A Tale of Two Sudans with UK and USA and Thailand

The unrest in Sudan again with demonstrations in Khartoum, Omdurman and Port Sudan with upto 100 demonstrators shot dead and thrown into the Nile highlights the dangers facing not just Sudan’s slide into chaos and dictatorship but the threat facing neighbouring South Sudan as it emerges from such a state.

The latter the world’s newest nation, unless you count last month’s name change by North Macedonia, formed from its civil war and breakaway from Sudan in 2011.

The unrest now in South Sudan’s Yei River state that conflict in microcosm.

But if the Sudan unrest has yielded, as with Mugabe in Zimbabwe, the toppling of the dictator Bashir – and potential ICC extradition for war crimes and crimes against humanity or at the very least an Idi Amin exile to Saudi Arabia – then there are wider considerations for UK and Europe and USA in helping South Sudan on the road to peace and prosperity.

East Africa a great USA success story for POTUS Trump with the peace treaty between Eritrea and Ethiopia – the latter’s PM now using his good offices to intervene in the Sudan crisis. While POTUS Trump has urged caution on the forever wars of Pentagon policy and new $750BN budget with the Special Forces casualties in Niger - a factor in the Tim Kaine War Power Act debate:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/02/17/world/africa/niger-ambush-american-soldiers.html

Perhaps the routine drone assassinations of the Obama years is reaching a natural end. $1M missiles for mud huts and motorbikes seems poor value in delivering peace and prosperity and no real substitute for boots on the ground whether military or humanitarian workers.


### Africa trade hots up for UK and USA ###


And both Ivanka Trump and PM May have had very positive trade visits to Africa to refocus UK and USA trade efforts not just in the Extra Special Relationship heralded by the POTUS Trump UK visit but in Africa with its growing markets of young consumers.
UK looking extremely foolish in the Who Lost China trade debates of the Cameron years if Africa trade slips away with the weight of the Commonwealth and DFID and EU etc.

While the POTUS Trump state visit to UK spurring on calls for a Treble Club of a tripling of UK USA trade to $3TN. That perfectly feasible given UK and USA already the largest trade partners of the other.

Indeed with UK, USA and France neck and neck in African trade and far more investments than any other nation, even the much-promised efforts of China, in transport (the new Djibouti electric train already running out of gas) and natural resources then African trade success is also there to be lost.

France most active militarily in West Africa in Mali - albeit this week the massacre of 100 villagers in Dongon in the witches brew continuum of terrorism and poverty and civil war. Both UK and USA perhaps wise to take lessons from fellow NATO ally France in its Francophone African successes.

Increasingly South Sudan is becoming the lynchpin in UK strategy for the Sahel. Dynamic new Ambassador Chris Trott now in place and kicking off greater EU aid and trade ties with the opening of the bridge at Kuacjok to ease the way over the Jur river and around Wau region.

That Wau road link enabling the rail link to the capital Juba and onto Kampala in Uganda, linking in the key cities and ports of Khartoum and Port Sudan in Sudan, and Nairobi and Mombasa in Kenya.

Tourism euros aside, those infrastructure improvements along with regional airstrips, speeding through the flow of DFID and USAid for one of the world’s poorest nations.

South Sudan with the world’s fewest roads and none paved, 97% of its people in slums and a daily wage of $2 and no paved airstrips.
While with Peak Oil and the only pipeline through Sudan to the Red Sea, landlocked South Sudan is at ground zero in terms of economic growth, if not rolling backwards into conflict again.

While former PM Theresa May in one of the last official visits pausing to throw a few shapes with African schoolchildren and at the Tory party conference and Ivanka Ghana textiles underscores lost growth in South Sudan. But the subsistence agriculture of South Sudan unlikely to yield a wheatfield to sprint through, even, perhaps, carrying a loaf with a stash inside of Guinea narco-state cocaine for Govey to energise his PM bid.

Govey's Dress Gordon tartan from the POTUS Trump state visit more likely woven from South Sudan textile mills of the future with the Trump tartan. If not jostling for space with Big Rice Jezza H rice mills and brick factories.

Certainly the Clean Clothes campaign in the Sunday Mirror highlighting the Premier League football shirts scandal of 75p per hour wages in Thailand and Cambodia and Bangladesh in for the real World Series of £100 shirts must cause food for thought in ASEAN and Africa. And by dynamic Cindy Cao former UNICEF and EU-KH Representative in the corridors and plush watering holes of Brussels.



### Water, water everywhere in Budapest and Balaton nor any drop to drink ###


While a forewarning for South Sudan of UK and USA policy in Afghanistan crumbling over the lack of goat milk and leather factories: First World nice to haves ignoring Third World critical issues. Or water bowsers and clear irrigation ditches and Thailand’s Doitung on heroin crops - perhaps Govey elbowing Rory out of the way in the PM election for a taste of opium.

And Helmand second only to the Great British English seaside towns for a steady supply of Afghan and Shan heroin. The Myanmar military now beginning search operations on the Thai border and not Chinese border yet.

While Ambo Woody in UK is still nursing the bruises from raising the Americanisation of the NHS (never start a land war in Asia, and never mess with the British NHS two great American truths?) probably swapping his NFL baseball cap for his Johnson and Johnson hat, and wondering on the possibilities for soap and condom and tampon factories in Africa and East Kent Pfizer Viagra.

London’s Mike Bloomberg or holidaying Warren Buffett would surely pause only for a microsecond before investing?

Certainly just those future Trump Hotels on the shore of Lake Chad or Somali seafront or in downtown Juba would gobble up thousands of those little bars of soap and miniature bottles of shower gel and shampoo.

Ambo Woody must also be sketching out a game plan for the Women’s Football (Soccer if you must) World Cup as well as his nascent European NFL growth in this Year of USA Sports. 6M UK viewers for last week’s Women’s FA Cup the largest broadcast television audience yet – with minimal scheduling and promotion.

While the 13-0 drubbing of Thailand by USA in the Women Word Cup suggests UK’s soccer export is alive and kicking in the home of gridiron.

While the quietly capable Senator Eshoo and dynamic POTUS candidate Kamala Harris, both in the West Coast Republic of Boeing, must be thinking on the possibilities for the Boeing board of directors in their Seattle or Sheffield HQ with every EU banned airline an African airline. That’s a lot of new solar planes needed given Californian wealth is built on aviation.

And air links easier between Africa and Europe easier than links between African nations. So Bristol’s and Toulouse’s Airbus, or Tim Apples, would probably have a view on those unpaved runways and lack of air traffic control electronic kit in South Sudan.

While McCain buddy, Lindsay Graham must pause between mouthfuls of hickory nuts or pecans sprinkled over his Kelloggs Cornflakes, the Rolls Royce of breakfast cereals, and wonder where in say South Sudan all those Arizona dumped aircraft could be properly dismantled, smelted and recycled for Ford or Volvo or John Deere hubcaps. And retooled back at Boeing Charleston?

That John Deere a more progressive force in MENA or Russian prairies than Jihadi John, or the ISIS Beatles? Especially with 11BN not 7BN mouths to feed soon.

Especially across Sahel and Yemen with for example that 45% shrunken Lake Chad again (the Aral Sea of Africa?) with 1M thirsty people in Fort Lamy on its riverbanks, or the dry taps of water-stressed Cape Town last year.

Even here in East Kent, Manston aquifers aside, less rainfall than Syria now with Climate Change. That East Kent tourism boom in the sun only deliverable with water and beer to quench their thirst - or drown their sorrows if the New York Jets lose on satellite telly.

(to be continued)

@timg33