The Quadrangle

Issue date: 11/3/04 Section: News

New Guerrilla Groups Emerge on the Dawn of Sudanese Peace Talks

As the United Nations Security Council organizes a session pertaining to the situation facing Sudan next month, two new insurgent groups emerged -- posing a threat to not only the nation, but also the entire process of peace talks within the ravaged African nation.

"At the beginning, I thought they were an artificial creation, but now I think it's more serious. It's a force with which you have to reckon," Said Jan Pronk, the United Nation's representative in Sudan.

One of the new groups, according to officials at the African Union Cease-Fire Commission, is based in northern territories of the nation. On October 6, the group named National Movement for Reform and Development attacked a governmental convoy traveling through the region. The National Movement for Reform and Development is regarded as a splinter group off the Justice and Equality Movement, one of two groups recognized by the UN as established rebel organizations. The Sudan Liberation Army, the second recognized group, is not known to have ties to the new organizations.

Many Sudanese officials view the threat presented by the two new groups as very tangible: these new factions were not prevalent when the two legitimate rebel factions signed a cease-fire, leaving the nation susceptible to further violence by the two new groups with no known agendas.


Northern Japan Recuperates from Earthquake and Aftershocks

After a weekend of earthquakes, 23 Japanese deaths, and over 2,000 known injuries, the residents of Niigata Prefecture are attempting to survive after enduring the deadliest natural disaster faced by the nation in two decades.

Mangled train tracks, destroyed roads, and landslides became the landscape for residents of the northern city of Ojiya this weekend as earthquakes churned the region - causing mudslides, power outages, and the destruction of over 1,000 buildings.

"There were four to five jolts so strong we couldn't keep standing without grabbing something like a desk. I saw some landslides on a hillside on my way to the office," said Toshio Kasuga, a Takayanagi-area official, to Kyodo News after the quakes ravaged the region. The quake, measuring a staggering 6.8 on the Richter scale, created over 52 landslides, destroyed 211 sections of road, and collapsed 2,583 homes.

Junichiro Koizumi, the Prime Minister of the highly seismically active nation of Japan, stated that he would allot funding in order to restore order to the area.

"[The earthquake] must be beyond our imagination in terms of fear and damage," said Koizumi.


Explosives Disappear from Iraqi Military Facility

380 tons of explosives disappeared this October from Al Qaqaa an Iraqi military installment, with little notice by American or Iraqi officials, according to an investigation by the Iraqi interim government.

The weapons cache has a range of capabilities spanning from the demolition of buildings to the detonation of nuclear warheads, presenting American officials with fears over prolonged warring in Iraqi cities, and future acts of terrorism in the United States.

"This is a high explosives risk, but not necessarily a proliferation risk," said an administration official within the White House.

Al Qaqaa, an area once secured by American forces, became subject to abandon after the insurgency gripping varied Iraqi cities shifted the focus of Coalition troops from security to open warfare. The distraction led to the seizure of incredibly dangerous materials by unknown groups or persons. The materials, named HMX and RDX, are explosives powerful enough to shatter airplanes, and were responsible for the explosion that brought Pan Am Flight 103 down in Lockerbie, Scotland during the late eighties. Many experts believe that the explosion of a housing complex in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in November 2003 was executed with the same explosives stolen from the abandoned cache near southern Baghdad.

After receiving notification of the absence of weapons from Al Qaqaa, the CIA-sponsored Iraq Survey Group launched an investigation into the issue.


After Little Doubt, Karzai Wins in Afghanistan's post-Taliban Vote

President Hamid Karzai became Afghanistan's first elected president after the Taliban control over the nation. According to the Afghani election commission, Karzai won a majority of votes in the October 9 election, much to the chagrin of opponents accusing him of election fraud.

While many campaigned for the office, Mr. Karzai was considered to be the frontrunner among the varied candidates with a popularity rating within the 50 percentile throughout the nation. Many ballot boxes remain uncounted in the fringe regions of the country, but very few within Afghani politics expect them to have little bearing on current statistics.

Most Afghanis assume that Karzai will take office as the first Afghani president in many years, but those that ran against him refuse to abandon their hopes for political power. One candidate stated, "It is obvious for everyone that Karzai could not get 15 percent of the votes if the election had been fair. Now if Karzai, or anybody else, becomes the president of the country because of this election, he will be a false president."

Without citing much evidence toward election fraud, many Afghanis are upset with the outcome of the election simply because of Karzai's reliance on compromise between the varying cultures established within the nation. As the candidate most capable of toeing the line between the Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras of the north, and the Pashtuns of the south, Karzai came to victory in the election with 55.3 percent of the vote - a number lower than expected by his western supporters.