South Sudan conflict: Pro-Machar forces 'seize' Bentiu

Apr 15, 2014. Rebel forces in South Sudan have recaptured the oil hub of Bentiu from the government, their spokesman says.

Oil companies should halt operations immediately and evacuate their staff within a week, Brig Gen Lul Ruai said.

An army spokesman denied Bentiu had fallen, saying fighting was continuing.

The two sides have repeatedly accused each other of violating a ceasefire signed in January.

More than one million people have been displaced in the conflict, which broke out about a month earlier after South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir accused his sacked deputy Riek Machar of plotting a coup.

‘Forced oil shutdown’
Mr Machar denied the allegation, but then launched a rebellion to overthrow Mr Kiir.

His forces took control of Bentiu, capital of Unity state, soon after the conflict started. However, government forces drove the rebels out of the the city on 10 January.

Unity state is rich in oil, the main foreign exchange earner of South Sudan. Oil production in South Sudan dropped by 20% after the conflict started.

China and Russia are among the major investors in South Sudan’s oil industry. Brig Gen Lul Ruai warned firms not to defy the order to shut operations.

Otherwise, they risked a “forced oil shutdown and the safety of their staff”, he said.

A UN official in South Sudan, Joe Contreras, said Mongolian peacekeepers had on Monday rescued 10 staff members from the Russian oil company Safinat just north of Bentiu, Associated Press news agency reports.

Two of the five wounded were in critical condition, he said.

The UN has around 8,000 peacekeepers in South Sudan, including a base in Bentiu where thousands of people have taken refuge since fighting broke out in December.

South Sudan’s military spokesman Col Philip Aguer said heavy fighting was continuing for control of Bentiu, AFP news agency reports.

“The rebels have tried to penetrate one part of the town but are being held back,” he told AFP.

Of the more than one million people displaced by the conflict, 803,200 are taking shelter within the country and another 254,000 have fled to neighbouring countries, according to a UN report released last month.

South Sudan seceded from Sudan in 2011 after a long and bloody conflict, to become the world’s newest state.

Putin Builds North Korea Rail to Circumvent Suez Canal

Putin Builds North Korea Rail to Circumvent Suez Canal
By Ekaterina Shatalova and Nicholas Brautlecht Oct 15, 2013 1:00 PM PT
Vladimir Putin is inching closer to his goal of turning Russia into a major transit route for trade between eastern Asia and Europe by prying open North Korea, a nuclear-capable dictatorship isolated for half a century.

Russia last month completed the first land link that North Korea’s Stalinist regime has allowed to the outside world since 2003. Running between Khasan in Russia’s southeastern corner and North Korea’s rebuilt port of Rajin, the 54-kilometer rail link is part of a project President Putin is pushing that would reunite the railway systems of the two Koreas and tie them to the Trans-Siberian Railway.

That would give Putin partial control over links to European train networks 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) away. The route is as much as three times faster than shipping via Egypt’s Suez Canal, which handles 17,000 ships a year, accounts for about 8 percent of maritime trade — and is increasingly beset by pirates and political instability in Egypt and Syria.

“Shipping companies face higher costs to secure their cargo,” said Thomas Straubhaar, director of the Hamburg Institute of International Economics, in an e-mailed response to questions. “The rail route will get attractive if Russia increases efforts to ensure a secure and reliable transport on the long stretch between Asia and Europe. Customers don’t want their Porsche to be stolen along the way.”

OAO Mechel (MTLR), Russia’s biggest supplier of steel-making coal, will be among the customers in the first stage of the North Korea project, sending shipments eastward to Asian consumers, according to Moscow-based Russian Railways. The Rajin facility also can be refitted to move Asian goods westward to Europe. Mechel’s press service in Moscow declined to comment.

Faster by Rail
Shipments to and from western Europe and Rajin will be delivered in just 14 days, compared with 45 days by ship, OAO Russian Railways Chief Executive Officer Vladimir Yakunin told reporters in North Korea Sept. 22.

Getting the two Koreas to work together on the railway and a long-stalled plan to build a pipeline to supply both Koreas with Russian natural gas is fraught with financial and political hurdles, said Fyodor Lukyanov, head of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy research group in Moscow. They stem from North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and lingering animosity from the 1950-1953 Korean War.

“Russia’s position is to get North Korea involved in profitable projects to make them realize that cooperation is better than isolation,” Lukyanov said by phone from the Russian capital.

Nuclear Developments
North Korea is under United Nations sanctions for its atomic program. Six-nation talks that were designed to remove nuclear weapons from the peninsula were abandoned in 2009, when it detonated another device. The Koreas are technically still at war, having ended their military conflict with an armistice rather than a formal peace treaty. In 2003, the two countries opened a highway through their demilitarized zone, one of the most heavily armed borders in the world.

“The Korean project is strategically important for Russian Railways,” said Igor Golubev, an analyst at OAO Promsvyazbank in Moscow. “But it shouldn’t expect fast returns on its investment because at this point I doubt global companies are willing to risk sending cargo via North Korea.”

While Russian Railways says time savings will make up for the higher costs compared with the Suez route, the services train operators already run between China and Europe are too costly, said Michael Tasto, an economist at the German Institute of Shipping Economics and Logistics. They thus lack the capacity to take major market share from container-shipping companies such as A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S. (MAERSKB)

Niche Product?
“The rail route is faster but more expensive, so it will probably become a niche product,” Tasto said by phone Oct. 7. “Cargo trains are not mass-transportation vehicles like container ships.”

None of that has stopped Russian Railways and its partners in the European Union and China from developing new links between the world’s two largest exporters, touting the routes as alternatives far removed from the political instability in Egypt and the wider Middle East.

Far East Land Bridge, a Russian Railways venture, opened a new service between Suzhou in eastern China and Warsaw on Sept. 30. The first shipment, of “electronic and technology items,” will make the 7,600-kilometer journey in 14 days, linking with the Trans-Siberian via Mongolia and reaching Poland through Belarus, the Vienna-based company said in a statement Oct. 7.

Direct Link
Russian Railways and its counterparts in China and Germany in August introduced a direct link between Hamburg and Zhengzhou in north-central China that takes as little as 15 days and travels through Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus and Poland.

“Our goal is a daily service,” Ruediger Grube, CEO of Deutsche Bahn AG, said after 51 shipping containers of goods from China arrived in Hamburg by train Aug. 2.

The Russian and German rail operators opened an 11,000-kilometer service between Chongqing in southwest China and the German transport hub of Duisburg via Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus and Poland in 2011. The travel time varies from 16 days to 23 days, according DB Schenker, Deutsche Bahn’s cargo unit.

Major customers include Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, which ships auto parts west to factories in China, and Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP), which transports computers the other way.

While the Chongqing line is focused on shipments between Europe and China, the Korean link caters to traffic between Europe and the rest of eastern Asia, Russian Railways said. China, Japan and South Korea together account for about a quarter of the global economy.

Korean Support
Putin has urged South Korean President Park Geun Hye, who assumed office in February, to work with North Korea on relinking their rail networks, most recently last month at the Group of 20 summit in St. Petersburg. Park publicly affirmed her commitment to reunifying the Trans-Korean when she met with officials in Busan, South Korea’s largest port, in July.

Putin plans to make his third state visit to Seoul for talks with Park in mid-November, Chosun Ilbo reported Oct. 1, without saying where it got the information. Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, declined to comment on the report.

North and South Korea resumed cross-border rail service in 2007 for the first time in 56 years amid a mood of detente, though North Korea closed it down after 18 months and hasn’t reopened it since.

“I have personally dreamed of a railway that starts at Busan and reaches Europe via Russia,” Park told Putin at the summit, according to the website of her presidential Blue House office. “It is an important agenda item for the new government to strengthen Eurasia cooperation.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Ekaterina Shatalova in Moscow at eshatalova@bloomberg.net; Nicholas Brautlecht in Hamburg at nbrautlecht@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Denis Maternovsky at dmaternovsky@bloomberg.net

Brazil Riots Threaten World Cup as Nation Prepares for Games

0ctober 23, 2013

The red carpet had been rolled out, the photographers were primed. Then came the tear gas.

The movie premiere in downtown Rio de Janeiro this month turned into another scene of confrontation between police and protesters in the Brazilian city that will host next year’s soccer World Cup final. This time, it was dozens of striking teachers who sought sanctuary in a movie theater.

“It was just like a war,” Cavi Borges, director of the documentary “City of God: 10 Years Later,” said of his canceled screening. “Every day there’s something like that.”

The story is familiar in a country where nationwide protests against political corruption, failing health and education systems as well as excessive public spending on sports erupted in June and show little sign of abating.

They are putting the spotlight on security before the arrival of the world’s biggest sporting events, the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games.

The World Cup will inject 112.8 billion reais ($52 billion) into the Brazilian economy by 2014, according to FIFA, citing a report by accountant Ernst & Young. Brazil is spending about 30 billion reais on projects related to the tournament. A similar amount in private and public spending is going toward the Rio Olympics that will be held two years later.

Percussion Grenades

The haze of tear gas and the sound of percussion grenades have remained commonplace as protesters are joined by masked anarchists known as the Black Bloc.

Authorities in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, said Oct. 16 they were tracking a criminal gang threatening to target the World Cup. The U.S. Consulate in Rio alerted American citizens on Oct. 11 to the possibility of continued protests, instructing them to avoid areas where large gatherings may occur. Less than a week later, some of the agency’s windows were smashed after being pelted with stones during another night of protests.

“Police don’t know who is being good and who is being bad and start going willy-nilly with deployment of gas, flash-bang devices, pepper weapons, and then everyone becomes a victim,” said Eduardo Jany, a security consultant who has worked with forces across Brazil. “There needs to be a pretty dramatic change in terms of doctrine, equipping and preparing.”

While no nation can match the five World Cups won by Brazil’s team, the 3.3 million-square mile (8.5 million-square kilometer) country has hosted the event only once before, in 1950. FIFA, which organizes the tournament, has trademarked the slogan for this one as “All in One Rhythm.”

Less Samba

Yet the pulse of the country has become less about dance and more about protest since June when Brazil hosted the Confederations Cup, a warm-up competition for the World Cup to test stadiums, transport and security.

On the night of Oct. 15 when teams such as current champion Spain, England and Chile won games they needed to qualify for the 32-team tournament next summer, bare-chested youths threw rocks and fireworks at police officers in downtown Rio following largely peaceful protests by about 10,000 teachers and their supporters. Police in riot gear responded with rounds of tear gas that hung over the center of the city.

During the protest, a youth dressed in black with his face covered climbed a wall of Rio’s municipal chamber, with hundreds of onlookers cheering as he sprayed-painted “Get Out FIFA” in Portuguese.

Slowing Economy

Economists predict that the country will grow at a slower pace than the Latin American average of 2.6 percent this year and 3.2 percent next, even as inflation of about 6 percent pushes up the housing and other costs for residents.

Every World Cup has its unique issue. In Germany, the focus in 2006 was on the controlling rival European fans. Four years later, host South Africa faced questions about whether its security forces were up to the job of protecting such a high-profile event from crime.

Brazil’s tourism agency Embratur today unveiled a $10 million advertising campaign to entice visitors to the country for the tournament. The organization’s head, Flavio Dino, says the protests won’t put tourists off, and he’s more concerned about price increases for hotels and aviation.

“The concerns are real,” Dino said. “We are currently negotiating with hotels, FIFA and the airlines to fix fair prices for fares.”

Rio’s Public Safety Secretariat, which has control of security in the state, is improving training for officers and adding new equipment, said Roberto Alzir, deputy secretary for major events in the organization.

Increasing Spending

The state’s investment in security rose to 4.8 billion reais this year from 2 billion reais in 2008, according to the secretariat. That compares with the 1.3 billion rand ($133 million) that South Africa said it had budgeted ahead of the 2010 World Cup as it assigned about 44,000 officers.

Fifty-five military police officers have been injured since protests began, and use of rubber bullets was suspended on Sept. 3, the Brazilian force’s press department said in an e-mail.

Yesterday, Interpol, the international police body, said it will work with the Olympic organizers to improve safety for the 2016 Games in Rio, including tracking stolen and lost travel documents, targeting illegal betting and hunting for internationally wanted suspects. The agreement calls for the global security group to assist the International Olympic Committee in the hunt for doping and corruption.

Rio’s violent deaths dropped 38.2 percent between 2006 and 2011, while street robberies fell to their lowest level since 2006, according to the city.

“There’s never been such satisfactory conditions of professionalism, command and respect in recent history,” Alzir said in an interview. The World Cup brings “more visibility, more reporters, and more foreign visitors. It’s a better environment for certain groups to propagate their causes, which will demand a greater effort of planning.”

Positive Movement

Jany, director of law enforcement advisory services for American security firm Mutualink Inc., said that Rio is moving to align its police tactics with best practices, though it won’t happen in time for the World Cup.

About $3.5 billion in public spending is going toward built to exact specifications demanded by FIFA, the Switzerland-based body that governs soccer.

That, and a further $10 billion being spent on infrastructure work related to the event has stoked tensions in a country where schools ranked below Mexico, Russia and Mongolia in the World Economic Forum’s 2013 Human Capital Index. The country relaxed immigration rules to allow more doctors in — as many as 4,000 from Communist Cuba — to combat what the government says is a shortage of 168,000 physicians. Inflation (BZPIIPCY) has remained above 5 percent in all but two months over the past three years, crimping purchasing power.

Rare Demonstrations

Until June, large-scale public demonstrations had been rare in South America’s most-populous country. As protests raged, a nationwide poll by Datafolha found 26 percent of people opposed Brazil hosting the World Cup, up from 10 percent in a 2008 survey.

At the opening game of the Confederations Cup, fans jeered FIFA leader Sepp Blatter and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. There was unrest in all six cities that hosted tournament games, and tear gas wafted into Rio’s Maracana stadium during Brazil’s victory over Spain in the final. At least six deaths were connected to June’s protests.

“Thousands were in the streets and you saw posters saying teachers are worth more than Neymar,” said Wiria Alcantara, a member of the board of the teachers’ union, referring to the Brazil player who in May joined Barcelona for $75 million. “Civil society was clamoring for quality education.”

Later Screening

“City of God: 10 Years Later,” a documentary about the fate of the actors who starred in director Fernando Meirelles’s hit movie about organized crime set in one of Rio’s toughest slums, finally screened on Oct. 12 after the tear gas prompted its postponement. Director Borges invited teachers onto the stage to unfurl their banners.

Signs are that protesters will continue to target sports events. Outside Rio’s legislature, one banner reads: “We’re not going to have a World Cup or Olympics.”

About 50 people on Oct. 7 invaded the pitch as Jerome Valcke, the top FIFA official responsible for the World Cup, toured a stadium in Cuiaba, western Brazil. Valcke watched the banner paraded around the arena that read: “FIFA, Go Home.”

“What do you want us to do? What do you want me to say about it? It is happening,” Valcke said, raising his arms in frustration at a press conference. “Will it happen at the World Cup? I hope not, but potentially it could.”