Sudan

Qatar's leader embraced Sudan's president in a red-carpet welcome as he arrived to attend an Arab summit in an act of defiance against an international warrant for his arrest on charges of war crimes in Darfur. For host Qatar, a key U.S. ally, the Arab League meeting starting today also showcases its desire to stake out a prominent role in regional affairs. Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir had promised to attend the 22-nation gathering after assurances from members that they would not enforce the International Criminal Court's arrest order issued March 4. Only Jordan and two other tiny Arab League members, the Comoros and Djibouti, are party to the ICC charter, and they can take no action on Qatari soil.

LONDON - Posthumus, the protagonist of Shakespeare's "Cymbeline," marched through the Herculean columns of the Globe theater, stopped abruptly at the front of the stage and looked up at an audience of hundreds - most of whom didn't speak a whisper of the language they were about to hear. His voice boomed, and he raised his arms and curled his hands into fists. "All these people have come from the newest country in the world," shouted actor Francis Paulino Lugali in Juba Arabic, "and this country is South Sudan!"

After years of worldwide outrage over suffering in Darfur, the Obama administration will soon launch a new policy that could soften some longtime U.S. sanctions against the Sudanese government implicated in the large-scale killings and displacement of African tribespeople. White House officials say that specific conditions would have to be met before sanctions would be lifted, and that Sudan could face even tougher sanctions if its leaders act in bad faith.

KHARTOUM, Sudan - It has come to this: The Sudanese government is sending out text messages to the population begging for donations to help the cash-strapped military. "Please help support the army," the messages plead. "If you want to contribute 10 Sudanese pounds, send number 10, and if you want to contribute 50 pounds, send the number 50. " This would not appear to an optimum moment to get into a war with its newest neighbor, South Sudan. But pride on both sides of their disputed border is undermining hope of peace, analysts warn, with neither side willing to reach a deal on the oil both depend on. South Sudan independence in July has cost Sudan three-quarters of its oil revenue, paralyzing the nation's economy.

The sun is high and it's a slow day for selling and there's not much for a camel trader to do except scatter hay and greens and listen to the big beasts munch. Sounds like shoes walking through gravel. Essam Ammar lifts a cellphone from his tunic. "Hi, Ahmed. No, I won't lower the price." Eyes roll. Ammar pulls the phone from his ear and looks at it; Ahmed's words crackle in the air. Click. It's not even noon. The day seems in retreat. "I've been doing this for 29 years," says Ammar, who wears a white-lace cap and an even snowier pinstriped vest, a risky choice amid blowing dust and rubbish fires.

A Sudanese official said Thursday that hundreds of people were killed early this year when foreign warplanes bombed three convoys smuggling African migrants through Sudan along with weapons that apparently were destined for the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert hinted at his air force's possible involvement in the attacks. They came after Israel ended a 22-day assault on Gaza without fully achieving one of its aims: to choke off Hamas' weapons supply.

Lovisa Stannow's compassion for the appalling situation in southern Sudan appears sincere, as witnessed by her arduous and heart wrenching stint in a feeding center (Commentary, Dec. 27). However, her article would have been much more effective without the minimizing of the American space program through the repeated snide references to John Glenn's heroic and well-deserved space shuttle trip. It is clear that Americans are caring and giving individuals. Our voluminous charity starts at home and extends to the far corners of the Earth, even where we are unwelcome.

George Clooney has perhaps learned an important lesson -- malaria makes traveling the globe a lot less fun than it should be. FOR THE RECORD: Malaria drug: An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the preventive drug mefloquine. Sure, it’s noble to go on philanthropic missions around the world, helping those who can’t help themselves, but it’s probably hard to feel noble when shaking from the chills. And Clooney should know. The actor apparently has just recovered from malaria, which he contracted in Africa earlier this month, media reports said Thursday.

Ask a Sudanese citizen what troubles him these days and he might not even mention Darfur or the International Criminal Court arrest warrant against the president. To many here, it's the economy that is keeping them up nights. Sudan's once-hard-charging economy, a source of national pride over the last five years, is in danger of grinding to a halt because of plummeting oil prices. With the nation's oil-dependent budget in tatters, government employees are facing pay cuts.

Sparks flew as blacksmiths fanned fires and Stephen Jada, a welder with ambitions far larger than his tin shack, rested in the shade and spoke of how this gritty, once forgotten sliver of the world was about to blossom. "A new nation," he declared, "is being born to be equal with other countries. There is much to be done. " He looked down an alley of tools and rust and listened to the hiss of blowtorches, the bite of hacksaws. Men around him hammered and sweated. Women sold beans and shooed children along bamboo fences not far from families scrubbing clothes in the Nile.

KHARTOUM, Sudan - Sudan and its southern rival slid toward a ruinous war Thursday, with fighting continuing along their contested border and Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir threatening to teach the world's newest country "a final lesson by force. " A protracted war between Sudan and South Sudan, which separated peacefully in July, would almost certainly have a devastating civilian toll and seriously damage the oil sector on which both economies depend. But diplomacy has gotten nowhere, and civilians on both sides were urging their governments not to back down.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Sudan and South Sudan teetered dangerously on the edge of war Thursday after South Sudan refused to withdraw its troops from a disputed border area despite calls to do so by the United Nations and African Union. Sudan, furious about South Sudan's seizure a day earlier of its most important oil field in the town of Heglig, bombed a bridge outside the South Sudan oil town of Bentiu, killing one civilian and wounding four, officials said. The fighting between the two nations was the worst since South Sudan seceded from the north in July after a January 2011 independence referendum.

  With a gnarled hand, the elderly widow picks up a rock and taps it with another rock until it shatters. Then she tosses the pebbles into a small pile. The tap-tap of stone on stone echoes like drips in a cave as women pound stones to pebbles in the blasting heat of Rock City, on the outskirts of Juba, capital of the new nation of South Sudan. Davidka Clement made the long trek to Juba from her village a few years ago. She had heard that South Sudan, which fought for decades for independence from Sudan, would soon become an independent country with its own leaders, who would care about people like her. The country became a reality in July, to momentous celebration, but it changed nothing for Clement or the other pebble women of Rock City.

The two wards are at opposite ends of the hospital. One ward is silent but for a baby boy, gurgling on a bed in a corridor. A toddler wanders around with a machete scar on his head. The boys' parents are dead. In the other ward lies one of the men who attacked them. When Gai Nashir was a baby, his father was also killed, by members of the boys' tribe. Quick to anger, he grew up with an enemy. "This war began before I was even born," says Nashir, who was wounded in December when he and other members of his Nuer tribe shot and hacked to death hundreds of men, women and children of the Murle tribe in the darkest episode in the short, troubled history of the world's newest country, South Sudan.

To outsiders, the move appears suicidal, a recipe for ruining the economy and possibly returning to war. But on the streets of Juba, the capital of South Sudan, the decision to turn off the flow from oil wells that produce 98% of the government's revenue has triggered bursts of defiance and national pride. "The oil was shut down because it's our oil. We need our rights," said truck driver Nimeiry Thomas, 30, his face dripping with sweat in Juba's Konyo Konyo market. One of the world's poorest countries, South Sudan made the move last month in an escalating dispute with northern neighbor Sudan, from which it seceded in July.

Memo to the new leaders of Libya: If you're trying to establish a democratic, internationally recognized state founded on the rule of law, it's a very bad idea to seek governance advice from the modern successor to Idi Amin. In one of the more incongruous diplomatic visits in recent memory, Libyan officials over the weekend rolled out the red carpet for none other than Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir — the dictator next door wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for slaughtering his own people, very like the military dictator just overthrown in Libya who was also wanted by the ICC on similar charges.

The tribal chief parked his bicycle beneath a tree, walked into a schoolhouse and cast his ballot for the man with the power to grant what he wants most: a paved road running past the fishmongers to the highway. "I am voting for our leader," Hamid Hamdoon said, referring to President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, the former general who has led Sudan for more than a decade. "I expect the country to move forward. We need water, doctors and hospitals. But in this neighborhood we desire asphalt."

Sudan's armed forces said Sunday that they had killed the leader of Darfur's main rebel group, inflicting what could prove a severe blow to rebels who have waged a nearly decade-long war against  the Arab-led government in Khartoum. In a statement carried on the official Sudan News Agency, the army said Khalil Ibrahim, leader of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement, was killed in fighting in Wad Banda in the North Kordofan region, which borders Darfur. A spokesman for JEM confirmed the death to the French news agency Agence France-Presse, but said Ibrahim was killed in an air strike rather than during clashes.

In just a few weeks, the people of southern Sudan will mark the first anniversary of their historic vote to secede from the north and establish their own sovereign nation. Voters danced as they cast their ballots in January to split with the government in Khartoum. Of the nearly 99% who voted in favor of independence, some were mindful of the great challenges ahead, but others talked to reporters about their high expectations: new bridges and roads and schools and jobs and even better food as a result of self-government.