South Sudan accused Sudan on Tuesday of mounting bombing raids on the newly independent country's oil-producing border region and President Salva Kiir said the latest hostilities amounted to a declaration of a war by his northern neighbor.

Weeks of cross-border fighting between the former civil war foes have threatened to escalate into a full blown conflict in a region that holds one of Africa's most significant oil reserves.

Although both Sudan, ruled by President Omar al-Bashir since 1989, and South Sudan, which became independent last July under a peace deal with Khartoum, can ill-afford a protracted war, both countries have fueled tensions with bellicose rhetoric.

The United States, China and Britain urged both sides to return to the negotiating table.

"We strongly condemn Sudan's military incursion into South Sudan. Sudan must immediately halt the aerial and artillery bombardment in South Sudan by the Sudan armed forces," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

Sudan's foreign minister said he was ready to discuss security issues with the South.

---

Philip Aguer, spokesman for South Sudan's army, or the SPLA, said Sudanese Antonov aircraft had flown up to 40 km (25 miles) into South Sudan's territory to bomb the settlements of Teschween, Panakuach and Roliaq on Monday night. Taban Deng Gai, governor of Unity State where the raids occurred, said bombs had hit Lalop market and Panakuach.

The raids came after the SPLA said Sudan bombed a market early on Monday near the oil town of Bentiu, capital of Unity state, and killed two civilians, an attack they said amounted to a declaration of war. The United Nations condemned the attack.

The Sudanese army denied carrying out air strikes.

Speaking in China, which has significant oil and business interests in both African countries, Kiir said Sudan had declared on his country.

PhotoBlog: South Sudanese run for cover as Sudan bombs border area

"It (this visit) comes at a very critical moment for the Republic of South Sudan because our neighbor in Khartoum has declared war on the Sudan," he told Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Hu called for restraint, urging the two neighbors to settle their disputes peacefully.

In addition to halting nearly all oil production, the recent fighting has displaced some 35,0000 people in areas around Heglig, Talodi and other parts of South Kordofan, the U.N. Refugee Agency said, citing its local partners.

"The urgent task is to actively cooperate with the mediation efforts of the international community and halt armed conflict in the border areas," China's state television paraphrased Hu as telling Kiir.

South Sudan said on Friday it would withdrew from the disputed Heglig oilfield it seized earlier this month, bowing to demands from the U.N. Security Council.

The SPLA's withdrawal from the oilfield, which used to produce about half of Sudan's total oil output, reduced the risk of an all-out war but Juba has accused Khartoum of daily air bombardments on its territories since then.

"We have not declared war but the SPLA is on maximum alert because if they attack they will not (catch) the SPLA off guard, Aguer told reporters in Juba.

"If they don't stop bombardment, if they don't stop the incursion into our territories, I assure you the SPLA is capable of retaking all of these areas that they are occupying by force," he said.

South Sudan became independent last year, breaking up what was Africa's largest country under a 2005 peace agreement that ended two decades of civil war.

But the two territories have yet to settle a long list of disputes including the position of their shared border, the ownership of critical territories and how much the landlocked South should pay in oil transit fees to Sudan.

The disputes have already halted nearly all oil production, choking the two countries' largely oil-dependent economies.

For China, the standoff shows how its economic expansion abroad has at times forced Beijing to deal with distant quarrels it would like to avoid.

A South Sudanese official, deputy chief of protocol Gum Bol Noah, said China had agreed to provide technical assistance on an alternative oil pipeline to Kenya, but would wait until the situation was calmer.

Juba has said it wants to build a pipeline within one year to end its dependency on Sudan's oil transit and export facilities, but experts say the project is not viable without significant new oil discoveries.

Bashir has ruled out a return to negotiations with Juba, saying the South's government only understands "the language of guns".

But Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Karti said Khartoum was ready to negotiate with the South on "security issues".

"I'm now ready to talk, but on the security issues," Karti told reporters in Addis Ababa after meeting officials from the African Union, who have urged both sides to return to talks.

South Sudan Information Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin said Kiir's visit to China was intended to improve relations that were strained after Juba expelled the head of a China-led oil consortium it accused of helping Sudan to "steal" southern oil.

"The relations we have been having with them (China), with Khartoum on the other side, have not been clear," he told reporters in Juba.

"There must be some sort of relationship where China can play a positive role, even in this war. You see it is like a case of a husband with two wives," he said referring to China's relationship with both Sudans. 

More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• James Murdoch grilled in phone hacking probe
• Runner who died in London Marathon inspires $500,000 donations
• France's election battle moves from hearts to heads
• UK cops close to arrest over British spy found dead in a bag?
• Judge slams Murdoch's Sky News for illegal email hacking
• Obama unveils sanctions on Syria, Iran for tech assault on activists

Follow us on Twitter: @msnbc_world

 

Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

KHARTOUM, Sudan -- Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir all but declared war against his newly independent neighbor on Thursday, vowing to teach South Sudan a "final lesson by force" after it occupied a disputed oil field.

South Sudan accused Bashir of planning "genocide" and said it would fight to protect its people.

Mounting violence since Sudan split into two countries last year has raised the prospect of two sovereign African states waging war against each other openly for the first time since Ethiopia fought newly independent Eritrea in 1998-2000.

---

Both are poor countries - South Sudan is one of the poorest in the world - and the dispute between them has already halted nearly all the oil production that underpins both economies. 

South Sudan says Heglig oilfied reduced 'to rubble'

Appearing in medal-spangled military uniform at a large rally, Bashir danced side-to-side, waved his walking stick in the air and made blistering threats against the leadership of the South, which seceded last year after decades of civil war.

"These people don't understand, and we will give them the final lesson by force," the burly military ruler told the rally in El-Obeid, capital of the North Kordofan state. "We will not give them an inch of our country, and whoever extends his hand on Sudan, we will cut it off."

China, a major investor in the oil industry in both countries, expressed "serious concern" about the increase of tensions and called on both sides to stop fighting, "maintain calm and exercise maximum restraint".

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said South Sudan's seizure of the oil field was an "illegal act" and called on both countries to stop fighting.

Bashir: South Sudan rulers are 'insects'
South Sudan separated from the rest of Sudan with Bashir's blessing last July under the terms of a 2005 peace deal. But since then violence has steadily escalated, fuelled by territorial disputes, ethnic animosity and quarrels over oil.

Birthday wish: 'Lost boys' pin hopes on independent South Sudan

Last week, South Sudan seized Heglig, a disputed oilfield near the border between the two countries, claiming it as its rightful territory and saying it would only withdraw if the United Nations deployed a neutral force there.

Sudan's armed forces spokesman Al-Sawarmi Khalid said by phone the army was now fighting "inside Heglig."

South Sudan's army (SPLA) said it had repulsed a large attack on Heglig on Wednesday evening, stopping Sudan's forces about 18 miles from the territory.

"The SPLA maintained its position," spokesman Philip Aguer said. He also accused Sudan of launching another attack in the border regions of South Sudan's Western Bahr al-Ghazal state.

In a sign of the conflict widening, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) - considered the most militarily potent of the rebel factions in Sudan's western Darfur region - claimed it had launched an assault on the al-Kharsana oil region near Heglig.

PhotoBlog: Last few licks of paint as South Sudan preps for independence

"We are surrounding the Sudanese army in the main military base in al-Kharsana," JEM spokesman Gibreel Adam Bilal said by phone. Heglig is hundreds of km away from JEM's bases in Darfur but the group has fought in the Kordofan region in the past. 

The Sudanese army spokesman, Khalid, denied JEM's statement, saying there was no fighting in the al-Kharsana area. 

Limited access for independent journalists to Sudan's remote conflict zones makes it difficult to confirm the often contradictory claims issued by all sides. 

African states have often waged war on each other's territory, but it is extremely rare for them to talk openly of fighting against government forces of sovereign neighbors.

Bashir's address to the rally on Thursday followed a fiery speech to party supporters on Wednesday, when he vowed to "liberate" South Sudan from its ruling party, which he repeatedly referred to as "insects", in a play on its Arabic name.

South Sudan's Information Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin responded on Thursday with outrage.

"Mr. President, we are no insects and if you are launching your genocide activities to the Republic of South Sudan to kill the people of South Sudan .... we can assure you we will protect the lives of our citizens."

However, he also said South Sudan was willing to resume talks immediately on all outstanding issues.

"The Republic of South Sudan is not in a state of war, nor is it interested in war with Sudan," he said.

In both speeches, Bashir vowed to retake the Heglig oilfield, which he said was part of Sudan's Kordofan region. But he also said that alone would not end the conflict.

"Heglig is not the end, but the beginning," he said in Thursday's speech.

More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• Joint Chiefs' leader: US will not send troops to Syria
• Outrage over video of alleged rape of disabled girl 
• Vietnam pleads for help as mystery disease kills 19, sickens 171
• Soccer or sex? Thai teens ponder puzzling choice
• US Black Hawk helicopter with four crew members crashes in Afghanistan
• Lack of leadership to blame for soldiers' bad behavior

Follow us on Twitter: @msnbc_world

 

 

Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

An American citizen who alleges that he was detained and tortured overseas at the behest of the U.S. government — and is now marooned as a result of the U.S. no-fly list — has filed for political asylum in Sweden, he announced with his lawyers on Wednesday.

Yonas Fikre, 33, says he spent more than three months in a Dubai detention center in 2011. In a lengthy Skype interview with msnbc.com, he described sleeping on the concrete floor of a frigid jail cell, and enduring regular interrogation, beatings and stress positions that caused him to collapse or black out.

He was released in September, he says, but is just now going public with his story.

---

Fikre’s ordeal took place outside the United States — far from his home in Portland, Ore. — but he and his American lawyer say they believe it was orchestrated by the FBI in connection with an investigation in Portland. And they maintain that Fikre’s inclusion on the no-fly list — which bars him from boarding U.S.-bound flights — has been used as a tool to coerce information, not because he presents a risk to U.S. flights.

"There is a practice and policy by the FBI to gratuitously deny the rights of American Muslims, particularly naturalized immigrant Muslims when they want to get more information," said Thomas Nelson, a Portland attorney representing Fikre. "In the case of Mr. Fikre …  we believe and will allege that they also engaged in torture by proxy. This is shocking. This is a dark day for America."

Limited scope of no-fly list
The government, citing security reasons, will not say why any individual is on the no-fly list or even confirm that they are included. However, the names are rigorously screened and regularly reviewed, according to a spokesman at the Terrorist Screening Center, a division of the FBI that maintains watch lists.

The Department of Justice reviewed Fikre’s case in response to a complaint from Nelson on behalf of Fikre and two others clients on the no-fly list, and said that it did not find cause for action.

"Based on our review, we have concluded that no action by this Office is warranted," said a letter from the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility dated March 28. “We are referring your correspondence to the FBI’s inspection division for whatever action it deems appropriate."

Security experts say the intent of the no-fly list is quite limited — to protect U.S. aviation from attack.

"Its principal purpose is to keep certain people who have been identified off of U.S. airlines. …  It doesn’t involve arresting people," said Brian Michael Jenkins, senior adviser to the president of the Rand Corp., a security think tank, and former member of the White House commission on aviation safety and security. "It is not a fugitive list."

He said it would not be surprising if law enforcers used getting off the no-fly list as an inducement for recruiting informants, but it would be considered an abuse if they were included on the list in order to pressure them.

The FBI office in Portland said it could not discuss specifics of the case, due to protections provided to Americans by the U.S. Privacy Act.

"I can tell you that the FBI trains its agents very specifically and very thoroughly about what is acceptable under U.S. law," said Beth Anne Steele, spokeswoman for the FBI Portland field office. "To do anything counter to that training is counterproductive — we risk legal liability and potentially losing a criminal case in court."

The problem for Fikre and others is that there is no way to dispute the information that put them on the list in the first place.

Nelson says Fikre’s ordeal fits a pattern among Muslim Americans, including several clients, who discover they are on the no-fly list while they are out of the United States — and are then  asked to submit to questioning, with no access to legal counsel, in return for their travel rights.

Related reporting from msnbc.com

• No-fly Americans split up for return home
• Bittersweet homecoming for American caught in no-fly limbo
• No-fly Muslim takes case to court of public opinion

Far-flung FBI encounter
In April 2010 Fikre was in Sudan, where he arrived several months earlier to set up a trading company. He was summoned to the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum, he says, ostensibly to attend a luncheon with other Americans to be briefed on security amid election-related turmoil in the country. But when he arrived Fikre was instead met with a grilling by two men who identified themselves as FBI agents from Portland, according to his account.

In a session lasting three to four hours, Fikre says, the two men questioned him about people and activities at As-Saber Mosque,  where he prays back in Portland. They asked about the imam and people who attend the mosque, the content of sermons and meetings and even details about the layout of the building.

Fikre says they made it clear that they wanted him to go back to Portland as an FBI informant in an unspecified investigation.

Fikre says  that when he told the men he didn’t want to work for the FBI, they countered by asking, "Don't you love your family? Don't you want to make real money?"  They also indicated that if he worked for them, they could help him get off of the "no fly" list — which he says was a surprise because this meeting was the first he had heard that his name was on the no-fly list.

The details of this conversation could not be verified. However, Fikre has an email that he says came from one of the men, David Noordeloos, after Fikre refused a second meeting: "Thanks for meeting with us last week in Sudan,” it says. “While we hope to get your side of issues we keep hearing about, the choice is yours to make. The time to help yourself is now." Fikre said he considered this communication a threat.

Fikre says he chose Sudan as a business destination because his family had lived there when he was a child, after fleeing civil war in Eritrea. In 1991 his immediate family immigrated to the United States and later became citizens, but he still has relatives in Sudan. He says the agents told him couldn’t do business in Sudan due to U.S. sanctions, so he made his way to the United Arab Emirates, where he had a friend, and started over.

Lost to the world
But on June 1, 2011, in Abu Dhabi, Fikre was arrested by non-uniformed secret police, blindfolded and taken to a secret state security prison with no explanation, according to Fikre’s account.

Day after day under detention in the UAE city, he said, he was interrogated about events and people in Portland, especially those in the As-Saber mosque and its imam — answering many of the very same questions posed by the FBI agents a year earlier, he says, but in even greater detail.

He says  that in a particularly brutal session, the prison interrogators prodded him to talk about a new case that was unfolding in Portland — that of Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, who had been arrested in late 2010 by the Portland FBI in a sting operation for an attempted bombing at a crowded Christmas tree lighting ceremony.  

Fikre  says he told his questioners he didn’t know Mohamud but recognized the younger man in news reports as a member of As-Saber Mosque. He says he knew nothing of Mohamud’s ideology or plans.

For about 10 weeks, Fikre says, he felt he was lost to the world.

He was in held in solitary confinement in a frigid cell without bedding, he says, subjected to bright lights, stress positions, sleep deprivation and beatings around his head, chest, soles of his feet and hands, and threatened with strangulation.

Fikre's captors urged him to work for the FBI and told him that if he agreed to do so he would be freed, according to his account. When Fikre suggested that the UAE interrogators were working for the FBI, they beat him more severely, he says.

Consular visit
Three weeks after Fikre went missing, Nelson, the Portland attorney, launched a search on behalf of worried relatives, contacting officials in the UAE and the U.S. State Department. On July 27, the U.S. Embassy located Fikre and said he was being detained by the UAE State Security Department, email records show.

The next day, a U.S. Embassy staffer was allowed to meet with Fikre.

But Fikre says that the UAE prison officials who also attended the meeting had warned him in advance not to discuss his poor treatment or face further punishment. They also promised that if he cooperated, he would be released within days.

During the meeting Fikre says he tried to subtly signal that he was in trouble, according to his account. But he says the U.S. representative, a woman named Marwa, did not appear to pick up on those signals.

"Mr. Fikre was reported to be in good spirits and did not report any issues of maltreatment," according to an email message from a communications officer at the U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi to the office of Rep. Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon congressman who had aided Nelson’s inquiries about the case.  The message, obtained by msnbc.com noted that the embassy understood Fikre was not charged with any crime and should be released soon.

Fikre’s incarceration, questioning and abuse continued for nearly seven weeks after that meeting, he says. There were no more visits from the consulate.

He was finally released on Sept. 14, and — because he could not board a flight to the United States – he went to Sweden, where he is staying with a relative while Swedish officials review his request  for asylum.

"I used to take great pride in being an American," Fikre said. "I believed that I have a very powerful country that will take care of me no matter where I am. … (Now) I feel like a second-class citizen or not even a citizen. I didn’t get any help from my government."

Fikre and Nelson say they believe the Sudan meeting and the detention were arranged by the FBI to bolster its investigation and prosecution of Mohamud, the would-be Christmas tree bomber.

How names get put on the no-fly list

The FBI had been tracking Mohamud since he was about 16, because of email communications that officials say expressed his desire to pursue violent jihad, according to an affidavit for his arrest.

Sting operation
An undercover FBI agent first made contact with Mohamud in June 2010 in the sting operation that led to his arrest in November.

On Nov. 26, 2010, apparently believing he had connected with Islamic extremists, Mohamud allegedly drove a car he believed contained explosives to a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland and then attempted to detonate it with a cellphone. The explosives and the detonator were fakes supplied by the FBI, which then swept in and arrested him.

Mohamud's trial, scheduled to begin in October, is expected to be a battle over entrapment — whether the sting operation averted a deadly attack or provoked action on the part of a disillusioned young man.

Fikre is one of several Portland Muslims —all of whom sometimes pray at As-Saber Mosque –  stranded overseas in recent months by the no-fly list. Jamal Tarhuni, 55, and Mustafa Elogbi, 60, both longtime U.S. citizens, were able to return home from trips to Libya only with the intervention of lawyers. They too say they were pursued by Portland FBI agents for questioning while in North Africa.

The men were reunited with their families in Portland but remain on the no-fly list. In Tarhuni’s case, the designation means he cannot complete aid projects he was working on in Libya with the nonprofit Medical Teams International, and he takes trains to meetings across the country.

Video: Waiting for husband to come home

These men, and others named on the no-fly list must be "considered a threat to aircraft, or be operationally capable of carrying out a terrorist attack, and using air travel to get somewhere for the purpose of conducting a terrorist attack, or be a threat to U.S. installations or troops worldwide," said the spokesman for the Terrorist Screening Center.

Tarhuni, Elogbi and Fikre are likely to file a lawsuit against the Department of Justice to challenge that claim and recover their travel rights, said Nelson.

But Fikre, unlike the other two, is not eager to return to the United States. He said that whatever action he takes will be from the relative security of Sweden, which he hopes will grant him a permanent haven.

"The most important thing for me is to find out why they did to me what they did, Fikri said, speaking from a relative’s home in Sweden. “It’s always in the back of your mind, you know, you wonder why this happened to me.  And if you get the answer to that question, you could move on, you know.  But something like this happened to you, you always are going to wonder — I wonder why this happened and who was really involved, who was really running the show behind the scenes."

More content from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• City's finance chief accused of looting $30 million
• Murder charges after mom killed in apparent baby-snatch plot
• Video: Troops pose with Afghan body parts
• Ill. couple claim share of giant Mega Millions pot

• Video: Teens stand on tracks in game of 'subway chicken'

Follow US News on msnbc.com on Twitter and Facebook

Follow Kari Huus on Facebook

 

By Ann Curry
NBC News anchor

Climbing into Sudan's Nuba Mountains I turned and saw her standing above me, in a dress so clean and white it seemed out of place with her surroundings.

Something about her seemed at once strong, even heroic and yet achingly vulnerable. She didn't move as I raised my camera to take a picture of her and the sleeping baby she carried: two children among thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands living in caves to survive the relentless bombing.

Even small children know to run at the sound of the government's Antonov warplanes.  Our news team had just sat down in at the mouth of a cave when the plane's "Whoooo woooooh" sound grew very loud. Suddenly children and adults started scrambling inside, tripping and falling on top of each other in a silent fear. It is odd, I realized, how quiet children are here, uttering not a word even at this moment.

All we heard was 89-year-old Cooli Kafi Darbar praying. Cooli is a former school teacher, who has been credited with translating the Bible into Kronga, the language of the Nuba people.

His quiet prayer translated, "The God of Isaac and Abraham, thank you for everything, for suffering and for blessings."

Hearing this, his 64-year-old daughter Hanna began to stare, seemingly at some memory, before she started to cry. Then she parted her lips and sang, "Why can't I find any comfort in this world," tears rolling down her left cheek and dropping off her chin.

---

It is a good question.

The Nuba are being bombed nearly every day now by their own government that seems intent on clearing them from these mountains.

When the people of South Sudan fought for independence from the government of President Omar al-Bashir (the same President Bashir who the International Criminal Court has accused of genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur), the Nuba fought with them. But when territorial lines were drawn, the Nuba were left on what they considered the wrong side of the border.

Sudan's government says it is fighting an insurgency. We met Nuba rebels who showed us the artillery they said they'd confiscated from government troops, but they insisted their people were attacked first.

People say government military units called the "Abu Tiera," led by Ahmed Harun (also accused by the ICC of crimes against humanity in Darfur), went door to door, targeting only Nuba homes with systematic rape, murder and kidnappings while leaving Arabs untouched.

There are no accurate numbers of how many people may have disappeared, but some experts say satellite images are consistent with reports of mass graves.

Brigadier General Nimori Morat told us, "We are fighting just to live."

The United Nations estimates that in the Nuba Mountains, and in the neighboring states that have also been attacked in the wake of South Sudan’s independence, 585,000 people have been displaced.

This seems to be a war over territory and, in one area, over oil, but it appears to have also unleashed ethnic cleansing.

"They say our skin is like charcoal," the elderly Cooli told us. Another woman who survived an attack said, ”They called us dogs and said we are the only people because we are Arabs and you are Nuba."

How could a war such as this be largely unknown to the rest of the world?

Journalists are not allowed into the Nuba Mountains. It was only because we snuck across the border that we reached the caves, and even then, we were wary of bombs and Sudan military units a few kilometers away. Ultimately we had to leave the same night because it was unsafe, we were told, to stay.

Sure enough, some of the places where we had been were attacked at sunrise and there appeared to be an effort to cut off the road into the Nuba Mountains completely. How will the people in the mountains survive this war, and soon, the potential famine that will result from being unable to plant their crops? Humanitarian aid has also been cut off from the mountains.

While the international community wonders what, if anything, can be done, we saw a boy in a refugee camp wearing, of all things, an Obama t-shirt.

And we heard several people, including children, thank us for taking their picture. If they are going to suffer, and even die, they at least want the world to know what is happening here.

 

Editor's note: Click here to watch Ann Curry's full Sudan report, 'The Man Who Stayed,' from Rock Center with Brian Williams.

Additional resources: Click here to learn more about humanitarian organizations helping Nuba refugees.

JOHANNESBURG – Fueled by an Asian demand for ivory, poachers have slaughtered more than 200 elephants in the past five weeks in a patch of Africa where they are more dangerously endangered than anywhere else on Earth, wildlife activists say.

Heavily armed poachers from Chad and Sudan had decimated the elephant population of Bouba Ndjida National Park in Cameroon's far north in a dry season killing spree, officials say.

"We are talking about a very serious case of trans-frontier poaching, involving well-armed poachers with modern weapons from Sudan and Chad who are decimating this wildlife species to make quick money from the international ivory trade," said Gambo Haman, governor of Cameroon's North region.

---

Speaking on local radio, Haman said some of the poachers were on horseback and operated in cahoots with the local population, who were given free elephant meat and were glad to be rid of animals that damage their crops.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare said cross-border poaching was common during the dry season but the scale of the killings so far this year was unprecedented.  "This latest massacre is massive and has no comparison to those of the preceding years," the group said in a statement.

Embassies of the United States, the European Union, Britain and France had sounded alarm bells about the slaughter and had called on Cameroon's government to take urgent action to stop the killing.

Cameroon has dispatched a rapid reaction force to the zone but Haman said there were not enough troops to cover the remote park in Cameroon's far north.

Need for ivory
Citing a record number of large scale ivory seizures in 2011, TRAFFIC, a conservation group that tracks trends in wildlife trading, has warned of a surge in elephant poaching in Africa to meet Asian demand for tusks for use in jewelry and ornaments.

"The ivory is smuggled out of West and Central Africa for markets in Asia and Europe, and the money it raises funds arms purchases for use in regional conflicts, particularly ongoing unrest in Sudan and in the Central African Republic," said the animal fund's Paris-based spokeswoman Celine Sissler-Bienvenu.

Wildlife experts said recently that large seizures of elephant tusks made 2011 the worst on record for elephants since ivory sales were banned in 1989.

The fund said estimates suggested as many as 3,000 elephants were killed by poachers across the continent last year.

The organization warned that countries such as Chad could lose their entire elephant population in the very near future if current poaching levels are sustained.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

More from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• 'Absolutely brilliant': NYT's Shadid remembered
• Strait of Hormuz: Iranians, smugglers and fireworks
• Robbers loot Greece's Ancient Olympia museum
• Pentagon details downsizing of US forces in Europe

KHARTOUM - A few weeks ago, a leading opposition activist sat down in a downtown Khartoum office to talk to a journalist. The young man immediately removed the battery from his cellphone.

"It's so they can't trace you," he said, placing the battery and the phone on the table. "Any one of the security agencies spread throughout the country can arrest you."

---

Despite that danger, the activist, from an underground group called "Change Now", said he was convinced Sudan is on the brink of its own Arab Spring uprising.

Hard times and growing frustration with the two-decades-old government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir have sparked small protests in Khartoum and other university cities in the Arab-African state.

The demonstrations are still tiny compared with those that shook Egypt and Libya. Sometimes about 30 people show up, hold banners denouncing the government for a couple of minutes, and then melt away before security agents arrive. But the demonstrations have become more frequent in the past few months and the question is, could they lead to something bigger?

The main economic challenge is plain. When South Sudan seceded from the north last year, Khartoum lost about three-quarters of its oil, the main source of state revenues and hard currency. The Sudanese pound has slumped by as much as 70 percent below the official rate. Annual inflation is at 18 percent as the cost of food imports has shot up. Wars against insurgencies in different parts of the still-vast country have also soaked up government funds.

In 1985, protests against food inflation toppled President Jaafar Nimeiri in some 10 days. But the government in Khartoum today says the economy is not nearly as bad as it was in the 1980s, when people had to queue for days to get rationed petrol or food. Sudan, it says, will not follow Egypt or Tunisia.

Rabie Abdelati, a senior official in the information ministry and Bashir's National Congress Party (NCP), said that the economy was much better than in 1989 when Bashir came to power.

"The situation at that time was very terrible," he said. "The government has the ability to overcome all obstacles."

A relaxed-looking Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, spoke on state television for almost two hours last week to assure the population that the economic situation was under control.

"We have a 3-year economic program (but) this year will be the most difficult," the president said.

On the surface, life in the capital looks normal. Construction cranes loom on the banks of the Nile, working on new buildings and roads. The city bustles with foreign workers, maids and hotel staff.

But there are sporadic signs that public anger is rising.

In the last week of December, authorities temporarily closed the University of Khartoum after villagers displaced by a huge hydro-electric dam staged a protest, inspiring a week of some of the biggest student demonstrations in years. Weeks later, the spray-painted graffiti calling for "revolution" still covered a few walls near the university.

South Sudan's independence deprived Sudan - a country of 32 million people - of around 350,000 barrels per day (bpd) of the roughly 500,000 it pumped. Since then, oil exports, which made up 90 percent of Sudan's total exports, have fallen to zero.

Landlocked South Sudan must pump its oil through Sudan to the Red Sea. Northern officials hope the transit fees they charges will help. But a deal has been elusive - oil analysts say Khartoum has demanded a transit fee more than 10 times the international standard - and the breakaway state has so far refused to pay.

Khartoum has seized oil awaiting shipment to compensate for what it argues are unpaid fees. Industry sources say the north has sold at least one shipment of southern oil. In protest, South Sudan has shut down production.

The government predicts 2 percent growth in 2012 but the International Monetary Fund (IMF) thinks the economy will contract. A senior Sudanese analyst with ties to the government says food inflation is much higher than the official figure. Prices for meat, sugar, vegetable oil and other staples are doubling every year, according to the analyst, who asked not to be named.

Khartoum had long known the South would secede, but did little to diversify its economy away from oil, bankers say. Just days after South Sudan became independent last July, Sudan's parliament, which is controlled by Bashir's National Congress Party (NCP), passed a budget predicting stable oil revenues.

Since the United States imposed a trade embargo on Sudan in 1997, most Western firms have shunned the country. The ongoing domestic insurgencies and the International Criminal Court's indictment of Bashir mean that's unlikely to end any time soon.

Despite the growing problems, organizing protests isn't easy. Power cuts, unreliable cell phone networks and low internet usage make it hard to mobilize people through Facebook or Twitter as happened in Egypt.

Activists are trying to link up with groups such as the people displaced by the Merowe dam, or poor farmers.

Many are frustrated with the inconsistent and ineffectual opposition parties, most of which are run by former rulers in their 70s.

Activists say the main opposition party, the Umma Party, is unwilling to call for mass protests. The party's veteran chairman Sadeq al-Mahdi recently said he wanted the president to go. But his son just became a presidential assistant in Bashir's office. The leaders of another big opposition party have decided to join the government.

More from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• Group: Militia 'slaughtered' 3 families in Syria's Homs
• In Greece, the crisis is making people ill, (literally)
• Argentina to protest 'militarization' of S. Atlantic
• State Department: We'll 'right-size' embassy in Iraq
• US eyes humanitarian aid for Syria
• Taliban lite? Afghans ponder power-sharing
• Chicken lays really jumbo egg in Colombia

Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

Campaigners expressed alarm Wednesday after Arab League observers in Syria said they saw "nothing frightening" during a visit to Homs, the city activists say is the epicenter of nine months of deadly clashes with government forces.

"Some places looked a bit of a mess but there was nothing frightening," Sudanese General Mustafa Dabi, the chief of the monitoring contingent, told Reuters by telephone from Damascus.

---

"The situation seemed reassuring so far," he added after his team's short visit to the city of one million people, Syria's third largest.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Tuesday that security forces fired tear gas at tens of thousands of protesters in Homs, and that 40 people were killed in the city on Monday and Tuesday alone.

A video clip posted on the Internet on Tuesday appeared to show the monitors touring the Baba Amr district of the city as angry residents shouted at them and tugged on one monitor's jacket, pleading them to enter their neighborhoods as gunfire erupted in the background.

The Arab League obervers are checking whether Syria is keeping its promise to withdraw troops from cities and halt the violence that has threatened to spiral into civil war.

Foreign journalists and other observers are banned from Syria, making it difficult to verify claims by activists or the government.

However, the United Nations estimates 5,000 people have been killed in Syria since the nine-month crackdown on opposition protests began.

Meanwhile, live footage carried on al-Jazeera television on Wednesday also showed gunfire and black smoke rising above Syria's central city of Hama as dozens of men marched through the streets chanting" "Where are the Arab monitors?"

Cloak of respectability?
Given the brief and limited nature of the monitors' tour on Tuesday, the comments by the chief monitor could heighten the concern of opposition activists that the observer mission could be used as a cloak of respectability by Damascus, issuing assessments whitewashing President Bashar Assad's record. 

It also highlights concern over the choice of a Sudanese general to head the mission.

Dabi has held senior Sudanese military and government posts, including in the Darfur region, where the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court says the army carried out war crimes and the United Nations says 300,000 people may have died. Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir has been indicted by the Hague-based International Criminal Court for genocide and crimes against humanity.

Eric Reeves, a professor at Smith College in Massachusetts, who studies Sudan and has written strong criticisms of its government, told Reuters the choice of a Sudanese general was a sign the Arab League might not want its monitors to produce findings that would force it to take stronger action.

"There is a broader question of why you would pick someone to lead this investigation ... when he is part of an army that is guilty of precisely the sort of crimes that are being investigated in Syria," Reeves said.

"I think a Sudanese general would be one of the least likely people in the world to acknowledge these findings even if they are right there before him... It doesn't make any sense unless you want to shape the finding. They want it shaped in ways that will minimize the obligation to do more than they already have."

'Shouting into a void'
A Baba Amr resident and activist, who gave his name as Omar, expressed frustration at the Arab League visit. "I felt they didn't really acknowledge what they'd seen -- maybe they had orders not to show sympathy," he said.

"But they didn't seem enthusiastic about hearing people tell their stories, we felt like we were shouting into a void."

"We placed our hopes in the entire Arab League," said Omar. "But these monitors don't seem to understand how the regime works, they don't seem interested in the suffering and death people have faced."

Amnesty International said Sudan's military intelligence, at the time Dabi led it, "was responsible for the arbitrary arrest and detention, enforced disappearance, and torture or other ill-treatment of numerous people in Sudan."

Jehanne Henry, Sudan researcher at New York-based Human Rights Watch, said that as head of Sudan's military intelligence in the 1990s, Dabi "certainly would have been in a position to know what the security services were doing at that time."

"He obviously does not fit the profile as a human rights monitor," she added.

"We have no confidence at all in the Arab League mission," Dr Mousab Azzawi told msnbc.com on Tuesday. "The very people investigating Syria are wanted for war crimes by the ICC -- it is some of bad joke."

The Arab League says Dabi brings vital military and diplomatic expertise to its unprecedented mission to verify that Assad is complying with a deal to end Syria's crackdown on protesters.

For its part, Khartoum says the accusations against Sudan's president are baseless and politically motivated, and puts the Darfur death toll at 10,000.

Reuters and msnbc.com's Alastair Jamieson contributed to this report.