Looks like somebody borrowed a page from Qadaffi's book in Mauritania today, with soldiers seizing control of the country while the president-for-life was away at King Fahd's funeral. Now would be an excellent time to revisit my ICG summary of the country. As the now-deposed Mauritanian despot has claimed his opponents were training with GSPC, it now looks as though we'll find out just how true those reports were.
Also, anybody else find it suspicious that Garang gets whacked right after the Sudanese decide to let Hassan Turabi out of jail?
I'm amazed Garang made it six months since he made 'peace' with the north.
That said, sometimes helicopters and aeroplanes crash. I wouldn't bet my life on Sudanese maintenance standards.
Whoa. Hold on here. I have a lot of contacts in Uganda and in the Sudanese refugee community. The helo involved was a Ugandan presidential helicopter used by President Museveni himself the previous day.
Mr. Garang had been on an official visit to Uganda, and the chopper attempted a landing in southern Sudan, only to be turned back from the LZ by bad weather. Crew reported weather problems and requested permission to return to Uganda. At no point did they report hostile fire.
While the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army, a jihadist group) are occasionally active in the region and do shoot at government aircraft, a shoot-down would be pretty obvious from the debris field, and the Ugandans would be making a huge fuss about it.
It seems simply to have been a very unfortunate accident. I will withhold commentary on the quality of Russian helicopters and their avionics.
LRA, a jihadist group? They are more a weird Christian sect