---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: John Ashworth <[email protected]> Date: Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 8:24 AM Subject: [sudan-john-ashworth] Fwd: More South Kordofan articles To: Group <[email protected]>
In #5 below, Eric Reeves correctly says, "A great deal of this has been eminently foreseeable". It's worth noting that just about every statement and communique produced by Sudanese Church leaders over the last few years has warned that Popular Consultation may not meet the aspirations of the people of South Kordofan and Blue Nile and that there was a serious risk of conflict breaking out again if no creative solution was found. Sadly, they have been proved right. One often wonders what is the point of "early warning" when it is consistently ignored. John BEGIN 1. Another Area Girds for Revolt as Sudan Approaches a Split The New York Times By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN Published: June 30, 2011 LEWERE, Sudan — Children with shrapnel wounds lie on metal hospital cots. Thousands of others have been huddling in caves and stony riverbeds, fleeing the fighter jets and bombers prowling the skies. Villages are empty, fields unplowed. At the faintest buzz of a plane, people scatter into the bush, in a panic. “Just lie flat, or you could get killed,” warned Nagwa Musa Konda, the director of a local aid organization, as a plane growled closer. Despite an agreement signed only days ago to bring peace to this part of central Sudan, it seems to be sliding inexorably toward war. Young men here in the Nuba Mountains are being mobilized into militias, marching into the hills to train. All the cars in this area, including humanitarian vehicles, are smeared with thick mud to camouflage them from what residents describe as unrelenting bombings. And opposition forces vow to press their fight until they win some form of autonomy, undeterred by the government’s push to stamp them out. “It’s going to be a long war,” said Ahmed Zakaria, a doctor from the Nuba Mountains who recently quit his job to become an opposition fighter. “We want a secular, democratic state where we can be free to rule ourselves. Like Kurdistan,” Dr. Zakaria said, smiling. “And we will fight for it.” The conflict is overshadowing one of the biggest events in Sudan’s history: the independence of the southern part of the country and the creation of two Sudans. In just over a week, southern Sudan will officially break off from the north, the capstone of decades of civil war and years of international negotiations to stave off further bloodshed. But the fighting in the Nuba Mountains, which sit in the north’s territory, underscores how fractured Sudan will remain even after the south secedes. The same demands being espoused by opposition fighters here have been the kindling for major conflict — and major suffering — in several other corners of northern Sudan, where the government is determined to keep a firm grip across a country of diverse groups clamoring for their rights. In the few towns in this vast landscape of terraced mountainsides and thatched-roof villages, the northern government has been amassing tanks, rocket launchers, artillery and thousands of soldiers and allied militiamen, either to pressure Nuba leaders into disarming or to prepare for a major offensive once the rains stop in a few months. While the hillsides are slick and muddy, the government can do little but bomb, as it admits doing. But government officials say their fight is solely with opposition fighters, not with civilians, contending that widespread reports of civilian casualties are fabrications intended to rally Western nations against Sudan. “The government is trying to control and take care of the people for peace and security and actually defeat and remove all the traces of rebels from the area,” said Rabie A. Atti, a government spokesman. “We are not against the people,” Mr. Atti added. But as the conflicts in the western region of Darfur and southern Sudan long before that have proved, counterinsurgencies often cast a wide net. At a small, mountainside hospital here in Lewere, an entire ward is filled with victims who said they were at a well, fetching water, when they were bombed. Most are children. Their whimpers filter through the mesh windows, along with the pungent smells of antiseptic solution and decaying flesh. Inside, Winnasa Steven, a 16-year-old girl, writhed on a cot. From her hip, doctors cut out a three-inch chunk of ragged shrapnel, which her mother keeps, wrapped in white paper. “I am in big pain,” Winnasa said. Next to her, a toddler cried, his face a map of bandages. Not far away, a little girl sucked down spoonfuls of porridge. Her mother tried not to look at the gaping hole in her leg. Tensions had been building steadily in the Nuba Mountains since a disputed election in May. The governing party’s candidate, Ahmed Haroun, who has been indicted on charges of war crimes in Darfur by the International Criminal Court, won the governorship of Southern Kordofan, the state that encompasses the Nuba Mountains, by a margin of 6,500 votes out of a total of 400,000, defeating a popular Nuba leader who used to be a guerrilla fighter. The Carter Center endorsed the election, but people say the government fiddled with the tallies because Southern Kordofan was too important to lose. It has the most productive oil fields in the north and borders the south, making it a useful rear base for the militias widely believed to be armed by the north. Kordofan also has fertile land, minerals and gum arabic, an ingredient in countless Western products. This area has a history of oppression — and resistance. The Nuba people were enslaved by their neighbors hundreds of years ago, bombed by the British and subjugated by the north. The people here are not Arab like the northerners, and many are Christian. Tens of thousands of Nuba fighters joined southern rebels during the north-south civil war. It is these southern-allied fighters who are refusing to disarm, and clashes erupted in June. In Kadugli, the biggest town in the Nuba Mountains region, many witnesses say the Sudanese Army and allied Arab militias have gone house to house, methodically executing civilians. Kamil Omer El Amin, a Nuba agricultural officer, matter-of-factly described what happened to his friend Philip. “He drove up to the U.N. compound,” Mr. Amin said. “The intelligence agents told him to get out of the car. He sat down. They shot him in the chest.” United Nations officials confirmed the killing, but said the overwhelming number of northern troops rendered them powerless to stop it, even though the shooting happened right outside the United Nations base. Many Nuba professionals have fled to the opposition-controlled mountaintops. “We spent two weeks up there, drinking something you can barely call water,” said Caddy Ali, who worked for a project financed by the World Bank. Ms. Ali said the agreement signed on Tuesday between southern-allied opposition leaders and the government, which outlined steps for political compromise and a cease-fire, was meaningless. “We’re never going to forgive them now,” she said. “Do you know how many people I’ve seen die right in front of me?” Aid workers said hundreds of civilians had been killed in the bombings. The Sudanese Army is also blockading roads and bombing airstrips, essentially cutting off food supplies. “These people are going to starve,” one Western aid worker said. On Thursday, some Nuba aid workers stopped their car to pick up some deleib, a wild mushy fruit that looks like a coconut. “This is what the fighters lived off in the 1990s,” Dr. Zakaria said. It seems some people are preparing to live off it again. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/world/africa/01sudan.html?_r=2 END1 2. Sudan detains South Kordofan’s human rights activist July 1, 2011 (KHARTOUM) – A Sudanese human rights activist working in the war-battered state of South Kordofan has been detained for a week so far by the country’s security apparatus, his former employers said on Friday. The UK branch of Sudan Social Development Organization (SUDO) said in a statement that Bushra Gamar Hussein Rahma, the former director of its office in Nyala and the current executive director of the Human Rights and Development Organization (HUDO) in South Kordofan was detained on June 25 by agents of Sudan’s National and Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) in Al-Thawra area in Sudan’s twin capital city of Omdurman. SUDO said that the 47-year old Rahma is believed to be detained in the custody of the NISS political department. “SUDO believes that his arrest is a result of his legitimate and peaceful activities in support of human rights,” the release said. The organization said it was “deeply concerned about the risk of torture” and called for the “immediate and unconditional release” of its former employee. Local and international rights groups have been accusing the Sudanese government’s army of committing widespread abuses during its ongoing military offensive in the country’s flashpoint state of South Kordofan. Sudanese security authorities routinely arrest and instigate legal proceedings against human rights activists. Last year, Sudan detained human rights activist Abdel Bast Mirghani for his attempt to organize protests against the flogging of women under the country’s stringent morality law. (ST) END2 3. Contested Territory - Jina Moore interviews Rebecca Hamilton http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/2836/rebecca_hamilton_interview_7_1_11/ 4. Satellite Imagery Corroborates Reports of Government of Sudan Bombardment in the Nuba Mountains - 6/30/11 | Enough Project http://www.satsentinel.org/press-release/satellite-imagery-corroborates-reports-government-sudan-bombardment-nuba-mountains 5. "Abyei and South Kordofan/Nuba Mountains: Under Siege, Deeply at Risk" Eric Reeves July 1, 2011 What are Khartoum's ambitions in South Kordofan and Abyei? What is the significance of the two agreements concerning these key regions signed by representatives of the regime? The agreement on South Kordofan (and Blue Nile) declared that in principle Khartoum was committed to a cessation of hostilities agreement. But Reuters reports today that on his return from China, President Omar al-Bashir made clear that this is yet another agreement signed expediently and one that he has no intention of honoring (one must surmise that the Chinese have done little to pressure al-Bashir and the regime to come to some reasonable diplomatic settlement). In the "Framework Agreement" on South Kordofan and Blue Nile (June 28), Nafi'e Ali Nafi'e---the increasingly powerful senior figure within the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party---officially committed the regime "to work to agree both [sic] immediate and sustainable security arrangements for Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile," specifically an "Agreement on Cessation of Hostilities in Southern Kordofan." But today we heard a rather different commitment: "Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said the army would continue its campaign in the flashpoint of South Kordofan, state news agency SUNA said on Friday, dashing hope of a cease-fire ahead of southern secession. In his first comments since returning from a visit to China, Bashir seemed to contradict comments by a northern official this week that north and south had agreed 'in principle' on a cease-fire in the northern oil state." "'He directed the armed forces to continue their military operations in South Kordofan until a cleansing of the region is over,' SUNA quoted Bashir as telling worshippers during Friday prayers." (dateline: Khartoum) http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFTRE7605O720110701 Celebration of the agreement by the AU's expedient Thabo Mbeki and the UN's feckless Ban Ki-Moon would seem distinctly premature. And in the absence of a cessation of hostilities agreement, we must ask what this war will look like going forward. Despite continuing agnosticism on the part of U.S. special envoy Princeton Lyman about what is occurring in South Kordofan, the images of aerial destruction continue to pour out of the region, as do reports of house-to-house arrests and executions of Nuba civilians; a virtual shutdown of humanitarian access in the region; a massive build-up of weapons and armor in Kadugli (capital of South Kordofan); and relentless aerial assaults on civilians, humanitarians, churches, and other non-military targets in the Nuba Mountains. The results of the present campaign have been horrific. I have assembled an album of my own photographs from 2003, a time of relative peace in the Nuba, and photographs from this past month (June 2011), mainly from Nuba sources. The latter are images of the war al-Bashir vows to continue until the Nuba Mountains have been "cleansed." (Warning: many of the photographs are disturbingly gruesome---http://goo.gl/5gDpV) I have also assembled a range of photographs, from various sources, that chronicle the displacement from Abyei of the Dinka Ngok to the South, the destruction and looting of Abyei town, as well as the plight of those displaced to Akok, Turelei, Wau, and other Southern towns. As Sudan moves into the heaviest part of the rainy season, water-borne diseases will become increasingly frequent and dangerous. A normally optimistic program director for a Western humanitarian organization, with a long history in this area, informs me that he sees only a very grim future for these people---http://goo.gl/oAhxE A great deal of this has been eminently foreseeable. I argued on March 9, 2011: "[Khartoum's] military strategy comes ever more clearly into focus: seize Abyei as far south as possible, then negotiate final status of the region from a position of military strength...." "If war resumes in Abyei, it is likely to spread quickly to the Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan and Southern Blue Nile. The entire North/South border could become one long military front, particularly in the oil regions of Unity State and South Kordofan. Unless Khartoum is sent the clearest possible signal that it will gain nothing by such offensive military action, including arming and encouraging Misseriya militias, the fighting in Abyei will increase. The UN peacekeeping mission (UNMIS) is neither willing nor able to intervene---or even report on what lies beyond their bases. At this point, UNMIS patrols are consistently being denied freedom of movement by both the SAF and SPLA. Heavily armed, Khartoum-backed Misseriya units continue marauding throughout much of Abyei." ("Obama Weak on the Rapidly Escalating Crisis in Abyei," Dissent Magazine (on-line), March 9, 2011 http://dissentmagazine.org/atw.php?id=396 ) All this has come to pass because the international community, and especially the U.S. as guided by special envoy Lyman, has refused to see Khartoum's ambitions for what they are, refused to assess on a realistic basis what would deter the regime from war-making that even in early March was clearly in the offing. It has also come to pass despite the grim history of the genocidal jihad directed against the Nuba people during the 1990s, a history that should do much more to inform the thinking of special envoy Lyman, who casually declared in response to a question about whether the Nuba Mountains might become a "new Darfur": "I don't think so for two reasons. One because the Nuba Mountain people are fighting back and I don't think the North is capable of dislodging large numbers of people on an ethnic basis from the Nuba Mountains. That's the reality on the ground. Second, I'm not sure that's the objective of the government though local commanders may have a different point of view." But of course the Nuba people "fought back" heroically in the 1990s; even so, hundreds of thousands died (mostly from starvation and disease) and hundreds of thousands were displaced from their rich farmlands. History flatly contradicts Lyman's claim. And as to Lyman's surmise about the "objectives" of the Khartoum regime, this seems absurdly complacent, given the history of this regime. The evidence of ethnic targeting of Nuba civilians for execution and aerial attack is overwhelming. Lyman would do well to read an account by Alex de Waal of the ghastly history of genocide in the Nuba Mountains in the 1990s ("Averting Genocide in the Nuba Mountains," 2006) "The counterinsurgency fought by the Government of Sudan against the rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) in the Nuba Mountains of central Sudan during the early 1990s was not only exceptionally violent, but also aimed at depopulating the area of civilians. Not only did the government aim to defeat the SPLA forces but they also intended a wholesale transformation of Nuba society in such a way that its prior identity was destroyed. The campaign was genocidal in intent and at one point, appeared to be on the brink of success...." "The war was notable for attacks on civilian targets with forced displacement, rape and killing. The principal instruments of counterinsurgency included locally-recruited militia, the regular army and the air force, under the overall coordination of Military Intelligence...." "The early period of the war was marked by militia massacres and extra-judicial executions by military intelligence. In a mixture of reprisals and counter-insurgency, some of it pre-emptive, a coalition of military officers and local militia commanders escalated violence against the Nuba. The first step was the arming of local Arab tribes by the government, initially as a panicked response to an SPLA attack in the region in 1985, and in 1989 they were formalized into the 'Popular Defence Forces.' The militias committed the worst massacres of the war, driven not only by orders from their paramilitary command, but also by their own search for cattle, loot and cheap labor...." "Death squads targeted community leaders in rural areas, while intellectuals in the towns were rounded up by Military Intelligence and 'disappeared.' The rationale was explained by Khalid Abdel Karim al Husseini, formerly head of the security in the Office of the Governor of Kordofan (and younger brother of the governor), until he left Sudan and sought asylum in Europe in 1993. He said that the government was 'taking the intellectuals, taking the professionals, to ensure that the Nuba were so primitive that they couldn't speak for themselves.'" All of this---all of it---is again evident in the conduct of counter-insurgency war: the extra-judicial executions; the targeting of intellectuals and indeed all Nuba; the arming of Arab militias and the Popular Defense Forces (PDF), the latter now entirely Arab; the depopulating of the Nuba Mountains; the campaign to deny food and humanitarian assistance. And as the Small Arms Survey makes clear in its report on arms in South Kordofan ("Armed Entities in South Kordofan," June 2011), the Khartoum-allied militia groups are extremely heavily armed and supplied---this in addition to the growing SAF military presence from Dilling to Kadugli. Military developments could not be more ominous. ***************** Below are two collections: one of my own recent writings on the grim military logic that is now playing out; a second that gathers especially important and very recent news reports on the situation in South Kordofan: Recent analyses and publications (Reeves, May/June 2011): •"In Sudan, Genocide Anew?" (We are, once again, on the verge of genocidal counterinsurgency in Sudan. History must not be allowed to repeat itself.) from The Washington Post, June 18, 2011 http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-sudan-genocide-anew/2011/06/17/AGVhCVZH_story.html •"Genocide in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan," from Dissent Magazine (on-line), June 22, 2011, http://dissentmagazine.org/atw.php?id=479 •"Abyei and South Kordofan: Why Our Diplomatic 'Successes' in Sudan Aren't," from The New Republic, June 30, 2011 http://www.tnr.com/article/world/91086/abyei-sudan-kordofan •"International Crimes and Threats to Peace in Sudan are mounting rapidly," June 28, 2011, http://www.sudanreeves.org/Article341.html •"Sudan: The Horror Continues---And the World Sits By," from The New Republic, June 24, 2011 http://www.tnr.com/article/world/90653/sudan-darfur-kordofan-genocide •"Genocide in Sudan: Is it Happening Again?" from The New Republic, June 20, 2011 http://www.tnr.com/article/world/90243/kordofan-sudan-refugees-united-nations-obama •"Obama's Second 'Rwanda Moment,'" The Sudan Tribune, June 14, 2011 http://www.sudantribune.com/Obama-s-Second-Rwanda-Moment,39204 •"An Abyei Timeline: The Long Road to Khartoum's Military Invasion," May 27, 2011, http://www.sudanreeves.org/Article328.html •"Khartoum Dramatically Escalates War in Sudan," June 9, 2011 http://www.sudanreeves.org/Article332.html •"Carter Center Fails to Consider Key Issues in the South Kordofan Gubernatorial Election," (political incompetence and misprision—and a failure to ask key questions—produce unwarranted ratification of NIF/NCP victory by indicted war criminal Ahmed Haroun), May 20, 2011, http://www.sudanreeves.org/Article325.html [It is difficult to overstate the significance of this botched monitoring job by the Carter Center; we will never know how events would have preceded without this perversely encouraging "green light" to Khartoum.] •"'They Bombed Everything that Moved': Aerial military attacks on civilians and humanitarians in Sudan, 1999 - 2011," (release of a comprehensive report and database, http://www.sudanbombing.org ) [With the relentless bombing of the Nuba Mountains, as well as other areas in South Kordofan, and Unity State in South Sudan, this twelve-year record of Khartoum's barbarism has considerable current relevance.] Some very recent and revealing news stories from the region: Jeffrey Gettleman, from the New York Times (dateline: Nuba Mountains): http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/world/africa/01sudan.html Some truly extraordinary reporting. Agence France-Presse, July 1, 2011 (dateline: Washington, DC) quotes Princeton Lyman as saying, "We have every indication that [Beijing’s] message to President Bashir has been, 'Look, you've got to resolve the issues of the CPA,' Lyman said, referring to the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement which set the stage for southern independence." "Every indication"? And al-Bashir's vow today to finishing "cleansing the Nuba Mountains" is an "indication" of what? In the Wall Street Journal (June 22), Julie Flint, a highly seasoned observer of the Nuba, notes with Mia Farrow: "The US special envoy to Sudan, Princeton Lyman, has said there is not yet evidence that the new Nuba war amounts to 'ethnic cleansing.' But confidential UN reports that we've seen speak of 'wide-scale exactions against unarmed civilians with specific targeting of African tribes,' and of people targeted 'along racial/ethnic lines.'" Associated Press reports that the "UN says Sudan's army continues attacking civilians" (July 1, 2011). In addition to the attacks on civilians, this story (dateline: Juba) reports that: "The UN says Sudan is denying it full access to tens of thousands of civilians near an area between north and south Sudan where violence continues less than 10 days before Southern Sudan becomes the world's newest nation." (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/06/30/ap/africa/main20075975.shtml) Reuters reports (June 30, 2011; dateline: UN/New York) "All UN agency offices were looted of their stocks and office equipment in Kadugli, with the exception of the UNICEF children's foundation and another agency, Haq said, citing information from the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)." (http://af.reuters.com/article/sudanNews/idAFN1E75T20P20110630 ) BBC News Africa reports (June 23): "We are getting very strong reports that house-to-house executions are going on by internal security forces where summary executions are taking place based on ethnicity, political affiliation and even how black you are. These are civilians, intellectuals, teachers, community leaders, Muslims and Christians, and often they are killed by their throats being slit. This may be only the beginning and it could well continue for many months and intensify. There is a complete lack of access---we learnt that the only airstrip that was left had been bombed and we have heard the government of Sudan will shoot down UN flights operating in South Kordofan so humanitarian flights are no longer an option." (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13882924 ) Agence France Presse reports (June 20; dateline: UN/New York): "Sudanese forces have threatened to shoot down UN flights over South Kordofan state where its troops are hunting and killing southern Sudan followers, the US ambassador to the United Nations said Monday." Amnesty International reports (June 24, London): Amnesty International speaks out about "indiscriminate attacks, bombing from high altitudes with imprecise bombs in areas which include civilians." Associated Press reports (June 23) on actions taken by Khartoum on June 20: "Sudanese intelligence agents posed as Red Crescent workers and ordered refugees to leave a UN-protected camp in a region where Sudan's Arab military has been targeting a black ethnic minority, according to an internal UN report obtained Thursday [June 23]. The report said agents from the National Security Service donned Red Crescent aprons at a camp in Kadugli, South Kordofan and told the refugees to go to a stadium for an address by the governor and for humanitarian aid. The refugees were threatened with forced removal from the camp if they did not comply.... The report...does not say what happened to the camp residents after their forced removal on Monday. The report did not say how many refugees were forced to leave the camp." And most ominously, Associated Press reports (June 29; dateline: Geneva) on the view of the UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, just back from Sudan: "'If this renewed fighting in border areas doesn't stop and it further spreads to other areas of South Kordofan and Blue Nile, then obviously it's war again,' said Kyung-wha Kang, the UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights." And this is the great danger: that Khartoum will see the July 9 date for Southern independence as the moment to use military force to extract through negotiations or simply to seize by force disputed border lands, risking all-out war. (In addition to Abyei, 20 percent of the 2,100-kilometer North/South border is still neither delineated nor demarcated). The UN has reported on large troop build-ups by Khartoum's regular Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) in the region where northern South Kordofan and Blue Nile states converge with southern (and oil-rich) Upper Nile State. Khartoum has exhibited extremely provocative military actions along the border further west, including repeated bombings in Southern territory near Jau. Agok, where so many Ngok Dinka fled from Abyei, has been subject to artillery shelling, and the critical Banton Bridge (across the River Kiir) has been destroyed. Renewed war now seems more likely than not. July 1, 2011 _____________________________ Eric Reeves Smith College Northampton, MA 01063 [email protected] 413-585-3326 www.sudanreeves.org END5 ______________________ John Ashworth Sudan Advisor [email protected] +254 725 926 297 (Kenya mobile) +249 919 695 362 (Sudan mobile) +27 82 853 3556 (South Africa mobile) +44 750 304 1790 (UK/international) +88 216 4334 0735 (Thuraya satphone) PO Box 52002 - 00200, Nairobi, Kenya This is a personal e-mail address and the contents do not necessarily reflect the views of any organisation -- The content of this message does not necessarily reflect John Ashworth's views. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, John Ashworth is not the author of the content and the source is always cited. You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sudan-john-ashworth" group. 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