---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: John Ashworth <[email protected]> Date: Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 7:56 AM Subject: [sudan-john-ashworth] Fw: Life on the wrong side of Sudan's new border To: Group <[email protected]>
The first article makes the mistake of referring to the Nuba as Nubian. As has been pointed out frequently, Nubians are a completely different group of people in a different part of Sudan. 1. Life on the wrong side of Sudan's new border As the south celebrates independence, Daniel Howden reports on the conflict still raging in the Nuba Mountains Saturday, 9 July 2011 The Independent The distant drone of engines has panicked faces scanning the sky. People scatter as the noise draws closer. Vehicles camouflaged with mud and motor oil veer away in search of cover. The outline of a bomber appears between the clouds. "When the sound changes that's when it drops the bombs," says Mutasir Mussa, a volunteer with a local organisation documenting the attacks. While South Sudan celebrates its independence today its former allies north of the new border in the Nuba mountains are living a nightmare. Supply routes to the outside world have been cut, an army is massing beneath the hills and the people face a daily bombing campaign designed, locals say, to terrify them into abandoning their homes and crops. "They are not bombing our military, they are bombing our civilians, they are terrorising our people," says Amar Amoun, a Nubian MP in Sudan's opposition. "We are asking the international community to create a no-fly zone. We are not asking Nato to come and fight a war but our people are being bombed by their own government." Mr Amoun, who faces arrest with other Nubian leaders if he returns to the capital, Khartoum, says the bombing campaign is a deliberate tactic to "depopulate" the Nuba mountains. The green and rocky hills scattered with villages of thatched grass huts and terraced fields have witnessed generations of hardship inflicted by the Arab-led government in Khartoum. With the division of Sudan the Nubians find themselves on the southern border of a new country whose government sees them as a threat to its control of valuable resources like arable land and oil. The hills lie in the strategically vital state of Southern Kordofan, which will be the north's main oil-producer after the divorce from the south. The government insists its fight is with armed rebels, not villagers. Dr Ahmed Zakaria, who has been treating wards full of women and children with shrapnel wounds from the bombing, sees it differently: "We are in a battle for our survival. They want to disarm us so we will have no say in our future." In the villages young men march in the heat of the day with sticks carved to look like rifles; in the hills women and children spend their days hiding in caves to escape the bombs; and in the fields a few farmers brave the barrage to plant crops while the rains last. Sudan's web of internal conflicts can appear bewildering to the outside world. Since its independence in 1956, two civil wars have blighted the country and prompted the south to break away. Since 2004, the conflict in Darfur has captured the world's attention as marginalised groups have taken up arms against a central government they accuse of systematically working against them. Sudan's oil wealth has produced a city of five-lane highways in Khartoum and wealth for the Arabs who live along the Nile; but for much of the rest of this huge and diverse country, life has been a struggle against poverty, war and exclusion. The veteran opposition leader Yasser Arman warned the Khartoum government last week that it faces war from the "Blue Nile to Darfur" if it continues its past policies. In the Nuba mountains, which once sheltered Africans trying to evade slavers, the people have faced repeated attempts by the central government to eradicate their culture and forcibly resettle them. The area was one of the strongholds of the rebel army, the SPLA, in its fight against the Arab-led government in Sudan's 20-year civil war. When peace was agreed in 2005 the Nubians – a non-Arab community that has many Christians as well as Muslims – remained under the rule of Khartoum. It was hoped that elections here would give the Nubians some degree of autonomy but their candidate, Abdel Aziz al-Hilu, was defeated in what many argue was a rigged election. In his place Khartoum appointed Ahmed Haroun, a man who like his president Omar al-Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Darfur. The new governor moved quickly to disarm civil war veterans still loyal to the SPLA, despite international agreements that they would be integrated into the Sudan armed forces. "After the elections we were given a final warning to evacuate the Nuba mountains," says Mubarak, a young commander with the Nuba SPLA. "But we will not go, we will stay here and defend ourselves." Government forces have emptied the state capital, Kadugli, killing or arresting SPLA leaders and their political allies. "It is a war zone in Kadugli," says Mubarak. "They went door to door assassinating people." Satellite images from the US-run Sentinel project have shown the northern army massing heavy weapons and troops in the towns around the mountains. But rebels have quickly established control of the mountains themselves and a long war seems in prospect. "This is our land and our home; we cannot leave this land," says the young SPLA soldier. El-Hamra, a village about 10 miles outside Kadugli, has already been visited by the new war. It sits in the no man's land between the rebels and the government's Arab militias and army. People have fled or been killed. Stray dogs gnaw at decomposing bodies strewn around rudimentary trenches dug in the grass. Unable to move forward on the ground the northern forces have been striking the rebel areas with MiG fighter jets and makeshift bombers converted from ageing Antonov cargo planes, as they did in Darfur. Food supplies are running low and fields are being left unplanted, which will mean famine in the months to come. International aid workers have been evacuated, UN peacekeepers are hiding in their bases and airstrips have been bombed to prevent supplies or observers getting in. "They are trying to make conditions here so difficult that we are forced to leave," says Mr Amoun. The struggle will continue, he says, until the government is forced to the negotiating table and the Nubians are given some measure of freedom. "Either we get a democratic, secular Sudan where we all have rights or we get self-rule," he says. "Until then it will be a long war." http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/life-on-the-wrong-side-of-sudans-new-border-2309525.html END1 2. Stories of death, terror from Sudan's Nuba Mountains By Alan Boswell | McClatchy Newspapers * Posted on Wednesday, July 6, 2011 KAUDA, Sudan — At the crest of a steep green mountainside in central Sudan, Gasim Ibrahim huddled in the shadow of a huge boulder, listening in fear for the whining drone of planes 10,000 feet overhead. A bomb from one of those planes in mid-June killed his sister, Faozi Ibrahim, who was six months pregnant, so Gasim and his extended family — more than a hundred of them — climbed here for safety. "I will stay here as long as the war continues," he said. Nearby, Dr. Tom, an American from upstate New York, also talked about the planes, Russian-made Antonov cargo aircraft. The crude bombs that Sudanese crews roll out the backs of the planes as they pass over civilian areas blew off the arms or legs of many of the wounded in the clinic Catena runs. He said the intent to target civilians was clear: "The Antonov is not a military weapon. There is no way to get any accuracy." On Saturday, Sudan will become two nations under a 2005 peace agreement that divides the country into a northern, Arab-run, half with its capital in Khartoum and the new nation of South Sudan, run by Africans, with its capital in Juba. When the peace agreement was signed, hopes were high that it would end decades of bloody civil war. But in the past month, the fighting in one of Sudan's most obscure conflict zones, the remote Nuba Mountains in the state of South Kordofan, has put such hopes in doubt. The Sudanese government has prohibited foreigners from traveling to the Nuba, blocking road access and banning all flights. But a small group of journalists, including a correspondent for McClatchy, made it into the region this week. What they found backs accounts by aid workers and others of ethnic cleansing that Susan Rice, the U.S. envoy to the United Nations, said "could constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity." The Nuba were among the non-Arab northern communities who joined with the southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army, and its political wing, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, during the war. But when partition takes place Saturday, their land will lie within Sudan. In May, the Sudanese government ordered former rebel fighters here to disarm or move into South Sudan. Clashes broke out June 5 and spread quickly, but the genesis of the fighting remains hazy. In interviews, refugees and the wounded described what appears to have been a government plan to exterminate Nuba political opposition leaders through door-to-door executions. That soon deteriorated into an indiscriminate slaughter of whoever was "black." Meanwhile, a heavy aerial bombardment by government Antonovs, MiG jets and helicopter gunships rocked rebel military strongholds and civilian villages. Abdulaziz Tajir, a 36-year-old teacher, said he was near the Tangal village market when bombs began to fall one evening. Ten died on the spot, all civilians. Tajir suffered a baseball-sized wound in the chest. Saleh Nahar, 32, was in his house when a bomb struck Kauda village and threw shrapnel through his leg. "Every time I hear a plane, I smell the bomb," he said. Most graphic are descriptions of helicopter gunships hovering over fleeing civilians, strafing the ground. Juma Fadul, 25, fled from a church Friday as a helicopter opened fire in Al Hamra. He was shot in the head, but survived. "Government troops yell, 'Allahu akbar'" — God is great — "and 'Let us chase the black people to the mountains' when they attack," he said. "All our houses had been set on fire." Photographs collected by Nuba and distributed to reporters showed graphic scenes of civilians dismembered, disemboweled or lying in pools of blood. Members of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement's northern branch who've fled to Kauda say the government had distributed lists of active members of the movement to be intercepted and killed. Nuba members of the Sudan People's Liberation Army responded with force, even pushing into Kadugli, South Kordofan's capital. That's when government forces began targeting civilians indiscriminately, slitting throats and opening fire on gatherings in the street, witnesses say. Casualty counts aren't clear, but "hundreds" seems to be a cautious figure. Several people interviewed claimed that they'd witnessed more 100 deaths themselves. What makes all this more dreadfully real for the Nuba is that it's not the first time they faced extermination. In the early 1990s, as Nuba increasingly joined with the rebellion in the south, the Arab government in Khartoum declared a "jihad" against the Nuba in a campaign of killing and displacement that academic and Sudan expert Alex de Waal, who's now an adviser to the African Union mediation team for Sudan led by former South African President Thabo Mbeki, has described as "genocidal in intent." It's estimated that 200,000 Nuba died. Official international investigations into recent incidents are unlikely to have much effect. The International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, already has charged Sudan's president, Omar al Bashir, and South Kordofan Gov. Ahmed Haroun with genocide for similar actions in Darfur. An effort by the African Union to broker a cease-fire has stalled, and the Nuba say they foresee a long struggle ahead. Young new Nuba recruits can be seen training with wooden guns. So far, the tens of thousands of Nuba Sudan People's Liberation Army troops have held their own against government firepower. A Sudan People's Liberation Army officer coming from the front lines, who asked not to be named in order to protect his family from possible government retribution, said the southern army had taken 61 government garrisons since fighting began. "We are on the offensive," the officer said. His account couldn't be independently verified, though Sudan People's Liberation Army control over most of the Nuba Mountains appears for now to be protecting many villagers from all but aerial attacks. How long the southern army can hold out, however, is unknown. The greatest long-term threat may be hunger as villages remain abandoned and fields unplanted. The Sudanese government has barred humanitarian aid, and women and children huddled among the rocks were chewing leaves from a baobab tree for food. "People cannot continue like this," said the local chief, Nimir Lalu Kodi. (Boswell is a McClatchy special correspondent. His reporting from Sudan is supported in part by Humanity United, a California-based foundation that focuses on human rights issues). http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/07/06/117120/stories-of-death-terror-from-sudans.html END2 3. North Sudan suspends six newspapers KHARTOUM, July 8 (Reuters) - North Sudan has suspended six newspapers because southerners are among their publishers or owners, a state-linked news agency said on Friday, a day before the south becomes an independent state. The National Newspaper Council suspended five English-language papers and an Arabic one, among them Ajras al-Huriya linked to the southern ruling party, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), the Sudanese Media Center (SMC) said. (Reporting by Ulf Laessing, Khartoum newsroom) END3 ______________________ 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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