---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: John Ashworth <[email protected]> Date: Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 12:35 PM Subject: [sudan-john-ashworth] Fw: South Kordofan and Blue Nile conflicts To: Group <[email protected]>
The conflict in South Kordofan continues, even if it is not so much in the news these days. I have just this minute talked to three Nuba, including one very old friend, who found their way separately to Juba with firsthand news of Kauda, Kadugli and Dilling. All confirm that the targeting of Nuba and suspected SPLM sympathisers is continuing. These days it is Arab militia rather than government forces which are searching vehicles and removing people on the road between the Nuba Mountains and El Obeid. Security forces in El Obeid continue to search for "SPLM sympathisers" and anyone who has come from the conflict area, and Nuba report that they don't even feel safe in Khartoum. There is still a feeling that educated people are being singled out. There are restrictions on Nuba returning to El Obeid from Khartoum. Those who remain in El Obeid are lacking humanitarian services. A small but steady trickle of Nuba is arriving in Juba as refugees (and note that they are now refugees rather than IDPs, having crossed an international border); as yet, it seems that no agency is taking care of their needs. Fighting continues around Dilling and Kadugli, with SPLA apparently holding its own and even capturing new areas. SPLA remains confident militarily. Dilling and Kadugli towns have been looted and badly damaged by Khartoum's security forces and militia. Many houses belonging to Nuba have been occupied or destroyed and all their property stolen. Civilians within the SPLA-controlled areas are being bombed regularly by their government; one informant said there was only one day in the last month when he heard no bombing. The jets come early in the morning, bomb Kauda airstrip, then bomb the nearby mountains. They are followed later by the Antonovs, which loiter and drop more bombs. People flee up into the mountains early each morning and only come back to their villages late in the evening, for fear of the random bombing. This is disrupting life; children cannot go to school and, more urgently, people cannot plant crops. Recently the Antonov has also been heard at night, causing new trauma. The plea we hear all the time from Nuba people is for the international community to stop the aerial bombing; if that is done, many Nuba feel that they can cope with the rest. A military no-fly zone may not be practical, but it is certainly the dream of the people on the ground. Governor Malik Agar has trod a lonely and heroic path to try and maintain peace in Blue Nile while negotiating the "Two Areas Agreement" which was immediately renounced by President Omar al Bashir. Malik's warning of a return to war in Blue Nile should be taken very seriously. I will leave others to analyse the dynamics within NCP which make war on two (and if Blue Nile erupts, three) fronts seem like an attractive option. Darfur was already at war. Southern Kordofan may have been a miscalculation, with Khartoum not realising the military strength of the Nuba SPLA, nor that they were wiling and able to operate independently of Juba (a mistake which the international community continues to make when it links this indigenous northern civil war to the south). Will NCP deliberately choose to open a third front in Blue Nile? John BEGIN 1. Blue Nile governor warns resumption of war in Sudan By Ngor Arol Garang July 11, 2011 (JUBA) - The governor of Blue Nile State warned Sunday of a resumption of war in Sudan if Khartoum attempts to forcibly disarm former members of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army in his state. Malik Agar head of the Northern branch of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement - the ruling party of South Sudan - also warned North Sudan’s ruling party against reneging on the agreement recently signed in Ethiopia. Since June 6 the SPLM’s Northern Sector (SPLMN) have been fighting the Sudanese army after they attempted to disarm them, the opposition group say. Khartoum claims the fighting started after SPLMN forces attacked and occupied a local police station. After the outbreak of fighting in South Kordofan there has been increased focus on Blue Nile state to see if conflict would start there as well. Both states joined South Sudan’s SPLM fighting Khartoum in Sudan’s second North-South civil war (1983-2005) and despite being in the North were granted special status under the peace deal that ended the conflict. In the week before South Sudan officially became independent from North Sudan on July 9 the SPLM signed an accord with Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party (NCP) in Addis Ababa setting the groundwork for ceasefire and political arrangements in South Kordofan and Blue Nile. However, the deal collapsed after strong opposition by hard-line circles within the NCP. Agar told the press in South Sudan’s new capital Juba on Sunday that the situation in the two areas could result in a return to war if the parties fail to address their differences amicably. Blue Nile’s governor said that the remaining aspects of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) had to be implemented. Under the deal that granted the South the right to secede, popular consultations were due to be held in both areas to determine their future relationship with Khartoum and whether the CPA addressed their grievances. Due to delayed elections, which the NCP won, in South Kordofan the consultation process has not begun - in Blue Nile they are only half complete. Both sides said they would only accept the result if they won. The SPLM complained that the vote was rigged although the election was endorsed by all local and international observers. Agar said that the consultations were also supposed to resolve future of Northern SPLA soldiers, which the Khartoum says are now part of a foreign army now the South has seceded. “The other issue within the popular consultation was that the government was supposed to address the issue of the two forces. We have over 55,000 forces which were part and parcel of the SPLA and they are sons and daughters of the two areas plus may be 9,000 not necessarily from the two other areas." He repeated the SPLA’s claim that it was the attempt of the Sudan Armed Forces to disarm the SPLA that led to the conflict in South Kordofan that has displaced 75,000 people according to UN figures. "The government of Sudan, especially the president issued an order through chief of staff to disarm these forces and when the general in Kadugli wanted to implement this order, the whole thing went into force military confrontation in South Kordofan”. Blue Nile’s governor said that violence could "spillover" into his state if the Northern military attempt to disarm his forces. "There will be resistance [to disarmament] and then there is going to be war in the two areas and possibly in the whole of Sudan. So the whole thing is a political aspiration of the people. Because these combatants were product of rebellion that had a cause, so the use of military is not the solution. It is an alarm to achieve political issues.” The governor said that Khartoum should implement the Addis Ababa framework agreement if they want peace and stability in Sudan. He has previously warned that failure to do so would mean opening up a hostile front from the border with Ethiopia all the way to Darfur, where various rebel groups continue to fight the government. The talks, which involved the African Union, United Nations and Ethiopian government covered wealth and power sharing as well as constitutional arrangements, rights and diversity and governance, according to Agar. Shortly before South Sudan’s independence the AU panel focusing on Sudan informed Agar and the SPLM the Sudan’s president Omar Hassan Al-Bashir had "reservations" with the deal. Agar again repeated that if the agreement was not implemented there was a risk of return to war in North Sudan. "Our position remains with the agreement because this is the agreement which we signed with them. The other option is war if he does not need peace", said senior member of the former rebel movement. (ST) END1 2. Sudan: UN reports ongoing heavy bombardment in Southern Kordofan UN News Centre 12 July 2011 – The situation in Sudan’s Southern Kordofan state has remained unpredictable with heavy bombardment continuing in and around the main town, Kadugli, and in a second one to the north-east, the United Nations humanitarian office reported today. The ongoing bombing of Delami town had caused the displacement of more than 2,000 people, Elisabeth Byrs, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told reporters in Geneva. According to the Sudanese Government’s Humanitarian Aid Commission, the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Southern Kordofan has decreased significantly from 73,000, but Ms. Byrs said OCHA had no information on how many people remained displaced. Preliminary results of an assessment undertaken in Kadugli town indicated that the most urgent humanitarian needs are food, water, medical services and shelter for those displaced. Aid workers have also reported that key access roads and bridges require immediate repair, and that mine clearance is critical. Ms. Byrs also said that the $620 million appeal for humanitarian operations in South Sudan – which became an independent nation on Saturday – is only 34 per cent funded. The appeal will be revised on 20 July. Troops from Sudan have in recent weeks clashed with armed groups aligned with South Sudan in South Kordofan, sparking a humanitarian crisis as thousands of people fled from the fighting in and around the town of Kadugli. The Governments of Sudan and South Sudan signed an agreement in Ethiopia on 28 June on border security and a joint political and security arrangement for Southern Kordofan. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=39017&Cr=southern+kordofan&Cr1=sudan END2 3. Children with horrific wounds pay price of Sudan's bloody war By Daniel Howden in the Nuba Mountains The Independent Wednesday, 13 July 2011 When boys and girls started arriving at his hospital with missing arms and feet, they were the first casualties of war Dr Tom Catena had seen. "The injuries are horrifying," said the mission doctor who comes from upstate New York, "a girl with her feet blown off, another with her abdomen sliced open." The victims pouring in from the villages in Sudan's Nuba mountains were being bombed by their own government, he discovered. Grass thatch villages were being turned to charnel houses as an air force dropped bombs from the back of ageing cargo planes. The government in Khartoum insists it is targeting armed rebels but the Antonovs it is using are non-military aircraft and are randomly destructive. "The worst injuries are from the Antonovs," said Dr Catena. "This is my first experience of war and you don't understand the human toll until you see it. "These people are being destroyed for nothing." The only qualified doctor in an area with hundreds of thousands people, the mission hospital has about 400 patients. The doctor who arrived recently from mission work in Kenya said he was nervous at first about speaking out as hospitals were targets. "Why hold back?" he asked. "We should show what's happening, this is the reality." Yussef Abdullahi Kuwa reached the hospital in the north of the Kauda Valley on Sunday. The 15-year-old was playing iwhen the bomb hit. He was unable to take cover fast enough and now half his face is missing where hot metal sliced through it. He cannot speak. "My boy has done nothing to this government," said his father, who took three days to get him to a doctor. "We are powerless." Children with stumps where their hands or feet should be wander around in the hospital. Sixteen-year-old Jakumo lost his left arm after helping his sister with the washing. The children had been told to lie flat when they heard planes but Jakumo forgot. "I tried to hide behind a tree instead," he said. "But it hit me." The UN Security Council announced yesterday that all its peacekeepers were being withdrawn from Sudan's southern border areas by the end of next month. Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted at The Hague for war crimes, also threatened to expel aid agencies in Southern Kordofan state where the fighting is taking place. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/children-with-horrific-wounds-pay-price-of-sudans-bloody-war-2312664.html END3 4. Bashir delineates Sudan’s “second republic”, promises reforms July 12, 2011 (KHARTOUM) – Sudan’s president, Omer Hassan al-Bashir, has outlined the features of his country’s “second republic,” promising political reforms. In an address before the country’s parliament on Tuesday, following his country’s break-up after South Sudan declared independence on Saturday, Bashir reaffirmed commitment to establishing amicable ties with the new southern state. “Today I confirm before you what I had announced in Juba, that our relations with the budding southern state will be made-up of honoring agreements and the serious pursuit of consolidating stability and construction of positive and distinguished neighborly relations driven by mutual interest and preservation of deeply-entrenched social relationship between us and our brothers in the south,” Bashir said. South Sudan officially split and formed its own state in line with the outcome of the region’s referendum, a vote promised under the 2005’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) which halted nearly half a century of intermittent civil wars with the south. The Sudanese president reiterated his government’s commitment to thrashing out unfinished business with the south, in reference to post-independence arrangements which include, among other things, sharing of oil revenues. “In the same spirit with which we implemented all provisions of the deal [CPA], we shall take on the pending and outstanding issues despite their sensitivity,” Bashir told the country’s highest legislative authority. The Sudanese leader did not omit to address the volatile security situation in the country’s South Kordofan and Blue Nile states, two flashpoint regions straddling the borders with South Sudan. Bashir announced that his government would continue “highly-concentrated development programs” in the two states which were devastated by fierce battles during the second Sudanese civil war 1983-2004 as their population largely sided with the South. He further announced that his government would extend the deadline of the popular consultation process in the two states, a CPA-mandated mechanism to ascertain local views on the implementation of that agreement and how governance relationship with Khartoum should be re-organized. “We are working to finalize the process of the popular consultation endorsed by your assembly last year,” Bashir told parliamentarians. “I shall not forget to mention that we are in the process of amending the popular consultation law in order to extend the deadline stipulated by the law,” Al-Bashir said in reference to the fact that the popular consultations’ mandate had already expired with the CPA on July 9. “I assure people of South Kordofan that we are keen to widen the range of fair political participation for them and enable them to handle their own affairs,” he added. South Kordofan is currently in a state of war after the northern army clashed with forces aligned with South Sudan. The fighting escalated into artillery and aerial bombardment carried out by the north’s Sudan Armed Forces, leading to the killing of hundreds and displacement of more than 70,000 people, according to UN figures. (ST) END4 ______________________ 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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