South Kordofan: A Critical Moment for Action
Posted by Enough Team on Jul 22, 2011
Many Sudan advocates have watched in horror as evidence rapidly
accumulates that genocide is beginning again in South Kordofan (in
what is now North Sudan). This week, many wrote to President Obama,
expressing their deep concerns.
Information from a leaked U.N. human rights report has chronicled
massive atrocities that occurred in June, both in the capital city of
Kadugli and in the Nuba Mountains. House-to-house searches have
targeted the African Nuba people of the region and those sympathetic
to South Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army
(North). Roadblocks have been set up in numerous locations targeting
the same population. Many have been arrested or summarily executed.
These actions continue to the present. The U.N. human rights report
also provides eyewitness accounts of mass graves, with considerable
detail.
On July 14, the Satellite Sentinel Project, in conjunction with the
Enough Project, released satellite photography that shows three mass
gravesites parallel to one another, each about 16 feet by 80 feet;
together they are capable of holding many thousands of victims,
victims who would almost certainly be Nuba. These sites were excavated
after June 7 and before July 4 – in other words, at the very height of
violent conflict.
There is simply no other credible explanation for what SSP photography
reveals – and none has been offered, even by U.S. special envoy
Princeton Lyman, who seemed to go out of his way to say that the
United States could not confirm the findings of the SSP report.
Moreover, SSP has photographed masses of irregular white bags, all of
a size to comport with human body dimensions. Lyman says that the
white bags were always there (implying, notably, that U.S. satellite
surveillance has been ongoing). But this is simply wrong: SSP has
photographs of precisely the same site on both June 17 (no white bags)
and July 4 (many white bags); this is unmistakable.
Why would Lyman try to undermine the SSP report? There are no answers
that are not intensely dismaying. But his effort flies in the face of
too much evidence: satellite photography, eyewitness accounts
(independently conducted and confirming of one another), and the grim
accounts of mass disappearances. The Associated Press reported that on
June 20 some 7,000 Nuba who had sought U.N. protection were forcibly
removed from U.N. custody by security agents of the Khartoum regime,
disguised as Red Crescent workers. To this day the U.N. has no idea
where these people were moved or where they are now.
There is a great deal more evidence, particularly of ongoing aerial
bombardment of Nuba civilians in the Nuba Mountains, and a deliberate
assault on the agricultural cycle (now is the most critical time for
planting and tending crops). If there is no fall harvest because
bombing has forced so many people to abandon their fields, and if
humanitarian access to the Nuba remains blocked, people will starve in
large numbers.
Many, including myself, believe that with so much evidence that ethnic
violence, even genocide, is once again accelerating in Sudan, the
international community must act and act forcefully. With or without
U.N. authorization, the U.S. and others committed to the ideal of a
“responsibility to protect” must stop the bombing of civilians, the
greatest issue in the minds of most Nuba at this point. Khartoum
should be put on notice that any aircraft implicated in attacks on
civilian or humanitarian targets will be destroyed on the ground, by
cruise missiles or drone attack aircraft. This minimizes the chances
for collateral damage and provides a steady ratcheting up of pressure
on Khartoum. Some of its aircraft, e.g., MiG-29s, are very expensive,
running to $30 million each. But the ageing Antonov “bombers” should
be the first target, since they are doing the most damage to civilian
lives and livelihoods in the Nuba.
The call for an Iraq-style “No Fly Zone,” while understandable, is
impracticable on a number of counts, given the geography of South
Kordofan; and it would be hugely resource-consumptive. Threatening to
destroy culpable aircraft on the ground would soon have the effect of
creating a NFZ, but very simply and at low cost.
The alternative is to accept the continuing, indeed accelerating
ethnically targeted human destruction of the Nuba people. This is not
a morally intelligible alternative.
Eric Reeves has published extensively on Sudan, nationally and
internationally, for more than a decade. He is author of A Long Day's
Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide.
* Advocacy
* Darfur and Southern Sudan
* Peace
* Prevention
* Protection
* Punishment
* Enough Team's blog
* 1 Comment
Abyei: Peacekeepers’ Plans Unclear as Sudan Army Vows to Stay for Now
Posted by Laura Heaton and Amanda Hsiao on Jul 22, 2011
Attention to the situation in the disputed area of Abyei has been
overshadowed by the worsening crisis to the northeast in the Nuba
Mountains. In part, that may because of the agreement signed by
Khartoum and Juba to remove their forces from the region and the U.N.
Security Council’s authorization of a deployment of Ethiopian
peacekeepers to secure the area. It seemed the situation was on the
mend; with nearly 4,300 peacekeepers and police on their way to Abyei,
surely the more than 100,000 displaced people would soon return home.
Nearly one month into UNISFA’s six-month mandate, U.S. and U.N.
sources indicate about 300 to 500 peacekeepers have deployed. With the
timeframe for full deployment uncertain, discrepancies have arisen
over when the Sudan Armed Forces will be pulled back.
Speaking to news outlets this week, SAF spokesman Sawarmi Khaled Saad
stated in no uncertain terms that the army will not redeploy until the
full Ethiopian force is in place. “The Sudanese troops will withdraw
from Abyei after the Ethiopians complete their deployment in the
area," he said to AFP.
But that’s where significant disagreement arises. In New York last
week, the head of U.N. peacekeeping Alain Le Roy said during a
briefing, “all forces [in Abyei] were to withdraw by the first
deployment of United Nations troops,” citing the language of the Addis
Ababa agreement signed June 20 and the Security Council resolution.
Overseeing the withdrawal would be one of the peacekeeping missions
first tasks, he said.
However, the two agreements Le Roy mentioned are far less clear about
the timeframe for SAF withdrawal than he suggested.
In Security Council Resolution 1990, the first order of UNISFA’s
mandate is to “monitor and verify the redeployment of any Sudan Armed
Forces, Sudan People’s Liberation Army or its successor, from the
Abyei Area,” leaving the area demilitarized by all forces other than
the peacekeepers and the police. There’s no mention of how this task
corresponds to the timing of the deployment of Ethiopian forces.
The Temporary Arrangements deal signed by Khartoum and Juba in Addis
Ababa on June 20 lays out plans for the redeployment of Sudanese
military forces “immediately consequent on the deployment of an
Interim Security Force for Abyei composed of Ethiopian troops.” The
point is adequately vague to make a case for SAF pullout after the
full deployment of the peacekeeping mission.
And when that will be is an open question.
A spokesman for the Ethiopian foreign ministry, quoted by the
state-run SUNA news agency, recently suggested that the full force is
already in-country, but a political officer with the U.N. peacekeeping
department in New York contradicted this ambitious assessment. At most
nearly 600 soldiers are currently in Abyei, with plans to have 1,600
in place by the end of July. “The existing U.N. sites can only
accommodate that many. For the rest we have to establish new sites,
which will take time,” he wrote in an email to Enough.
His boss, Le Roy, cautioned that the full deployment could take
months. Logistical concerns alone – not to mention political ones –
will “require full cooperation by both Governments in order to fully
operationalize the Mission before 2012,” Le Roy said last week. If
those anticipated obstacles – washed out roads, inadequate housing –
come to pass, the mission could spend its first six-month mandate just
prepping and beginning to deploy.
As SAF makes clear it will use the delay to dig in its heels,
civilians displaced from Abyei have said repeatedly they will not
return home so long as SAF maintains its presence. As recently as two
weeks ago, an internal U.N. report indicated that the situation in
Abyei town remained “volatile and unpredictable.” Sudanese soldiers
continued to burn tukuls and carry out random shootings.
As long as the situation on the ground remains skewed in the NCP's
favor, political negotiations will continue to be impossible between
the SPLM and the NCP. If the SAF are allowed to withdraw according to
their own timeline, the international community will be complicit in
allowing a final solution to the region to once again be kicked down
the road.
The Security Council resolution calls on the Secretary General to
provide a status update to the council within 30 days of signing,
which falls next week.
Photo: Heavy rains on the airstrip in Agok (Enough/Tim Freccia)
* Darfur and Southern Sudan
* Peace
* Prevention
* Protection
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "JFD
info" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected].
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/jfdinfo?hl=en.
