---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: John Ashworth <[email protected]> Date: Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 10:18 AM Subject: [sudan-john-ashworth] Fwd: South Kordofan articles To: Group <[email protected]>
"The capital's dominance backfired. The south rebelled even before independence in 1956. In the 1980s and '90s, it was joined by fighters from the Nuba Mountains, Darfur and Blue Nile. Ethnic Beja fighters in the east also took up arms. Even the far north has a self-determination movement... the Bashir regime is fighting to prevent further splintering of the north" "The only good thing about peace was that it gave us time to prepare for more war" 1. Born in Blood By Alex Perry / Kauda; Alan Boswell / Kauda TIME Magazine 18th July 2011 High in the Nuba Mountains in central Sudan lies a green valley of guava, mango and custard-apple trees where the people live in conical grass-roofed huts, tending goats and raising maize and sorghum on steep stone terraces. For the past month the focus of valley life has been its hospital, overflowing with child amputees, old women with shrapnel wounds and young men who arrived carrying their guts. Among them is Morcilla Dimas, 8. Her uncle, Haitar Solomon, recounts how on June 26, after hiding all day in the hills above their village of Kurchi, the family ventured home, and Morcilla took her sisters Maklena, 6, and Priska, 4, to fetch water from the village pump. A Sudanese air force Antonov plane chose that moment to launch five 45-gal. (170 L) barrels of oil attached to explosives. Twelve people, including Maklena and Priska, were killed. Morcilla suffered burns and lacerations to her feet and arms. Dr. Tom Catena, 47, a surgeon from upstate New York who works in the hospital, says even if Kurchi were a military target, "rolling bombs out the back at 20,000 feet" over a village can only be described as "premeditated civilian bombing." Births should be joyous, but in Sudan, new life can seem merely one more opportunity for death. On July 9, two new nations will come into being when Africa's largest country splits into two: a smaller, mostly Arab and Muslim Sudan ruled from the old capital, Khartoum, and a mainly black African and Christian South Sudan with its capital in Juba. The road to separation was long and bloody: 2 million people died in two civil wars — 1955 to 1972 and 1983 to 2005 — between the northern government and southern rebels. But rather than heralding peace, the split is creating two weak and unstable countries and yet more conflicts. The deadliest is the month-old war between the regime in Khartoum and the rebels of the Nuba Mountains. Though the Nuba, ethnic black Africans, fought alongside the south at a cost of 200,000 lives, their state of South Kordofan ended up inside the new north along with Darfur to the west and a third restive state, Blue Nile, to the east. Last December, Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir proclaimed that the new northern Sudan would be a monolithic Islamic Arab state. "We will change the constitution, and at that time there will be no time to speak of diversity of culture and ethnicity," he declared. "Shari'a [law] and Islam will be the main source for the constitution, Islam the official religion and Arabic the official language." Further upping the stakes, on June 1, though stalling on other elements of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended the north-south war, al-Bashir's government announced it would implement the part about disarming rebels, starting with Nuba fighters. War erupted in days. Aid workers fled. Khartoum sealed the roads and banned flights. A handful of journalists managed to reach the mountains, however, including a small team from TIME. And from 30 interviews in three days with rebel leaders, soldiers, civilians, refugees, the wounded and medical personnel, a consistent picture emerges. Human-rights investigators will ultimately judge whether what is happening in the Nuba Mountains is classified as ethnic cleansing or genocide. What is clear is that by launching a campaign of terror against unarmed villagers, al-Bashir's soldiers are committing crimes against humanity (defined as "a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population" in Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court), and by targeting civilians they are guilty of war crimes (defined in Article 8 as "intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population"). Bolstering this case, as International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo notes, are the charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity already facing al-Bashir and his South Kordofan governor, Ahmed Haroun, over similar atrocities in Darfur. Al-Bashir responded to the new accusations on July 1, saying he had ordered his soldiers to "continue their operations in South Kordofan until they clean the state of rebels." Jehanne Henry, Sudan specialist at Human Rights Watch, says, "It certainly appears war crimes are being committed. The government is not discriminating at all between military and civilian. It seems to have decided to take them all out." Sudan's main rebel group for the past three decades has been the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). It has 150,000 to 200,000 men under arms, spread across Sudan — north and south — and a large political wing, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM). The rebels in the north will technically become a separate group on July 9. In early June, days after Khartoum announced its intention to disarm the rebels, its security forces in and around Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan, were handed lists of SPLA and SPLM members. On June 5, according to eyewitnesses, they began going house to house with the lists, shouting, "Now is the time to shoot" and "Allahu akbar [God is great]." Hundreds of rebels and opposition members fled. Many who did not were dragged from their houses and shot or butchered in the street. Simultaneously, the SPLA, reinforced by tens of thousands of Nuba fighters from bases in South Sudan, made a lightning advance, briefly capturing parts of Kadugli. There, a crowd of thousands of Nuba refugees gathered outside a base manned by peacekeepers belonging to the U.N. mission in Sudan. The peacekeepers refused to let the refugees enter. Northern soldiers encircled the crowd and began identifying rebel supporters. Witnesses say at least six were marched off and shot. With the SPLA fighters advancing once more on Kadugli and thousands of Nuba civilians fleeing the town — and a total of 73,000 on the move across South Kordofan, according to the U.N. — what the north began as a targeted elimination of political and military opponents soon deteriorated into an onslaught against all Nuba and other black Africans. Antonovs, MiG-27s and helicopter gunships were dispatched to bomb SPLA forces, refugees and mountain villages. Juma Fadul, a 25-year-old taxi driver, was in church in the village of al-Hamra on July 2 when a gunship made a sustained half-hour assault with missiles and machine guns. Five villagers died; Fadul took a piece of shrapnel to his forehead as he tried to run away. He and Khalid Somi, sprayed with shrapnel up the right side of his body during a helicopter attack near Kadugli the same day, estimate 100 civilians died. "I saw the bodies scattered on the ground," says Somi. Juma Abdulaziz, 31, wounded in an Antonov strike outside Kadugli on June 15, says 50 friends and neighbors were executed in the town. "When I was brought here, I left my wife and two children there," Fadul says. "For sure, they are all dead." Of the 161 patients Catena received from June 5 to July 3, about half were civilians, half SPLA soldiers. The surgeon has no doubts about the north's intent. "The idea is to scare the crap out of people, to terrorize them and force them out of their homes and their land." A History of Failure Sudan is where Arabia meets Africa, a geography enshrined in the place's name: Bilad al-Sudan is Arabic for "land of the blacks." An explanation for Khartoum's repression of the country's regions can be found in the centuries-old aspiration of Arabs to bring Islamic advancement to heathen Africans — which, as with Christian colonialists from Europe in other parts of Africa, followed earlier centuries of slave raiding. Khartoum's tyranny went hand in hand with economic marginalization. The capital's dominance backfired. The south rebelled even before independence in 1956. In the 1980s and '90s, it was joined by fighters from the Nuba Mountains, Darfur and Blue Nile. Ethnic Beja fighters in the east also took up arms. Even the far north has a self-determination movement. And despite superior armor, Khartoum was unable to beat its opponents militarily. The conflict cost it dearly, in money for weapons and soldiers and lost economic development: there is little economy to speak of outside the capital and certainly nothing on which to base hopes of clearing $38 billion in foreign debt. Today, weakened by the departure of the south, which holds most of Sudan's oil, the Bashir regime is fighting to prevent further splintering of the north. The future is hardly rosier in the south. So far, independence has meant the freedom to kill one another. More than 1,800 people have died in the six months since Jan. 9, when, in a referendum mandated by the CPA, the south voted for secession, with 99% in favor. Most of the dead were civilians caught in cross fire between the SPLA and renegade militias. The militias claim the SPLA and SPLM — and by extension the new government — are unfairly dominated by the south's largest ethnic group, the Dinkas. The militias are concentrated in the states of Jonglei, Unity and Upper Nile — not coincidentally also areas of plentiful oil. Another flash point is Abyei, an oil-rich border region claimed by north and south and annexed by the north in May. More uncertainty looms in a failure to agree on how the two sides might split what this year is set to be $6 billion in revenue from oil that is located in the south but piped out through the north. "All the fighting is about resources, about who gets what," says a Western diplomat in Juba. And if the north is ruled by a self-seeking autocracy, the south shows every sign of aping it. A draft transitional constitution drawn up by President Salva Kiir Mayardit "contains a number of provisions that appear likely to concentrate power in the central government," warns the report of an observer mission from the Carter Center, headed by the former U.S. President. The Juba diplomat estimates that $3 billion of the $12 billion the southern government has earned from oil since 2005 is missing. Another Western observer says that between salaries, businesses it owns and corruption, the SPLA controls 40% to 60% of the southern economy. The fledgling state would also benefit from a more competent government. Positions are handed out on the basis of patronage. On paper, the south's 8 million to 10 million people are rich: as well as oil, their new country is blessed with millions of hectares of fertile land around the vast Sudd swamp, while cows — worth $250 to $400 a head — outnumber people. In reality, health, education and poverty indicators are among the worst in the world. Illiteracy and innumeracy are rife, and many development workers label South Sudan a "pre-failed state." Can Diplomacy Help? Could the world have done more to prevent this dual disaster? There have been missed opportunities. A $526 million international development effort in the south has been slow, and change is largely confined to Juba. The U.S. has dangled incentives before Khartoum — like an offer to remove it from its list of state sponsors of terrorism if it allowed a peaceful referendum — only to fail to deliver. The world also finds Sudan's complexity a challenge: campaigns such as Save Darfur and the Enough Project, featuring celebrities like George Clooney and Mia Farrow, bring welcome attention, but they oversimplify the issues. The U.N. peace mission is often impotent, as in Kadugli, where civilians were executed within sight of peacekeepers. But some diplomatic initiatives have worked in Sudan. The U.S., Europe, Africa and China unified to persuade the north to allow January's referendum. Sudan is also where the African Union (A.U.) is making good on a vow for Africans to take charge of African problems. In June, Ethiopia stepped up to provide 4,200 troops to demilitarize Abyei, a mission an A.U. official says will likely extend to the entire north-south border. Former South African President Thabo Mbeki has also proved a dogged and occasionally successful mediator. Not in Kordofan, however. A framework deal for talks he brokered last month in Addis Ababa meant little on the ground. The north kept bombing, and the Nuba, who were not at the negotiations, rejected the agreement. To be fair, however, assistance requires a desire to be helped. "If you're trying to get peace, it's generally an advantage to have two sides who want it," remarked an exhausted-looking A.U. official at the Addis Ababa talks. Many diplomats privately admit to wondering whether they are wasting time and money in the two Sudans. What stops them from quitting is Kordofan — and Darfur and Jonglei and Unity and Upper Nile — where what happens when Sudanese try to sort things out themselves is on gory display. For now, more war and many more deaths seem inevitable. In South Kordofan, the Nuba are readying for a long fight. "The only good thing about peace was that it gave us time to prepare for more war," says Montasir Kalo, 33, from a Nuba aid group in Kauda. "Our vision remains the same: tearing down the regime and empire of the north and claiming our rights as ordinary Sudanese. So far the result of all our fighting is that we are still fighting. We have this one choice: to be or not to be." http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2081915,00.html END1 2. South Kordofan governor says Al-Hilu planned coup with Darfur rebels July 27, 2011 (KHARTOUM) – South Kordofan Governor Ahmad Haroun has charged his former deputy Abdul Aziz Al-Hilu with attempting a localized coup in coordination with rebel groups from the western region of Darfur. Sudan’s oil-producing state of South Kordofan, which borders the newly independent state of South Sudan and the war-battered region of Darfur, descended into violence since 6 June when Sudan army known as the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) clashed with forces of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) led by Abdul Aziz al-Hilu. The conflict in South Kordofan, which escalated into heavy artillery and aerial bombardment, is believed to have been erupted after SAF attempted to disarm SPLM fighters. The violence also followed contentious gubernatorial elections in which Haroun, the incumbent governor of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP), was declared winner over his deputy Al-Hilu who disputed the result saying the vote was rigged. Addressing a press conference in Khartoum on Tuesday, Haroun said that Al-Hilu had planned to launch a coup on 6 June and assassinate 110 political figures in the state. He further said that documents obtained by the army at Al-Hilu’s residence revealed a plan by AL-Hilu forces to wrestle control of South Kordofan’s state capital Kadugli with three divisions of the SPLM’s military wing, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), at 6 pm on 6 June. Haroun, who faces an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in the course of the government’s notorious counterinsurgency in Darfur region, said that Al-Hilu had also planned to coordinate with Darfur rebel groups to advance towards Khartoum once control of Kadugli is secured. The ICC indictee further claimed that Al-Hilu was receiving assistance from Bentiu town in the Unity State of South Sudan. South Sudan declared full independence from Sudan on 9 July. The region, which is ruled by the SPLM, says it no longer maintain ties with forces in South Kordofan. Haroun said they were still willing to engage in dialogue with Al-Hilu, however, he added that such dialogue must occur within the framework of effective security arrangements and without preconditions. Khartoum government withdrew commitment to an agreement it signed on 28 June with the SPLM in Addis Ababa on South Kordofan situation. The deal, which stipulated the recognition of the SPLM’s as a legal political party in north Sudan and provides for the integration of SPLA forces into SAF, was declared null and void by President Al-Bashir who ordered SAF to sustain military operations in South Kordofan. Separately, Haroun has strongly denied reports on the identification of mass graves in South Kordofan. Citing satellite imagery and eye-witness reports, the Satellite Sentinel Project (SSP), which monitors Sudan, said last week it had found evidence of mass graves in Kadugli town. A leaked report produced by the UN Mission in Sudan concluded that “especially egregious” acts by SAF during the conflict could be considered as war crimes and crimes against humanity, recommending a probe by the ICC into the situation. In an interview with Saudi owned Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper on 24 July, al-Hilu echoed accusations that the Sudanese government has been pursuing ethnic cleansing policy in South Kordofan. Haroun, for his part, said that the Sudanese Red Crescent Society handled burial of all victims in accordance with the criminal procedures law. The NCP official dismissed the possibility of re-holding the elections in South Kordofan. “Re-holding elections in South Kordofan is a medicine that it unavailable in our pharmacies,” he added. Haroun said that the doors for dialogue would remain open but their swords would remain unsheathed. In a related development, Haroun stressed that there is no intention to setup refugee camps in South Kordofan, claiming that 80 percent of the internally displaced people have returned to their homes. More than 72,000 people have been displaced since South Kordofan violence erupted, according to UN estimates. (ST) END2 3. Safe in Juba, Refugees from South Kordofan Recount Horrors Posted by Matt Brown and Laura Heaton on Jul 19, 2011 Humanitarian News JUBA, South Sudan -- The embattled area of the Nuba Mountains is squarely situated in North Sudan, but the recent separation of the South poses new challenges for what in the past two months has become the region’s latest deadly front. As the festive mood surrounding the South’s independence celebration tapered off, many journalists in town for the big day turned attention – quietly, given the immense sensitivities – toward the conflict unfolding just over the new international border. Much of the reporting about the atrocities being committed by Khartoum-aligned soldiers and militias has relied upon secondhand information, often filtered through layers of sources who have access to satellite phones and email. But the options for now traveling to the Nuba Mountains and witnessing the conflict first-hand narrowed significantly when the once-fluid border became a hard international boundary. The worst-case scenarios that one must consider when weighing travel into an active conflict zone just got markedly more serious. Pilots fear having their planes shot out of the sky, Enough was told. Even among people with resources, relatively few Nubans are making their way out of the area. In the month and a half since the offensive there began, only about 200 or 300 Nubans have arrived in Juba. Enough met with some Nuban aid workers who were in Kadugli when the violence began, and who told harrowing stories about the first days of the crisis and how they managed to escape. Even before the violence erupted in early June, a rights activist named Peter said that staff of his organization had been threatened. Their work “was seen as a threat because the regime does not want an enlightened people who know their rights,” Peter said. On June 5, Peter was in the market when a truckload of soldiers arrived. They started shooting in the air at first. People ran in all directions. “Then they started targeting people who they thought were part of the SPLM,” Peter said. Even though he is not part of the SPLM, he realized that his work would put him and his family in grave danger. The government-aligned soldiers and militias were targeting specific individuals through a “carefully organized” campaign. Peter tried to find a way to get his family out of Kadugli, but it took two more days until they could find a car and a group of people also willing to attempt to drive out of town. In the meantime, he and his family hid in their home. Their house was in a neighborhood where there were many NCP supporters, and on the first day of fighting guns were distributed in the community. “The supporters of the NCP – civilians, just civilians – would shoot from their house to show that this is a secure house,” Peter said. “The houses that did not have sound of guns shooting is probably those of the enemy.” After learning that helicopter gunships were “hunting” people who were trying to escape Kadugli toward SPLA positions, Peter and his family opted to travel out of town via the northern route. He credits this counter-intuitive decision with saving their lives. “They probably believed that if we are associated with the SPLA, we would not be brave enough to travel on this side.” Their car was stopped at a roadblock, and some of the men, including Peter, were beaten, but eventually they were allowed to pass. The next day Peter learned through a friend affiliated with the Khartoum-backed Popular Defense Forces that his name and photo were included on the list of people the militia was instructed to track down and kill. For a couple of weeks after he arrived in Juba, Peter spoke daily with his friend in the PDF to follow the events in Kadugli. “He told me he did not want to do what the PDF was doing, but he was given a gun,” Peter said, adding that the man had expressed concern that his commander suspected he might be sympathetic to the Nuba. Weeks ago Peter’s friend called him distraught about the mass graves near Tilo primary school that were recently pinpointed by satellite images. “He saw mass graves with his own eyes. He saw people loaded into trucks (...) and one morning he counted more than 20 bodies.” There were other small graves as well with six or seven bodies, Peter’s friend told him. But since June 20 Peter has not been able to reach his friend and now suspects that their phone calls were traced. “I am really feeling guilty about this, if that is the reason he was killed,” he said. “I am sure if he was still alive he would have called me, he should have called me.” After the summary executions in and around Kadugli, the northern-aligned forces turned their attention to the mountains to the east and the SPLA-held region around the town of Kauda. This time, death came from above. “When the MiGs come, we run for the bomb shelters,” said a Sudanese aid worker who fled Kauda for Juba just over a week ago. Antonov cargo planes with payloads of heavy ordnance and MiG fighter jets showered the region with bombs sending terrified civilians running for shelter in mountain caves. Those caught out during bombing raids were cut in half by shrapnel. Others were critically wounded and have flooded local clinics in the past few weeks. The death and destruction has been captured in gruesome and haunting photos and video that Enough has witnessed. The Sudanese aid worker from Kauda made it out on one of the last humanitarian flights from the region before South Sudan’s independence on July 9th. She is safe in Juba, but she is desperate to go back to continue assisting those who were not fortunate enough to flee. With flights to the region suspended indefinitely, she doesn’t know when she will return. “I am worried about safety if I go back,” she said. “But I am more worried when I am out of the area and I think about what is happening to my people.” http://humanitariannews.org/20110719/safe-juba-refugees-south-kordofan-recount-horrors END3 4. "Ongoing Aerial Assaults in Sudan Against Civilians and Humanitarians: An Update" Dissent Magazine (on-line), July 25, 2011 by Eric Reeves Since my report and data spreadsheet on aerial targeting of civilians and humanitarians in Sudan were released on this blog on May 6, 2011, the Sudan Armed Forces---at the direction of the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party regime in Khartoum---have not only continued their onslaught in Darfur, but have begun a massive, ethnically targeted military campaign in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan, including sustained and extremely destructive aerial attacks on civilians. Khartoum has also engaged in military actions in very tense border regions, including Abyei and the northern border of oil-rich Unity State (South Sudan). The latter actions have included repeated aerial bombardments within Pariang County, which have displaced thousands of Southerners. Ominous reports---from the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS), from Malik Agar (leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement in North Sudan and Governor of Blue Nile), from satellite imagery, and from regional sources---suggest that the southern regions of Blue Nile State (North Sudan) may also soon become a war zone. In Darfur---increasingly a parenthetical subject in discussions of Sudan---several attacks in a three-day period in May killed and injured dozens of civilians. On May 15 Khartoum's warplanes bombed the town of Labado and the village of Esheraya in South Darfur, killing thirteen and wounding many more. Reuters reports that on May 17 the village of Sukamir was bombed, with casualties unknown. Bloomberg News reports that the targets of the May 18 bombing included the civilian villages of Umm Rai and Hashaba in North Darfur; ten civilians were killed (Baashim village was also attacked). The powerless UN Mission in Darfur (UNAMID), led by Nigeria's feckless Ibrahim Gambari, was prevented by Khartoum from investigating these atrocity crimes, as it has been so many times previously. Information about such aerial attacks, including the names of many victims, comes much more often from Radio Dabanga, the essential news clearinghouse for Darfur. Radio Dabanga estimates, on the basis of UN figures and its own, that some 140,000 people have been newly displaced by aerial and other military violence since mid-December 2010 (this comports closely with an aggregation of data from the UN and humanitarian organizations). Now, the regime's June 5 assault on South Kordofan---following its May 20 - 21 military seizure of the contested Abyei region---has concentrated aerial firepower with extraordinary ferocity on the Nuba people of the region, especially in the Nuba Mountains in the center of South Kordofan; some seventy bombing, strafing, and helicopter gunship attacks have been confirmed in the last six weeks, but reports from the ground suggest that this vastly understates the actual number. An internal and unreleased document produced at the very end of June by human rights personnel of UNMIS gives a general sense of the scope of aerial assaults on civilians: "Since the eruption of the conflict, the SAF has carried out daily aerial bombardments into the Nuba Mountains and in several towns and villages populated by Nubans. The consequences of these bombardments on the Nuban people and in particular civilians, including women and children, are devastating. They have resulted in significant loss of life, destruction of properties, and massive displacement." (UNMIS Report on the Human Rights Situation During the Violence in Southern Kordofan) The Nuba are a large and indigenous group of African tribes who have had the temerity to resist Khartoum's campaign of Arabism and Islamism (although a significant number of Nuba are themselves Muslim). The Nuba became strong supporters of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army in the 1990s, and for this reason were targeted by Khartoum for genocidal destruction. A fatwa was issued by Khartoum in January 1992, bringing a military jihad and blockade of humanitarian relief that came perilously close to exterminating the Nuba. Julie Flint, an expert on the region, has estimated on the basis of her research that "in the early 1990s, regular Sudanese army troops and paramilitary Popular Defense Forces killed 60,000–70,000 Nuba in just seven months." Many hundreds of thousands were killed, otherwise succumbed, or were displaced from their fertile lands---some of the richest in Sudan. I have supplemented the Excel spreadsheet of May 6 to reflect all confirmed aerial assaults in Darfur, Unity State (South Sudan), and South Kordofan (North Sudan) through July 15, 2011. The total number of confirmed attacks exceeds eighty. The attacks in the Nuba Mountains have been confirmed by (highly limited) UN investigations, by journalists who have now reported from the remote Nuba Mountains region (including photographically), by massive photographic evidence from the ground, by satellite imagery from the Satellite Sentinel Project, and by the Nuba themselves. It is impossible to confirm all these latter reports as fully as might be wished, but with so much redundancy among all the reports, there is no reason to exclude Nuba accounts. The consequences of this indiscriminate aerial assault are evident everywhere: people have been forced to abandon their villages and lands at the height of planting season, fleeing to caves in the mountainsides; humanitarian access to the Nuba Mountains has been shut down; a great many Nuba have been killed or wounded. Evidence strongly suggests that hundreds, perhaps thousands, have been killed directly or as a consequence of the bombings and the lack of relief aid. Tremendous numbers of people have been displaced, and the peculiarly static UN figure of "73,000 displaced" is simply an estimate based on what can be surmised from the highly constrained UN presence in Kadugli (capital of South Kordofan). Abdel Aziz el-Hilu, former deputy governor of South Kordofan, has estimated on the basis of preliminary data that the figure is closer to 500,000, and at least it very likely exceeds 250,000. There are many reports of house-to-house arrests and summary executions of Nuba in Kadugli during the early weeks of the onslaught, typically on the pretext of their having "Southern sympathies." Roadblocks reminiscent of those in Rwanda during the spring of 1994 have also targeted Nuba, who are arrested or executed. Often these people are simply trying to escape, especially to the South. There is now compelling satellite photographic evidence of mass graves, and the UN cannot account for some 7,000 Nuba who were in their protective custody until compelled by Khartoum's Military Intelligence to leave for Kadugli Stadium. They have not been seen since their forcible removal from the UN security perimeter. But the aerial assaults are what will destroy the Nuba, if Khartoum succeeds in its genocidal ambitions. Nearly all the relief groups that haven't already left will have to withdraw, particularly those with expatriate workers. It is presently the rainy season and the widespread loss of shelter is particularly dangerous, but it will be the loss of next autumn’s crops that will bring the Nuba to the verge of starvation. If this planting season and crop-tending are disrupted by continuous aerial bombing and rocket attacks, starvation will be an inescapable reality. Such starvation in the 1990s compelled many Nuba to seek out Khartoum's "peace camps,"where receiving food was contingent upon conversion to Islam. Those who refused where often tortured, mutilated, or killed. Memories of the "peace camps" run deep among the Nuba. Khartoum is making good on its demand that UNMIS withdraw entirely from North Sudan after secession by the South on July 9. This removes the last vestiges of yet another failed and extravagantly funded UN peacekeeping mission---the last international presence that might be able to confirm the scale of human suffering and destruction in the Nuba Mountains. The United States and others have objected, but Khartoum is not listening. Absent a robust international response that is nowhere in evidence, the most likely course of events will be a continuation of the present pattern of civilian bombings in Darfur, South Sudan, and South Kordofan. But war might easily expand significantly following recent international recognition of the new Republic of South Sudan (whose UN membership became official on July 14). Since Khartoum has been the conspicuous aggressor in all reported military violence, the international right of self-defense by South Sudan has significantly new meaning. This is especially true since the Khartoum regime is clearly supporting militia groups in the South that have only one goal: to destabilize the region through attacks on civilians. This can be seen in the example of Peter Gadet, a dangerous military leader in Unity and Warrab states who has repeatedly changed sides during and after Sudan’s twenty-two-year civil war. Once war begins to expand, there is simply no saying where it will end. After much talk about how war was too expensive for either side, Sudan pundits are now speaking of more ominous possibilities. There will be enormous pressure on Juba, capital of South Sudan, to aid the Sudan People's Liberation Army/North, both in the Nuba Mountains and in Blue Nile State (in the North), where there has been a major but underreported military build-up by both sides. Soldiers from both the Nuba and southern Blue Nile fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the SPLA in the South; these regions have already been excluded from the self-determination process that was laid out by the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. It is doubtful that Juba will let their compatriots down again. As Salva Kiir, the President of the Republic of South Sudan, declared on independence day, July 9, 2011, "I want to assure the people of Abyei, Darfur, Blue Nile, and South Kordofan that we have not forgotten you. When you cry, we cry. When you bleed, we bleed. I pledge to you today that we will find a just peace for all." It is unclear all that this implies militarily. What we may be sure of is that Khartoum's conduct of war will continue to include systematic, widespread, and ethnically targeted aerial attacks on civilians and the humanitarian resources upon which they depend. [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.] http://www.dissentmagazine.org/atw.php?id=513 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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