Co-authored by Julie Flint
Soon after the Nuba Mountains region of central Sudan exploded in war two weeks ago, a patrol from the United Nations peacekeeping force was detained by Sudanese government soldiers and subjected to a mock firing squad in the soldiers' divisional headquarters.
First the peacekeepers were lined up. Then an officer cocked his AK-47 and pointed it at them. He demanded that they leave South Kordofan state, the ancestral home of the Nuba people, and warned: "We will kill you if you come back here."
The U.N. mission in South Kordofan is the only international protection for the Nuba people, the forgotten victims of Sudan's 22-year civil war. South Sudan will finally earn freedom from the Khartoum regime when the South becomes independent on July 9. But the Nuba, trapped along the North-South border, will remain within Khartoum's reach.
The peacekeepers meant to protect the Nuba cannot even protect themselves. They are out-gunned and out-numbered by Sudanese government forces who have dropped 500-pound bombs less than 2,500 feet from U.N. mission headquarters in the state capital, Kadugli. On Monday, Sudanese forces threatened to shoot down any U.N. flights over South Kordofan.
Now, the peacekeeping force is under orders from Khartoum to leave South Kordofan by July 9, the day South Sudan becomes independent. If it is pushed out, who will remain in South Kordofan to bear witness to the atrocities that are already unfolding? International staff working for non-U.N. agencies have already left Kadugli -- every last one of them.
The U.S. special envoy to Sudan, Princeton Lyman, has said there is not yet evidence that the new Nuba war amounts to "ethnic cleansing." But confidential U.N. 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."
The Nuba live on the southern edge of Sudan's Arabized north. As black Africans, they have always been regarded as second-class citizens by Sudan's northern elites. Many fought alongside the southern rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation Army in the civil war from 1985 until a ceasefire in the Nuba Mountains in 2002, hoping to end their marginalization and preserve their unique culture.
Long before the Khartoum regime launched its war on Darfur, it attempted to destroy life in the rural Nuba Mountains and resettle the entire population of insurgent areas in camps where Nuba identity would be eradicated. Community leaders and intellectuals were killed; villages were burned to the ground.
Despite the Nuba people's immense suffering, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005 did not satisfy their aspirations -- including their demand for self-determination. What little the peace agreement did offer was neglected as Darfur monopolized international attention.
Today the international community is making another mistake. It is failing to understand that this is not a conflict that can be resolved by North-South negotiations. This is a North-North conflict. The so-called Three Areas along the North-South divide -- Abyei, South Kordofan and Blue Nile -- are regions with particular histories and problems that remain largely unaddressed. Without urgent attention to South Kordofan, next month's partition may well ignite a new civil war.
Hundreds of thousands of Nuba are already on the move, fleeing from tanks, artillery and aerial bombardment. Humanitarian access has been shut down. A week ago, U.N. peacekeepers warned of a humanitarian crisis that they are "not sufficiently prepared to counter."
Apart from a couple of statements in the U.N. Security Council, the international community has failed to put the plight of the Nuba people on its agenda. President Obama must understand that the conflagration in South Kordofan has the potential to bring down the whole edifice built by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The Nuba Mountains require an immediate ceasefire with unconditional humanitarian access, followed by a robust monitoring mission on the ground and resolution of the grievances that caused conflict in the first place.
The Nuba Mountains were killing fields a decade before Darfur. Are they doomed to be again?
Ms. Farrow, an actor and advocate, has traveled to Sudan 16 times. Ms. Flint has reported from the Nuba Mountains for 20 years.
This post originally appeared at WSJ.com.
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That is the sad reality of our world.
Bashir's regime does not intend to allow the new state to be established, and never did. I've been waiting for him to pull military stunts, to give him an excuse to re-take the South - and this time, with a vengeance. He was rejected. Muslims react violently to rejections and humiliations, as we ought to know by now.
Maybe it is time to kick some rear over there. If there is one legitimate reason for war, it is to stop a genocide. Failure to stop one guarantees proliferation - more genocides.
You can't negotiate peace with people who will have none of it. And you can't stop genocide by pretending it doesn't exist, that it is actually a "civil war."
is it then a coincidence that Arab Sudenese
want black tribes off their oil rich lands?
HOW DID OUR OIL GET UNDER THEIR SAND?
Mighty interesting.
population of it's lands is the view of
the extremists, it is the same 'big lie"
as the inexorable march of communism or
any other political religious or cult
sense of entitlement to world domination,
it is all hogwash.
to stop genocide,,,,
anyway it's not"a military solution"
it's the threat of one that works, give the UN
peacekeepers guns and let the
UN fight real injustice for a change.
Your comment on the military suggest the only thing is a very strong active military that can take the fight to and has the weapons to fight at any time. This means death and destruction beyond just military but into the bases filled with civilian families and relatives of the now new enemy.
In Korea we have a large force that is in position to slow an attack, not enough to stop an invasion but as a threat by saying if you attack it will be an act of war. To set up such a position would take tens of thousands of men and material plus the real knowledge by both sides of destruction.
it will not happen.
So I ask again, what are you asking for, in political and military terms?
People are worried now about S. Sudan's fate. I've been worried since 1994. Unless the outside world DOES do something, the new S. Sudan will never come into being. Bashir never intended for it to do so, and still doesn't. But he wants his next genocide in the south to look like a legitimate "civil war," which is why he allowed the vote. He could then find "offenses," send in military, and when they resist at ALL - well, now it's a civil war, isn't it? Except that it will still be genocide.
Few people care, of course, about black Africans, especially indigenous ones. But keeping the genocide from us for 20 years ought to make you worry about just how "free" our free press is. Condoning genocide ought to worry everyone, too.
Only outside military intervention will stop this regime, whose intention is to wipe out all black skin. Do you see Muslim states stopping them? What does THAT mean? It means genocide is acceptable when it is done BY Muslims. Maybe it's time we all did serious homework on Islam, too. What we don't know about it can - and ultimately will - kill us.
dude get a grip.
to fight artillery with their
babies and wives living
with them, ask the plains indians
how that went.
Where genocide is concerned, we wouldn't be "the world's policemen." We'd be doing some policing of criminals who will one day genocide US. Such people don't know of anything else, and NEVER quit slaughtering on their own. They only understand force.
Locke wasn't just flapping his gums when he said, "...I am involved in mankind; therefore ask not for whom the bell tolls - it tolls for THEE." That wasn't just pretty prose; he was expressing REALITY.
There isn't a single person safe from genocide, as long as the world permits it to go on unimpeded, anywhere at ALL. The fact that most people don't care about blacks, especially indigenous African ones, makes no difference. The principle holds true. You can make this argument about just about anything else, but not about genocide.
I'm a liberal. I opposed the Iraq war. The things I knew would happen afterward, DID. Most wars have more to do with greed and power lust than anything else, but genocide is perhaps the only legitimate reason for starting a war.
We ignored the first genocide, for 20+ years. The result was emboldening genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia, because the Sudanese genocide was extremely successful.
Genocide PROPAGATES itself. That makes it everybody's business.
You can't really believe that genocidal sudanese are a threat to the US? How can that be? But, no threat to Europe or elsewhere.??
Sorry, but not our fight. Ugly world out there, but if not a direct, immediate threat to the US, I'm opposed, no matter how sad the situation.
S. Sudan is supposed to become official on July 9. Wait and watch. Bashir's regime will stop it COLD. They're already starting. The dream of these long-suffering people is about to become just another nightmare.
Another GENOCIDE.
A genocide which, once again, the free world will label as a "civil war."
TO OUR EVERLASTING SHAME.