Conflict in South Kordofan: the Complexity of Sudan's Interlocking Crises

In Sudan’s South Kordofan and Blue Nile states, hundreds of thousands of civilians have been displaced and thousands more killed since June 2011, when the government of Sudan began a campaign to crush an insurgency led by the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF), a coalition of groups aiming to overthrow the government of President Omar al- South Kordofan state, and the relationship between current and past represents something new and different. Michelle Trone Introduction been ongoing since 2003, and the Second Civil War, which ended in 2005 and killed approximately two million people. The root cause of all three peripheral regions by the central government in Khartoum. Additional causes include divisions within Khartoum’s elite and environmental factors, particularly land dispossession. While the immediate trigger for to implement key provisions of the resulting 2005 Comprehensive civilians to deny rebels a base of support and the resulting humanitarian catastrophe, which has been exacerbated by the government’s refusal to allow humanitarian organizations access to much of the region, is strongly reminiscent of Darfur. Several attempted peace talks have stalemates 139 peripheries of the state by Khartoum – is resolved, which would require a fundamental restructuring of the Sudanese state and the removal of President Omar al-Bashir from power. Demographic and Historical Factors South Kordofan and Blue Nile are both states in Sudan, located near the disputed border with South Sudan. South Kordofan is characterized by its mountainous terrain, and is home to an ethnically and religiously diverse population, namely the Nuba people and several Arab tribes. The Nuba include more than 100 distinct non-Arab tribes who speak more than 100 languages. The largest concentration of Nuba is in the foothills of the South Kordofan’s Nuba Mountains. The majority of Nuba practice Islam, although many also follow Christian and animist beliefs. In addition to the Nuba, South Kordofan is home to several Arab tribes, mostly cattle-herders known as Baggara. The two major Arab tribes are the Misseriya, from the west, and the Hawazma, from the east. The demographic diversity of South Kordofan, with its mix of nomadic and sedentary peoples, bears similarities to the demographics of the Darfur region. In addition to the various Nuba and Arab groups, particular the Masalit and Borgo, who come from the Wadday sultanate in eastern Chad. Nuba people of South Kordofan and the Arab-dominated government of Sudan has been recurrent. There has been almost no representation of Nuba in the centers of power in Khartoum throughout Sudan’s history, and the central government has repeatedly carried out aggressive policies towards the Nuba. Frustrated by their lack of political representation and southern cause during both the First and Second Civil Wars between the key southern combatant during the Second Civil War, began recruiting of Sadiq al’Mahdi began to recruit members of Arab tribes into militias, encouraging them to attack Nuba villages. This policy of using Arab militias as proxy forces (which the government later repeated in Darfur) proved to be counter-productive and led to increased support for the 1 An estimated 30,000 Nuba fought with the south during the Second Civil War, and many of these same Nuba tribesmen are today is in some ways a continuation of this previous war.2 140 BCJIa vol. 17 Hassan al-Turabi to power, the relationship between Khartoum and the Nuba worsened. The government declared jihad on the Nuba people in 1992, legitimizing the killing of Christians, animists, and Muslim “apostates.” The scholar Alex de Waal called the 1992 jihad against the Nuba the “...genocidal campaign of a government at the height of its ideological hubris.”3 The government embarked upon a campaign of destruction, placing thousands of Nuba into “peace camps,” murdering thousands of young men, using rape as a weapon of war, and dropping bombs on entire Nuba villages in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.4 The government’s brutal counter-insurgency tactics later used in Darfur were returned to the Nuba Mountains following a 2002 Swiss-brokered 5 The Sudan Revolutionary Front: Actors and Goals the government of President Omar al-Bashir and replace it with a national agenda, and includes disenchanted groups from other regions as well. It aims to unify disparate political and opposition groups to groups, including the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), the Sudan 6 Some dissidents from opposition parties, including the National Umma Party and the during the Second Civil War and the goals of the Darfuri rebels. While marginalized groups from the exploited peripheries uniting to change stalemates 141 establishment of a decentralized and federal administration “where all powers are delegated to the regions” which includes the “distribution of power and wealth on the basis of the population average for each region.”7 Echoing the calls of rebels in Darfur and South Sudan, the rather has a national agenda emphasizing all Sudan’s marginalized; thus This alliance of 9 10 However, the Darfuri rebel groups, in particular the JEM, play an important role and have a long history in South Kordofan. The JEM has recruited clandestinely in South Kordofan since the Second Civil War, in particular among students who sided with al-Turabi after his 1999 split from al-Bashir, although its geographic focus remained in Darfur throughout the 2000s. Following the outbreak of hostilities in South Kordofan in June 2011, the JEM began moving forces from Darfur to to the death of the JEM’s leader Khalil Ibrahim in December 2011, have been crucial to rebel victories. By mid-2012, half of all the JEM’s but the rebels in each region work together, sharing a united strategy and working towards common goals. The Government of Sudan: Motivations, Strategy, and Tactics The government of Sudan’s motivations, strategy, and tactics exhibit strong similarities to its motivations, strategy, and tactics used both in Darfur and during the Second Civil War. As in Darfur, the government is motivated by regime survival and the belief that this survival depends on striking as hard as possible to destroy support for insurgents and to prevent the establishment of insurgencies in other regions. Hardliners in Khartoum increasingly view concessions to the peripheries as dangerous steps towards separatism, which poses a serious threat to the 142 BCJIa vol. 17 very existence of the state and the survival of the regime.11 Just like in Darfur and during the Second Civil War, the government’s strategy in South Kordofan is to target civilians suspected of supporting the rebels to deny the rebels a base of support. The resulting humanitarian catastrophe was labeled a potential genocide by major newspapers within 12 Journalists such as Nick Kristof, who sounded the alarm of genocide in Darfur, have repeatedly made comparisons between the humanitarian situation in Darfur and South Kordofan, while a 2011 Washington Post Op-Ed stated that the 13 The government forces have indiscriminately bombed villages, failing to make any distinction between civilians and combatants. Instead, all populations in rebel-held areas are viewed by the government as enemies and therefore legitimate targets. The reported human rights abuses committed are similar to those committed in Darfur, including arbitrary executions, forced displacement, mass arrests of civilians, and cases of rape and sexual violence.14 The resulting climate of fear has caused thousands of civilians in the Nuba Mountains to move into caves, where the fear of aerial bombardment has left them unable to farm. This has resulted in widespread food insecurity; an October 2013 survey by the Enough Project found that 43% of households in the Nuba Mountains do not even have enough food to last a week.15 John Prendergast, co-founder counterinsurgency strategies known to man.”16 The government has denied international humanitarian organizations access to much of the region, blocking the delivery of both food and medical assistance. Even the UN was blocked from entering South Kordofan and Blue Nile for a polio vaccination campaign.17 These humanitarian concerns, exacerbated by the government blockade, have spurred mass migrations out of the area. By mid-2012, the number of refugees from Blue Nile grown to 65,000, and by 2014 the number of refugees in camps in Ethiopia and South Sudan had swelled to more than 210,000. The government’s brutality and the resulting humanitarian catastrophe are strongly reminiscent of events in Darfur, although the death toll is lower. The government’s tactics in South Kordofan are different from the tactics used in either Darfur or during the Second Civil War. While in Darfur the government primarily fought through proxy forces, known as the Janjaweed, the government in South Kordofan has fought directly stalemates 143 government used a “counterinsurgency on the cheap” tactic in South Kordofan by mobilizing Misseriya Arab militias and encouraging them to attack civilian villages whose residents were suspected of supporting the rebels, with the evidence for support being their non-Arab identity. This tactic is very similar to what occurred in Darfur, where the Janjaweed was made up largely of nomadic Arab tribes targeting primarily non-Arab groups. Many of

Load more