Terrifying news today via the indefatigable Rebecca Hamilton, author of Fighting for Darfur, who has a piece on Nick Kristof’s New York Times blog today that must be read: Sudan’s Khartoum government, which is about to lose southern Sudan, is fighting to keep the Nuba mountain region… by conducting a campaign of what looks like ethnic cleansing.
Hamilton received information from an expatriate eyewitness who recently escaped the region. The eyewitness sent an email to friends and colleagues, and Hamilton followed up on his information with a phone interview. Read the whole thing here.
A few highlights:
“We were bombed by Antonovs and strafed by MiGs. Heavy shelling was never far away but we never ran into trouble except from the air. It seems that there is an overt operation to completely “neutralise” (either by killing or by terrifying) any likelihood of opposition. There are very brutal and aggressive attacks with new weapons. We heard stories (we are not sure) of what sounded like phosphorous bombs that cause fires that never go out and horrible burning. People are terrified. There are many civilian casualties already and I fear it is going to get much worse.”
“What can only be called ethnic cleansing, when an ethnic group is targeted for extermination, started in Kadugli and Dilling while we were there. Door to door executions of completely innocent and defenseless civilians, often by throat cutting, by special internal security forces. We don’t know how many yet; hundreds seems for sure, but could be much worse. Terrible accounts of civilians – friends – attempting to find safety in the UNMIS (United Nations Missions of Sudan) compound being pulled out of vehicles and executed immediately. And now we hear that all the displaced who had been seeking some form of security alongside the perimeter fence of UNMIS are being forced to move by the government authorities.”
“[I]n the first week of June, Bashir’s forces started an operation to “remove” any local people who had sided with the opposition during the recent elections. There was an enormous build-up of troops, artillery, tanks, and machine gun carriers. And now they’ve started ground attacks with strong air support. All access is cut off, official statements that any United Nations planes will be shot down, no commodities, going in or out, no humanitarian access, roads mined, large numbers of militias armed.”
Dear Ms. Moore:
There are squillions of anti-‘Khartoum’ activists running amok in international NGOs and UN agencies here in Sudan; Lord knows I, and countless other ordinary Sudanese civilians, have had the (mis?) fortune to see them first hand and hear their bombastic and hubristic ‘opinions’ about topical Sudan issues; all the while delivered with a straight face and with knowledge about the REAL, as opposed to ‘virtual’, dynamics of Sudan that can fit on a postage stamp.
Do remember that Western aid workers predicted thousands would die in Darfur when some NGOs were expelled in 2009.
That didn’t happen; i.e. aid worker’s gospel is not sacrosanct.
Not unsurprisingly, moreover, Mr. ‘Anonymous American aid worker’ (guessed he’s from there ‘cos he contacted US-based Ms Hamilton) does not provide ANY real contextualisation (just brickbats aimed at ‘Khartoum’) for the outbreak of violence in the Nuba Mtns region; that’s if you exclude the standard bogus activist touchstones of “ethnic cleansing”, allied to repeating nakedly politically-finessed third or fourth-hand re-cycled accounts (i.e. urban myths) from Nuba activists of the alleged situation on the ground and, a generous sprinkling of caricatures of the civil war (over twenty years ago – a lot has changed since then, btw), all with the aim of clouding the issues at hand.
In other words, Mr. ‘Anonymous American aid worker’ has set out to dumb down to a very caring, if gullible, American public that the current violence is just another typical example of leftfield brutish behaviour by a racist and Arab supremacist Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), bearing down yet again on a completely innocent and whiter-than-white non-Arab group – this time the Nuba.
It isn’t “ethnic cleansing” or “a war against one of the minority groups of northern Sudan” or anything of that kind, Ms Moore; crikey – just look at how Abdul-Aziz Al-Hilu, a veteran Nuba SPLA commander-turned deputy governor, and other boneheads’ in the SPLM in South Kordofan have acted recently (wholly excluded by Mr. ‘Anonymous American aid worker’), and judge for yourself; readers of your blog, I’m one, do likewise, too.
It provides the crucial contextualisation that Mr. Anonymous (and Ms Hamilton) neglected (deliberately?? Totally!):
S K held elections in May 2011 – a full thirteen months after the rest of the country had voted.
Why so late??
Al-Hilu and his ‘Hiluites’ in the SPLM had demanded a re-casting of the 2009 census in South Kordofan, claiming the NCP had rigged it (but didn’t offer up any convincing proof). Without a consensus on the census, the elections and, in turn, the popular consultation process for SK enshrined in the CPA, could not be rolled out. So the NCP had little choice, other than to assent to Al-Hilu’s demand for a new census in spite of the considerable financial expense that it would entail.
Indeed, US taxpayers (quelle une surprise) footed a lot of that bill for the new census, as noted by USAID’s Rajakumari Jandhyala in her testimony to the House of Representatives on 6th June, 2011:
“In Southern Kordofan, USAID provided comprehensive support for the state elections last month and processes leading up to the elections, including the 2010 Southern Kordofan census, electoral administration, voter education, political party participation, and election observation by international [e.g. the Carter Center – the world’s most respected poll watcher] and domestic observers.”
American taxpayer-funded voter education missed out Al-Hilu, however:
“I win or I attack!” was the key election motto of his camp.
Nice.
Faced with imminent defeat by the NCP in both the state legislative and gubernatorial elections, Al-Hilu announced, diva-like, that he and the SPLM were pulling out immediately of the polls (now at the counting stage), claiming, quelle une surprise again, they had been rigged, too (but again offering no concrete evidence that would even have a serious material impact on the out-turn).
“It was obvious the election process had become so seriously flawed”, Mr. Anon??
NOT according to The Carter Center it wasn’t.
It issued its unequivocal verdict on the S K polls:
“Credible”.
Al-Hilu then proceeded to thumb his nose at NCP incumbent and poll victor S K Governor, Ahmed Haroun, who, magnanimously, offered the conciliatory gesture of forming a broad-based government and, in turn, entrench the popular consultation process, with Al-Hilu and the rest of the SPLM in S K; an arrangement that had worked so well in the run up the polls.
Al-Hilu also pooh-poohed the Carter Center’s plea for ALL candidates to eschew violence as a means of challenging the outturn and, instead, take a legal route for raising claims of foul play; in other words, the destructive culture of victimhood in Sudan, cultivated so assiduously by Ms Hamilton and other US-based journo-activists, climbed another notch.
Again.
Hiluites subsequently raided a police station near Kadugli, the state capital, seized its weapons and began a wild shooting spree in Kadugli (including an assassination attempt on Governor Haroun’s convoy and the murder of a prominent local NCP official in cold blood). It spread quickly to Kauda and other areas in the Nuba Mountains, creating further mayhem for ordinary civilians and humanitarians alike, before Al-Hilu and the Hiluites dispersed to villages around the Mountains where they remained holed-up still. Concurrently, SAF had demanded in May 2011 the disarmament of all historically pro-southern forces in Southern Kordofan before southern independence on 9th July 2011; elements of the SPLA in S K responded by opening fire on disarmers from SAF.
The demand to disarm and demobilise, however, wasn’t SAF rough-housing of the SPLA, as Mr, Anonymous asserts with seemingly typical hubris.
It’s actually a REQUIREMENT of the CPA (both SAF and the SPLA withdrawing to the 1/1/1956 border between Sudan and South Sudan) that Ms Hamilton, other journo-activists, and likely Mr. Anonymous, too, have wailed, fretted, and gnashed their teeth about in wondering (pessimistically) whether the NCP would uphold as separation of southern Sudan approaches.
De-mobilised fully and disarmed they indeed MUST be (SPLA soldiers in South Kordofan and, indeed, Blue Nile state, too), ‘civilianised’, or incorporated into the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF). No government in the world, including the USA’s, would tolerate a non (domestic) state militia roaming freely around parts of a country, let alone one from a soon-to-be new neighbour. Indeed, the Assessment and Evaluation Commission (AEC), a watchdog body staffed by international stakeholders of the CPA, has confirmed repeatedly that SPLA has continued dragging its feet in redeploying to the 1/1/56 border, while SAF has completed it.
Yet, be clear: nobody, including the NCP, tried to “remove” SPLA soldiers in S K or “people who had sided [read voted for] with the opposition during the recent elections”, as Mr. Anonymous American aid workers claims ridiculously (all whilst offering no proof at all – i.e. opinion, dressed up as fact).
They are ‘northerners’ after all.
Instead, the violence in S K and its sad impact on ordinary civilians there are the ‘north’ Sudan residue of the SPLM-intended consequences of separation of southern Sudan.
They, the GOSS leadership in Juba, could clearly send the right message to “their fighters” like Al-Hilu in South Kordofan; i.e.:
“De-commission immediately! We don’t want to jeopardise independence of South Sudan, and want peaceful relations between us and the north.”
But they haven’t.
Al-Hilu’s recent quote carried in the NYT about his willingness to accept a ceasefire “I have to consult with [SPLM] Chairman Salva [Kirr – President of GOSS]” gave that game away somewhat.
Put starkly, the recent violence in S K is the corollary of political posturing in extremis by GOSS; an attempt, if you like, to up the ante to the max in the ongoing post-secession negotiations with the NCP.
In any case, the nub of the Hilluites’s grievance lies not with Haroun, President Al-Bashir or anybody else in the NCP:
It lies with the SPLM leadership in Juba instead.
The SPLM in South Kordofan and the rest of (non-south) Sudan has been left as a body without a head following the southern referendum: southern Sudanese members of the SPLM performed a right-angled turn away from the ‘New Sudan’ philosophy of the late Dr. John Garang in favour of the hasty rush to separation of South Sudan, leaving Abdul-Aziz Al-Hilu and other leading lights of its ‘northern wing’ rudderless, demoralised, and fearful for their own political survival, going forward.
That ‘betrayal’, no question, is what rankles most with Abdul-Aziz Hilu and his Hiluites in the Nuba Mountains. Southern Sudanese evidently didn’t care enough about the Nuba (or the Ingesanna of Blue Nile State), in spite of their many sacrifices that made the very option of a self-determination referendum for southern Sudan possible; see SPLM Blue Nile Governor Malik Agar’s recent description in the NYT of a “cornered cat” as illustrative. (A kitten cast out from the rest of its litter would be a more appropriate analogy of the crisis of direction facing the SPLM’s Northern sector ahead of the south’s separation).
So, there you have it, Ms Moore: the contextualisation for SAF’s actions in S K that Mr. Anonymous, ‘Bec’ Hamilton and their ilk have kept concealed on purpose.
No “’cos I’m black that’s why they are after me”.
No “extermination” “ethnic cleansing” or “door to door executions of completely innocent and defenseless civilians, often by throat cutting, by special internal security forces”: that’s all just pap and urban myths by Hiluite activists and their acolytes amongst the Nuba disapora to muddy the waters.
Moreover, isn’t it odd how, for example, when the US tries (rightly) to flush out violent Islamist extremists from the Af-Pak border, nobody accuses Washington of trying to, e.g., “exterminate” or ethnically cleanse the area of ALL Pashtuns; so where’s the difference with SAF in S K?, Ms Moore?
Simple.
There isn’t one.
That’s the plain vanilla truth – in spite of the wholly predictable effort of Mr. Anonymous and Ms Hamilton to try to whitewash it and create something else.
Like most ordinary Sudanese, I don’t want to see another single drop of blood of my countrymen and women spilt by war and wasted. ‘Bec’ Hamilton, John Prendergast, other leading lights of the Sudan journo-activist movement and probably Mr. Anonymous himself may claim that they don’t either, too; but that’s clearly not true.
For example, Mr Prendergast’s suggestion for ending the violence in S K??
Ramp up arms sales to GOSS to deter attacks by SAF; yep, that’s right – the same GOSS whose army (the SPLA) has been going wild (really wild) on women, children and other ordinary civilians in its attempts (facile so far) to crush the seven intra-southern armed rebellions against GOSS’s rule – see these two AP reports for further detail:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iGjG9whhCv3fK2pUQK5m9HkvOFig?docId=8760bf3cf28f4230838f7a530d928a4e
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110311/ap_on_re_af/af_southern_sudan_un_troops_2
Horrific, aren’t they?
Ms Hamilton’s totally underwhelming response – see her Twitter page http://twitter.com/#!/bechamilton – to such madness by the SPLA on civilians in south Sudan???
“Troubling”.
Getting a zit on your nose on prom night – that’s “troubling”, not women, children and old people being slaughtered like chickens.
I doubt strongly, too, that said Mr. Anonymous jumped on the blower or typed a furious missive to his buddy, Ms Hamilton, about those events – two of many pulling down the soon to be Republic of South Sudan (ROSS) – or the circus tricks of Al-Hilu in the run up to, during, and following the completion of elections; why no ‘in for a dollar, in for a dime’??
Put starkly, it looks like I and countless other ordinary Sudanese at home or abroad are troubled by ANY violence in Sudan, whereas Ms Hamilton, “JP” and Mr. Anonymous seem to go nuts only about the plight of ordinary Sudanese civilians when SAF is one of the protagonists.
How on earth do they square that circle???
Precisely.
They can’t.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter to them.
Journo-activists like Ms Hamilton and bombastic foreign aid workers like Mr. Anon don’t focus on Sudan to give a ‘360’ to their American or other western readerships.
They are not motivated truly by the quest for sustainable peace in Sudan, or between Sudan and ROSS.
Teenage scribblers like Ms Hamilton, instead, look rabidly only for opportunities ($$$) to roll out their reflexive and facile ‘Yay-boo’ style of discourse/framing of the narrative on ‘topical’ Sudan issues.
Why??
That’s what their editors/bankrollers higher up the food chain expect in their filings about Sudan; send something like “South Kordofan – not everything is black and white” and it’ll get tossed in the trash; so be clear: Ms Hamilton and other journo-activists of ‘virtual Sudan’, and indeed Mr. Anon himself, have got no interest at all in giving space or time to framing Khartoum’s calculus or actions in a nuanced light (just painting everything ‘black-and-white’, ‘good over evil’ etc instead).
That’s no surprise, too: Ms Hamilton and other teenage scribblers running amok in said virtual arena have now turned their attention to de-legitimising ‘rump’ Sudan now that the de-legitimisation of the former unified ‘north’ and south Sudan has been completed by separation of southern Sudan, which, in turn, brings me to another key point:
The fundamental premise of the CPA (and the basis for sustainable peace, development and security for ALL Sudanese going forward ) was/is the rejection of violence in favour of airing perceived grievances and, in turn, resolving them through the political process and accompanying institutions of the state; that’s, unless, like Mr. Anonymous American aid worker, we all want Sudan to become like Palestine, where the views of regional and international actors have a bigger sway on how to resolve Palestinian grievances than, for example, the elected legislature of the Palestinian Authority, or, alternatively, with those Palestinian grievances against Israel being settled with the gun as a route of the first and preferred choice of local actors???
No, Sudan cannot and will not become a warden of the international community like the issue of Palestine.
To stop that from happening by stealth, however, the maxim of Von Clausewitz, war as a continuation of politics by other means, must be exorcised from the Sudanese landscape in its entirety. The time must surely end when activists in USA and other Western countries re-shape the narrative, rally round and mollycoddle reflexively GOSS or any other group that picks up a stone and throws it at President Al-Bashir and the rest of the NCP.
No ifs.
No buts.
In fact, no qualifiers at all, Mr. Anonymous, Ms Hamilton, and Ms Moore.
No more violence.
Period.
If ordinary Americans and other westerners can, for example, accept that it’s wrong for Palestinians to resort to violence to challenge the Israeli status quo (hands up, Mr. Anonymous, do you support Hamas??? Exactly), then why should it be so difficult to extend that reasoning to Sudan???
“They are fighting to resist a regime that refuses them basic rights and a voice – access to justice and even basic social and economic rights”.
Mr. ‘Anonymous American aid worker’ can hardly contain his infantile admiration for the Hiluites, or his boneheaded support for violent regime change: “The Nuba…can see no future unless there is a change of regime in Khartoum now”. (Mr. Anon: please kindly note that ordinary Sudanese had an opportunity for regime change in Khartoum in 2010: they were called general elections. President Al-Bashir and the NCP won them. Sudanese could have put their ‘x’s’ elsewhere. They didn’t. Get over it.)
In other words, Mr. Anonymous is happy for Sudan to become the world’s sole country where violent challenges to the state’s authority are acceptable or even commendable.
How absurd – even more so coming from a self-professed ‘humanitarian’.
Just look at the adverse impact on, and ask, ordinary Sudanese civilians caught up in the violence in South Kordofan, Mr. Anonymous, that you are gnashing your teeth about: they certainly don’t think it is acceptable or commendable.
Indeed, local (non-state) armed actors throughout Sudan have long recognised that legitimising internationally the launch of armed challenges against Khartoum requires, in tandem, the support of an always sympathetic ‘big brother’ standing by on call (read the USA, UK – ideally wearing blue helmets, too) ready to, at the very least, blackball reflexively any action by Khartoum to respond to such armed threats to its authority – as any state is entitled, nay required, for the safety of its citizens to do.
Anarchy doesn’t rule OK in Sudan or anywhere else, Mr. Anonymous, Ms Hamilton, and Ms Moore.
Rallying round the maxim of Clausewitz for Sudan serves nobody here in the REAL Sudan apart from the warlords that raise their arms against ‘Khartoum’ (note Al-Hilu didn’t pause once to consider the impact on his fellow Nuba people of launching violence, and see, too, the ongoing refusal of Abdel Wahid Al-Nur to come to the international negotiating table eight years on after he launched war in Darfur).
It has just bred a culture of victimhood in Sudan that’s inimical completely to sustained peace and nation-state building in ‘rump’ Sudan or ROSS.
Be clear: us ordinary Sudanese all want to see Sudan get to the finishing line (9th July 2011) in peace and usher in a new, lasting era of prosperity, security, cooperation, and stability for Sudan and ROSS, going forward.
However, that’s not helped by journo-activists (let alone policy makers from the UK, USA, France, and Norway – the big Western players in Sudan) taking continuously an uneven-handed approach to resolving the bumps on the road to 9th July; the powder-puff and completely underwhelming response by the UK, and the other countries outlined above, to the unprovoked attacks on SAF and NCP individuals by ‘SPLM-aligned’ forces in S K and, earlier, in Abyei and, in turn, their hysterical, apocalyptic reaction to SAF counter-attacks, and accompanying threats of financial and diplomatic retribution against ‘Khartoum’ wasn’t missed by many ordinary Sudanese here in ‘rump’ Sudan.
Indeed, for readers of your blog, Ms Moore, who have a partner and children, here’s an analogy to help crystallise the fundamental problem of Sudan as separation draws ever closer:
The SPLM is able to tweak the ears and cuff on the head its elder sibling (the NCP), and then run behind the skirt of mommy (read USA, UK and other Western countries), crying that it’s being picked on by the elder and stronger sibling when it seeks to put an end to such unprovoked acts that cause such turbulence for other members of the family and their neighbours; worse still, the elder one becomes the sole recipient of opprobrium from said ‘mommy’ and is threatened by her and told just to “cut that out now!”
Result??
The errant, mischievous younger child remains precisely that (a child) for eternity who constantly holds on to or hides behind the skirt of his/her mommy for protection and is incapable of accepting responsibility for his or her own actions, while the elder sibling becomes surly because he’s grown out of past experience to fundamentally distrust mommy’s ability to mediate fairly and successfully in addressing not the symptoms (i.e. said elder and stronger sibling seeking retribution or to end the unprovoked acts by the younger child), but the cause – said childish and irresponsible behaviour.
That’s where we are today, sadly, with South Kordofan and the boneheaded elements within the SPLM/A and GOSS.
So, spin, fudge, caricaturise, and bury your head in the sand all you want, Ms Hamilton., Mr Anonymous, and Ms Moore and carry on playing to the gallery back home in the good ol’ US-of-A; however, we ordinary Sudanese don’t want our country to become sucked into a vortex of never-ending conflict against ‘Khartoum’, and where journo activists like Ms Hamilton and Western aid workers – all with knowledge about Sudan’s REAL, not ‘virtual’ dynamics, that can fit on a pin head- cheerlead the opponent of ‘Khartoum’ come what may the impact on ordinary Sudanese civilians – the very people who they claim (feign??) concern about.
Violence begets violence, don’t you know??
It (Sudan) is a country with real people.
It’s not an academic exercise to masturbate intellectually and ineffectively about.
Nor is it a never-ending talking point for ‘Bec’, “JP” or other journo-activists to indulge in the twitter sphere or elsewhere in the virtual Sudan – even though it pays $$.
Do please remember that challenging a state violently always has real-time consequences, on real people, and on real lives.
Sincerely,
Ibrahim Adam
El Fasher
North Darfur – yes, readers, we have broadband here, too 😉
Sudan