---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: John Ashworth <[email protected]> Date: Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 7:48 PM Subject: [sudan-john-ashworth] Blue Nile and South Kordofan To: Group <[email protected]>
1. US calls on Sudan to allow humanitarian access in S. Kordofan and Blue Nile October 22, 2011 (KHARTOUM) – The United Special envoy to Sudan Princeton Lyman urged Khartoum to allow "credible" international organizations to reach the border states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile in order to assess the humanitarian situation. In his meeting with the foreign ministry undersecretary Rahma Mohammed Osman, Lyman expressed concern about the deteriorating situation in the border region of Abyei which is source of dispute with the newly established state of South Sudan. The US official said that the issue of Abyei is political rather than humanitarian adding that he regrets that the meetings on security issues between North and South Sudan are being postponed. In June and August of this year fighting broke out between Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and forces from Sudan People Liberation Movement North (SPLM-N) in the two border states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile. Both sides traded accusations over who started the fighting. The Sudanese government vowed to crush the rebellion and bring the SPLM-N leaders to justice. Both border states are home to large populations which sided with South Sudan during decades of civil war and found themselves in north Sudan after the South became independent on July 9. In another hotspot, Abyei, a U.N. mission is monitoring a ceasefire after Khartoum took the disputed region bordering South Kordofan by force in May following an attack of the southern army on a military convoy. The foreign ministry spokesperson Al-Obaid Marawih said that Osman blamed the SPLM-N for the situation for failing to withdraw its forces from South Kordofan and Blue Nile per the 2005 peace agreement. Osman called on the international community to focus its efforts towards the withdrawal of SPLM-N troops if it is serious in resolving the conflict, stressing that the Sudanese government will not accept the existence of a foreign army within its territory and will not allow the party to have armed militias. He said the government had made several attempts to address the matter of disarming the SPLM in these two states but that the latter refused to. The Sudanese official accused the international community of using the humanitarian situation to put more pressure on Khartoum rather than the party which triggered the fighting. (ST) http://www.sudantribune.com/US-calls-on-Sudan-to-allow,40508 END1 2. Sudan says seizes town in border state, rebels deny Fri Oct 21, 2011 6:07am GMT KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudan's armed forces have seized a town close to a rebel stronghold in the border state of Blue Nile where fighting has been going on for almost two months, state media said on Thursday. A rebel spokesman confirmed a battle in the town of Sali but denied the army had driven away its fighters from the area near the border with newly-independent South Sudan and Ethiopia. The army has been fighting rebels of the SPLM-North in Blue Nile since September. The two sides are also fighting in neighbouring South Kordofan state, north Sudan's main oil state. Army spokesman al-Sawarmi Khalid Saad told state news agency SUNA that after a 12-hour battle, Sudan's forces had taken Sali, nine kilometres (5.6 miles) north of Kurmuk, which is seen as a stronghold of the SPLM-N and its armed wing SPLA. "The armed forces took the SPLA military camp in Sali and cleared it completely of rebels," he said. But a SPLM-N spokesman said fighting was still going on there: "SPLA forces have not been driven away from the area." Last month, activists said the Sudanese army had deployed an armoured brigade along a road to Kurmuk. Analysts say fighting in Blue Nile and South Kordofan risks drawing Khartoum's former civil war foe South Sudan into a proxy war. The Sudanese government has accused the south's dominant Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) of being behind the violence. The South denies this. Events in Blue Nile and South Kordofan are hard to verify because aid agencies say they have no access and foreign journalists cannot travel there without permission. http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE79K01520111021?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews END3 3. Sudan army claims new gains near rebel stronghold in Blue Nile state October 20, 2011 (KHARTOUM) – The Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) on Thursday said it managed to take over a town close to the rebel stronghold in the Blue Nile state which borders Ethiopia and South Sudan. The state was the scene of fighting two months ago between SAF and forces from the Sudan People Liberation Movement North (SPLM-N), led by then-governor Malik Agar, who was later sacked by president Omer Hassan al-Bashir under his constitutional powers to impose emergency laws. Agar accused SAF of firing on his convoy and thus triggering the fighting between the two sides. The SPLM-N was flushed out of most of the state in the fighting that ensued and is now believed to be confined to the town of Al-Kurmuk ever since. SAF spokesperson Al-Sawarmi Khalid Sa’ad was quoted by Sudan official news agency (SUNA) as saying that they have driven out SPLM-N forces from the town of Sali which lies 9 kilometers north of Al-Kurmuk. Sa’ad said that the 12-hour battle took place on Wednesday and lasted till early hours of Thursday adding that SPLM-N used all its tanks and artillery to defend its camp in the area. But a SPLM-N spokesman told Reuters that fighting was still going on there, saying "SPLA forces have not been driven away from the area." (ST) http://www.sudantribune.com/Sudan-army-claims-new-gains-near,40489 END3 4. The Man Who Stayed Behind By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF The New York Times Published: October 22, 2011 IN the last few months, as you and I have been fretting about the economy or moaning about the weather, Ryan Boyette has been living in a mud-wall hut and dodging bombs in his underwear. Some humanitarian catastrophes — Congo, Somalia, Sudan — linger because the killing unfolds without witnesses. So Ryan, a 30-year-old from Florida, has made the perilous decision to bear witness to atrocities in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, secretly staying behind when other foreigners were evacuated. I met Ryan a few years ago in Sudan, and even then he was a compelling figure who spoke the local languages of Otoro and Sudanese Arabic. An evangelical Christian deeply motivated by his faith, Ryan moved to the Nuba Mountains in 2003 and worked for Samaritan’s Purse, an aid group led by the Rev. Franklin Graham. Early this year, Ryan married a local woman, Jazira, a health worker — and 6,000 joyous Nubans celebrated at the wedding, along with Ryan’s parents, who flew in from Florida. It was clear that war was brewing in the Nuba Mountains. The region had sided with South Sudan in the country’s long civil war, but now South Sudan was separating while the Nuba Mountains would remain in the north. The people — mostly Muslim but with a large Christian minority — supported a local rebel army left over from the civil war. In June, fighting erupted. The Sudanese government moved in to destroy the rebel army and depopulate areas that supported it. Aid organizations pulled out their workers. Ryan decided that he could not flee, so when Samaritan’s Purse ordered him to evacuate, he resigned and stayed behind. “A lot of people tried to convince me to leave,” Ryan remembers. “But this is where my wife is from, this is where I’ve lived for eight years. It’s hard to get on a plane and say, ‘Bye, I hope to see you when this ends.’ ” Ryan organized a network of 15 people to gather information and take photos and videos, documenting atrocities. He used a solar-powered laptop and a satellite phone to transmit them to the West, typically to the Enough Project, a Washington-based anti-genocide organization. He also supplied eyewitness interviews that helped the Enough Project and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative find evidence of atrocities, including eight mass graves, on satellite images. And he helped journalists understand what was going on. “He’s irreplaceable,” said Jonathan Hutson of the Enough Project. “There’s no substitute for someone on the ground.” Ryan tried to keep his presence in the region a secret, at least from the Sudanese government, for fear that it might seek to eliminate a witness. Once, a bombing seemed to target his hut, but he heard the plane approaching and ran out in his skivvies and took cover; the bombs missed, and he was unhurt. After the first few weeks, the killings on the ground abated. But the government has continued the bombings. “It’s terrifying when they bomb,” Ryan told me. “You don’t feel safe at any time of day or night.” The bombs typically miss and have killed fewer than 200 people, he says, but they prevent people from farming their fields. Several hundred thousand people have been driven from their homes in the surrounding state of South Kordofan, Ryan says, and a famine may be looming. “It’s not a good time to have kids,” Ryan quoted Jazira as telling him. “If we have kids, they’ll just starve.” Frustrated by the lack of attention for the Nubans’ plight, Ryan decided to return to the United States this month and tell his story. He couldn’t get a visa for Jazira in time — obtaining an American visa for a spouse is a long and complex process — so she is in a refugee camp for 15,000 Nubans in South Sudan, struggling to address health needs there. Meanwhile, in Washington, Ryan has testified before Congress and met with White House officials. Soon, he’ll go back, rejoining Jazira and sneaking back with her into the Nuba Mountains. It’ll be more dangerous than ever now that he has gone public, but he is determined to give voice to the voiceless — and Nubans will do everything to protect him. In a world where leaders often pretend not to notice mass atrocities, for fear that they might be called upon to do something, I find Ryan an inspiration. His eyewitness accounts make it more difficult for the world to neglect a humanitarian crisis in the Nuba Mountains — even if he does need to brush up on his tech skills. I asked Ryan if he planned to use Twitter. “Twitter?” he asked. “I’ve been in the bush for nine years, so I don’t know how to use it.” But he’s planning to learn. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/opinion/sunday/kristof-the-man-who-stayed-behind.html?_r=1 END4 5. Blue Nile bombers CBC Radio Wednesday October 19, 2011 President al-Bashir denies his government is bombarding the Blue Nile State. But Dispatches contributor Jared Ferrie hears different on the ground... Audio at: http://www.cbc.ca/dispatches/episode/2011/10/19/october-20-2011-from-blue-nile-sudan---new-york-state---congo---pittsburgh-pennsylvania---dublin/editor-content.html?cs=utf-8# Website: http://www.cbc.ca/dispatches/episode/2011/10/19/october-20-2011-from-blue-nile-sudan---new-york-state---congo---pittsburgh-pennsylvania---dublin/ END5 ______________________ 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. 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