---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Eric Reeves <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 5:30 PM
Subject: "Acquiescence Before Mass Human Destruction in Sudan's Border Regions"
To: Eric Reeves <[email protected]>
"Acquiescence Before Mass Human Destruction in Sudan's Border Regions"
Blue Nile and South Kordofan face catastrophic humanitarian crises
Following Khartoum's military assaults on South Kordofan (June 5) and
Blue Nile (September 1), hundreds of thousands of civilians now face
relentless aerial attacks, violent displacement, and starvation as the
harvests are poised for failure. For Khartoum is denying all
humanitarian access to these acutely vulnerable populations. There
are no indications the international community is prepared to change
the regime's ruthless military calculations, which are rapidly leading
to catastrophe.
Eric Reeves
October 24, 2011
For two months now the world has watched as the brutal regime in
Khartoum continues to deny all relief access to large populations of
acutely vulnerable civilians in Blue Nile State, which lies
immediately north of the border dividing what are now North and South
Sudan. The same embargo, extending even to independent humanitarian
assessment missions, has been in place in neighboring South Kordofan
State for five months. This scandalous fact bears repeating, since it
has been so poorly reported: the National Islamic Front/National
Congress Party regime in Khartoum has barred all international relief
organizations from responding to what substantial evidence makes clear
are major humanitarian crises in Blue Nile and South Kordofan---and
both crises are on the verge of becoming overwhelming catastrophes,
involving many hundreds of thousands of civilians.
There is an eerie familiarity to all this, for what we are seeing is
an accelerated reprise of Khartoum's strategy of obstructing relief
efforts in Darfur, a strategy the regime committed to aggressively
once it recognized its "error" in allowing an international
humanitarian presence in Darfur. Regime officials now repeatedly make
clear that they won't allow "another Darfur" to emerge in either South
Kordofan or Blue Nile---there won't be any witnesses to the massive
suffering and destruction that are well underway. And of course, in
addition to banning all relief efforts, the regime allows no
journalists or human rights monitors into either of these states.
We should remember that this regime has a decades-long history of
obstructing humanitarian aid in Sudan, including the total embargo on
relief efforts imposed by Khartoum on the Nuba Mountains throughout
the 1990s---part of a jihad that is widely acknowledged to have been
genocidal in ambition. Throughout the bloody civil war, which claimed
well over 2 million lives in the South and border states---mainly from
disease and malnutrition related to violence---Khartoum frequently cut
off all humanitarian aid to the South for long periods of time.
Because virtually all of Sudan was and remains inaccessible except by
air---there are almost no roads, and in the long rainy season these
are mainly impassible---airlift capacity and access are what's
critical. So all that Khartoum had to do to shut down humanitarian
relief was deny air access to the large international humanitarian
organizations based in Lokichokio, northern Kenya. In early July 2002,
for example, the UN estimate for those being denied humanitarian
assistance in the South was 1.7 million human beings.
So how has the U.S. responded to this most recent chapter in the
regime's deployment of its crude "weapon of mass destruction"?
Officials of the Obama administration continue to go through the
motions of demanding humanitarian access as well as an independent
investigation of the well-documented, large-scale atrocity crimes in
Kadugli, capital of South Kordofan; but it does so without either
conviction or determination (the U.S. special envoy for Sudan,
Princeton Lyman, first called for such a independent human rights
investigation over two months ago, and can point to no progress
whatsoever). There is very strong evidence that similar atrocity
crimes are being committed in Blue Nile, certainly in the form of
continuous, indiscriminate aerial attacks on civilians throughout much
of the state (see my October 15 update to an analysis of such attacks
over the past twelve years, at www.sudanbombing.org). And yet
condemnation by the U.S. has been tepid at best.
Instead, the U.S., the UN, and other international actors of
consequence have for months indulged in offering muted condemnations
and making facile "demands" with no expectation of compliance. Since
Khartoum's military invasion of Abyei more than five months ago (May
20), the regime has not budged an inch from any of its categorical
refusals. It will not withdraw militarily from Abyei, as it has
promised; it will not engage in any discussions of access for
humanitarians or human rights investigators; and it will not negotiate
a political settlement to the conflict in South Kordofan, as it
committed to doing in late June. The only change of note is that the
propaganda organs of the regime have dramatically increased their
activities and are now offering hideously distorting accounts of
civilian life in the two states, and at the same time boasting that
"regional and international changes [are] working in Sudan’s favour."
As I argued in August, shortly before Khartoum's military assault on
Blue Nile, the international community and the UN in particular were
setting themselves up for failure by demanding what would clearly not
be granted, or even supported in the Security Council. The UN High
Commission for Human Rights had declared very publicly that there
should be in South Kordofan an "independent, thorough, and objective
inquiry with the aim of holding perpetrators to account." But it was
obvious then and now that Khartoum would never accede to this demand;
and it was equally clear that a Security Council resolution
authorizing any form of non-consensual investigation---even for
ethnically-targeted mass executions---would never survive China's (or
Russia's) veto. The failure I spoke of is now conspicuous: despite
the demand for an independent UN human rights investigation, no
serious effort was ever made by the U.S. or any other member of the
Security Council to seek authorization for such an investigation. And
yet in characteristic fashion this failure has been passed over
without remark or self-criticism. The evident thinking is that if the
diplomatic mumbling continues long enough, then no definitive failure
will be registered.
No matter that following Khartoum's invasion of Abyei, a UN human
rights team found strong evidence of actions "tantamount to ethnic
cleansing" (the UN Secretariat would later disingenuously weaken this
report); no matter that the military assault on South Kordofan began
shortly thereafter, and we have received since June overwhelming
evidence of widespread, ethnically-targeted civilian destruction,
including extraordinarily revealing satellite photographs of mass
gravesites; no matter that we have numerous eyewitness accounts of
house-to-house searches and roadblocks targeting the African tribal
grouping known as the Nuba. But there can be no doubt about the
authority of a confidential UN human rights report, prepared by UN
investigators who were on the ground for several weeks in June as part
of the UN peacekeeping mission stationed in Kadugli. Their report was
promptly leaked and its central conclusion made clear the urgency of a
human rights investigation:
"Instead of distinguishing between civilians and combatants and
accordingly directing their military operations only against military
targets, the Sudan Armed Forces and allied paramilitary forces have
targeted members and supporters of the SPLM/A, most of whom are Nubans
and other dark skinned people."
Arab militias have been widely reported to be doing much of the
fighting for Khartoum, both in South Kordofan and Blue Nile. On
October 22, SPLM-N Secretary General Yasir Arman asserted that
Khartoum was in fact deploying mercenaries:
"The National Congress Party military has been, of late, actively
engaged in recruiting Janjaweed militias---mostly non-Sudanese---from
North and West Africa, particularly Niger. The airports of Al-Geneina
and Nyala, Darfur, recently witnessed a flurry of flights transporting
mercenaries to Damazin." (Press Release, Office of the Secretary
General of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North, October 22,
2011)
The large-scale use of mercenaries would mark a new stage in the
Khartoum regime's ruthless survivalism, and yet another crushing
military expense for a budget and economy that are already in a
shambles.
Obama administration skepticism
That an attack on South Kordofan was imminent was clear in the first
days of June, primarily from evidence of a rapidly accelerating
movement of men, arms and armor toward South Kordofan from the main
forward military base at el-Obeid and other northern bases. Soon
after the invasion, Satellite Sentinel Project photography revealed
unambiguously that there were mass gravesites in and around Kadugli.
The policy of the Obama administration in the face of such massive
evidence, supported by numerous eyewitness accounts from the ground,
was at once dismissive and skeptical; this peculiar skepticism
extended even to a highly tendentious claim that the administration
possessed (unspecified) intelligence that called into question the
validity of the Satellite Sentinel Project findings. That skepticism,
particularly on the part special envoy Lyman, has had the
effect---presumably designed---of diminishing the urgency of the
crises in the region. Lyman's comments during an interview of June 28
(just as the UN human rights investigators were completing their
powerfully damning report) suggest an almost casual concern for the
unmistakable commission of atrocity crimes, and a specious moral
equivalence as well:
"Because we don't have a presence there [in South Kordofan], we
haven't been able to investigate [the many reports of atrocity crimes]
fully. There are certainly reports of targeted killings. There are
some reports from the other side also. What we've asked for is a full
investigation."
And to the follow-up question ("By whom [should the investigation be
conducted]?") Lyman responded baldly:
"Well, by the UN would be the best. The UN presence has not been
sufficient to get out and stop this or to investigate it."
Given this facile, finally disingenuous answer---Lyman certainly knew
that no such UN investigation would be authorized---we must inevitably
wonder about motives. Why these perfunctory answers to such pressing
questions? What lay behind the contrived skepticism about findings
from the Satellite Sentinel Project?
I have argued at length that there are strong indications, past and
present, that U.S. policy toward Sudan is and has been unduly
influenced by a lust for counter-terrorism intelligence from
Khartoum's ruthless security services, something reported in
chillingly compelling fashion by the Los Angeles Times (June 17, 2005)
and the Washington Post (August 30, 2010). The larger point here was
made emphatically by former Senator Russ Feingold, who spoke with
unrivalled authority, sitting on the Senate Intelligence Committee and
chairing the Africa subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee:
"I take serious issue with the way the report [on international
terrorism by the U.S. State Department] overstates the level of
cooperation in our counterterrorism relationship with Sudan, a nation
which the U.S. classifies as a state sponsor of terrorism. A more
accurate assessment is important not only for effectively countering
terrorism in the region, but as part of a review of our overall policy
toward Sudan, including U.S. pressure to address the ongoing crisis in
Darfur and maintain the fragile peace between the North and the
South." (Statement by Senator Russell Feingold, Chair of the Africa
Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and member of
the Senate Intelligence Committee, May 1, 2009)
No other Senator joined former Senator Feingold in demanding that
there be a response to this serious concern. As a consequence, the
Obama administration has felt no serious Congressional pressure to
acknowledge either the authority or significance of Feingold's damning
assertions.
But of course none of this matters to those who are already victims of
a regime that sees the U.S. as obsessed with the prize of
Khartoum-generated counter-terrorism intelligence. None of this
matters to people who are uprooted, unprotected, and without
humanitarian resources. Precisely because the regime allows no
journalists, human rights monitors, or humanitarians into these highly
threatened areas, we are left only with only broadly informed
estimates, or evidence that is based on news accounts or accounts that
come anecdotally from embedded or fleeing Sudanese civilians. But
there are a number of credible estimates and a great deal of such
reportage, some from intrepid journalists who have made it to the
Kauda area of the Nuba Mountains and to Kurmuk, which is the southern
Blue Nile stronghold of the northern indigenous rebel force (formerly
allied with the rebel movement that secured Southern independence):
the Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement-North (SPLA/M-N). There
are even a few courageous humanitarians who have refused to withdraw
from these regions, and have reported in excruciating detail on what
they have seen.
Consequences of inaction
The possibility and immense danger of a military response by Khartoum
in South Kordofan and Blue Nile had been conspicuous for quite some
time before the assaults actually occurred, as had the invasion of
Abyei. And yet no international actor of consequence spoke out in
meaningful fashion; here the U.S. has plenty of company in failing
miserably to anticipate the present violence, and the entirely
predictable humanitarian crises that have come in its wake. Khartoum
was not warned seriously against initiating the clearly impending
assaults on South Kordofan (June 5) and Blue Nile (September 1);
rather, the regime took its cue from the muted diplomacy of
perfunctory exhortations and glib "expectations." Following the brutal
military seizure of the disputed Abyei region (May 20), the regime in
Khartoum understood there was no serious commitment to halt their
military endeavors. The Obama administration, as represented by
special envoy Lyman, seemed clearly willing to let Khartoum have its
way in the North, so long as some terms of the CPA continue to be
observed as South Sudan struggled into nationhood.
Just as a senior administration official declared that genocide in
Darfur had been "de-coupled" from the key issue in bilateral relations
between Khartoum and Washington (i.e., Khartoum's continuing presence
on the U.S. State Department list of terrorism-sponsoring nations), so
atrocity crimes and even extermination in northern states, on whatever
scale, are apparently insufficient to compel any robust U.S. response
or change in policy. Given such decisions, to pretend that we don't
really know what is going on, as Lyman has repeatedly tried to do, is
a nasty bit of political expediency.
Dispatches with datelines in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile have
come from a wide range of news organizations. UN investigators, part
of the UN peacekeeping mission (UNMIS) with a base in Kadugli,
produced their searing human rights report in late June/early July,
and it included the following:
"Instead of distinguishing between civilians and combatants and
accordingly directing their military operations only against military
targets, the Sudan Armed Forces and allied paramilitary forces have
targeted members and supporters of the SPLM/A, most of whom are Nubans
and other dark skinned people."
"[This campaign included] aerial bombardments resulting in destruction
of property, forced displacement, significant loss of civilian lives,
including of women, children and the elderly; abductions;
house-to-house searches; arbitrary arrests and detentions; targeted
killings; summary executions; reports of mass graves; systematic
destruction of dwellings and attacks on churches."
"With the reinforcement of Sudan Armed Forces, Central Reserve Police
and militia elements, the security situation deteriorated on 7 June,
with indiscriminate shelling of Kadugli town apparently targeting
densely civilian-inhabited areas."
"On 22 June, an UNMIS independent contractor reported witnessing SAF
elements fill a mass grave in Al Gardut Locality in Tillo with dead
bodies. She reported that SAF elements transported the bodies to the
site, dumped them in the grave and using a bulldozer to cover the
grave. On 10 June, UNMIS Human Rights interviewed residents from Murta
village, outside of Kadugli Town, who stated that they saw fresh mass
graves located in a valley southeast of the Murta bus station near the
Kadugli police training centre."
And UNMIS was not the only source for reports of egregious violations
of human rights. Many Nuba have reported bombing attacks on civilians
since June 5, as well mass slaughter and assaults on humanitarian
operations and workers. Julie Flint in The Observer (UK) (July 17,
2011) draws on many years of experience and unimpeachable sources in
reporting that:
"National staff of international aid organisations have also come
under attack. UNMIS cites the case of a young Nuba woman arrested and
accused of supporting the SPLM. UNMIS human rights officers saw
bruises and scars on her body consistent with her claim to have been
beaten with fists, sticks, rubber hoses and electric wires."
"Underscoring the need for the 'independent and comprehensive
investigation' UNMIS recommends, the Observer has been told---by a
hitherto impeccable source not connected to the SPLM/A---that 410
captured SPLM sympathisers were ordered executed on 10 June by
Major-General Ahmad Khamis, one of four senior army officers sent to
South Kordofan from Khartoum at the start of the war .... "
These are the reports, along with unambiguous satellite imagery from
the Satellite Sentinel Project, about which Lyman has continued to
express skepticism. Also ignored were dispatches from a number of
journalists who made it to Kauda in July, in the center of the Nuba
Mountains. There they reported---often with accompanying
photography---on the horrific human toll taken by relentless aerial
attacks on civilian targets. At a crucial time in the agricultural
cycle, when the planting and tending of crops was critical, there was
instead massive displacement. The people of the Nuba are facing
starvation in the near term.
And from Blue Nile we also have many dispatches with a Kurmuk dateline
(the town actually straddles the Sudan/Ethiopia border), reporting
again on relentless aerial attacks directed against civilian targets
(again, see my October 15 update to the history of this long-term
military practice, at www.sudanbombing.org ). Within days of the
September 1 assault, the African Center for Justice and Peace Studies
(UK), with excellent sources throughout Sudan, was reporting that, "On
3 September, aircraft continued to bomb SPLM areas. The main water
reservoir in Al Damazein was destroyed in the bombardment, possibly in
a deliberate attempt to deprive the population of this essential
resource. About 75 bodies have been confirmed to be present in the Al
Damazein morgue. The hospital has declared an emergency."
The UN's Integrated Regional Information Networks (October 17,
dateline: Kurmuk) makes clear the relationship between the lack of
food and aerial bombardment by Antonovs:
"Khidir Abusita, the chief of Maiyas village, in Sudan's crisis-hit
Blue Nile state, points to a bomb and the shrapnel that ripped through
two 'tukuls' (conical mud and thatch huts) on 2 October. That day, the
Sudan Armed Forces' Antonov bomber planes literally broke apart two
families and left the village terrorized by their almost daily
appearance. Abusita spoke to IRIN about the damage caused to his
village: 'The Antonov came here at around midday [on 2 October]; it
bombed the place, killing six people, including one child. Among the
people who died were two pregnant women.'"
"In one of the affected families, three people died and three are
remaining, so we took these three behind the mountain to hide. In this
other family, two died and three are remaining. 'Another man who was
just passing by to visit his neighbours was killed too. They were just
farmers. His leg was cut and we tried to take him to hospital but he
died.' 'The other injured man is lying at Kurmuk hospital after the
[bomb] cut his feet and stomach.' 'Yesterday [1 October] there were
two Antonovs around the area. They just circled overhead for one hour,
so we are very scared.' 'Most of the people have stayed here, but
behind the mountains. We sleep near the river during the day and come
back to the village at night.' 'We just eat from these small, small
farms; we just [grow food] near our houses because this year we
haven't been able to go to our farms in the valley to cultivate.'"
(emphasis added)
"We don't have sugar, we don't have tea, we don't have coffee. Also
there is no medicine, people are just depending on the traditional
medicine. 'There are 3,475 people in the village and no one has
enough food. We don't know what to do,' [said chief Abusita]."
Towards the end of September the UN declared that it was urgent to get
food to the people of Blue Nile and South Kordofan, even as estimates
of numbers of displaced persons and food needs was already inadequate
to the realities of human need now apparent. Malik Agar, the elected
governor of Blue Nile---and deposed by Khartoum---has estimated that
half Blue Nile's population of 1.2 million is "on the move." And they
are on the move at a time that should be given over entirely to
harvesting crops planted during the past rainy season. There is no
way to verify Malik's estimate, but it would be foolish to ignore the
clear indications that hundreds of thousands of people are now
displaced. More than 30,000 have already fled to Ethiopia; many
others to neighboring Sennar State. As in South Kordofan, the very
rough humanitarian assessments of food availability suggest that
massive human starvation may be imminent if access is not granted by
the regime. Valerie Amos, the head of UN humanitarian operations---and
who in mid-July early declared that "we do not know whether these is
any truth to the grave allegations of human rights abuses" in South
Kordofan---found herself obliged to declare (August 30) that:
"[M]ore than 200,000 people affected by the fighting in South Kordofan
faced 'potentially catastrophic levels of malnutrition and mortality'
because of Khartoum denying access to aid agencies. Also this week,
two leading human rights groups said that deadly air raids on
civilians in rebel-held areas of the Nuba Mountains may amount to war
crimes."
More recently the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) put the
matter more bluntly, if still almost certainly understating,
significantly, the scale of human need:
"The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has also launched a
$3.5-million appeal to help 235,000 people on the brink of starvation
in Sudan's embattled southern border region, because of fighting in
Blue Nile and South Kordofan." (emphasis added)
The FAO has also indicated in its October 5 news release that the
forecast for food security is exceedingly grim, and that "next month's
harvest is expected to generally fail." (emphasis added)
"Next month's harvest is expected to generally fail ... " ---and there
is no international humanitarian presence or access.
What will it take to stop the continuing slide toward catastrophe in
South Kordofan and Blue Nile? And what about Darfur, which is no
longer mentioned by the U.S. and the Europeans except parenthetically?
To make matters worse, both the UN and the African Union are, for
different reasons, committed to a representation of Darfur that
minimizes ongoing suffering and destruction, and highlights an
essentially meaningless (and potentially counter-productive) agreement
that finally emerged in July from the bumbling and increasingly
politicized Doha (Qatar) peace talks.
Certainly much was revealed about the future of marginalized regions
in northern Sudan with the breakdown of the important framework
agreement signed on June 28 by Malik Agar, representing the Sudan
People's Liberation Army/Movement-North, and by presidential advisor
Nafi'e Ali Nafi'e of the National Islamic Front/National Congress
Party regime. The agreement committed the signatories to seek a
political resolution of the conflict and to begin immediate
negotiations for a cease-fire. But the agreement was promptly
disowned by President al-Bashir on his return from China (July 1,
2011). More than disowning the agreement, al-Bashir declared at
Friday prayers:
"'[Al-Bashir] directed the armed forces to continue their military
operations in South Kordofan until a cleansing of the region is over,'
SUNA quoted Bashir as telling worshippers during Friday prayers."
(emphasis added)
In al-Bashir's abrupt reneging we saw for the first time the full
power of the generals who now dominate the political and security
cabal that rules in Khartoum. These military figures, several of them
senior cabinet officials, have slowly moved Sudan into what one
well-informed source in Khartoum calls the "hour of the soldiers." In
short, there has been a "creeping military coup," and some of the
generals who are now so powerful appear on a range of lists assembled
by UN and other bodies for the prosecution of atrocity crimes by the
International Criminal Court (Abdel Rahmin Mohamed Hussein, the
current Defense Minister and former Minister of the Interior, is one
of 17 named on a confidential annex to a report by the former UN Panel
of Experts on Darfur; February 2006). They know their future depends
on surviving at all costs, or they will spend the rest of their lives
in The Hague.
But there is no apparent recognition of this new political reality in
Khartoum by the Obama administration, and special envoy Lyman simply
repeats his glib assessment: "there is no military solution to the
conflict," and all the U.S. can do is "promote negotiations." But it
is precisely a military solution to its "new southern problem" that
Khartoum is seeking, as al-Bashir's comments make perfectly clear.
And as for negotiations, the regime is equally blunt: "Sudan will
never again negotiate 'under UN supervision'":
"'There will be no negotiation with the SPLM-N because it was the one
that started the war' [President al-Bashir] said, adding that ending
the state of war in the two states is contingent on the SPLM-N's
acceptance of the elections results in South Kordofan and surrendering
its arms to the Sudanese army. 'There are no more negotiations or
protocols, this is our position,' Al-Bashir declared." ("Bashir takes
pride in Sudan's defiance of UN resolutions," Sudan Tribune, October
13, 2011)
Lyman has made no comment on such intransigence by one of the
"negotiating" partners he would have us believe can be accommodated
diplomatically. And he no longer pushes for the independent, UN-led
human rights investigation he thought worth proposing in June; now
there is a hideously belated focus on humanitarian access, as the
desperate plight of many hundreds of thousands of civilians no longer
permits any skepticism:
"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."
But this plea will be met with the same aggressiveness and truculent
defiance that has increasingly become the hallmark of the Khartoum
regime. And having pleaded so feebly previously, there is precious
little reason to believe that Lyman's voice will carry any weight now.
It is happening, before our very eyes, if we would only see. Yes, of
course there is much that we don't know; but there is too much that we
do know for any further delay to be justified: even exceedingly
conservative UN estimates for displacement and humanitarian need are
more than enough. And do we have any doubt about the authenticity of
these narratives from Kurmuk? or the significance of deliberate,
continuous aerial attacks on civilians and agricultural livelihoods?
"In another hospital bed, 65-year-old Altom Osman is recovering from a
deep shrapnel wound in his back and one in his arm after a bomb hit
the village of Sali an hour north of Kurmuk. 'I was taking some
sorghum flour to my wife. We were passing our farm and then the
Antonov came immediately and bombed,' Osman whispered. Two hours
further north, in Maiyas, village chief Khidir Abusita points to a
hole a bomb from an Antonov made that he said killed six people,
including 55-year-old Hakuma Yousif and her 20-year-old daughter Soura
in their hut. 'Yesterday there were two Antonovs and they were
circling for an hour. We are very scared...'" (Agence France-Presse
[dateline: Kurmuk], October 17, 2011)
"[Following Southern] independence in July this year, Maza Soya led
her nine children out of a squalid camp in Ethiopia dreaming of a new
life back home in Sudan. Last month, however, fighting erupted in Blue
Nile state between the northern Sudanese army and fighters allied to
the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), the dominant force in
the newly independent South Sudan. 'Our homes were burnt down to the
ground. There were daily air raids on our town,' Soya told Reuters two
weeks after fleeing back to Ethiopia's frontier town of Kurmuk."
(Reuters [dateline: Kurmuk], October 14, 2011)
"Satdam Anima's eyes flicker and weep as the doctor sews up the stump
of his left arm, before he rolls back on the hospital bed, one of the
latest victims in Sudan's relentless bombing campaign in Blue Nile
state. Dr Evan Atar says he has done seven amputations since war broke
out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and fighters loyal to the
SPLM-North in Blue Nile state last month. He has treated more than 600
others for shrapnel wounds. 'We are really now running out of
supplies. We have been running here and there and crying... But now
where to get it from is really an issue,' he said."
"President Omar al-Bashir has blocked foreign aid agencies from
entering Blue Nile and nearby South Kordofan state, where a separate
conflict between the army and SPLM-North rebels has raged since June.
Kurmuk's is the only hospital between neighbouring Ethiopia and
Damazin, the state capital of Blue Nile, which remains under SAF
control, and Dr Atar is the only doctor. He says the hospital will run
out of vital supplies such as saline solution, cotton and gauze this
week if no aid arrives, after using up six months' supplies in one."
"A man on the operating table cries out in pain, but Atar says the
hospital has no more anaesthetics to give him. Cotton, gauze and
saline solution will run out this week if aid does not arrive, he
says, adding that six months of supplies have been used up in the past
six weeks. 'We are running short of everything---drugs, dressings.' He
feared the hospital would have to buy salt, boil it, and use it to
sterilize wounds. 'The problem is that there is no way we can get the
drugs in here now because of the Antonovs bombing the area, making it
very dangerous to fly supplies in from Kenya.' Sudan's President Omar
al-Bashir will not allow foreign aid agencies inside Blue Nile or the
neighbouring state of South Kordofan, where the government has been
fighting SPLM-N forces for months." (Agence France-Presse [dateline:
Kurmuk], October 10, 2011)
"Atar is the only doctor in Kurmuk, which has the only hospital
between state capital Damazin, and neighbouring Ethiopia. Nurse Walid
Solomon says 20-year-old soldier Satdam Anima is the seventh amputee
victim the hospital has dealt with. He was hit by 'the big bullet of
the Antonov.' Atar, with Solomon's assistance, sews up the stump near
the left shoulder, and Satdam's eyes roll in pain. The lack of blood
donors mean that the hospital's 24 nurses donate blood to keep
patients alive. The aerial bombardment in and around Kurmuk is evident
and audible. 'In the first war, there was peace in the villages; now
they [Antonovs] bomb even the villages---that's the problem; and the
increasing accuracy of the bombing is leading to rising patient
numbers as the weeks go by,' Atar said." (UN IRIN [dateline: Kurmuk],
October 12, 2011)
"At the beginning of October, locals say a bomb killed half a dozen
people in Maiyes, a village near Ethiopia's border. Holding a piece of
twisted iron shrapnel next to the churned earth around the crater,
neighbour Mahmoud Abdanafi Jundi says the village buried the victims'
bodies in one grave. 'When the bomb hit, the people in the house over
there, three of them were killed. The people who were living here also
died. A child over there was also killed,' he said, gesturing to
thatched huts that now lie empty." (Reuters [dateline: Kurmuk],
October 13, 2011)
"They fled their village of Sally after a bombing raid. But even in
this temporary camp she has not found safety. 'I don't know why the
Antonov came and bombed us, but we left our village and came here,'
she said. 'And after we came here, we found that the Antonov is coming
also to this place.' Earlier that day, she narrowly escaped being hit
by shrapnel from a bomb dropped in a river bed where villagers were
searching for scraps of gold to sell for food. When the bombs hit
their target, the results are deadly. A crater in the ground was all
that was left of one family's hut in Maiyes village, about 20
kilometres from the front line. Household possessions, including a
child's shoe, were scattered around. Relatives and neighbours held up
twisted pieces of shrapnel, which they said had ripped apart the
family of six."
"'One of them was pregnant and it cut her stomach,' said Heder
Abusita, the village chief. 'Rueana Murdis also was killed here with
her small kid. And also there is Bushara. He died here in this house.
His feet were cut, and his stomach also was cut.'" (The National [AE]
[dateline: Kurmuk], October 19, 2011)
"Huwa Gundi, 21, sits on a sheet outside two makeshift tents near her
home village of Sali, where her extended family of eight now live off
one meal a day. Cradling her four-month-old baby, Fatma, she says her
three other children have died since the start of the conflict in
Sudan's Blue Nile State in early September. 'They were sick, and they
died; there was no medicine,' Gundi said, adding that Fatma now has
diarrhoea and a fever at night. 'We heard the voice of the Antonov
[plane used by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) for dropping bombs]. We
know it well,' she said, referring to the bombing of her village,
Sali, which she and her family were forced to abandon. 'We don’t have
anything to eat; we just go into the bush and then in the old farms we
find some "dura" [sorghum] that is growing and we just make porridge,'
she said." (UN IRIN [dateline: Kurmuk], October 13, 2011)
Either the world very soon finds the political will to make clear to
Khartoum that there will be intolerable consequences if they proceed
with their policies of extermination, or history will record that the
U.S and a great many others were willing to accommodate what it knew
to be mass human destruction, defined by widespread and systematic
atrocity crimes, and do nothing but weakly exhort those responsible to
behave better. It will be one of the ugliest chapters in the grim
history of the past century.
_____________________________
Eric Reeves
Smith College
Northampton, MA 01063
[email protected]
413-585-3326
Skype: ReevesSudan
www.sudanreeves.org
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