Sudan’s Nuba Mountain People Starved and Bombed

February 28, 2012 By 10 Comments

Satellite images from the Satellite Sentinel Project (SSP) show that Khartoum has amassed troops to shut the Nuba off from escape and stop food and medical aid from getting in. Initiated by actor/activist George Clooney in October 2010, SSP’s latest imagery shows “apparent artillery, main battle tanks, and infantry fighting vehicles controlling the main evacuation route for refugees attempting to flee into South Sudan.” Jonathan Hutson, Director of Communications for the Enough Project, says Khartoum “is creating a kill box . . . encircling the Nuba people of the Nuba Mountains, as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign.”

Sadly, this is not unexpected. Speaking at Kadugli, South Kordofan, soon after starting his attack on the Nuba in June 2011, war criminal Bashir threatened those who resisted Khartoum. Through rigging, his fellow ICC-indictee, Ahmed Haroun, Darfur’s genocide implementer, had been “elected” governor of South Kordofan. Resistance to his fraudulent election was met by Khartoum’s already-planned extermination campaign. Bashir declared, “If the people here refuse to honor the results of the election, then we will force them back into the mountains and prevent them from having food just as we did before.”

“Just as we did before” refers to the 1983-2005 Nuba genocide when the Nuba sided with South Sudan during the war. Nuba Muslims live as friends and brothers with Christians and refused to participate in Bashir’s jihad against the South. They were labeled “apostate” in an April 1993 government-sponsored fatwa that said, “An insurgent who was previously a Moslem is now an apostate; and a non-Moslem is a non-believer standing as a bulwark against the spread of Islam, and Islam has granted the freedom of killing both of them.” Tens of thousands of Nuba were killed outright or starved to death through saturation bombing and simultaneously banned international relief flights. Khartoum did “prevent from having food,” the same strategy the regime is now employing.

In 2002, the Sudan Peace Act, passed by Congress and signed into law as Public Law 107-245 by President George W. Bush, displayed understanding of Khartoum’s intentions, finding, “By regularly banning air transport relief flights by the United Nations relief operation OLS, the Government of Sudan has been able to manipulate the receipt of food aid by the Sudanese people from the United States and other donor countries as a devastating weapon of war in the ongoing effort by the Government of Sudan to starve targeted groups and subdue areas of Sudan outside of the Government’s control.” The law directs the President to an action modeled after the Berlin Airlift, to “develop a contingency plan to provide, outside the auspices of the United Nations if necessary, the greatest possible amount of United States Government and privately donated relief to all affected areas in Sudan, including the Nuba Mountains and the Upper Nile and the Blue Nile regions, in the event that the Government of Sudan imposes a total, partial, or incremental ban on OLS air transport relief flights.” It also provides reprogramming authority for the President to redirect “up to 100 percent of the funds” available for the UN operations to non-OLS agencies.

Alternate methods to deliver humanitarian aid, like those described in Public Law 107-245, could mean the difference between life and death for hundreds of thousands of people. For this reason, Act for Sudan, an alliance of Sudan activist organizations, is asking Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to display the same level of concern for the Nuba and other oppressed peoples in Sudan as she has recently expressed for the Syrian people by protecting innocent Nuba from their own government. In the “Secretary Clinton: They Can’t Wait” campaign, Act for Sudan tells Clinton that the Nuba need protection and aid. The message can be posted on the State Department’s Engaging the Community on Foreign Affairs Facebook page and on Twitter.

For those who would argue that the U.S. cannot afford to pay for humanitarian supplies, the heartbreaking reality is that much of the food and medical aid is already on the ground just over the border in South Sudan, almost within sight of dying Nuba. It is not a matter of funds, but of moral will and the determination to cross borders and deliver the aid for which the Nuba people can’t wait.

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About

Faith J. H. McDonnell directs the Institute on Religion and Democracy’s Religious Liberty Program and Church Alliance for a New Sudan and is the author of Girl Soldier: A Story of Hope for Northern Uganda’s Children (Chosen Books, 2007).

  • UCSPanther

    There's a place in the dead genocidal dictators' club in hell that is reserved for Omar Bashir…

  • StephenD

    You suggest Obama isn't doing anything about this situation in Sudan. Au Contraire. You are very much mistaken. He has granted a WAIVER for Sudan to continue to receive American aid (our tax dollars) even though they will use CHILDREN AS SOLDIERS. Now why and how would such a waiver ever be granted unless you wanted to assist the Islamic north in destroying the people of the Nuba Mountains. Of course, they are in the way of the Oil that has been found recently in the region. Money talks…everywhere.

  • maturin20

    This is the most poignant snapshot of the Nuba people since Leni Riefenstahl. If the black and white video of this oppression could be narrated by a stuttering Congressman and it could also somehow lead to an invasion of Syria, the story would be complete.

  • LindaRivera

    Libya's Gaddafi was AGAINST the genocide in SUDAN and SUPPORTED the innocent Black Muslim and Christian victims of barbaric atrocities and genocide perpetrated by Sudan's Arab Muslim Bashir.

    Rights group condemns Libya visit by Sudan's Bashir
    By REUTERS
    01/07/2012 18:59

    Sudanese President al-Bashir, wanted by the ICC for orchestrating Darfur genocide, pays an official visit to Libya.

    TRIPOLI – Sudanese President Omar Hassan Bashir, wanted by the International Criminal Court on genocide charges, arrived in Libya on Saturday, drawing criticism from a human rights group.

    Bashir, wanted by The Hague-based court on charges of orchestrating genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, was met by Mustafa Abdul Jalil, chairman of Libya's ruling National Transitional Council, at Tripoli airport.

    Abdul Jalil, who visited Khartoum in November, has said Sudanese weapons and ammunition helped Libya's former rebels oust Muammar Gaddafi last year and take control of the North African country.

    Relations between Khartoum and Tripoli were strained during Gaddafi's rule because of his support for rebels in Sudan's western Darfur region and in South Sudan, which gained independence in July under a 2005 peace deal. http://www.jpost.com/VideoArticles/Video/Article….

  • LindaRivera

    It is evident that the Obama/Clinton administration and George Soros have nothing but contempt for severely persecuted innocents. US/NATO take the side of Muslim terrorists!

    Gaddafi was reformed and cooperating fully with the US and other Western powers. Gaddafi had his picture taken many times with American, British and European leaders. Gaddafi referred to President Obama as his son. Why did US/NATO go to war against Gaddafi and Libya? Gaddafi was fighting against Al-Qaeda.

    Admiral James Stavridis, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, and the commander of the U.S. European Command told the U.S. Senate
    that Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah fighters are among the Libyan rebels
    currently receiving support from the US and its NATO allies. This was
    confirmed by one of the Libyan rebel officers, Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, who leads one of the Al-Qaeda units.
    (US Aid to Israel’s Enemies, Oct 13th, 2011, frontpagemag)

    U.S/NATO joined with Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah terrorists to wage relentless war for months.
    Barbaric Al Qaeda and Hezbollah who MURDER our troops in Iraq were considered desirable for placing in power in Libya. Making the world a safer place for Muslim terrorists. US/NATO have great guilt in making the world a far more dangerous place.

  • http://joiningourvoices.com Slater Armstrong

    Another amazing, hard hitting, and well directed article by human rights champion, Faith McDonnell. Thank you Faith, for your tireless efforts to bring these things to light of day in our awareness.

  • Ron Carnine

    Debating will not help the starving Nuba people. The United Nations and NATO need to act now, to stop these brutal tactics of the Sudanese tyrants. They are murderous cowards, killing innocent people and getting away with because they can't defend themselves. They need food, medicine and weapons so they can at least defend themselves. That is the right of every human being. The Congress should immediately begin dropping the needed supplies to these people. If Sudan tries to interfere our fighter planes should blow them out of the skies and bomb these barbarians.

  • Mel M

    Thank you Faith for once again highlighting the plight of Sudan's suffering people, and the complicity of western corporations and governments. Having pondered the question for many years as to why no US or other western administration gov't has acted to protect the Nuba (with the exception, perhaps, of the feeble, trepid and incomplete peace efforts of George W. Bush) I've come to the conclusion that the Muslim Brotherhood, (MB) which backed the current Khartoum regime, helped it attain power, and uses it as its base for international relations, is too well entrenched in the upper echelons of western society for any administration to confront.

  • Mel M

    The MB simply has its people too strategically well placed in western power structures, including the State Department, CIA, media, academic arena and other key institutions — even in the White House — to cross without facing serious repercussions! In fact, my bet is that B. Hussein Obama is not only a Muslim. I would not be the least surprised if he was also a card carrying member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Why else would he back so openly the removal of dictators throughout the Middle East who have opposed the Muslim Brotherhood, (like Mubarak and Ghaddafi), who have killed, perhaps, a few thousand innocent people; yet give a complete pass to mass dictators like Omar Bashir and his ilk who have killed millions and millions of innocents and are continuing to do so?

  • LindaRivera

    The Obama/Clinton administration are ALLOWING Black Christian and Muslim innocents of Sudan's Nuba Mountain to be starved and mass murdered. They are allowing these innocents to become victims of GENOCIDE. Is this because if US/NATO intervened, U.S. leaders top favorites, the Muslim Brotherhood would not come to power?

    Obama made a special point of inviting his favorites, the Muslim Brotherhood, to his speech in Cairo. Behind the scenes, America worked to oust U.S. ally, moderate Mubarak, in order to bring to power, U.S. leaders' top favorites, the Muslim Brotherhood, whose stated goal is the DESTRUCTION of civilization and global Islamic conquest.

    From the document of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America:

    The process of settlement is a "Civilization-Jihadist Process" and all the word means. The
    Ikhwan [Arabic for brothers] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad to eliminate and destroy the Western civilization from within, and sabotage its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers, so that it is eliminated, and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions.

    It is a Muslim's destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny…"