Blue Nile’s Kurmuk could be another bloodbath in Sudan
This article is from Sudan Tribune, by Eric Reeves. Views expressed are the author’s own.
In a matter of days, or hours, the northern Sudanese state of Blue Nile seems likely to be the scene of the most violent military confrontation in Sudan for almost a decade. The Satellite Sentinel Project (SSP) released a highly alarming report on September 23, based on substantial satellite photography, indicating that armed forces of Khartoum’s National Islamic Front/National Congress Party regime are mobilizing in a massive formation of armor, troops, and military aircraft: “heavily camouflaged, mechanized units comprising at least a brigade—3,000 troops or more;” “these forces appear to be equipped with heavy armor and artillery, supported by helicopter gunships.”
The apparent target of this huge assault is the town of Kurmuk—on the border with Ethiopia—which is the primary stronghold of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement-North (SPLA/M-N) in Blue Nile. These are the northern military units and political cadres of the broader movement known during the civil war (1983-2005) simply as the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement; their homes and base of support lie not within the newly formed South Sudan but in the northern parts of the country still ruled by Khartoum. Following South Sudan’s declaration of independence, the increasingly militant Khartoum regime has felt obliged to respond with force to what threatens to become a “new South,” a source of resistance to the regime’s 22-year stranglehold on national wealth and power. Focusing first on the nearby states of Abyei and South Kordofan, Khartoum has now turned its destructive attention to the rebel strongholds in Blue Nile. In the absence of increased international pressure on the regime, a bloody and protracted military confrontation appears imminent.
MOST PEOPLE IN Sudan’s southern states of Abyei, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile feel that they were short-changed by the North/South Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005, but they expected, at least, “popular consultations”—discussions promised by the CPA through which the people of these warn-torn areas would negotiate their relationship with the central government. Instead, Khartoum’s first act—even before Southern secession—was to rig the election of Ahmed Haroun as governor of South Kordofan (Haroun is under indictment for 42 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur). Then, on June 5, the regime launched a military campaign against both political and military elements of the SPLA/M-N in South Kordofan, an operation overseen by Haroun and the state military and intelligence leadership. Unspeakable atrocity crimes marked the military and security effort, which continues to this day in the form of a relentless bombing of the African peoples of the Nuba Mountains, a tribal group known collectively as the Nuba. Without humanitarian access, which Khartoum continues to deny, the threat to human life is enormous. Valerie Amos, the head of UN humanitarian operations, declared on 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.”
Like the military seizure of Abyei (May 20) and the assault on the Nuba and SPLA/M-N in South Kordofan (June 5), the current campaign in Blue Nile was well prepared for, with troops and armor poised to move quickly and decisively. The regime’s regular and militia forces moved preemptively, launching an attack on September 1 by bombing the home of the elected governor of Blue Nile, Malik Agar; Malik is also the political head of the SPLA/M-N. And as in South Kordofan, human displacement in Blue Nile has quickly become massive and suffering by civilians acute. More than 50,000 have been displaced since the beginning of Khartoum’s campaign on September 1, and 25,000 have fled to Ethiopia. Khartoum is denying all humanitarian access, both to prevent foreign observers and as a savage weapon of war.
Even so, resistance by the SPLA-N has proven stiff. Khartoum controls Damazin, the capital of Blue Nile, and Rosaries to the north—but almost nothing else in the state beyond the vast corridor of men and armaments moving southeast to Kurmuk. The movement of Khartoum’s troops has already been halted once in fierce fighting, but many thousands of civilians in Kurmuk are deeply at risk. This is in large part because Khartoum has increasingly resorted to “stand-off” military tactics, using artillery, tanks, and aircraft to do the fighting that regular troops are increasingly resisting. Such tactics are inherently indiscriminate, and civilians are much more often the victims than soldiers.
In addition, although military violence will likely capture whatever news attention the crises in Abyei, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile receive, the real story is in the dying that will come this fall. Normally, people in these regions would be looking forward to an October first harvest with the end of the rains. But this year vast tracts of land were too dangerous to cultivate in the Nuba Mountains, and starvation will begin soon without humanitarian access. In Blue Nile the UN’s World Food Program is desperate to get food supplies in to hundreds of thousands of people either displaced or food insecure. Khartoum’s denial has been adamant. Human mortality will soon skyrocket.
Photo credit: africanglobe.net