Overlooking Nuba

While the world struggles to cope with Darfur, another crisis brews nearby…

The conflict in Darfur still may not be getting the attention it deserves, but another crisis in Sudan threatens to become the country’s newest humanitarian catastrophe. The flash point is Southern Kordofan, a state created in 2005 to encompass the Nuba Mountains, just north of the autonomous southern zone. Central government forces, South Sudanese forces, and local groups are all arming and recruiting troops with the hope of securing victory in the upcoming local elections. As the Small Arms Survey, a research organization, documented in August, “[D]iscontent … is turning to anger, and many now view war in the Nuba Mountains as inevitable.”

The storm brewing in Nuba country looks much like the ongoing tempest in Darfur. The Nuba, a tribal group comprising more than 50 indigenous African ethnicities, have long been marginalized under Sudan’s Arab-dominated government, and many took up arms against it during the 1980s civil war. When a peace agreement ended the North-South conflict in 2005, many Nuba felt the Southern Sudanese government sold them out to the North in order to gain oil concessions. Now, their patience is running thin. The International Crisis Group (ICG) reported in October that hundreds have died in disputes over land and grazing rights in recent years. As in Darfur, violence has broken out between Nuba farmers and Arab nomads, both of whom covet the same fertile land.

Via ForeignPolicy.com