Twilight of the Nuba

Is the Sudanese regime embarking on another war of extinction?

BY DAN MORRISON | JUNE 23, 2011

As Southern Sudan prepares for its final split from Africa's largest country on July 9, the northern soldiers who aided its battle for self-determination are refusing to be left behind. In the state of Southern Kordofan, located in the center of the country on Sudan's contested internal border, fighters from the Nuba Mountains are putting up a tooth-and-nail fight to avoid being crushed by the Islamist government in Khartoum.

At least 73,000 people have fled the current fighting, according to the United Nations. As Sudanese bombs continue to fall and activists issue familiar warnings of genocide, the Nuba people face a lonely fight.

The Nuba, a diverse collection of black African tribes -- Muslim, Christian, and animist -- have long resisted the aggression of Sudan's Arab rulers in Khartoum. The government tried to eradicate them during the 1990s in a campaign of murder, starvation, rape, enslavement, and land seizure that killed as many as 200,000. During the north-south civil war, an estimated 30,000 Nuba joined the Southern-led Sudan People's Liberation Army, which was fighting to transform the whole of Sudan into a multiethnic democratic state.

In 1992, in the midst of the 22-year war, the government went so far as to declare a jihad in the Nuba Mountains. The official fatwa that declared the war made no distinction between Muslim and non-Muslim, stating, "An insurgent who was previously a Muslim is now an apostate; and a non-Muslim is a nonbeliever standing as a bulwark against the spread of Islam, and Islam has granted the freedom of killing both of them." The campaign included the use of chemical weapons (dropped by pilots from Saddam Hussein's air force) against the civilian population.

The 2005 peace deal that ended the civil war has led only to the imminent secession of the south. Southern Kordofan, a northern state whose residents largely supported the rebel cause, did not receive the right to self-determination. Instead, the state was given the sop of a "popular consultation" in which voters could express a desire for limited autonomy. Even that exercise never took place. For months now, the Nuba have felt Khartoum's noose slowly tightening.

While the government claims it is justifiably squashing an armed rebellion, it has maintained a naked focus on ethnicity and religion, with distinct echoes of the jihad era. Last year, the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey obtained and released parts of a January 2009 memo from Sudan's Defense Ministry ordering militia commanders to re-enlist soldiers who had defected to the Southern army. "Get back all those who joined the SPLM [Sudan People's Liberation Movement]," said the memo, "whether in the south, Nuba Mountains or elsewhere ... to defend their religion and their Arabism." After the south secedes, Southern Kordofan will be the sole remaining oil-producing state in northern Sudan.

As northern forces and armor began encircling their villages this year, many Nuba fighters left their bases in the south and returned to defend their homeland. Then, two weeks ago, a series of provocations by the Nuba fighters helped spark a furious bout of shelling, aerial bombardment, looting, and murder by northern Sudanese forces.

An estimated 3,000 Nuba men and boys are missing. Advocates fear they've been executed. One refugee, Abdul Mutalib Suleiman, told the banned news station Radio Dabanga that as he fled Kadugli, the state capital, with his family, they saw "a man wearing military uniform shoot at one civilian who was on a motorbike and he died immediately."

ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images

 SUBJECTS: SUDAN, RACE/ETHNICITY
 

Dan Morrison is a freelance journalist and author of The Black Nile, which will be published in paperback July 26.

ROMAN GIL

11:21 AM ET

June 24, 2011

Wars and Foreign Affairs Fueled by Massive Debts. Who'll Pay?

Obama Is Violating The U.S. Constitution. Congress Is Now Irrelevant. We’re Getting Endless Presidential Unconstitutional Wars Financed by Debt. The USA National Net Worth in -$58 Trillion. The Politicians Have no Plan for Rebuilding a Modern Industrial Economy.

The U.S. Congress has abdicated its powers to the Executive and Judicial Federal government branches. We are on the road to Presidential tyranny. One person cannot have the power to commit America to war or to do acts that may lead to war. This is the job of Congress and this power can never be trusted to one man. Obama attacked Libya without obtaining Congressional approval. Obama went farther forging ahead boldly with his “handlers”; he ignored the Congressional “War Powers” law that requires Presidents to obtain Congressional approval for military actions 90 days after they started.

The U.S. Constitution gives Presidents only the war power to react to a threat or an actual attack, not the power to personally authorize acts of war, including economic sanctions or starting wars.

Another serious crime against the Constitution, Obama refuses to enforce Federal laws that he does not like including the immigration laws, and obstructs and threatens States like Arizona that wish to enforce the laws that Obama refuses to enforce. Congress is failing to exert its Constitutional powers to balance the Executive branch.

Federal judges now routinely nullify laws passed by millions of voters. This is legislating from the bench against the rights of the States. The Arizona law that provided for enforcement of existing Federal immigration laws by the State police forces is an example of judicial tyranny because it was effectively neutered by a Federal judge. In my blog I have a program to rebuild the American industrial economy that the globalists exported to China and other cheap (a polite way of saying slave labor) countries. I will be adding how to restore Washington’s constitutional republic before we lose our freedom. The globalists control media and the government key positions. I explain the globalist anti-American ideology and how it has ruined America and now Europe. I included Washington's "Farewell Address" advice to the American people and highlighted the parts that we are violating with ruinous results.

Even the Communist Chinese President does not have Obama’s war and executive powers. In the Chinese Communist dictatorship, the President of China must obtain the approval of the Communist Party Central Committee to do what Obama does independently and he must enforce all Chinese Communist laws.

We have to defend the Constitutional balance of powers between the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of government and the complete system of checks and balances that the Constitution created. Congress must demand that all laws must be enforced by the Executive branch and that the Constitutional balance of powers must be restored.

Roman Gil
http://roman-gil1.blogspot.com

 

TAWNYA219

6:08 PM ET

July 22, 2011

Twilight of the Nuba

Is the Sudanese regime embarking on another war of extinction? Right. So there you have it. A view – won’t call it ‘analysis’ because it’s not worthy of the name - about the ongoing troubles in South Kordofan from a doyen of the ‘virtual Sudan’ - the journo-activist, Mr. Daniel Morrison. Not unsurprisingly, Mr. Morrison does not provide ANY real contextualisation (just brickbats aimed at ‘Khartoum) for the outbreak of violence in the Nuba Mtns region; that’s answering services Obama Is Violating The U.S. Constitution. Congress Is Now Irrelevant. We’re Getting Endless Presidential Unconstitutional Wars Financed by Debt. The USA National Net Worth in -$58 Trillion. The Politicians Have no Plan for Rebuilding a Modern Industrial Economy. The U.S. Congress has abdicated its powers to the Executive and Judicial Federal government branches. We are on the road to Presidential.

 

PERSON_GUYZZ1

9:54 AM ET

July 23, 2011

The U.S. Constitution gives

The U.S. Constitution gives Presidents only the war power to react to a threat or an actual attack, not the power to personally authorize acts of war, including economic sanctions or starting wars readymadeinternetbusiness. Rallying round the maxim of Clausewitz for Sudan serves nobody here in the REAL Sudan apart from the warlords that raise their arms against ‘Khartoum’ (note Al Hilu didn’t pause once to consider the impact on his fellow Nuba people of launching violence, and see, too, the ongoing refusal of Abdel Wahid Al Nur to come to the international negotiating table eight years on after he launched war in Darfur).