In the Nuba Mountains, a people hold out against genocide. 

An unreported war rages in the south of Sudan. In the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan province, the black African Nuba people are locked in a bitter conflict with the Arab-dominated Sudanese regime. Besieged in their mountainous enclave, the Nuba struggle against the genocidal tactics of an army now proficient in mass slaughter. Sudan’s regional strife, merely the latest phase in the ethnic remodelling of one of the world’s most unstable countries, has largely been shut off to international scrutiny . Yet with the independent South Sudan embroiled in its own civil war, the Nuba people are faced with pitiful options and a dismal future.

The Nuba people consists of around fifty tribes connected through culture and a shared history of discrimination. “Nuba” was originally a derogatory term meaning “primitive” and was used by the Arab settlers and slavers who pushed the Nuba’s ancestors into the foothills where they now reside. In Sudan’s decades long civil war, the Nuba always sided with the South. As black Africans they opposed an exclusively Arab, racist government. The war reached them in 1985 when the predominantly southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) broke out of its traditional bases and entrenched itself in the relative safety of the mountains.

In 1989, Colonel Omar al Bashir overthrew the democratically elected government and brought the National Islamic Front (NIF) to power . Bashir proceeded to launch an aggressive Islamisation policy lacking moral restraints. The NIF believed that Sudan had become irreligious. They believed that Sudan needed to purify and return to the teachings of the Koran and that this could only be done if the animist and Christian South was either converted or exterminated. That same year, the NIF regime declared Jihad against its own people. Nuba families who had lived in South Kordofan for generations were suddenly seen as an impure blemish on Bashir’s conception of Sudan’s Islamic identity. Employing local Arab tribesmen eager to seize the cattle of Nuba farmers, the Sudanese army has gassed, bombed, tortured and raped the Nuba for almost 30 years.

In 2011, most victims of Khartoum’s Jihad-imbued campaign were spared by the secession of the South, which took the majority of Sudan’s non-Muslims with it. However, South Kordofan was sacrificed by the South in pre-separation negotiations leaving the Nuba trapped in Sudan despite having fought for the SPLA. The Nuba, therefore, experienced no reprieve. With the South detached, the NIF regime was faced with a much more achievable nation remodelling task, and so it set about exterminating the Nuba with renewed vigour. This is why the Nuba factions of the SPLA formed the SPLA-North in 2011, a group which is locked in a vicious struggle with Khartoum to the present day. Although a ceasefire agreement was established earlier this year, Khartoum continues to block humanitarian assistance from reaching the Nuba, and there have been reports that the regime has breached the terms of the ceasefire. 

Despite the SPLA-N’s enduring campaign against the regime, it is difficult to see how the lives of most Nuba can improve any time soon. Even if the Sudanese government becomes so irritated by the SPLA-N that it agrees to cede South Kordofan to South Sudan, it is likely that most Nuba would oppose this development. Incorporation into South Sudan is an ever less appealing objective for the Nuba rebels. To join the South is to join one of the world’s poorest and most dysfunctional states. Endemic corruption, gross incompetence, tribalized politics and huge expectations have plunged the South into its own genocidal civil war pitting the ethnic Dinka against their Nuer compatriots. The Nuba are seemingly stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Moreover, many SPLA-N fighters are deeply conscious of their own Nuba identity and recall the suspicion and distrust between Nuba and other Southern tribes during the independence struggle. This struggle saw many Nuba perish travelling on foot to SPLA training camps in Ethiopia and took on a particularly local flavour for the Nuba when the regime employed their traditional Baggara Arab enemies to attack their villages. For these reasons, the predominant mood within the SPLA-N is a desire not for unification with the South, but for a “New Sudan”: democratic, transparent and tolerant. It is this vision of a Sudan in which they are treated as equals to Muslim Arabs that keeps the Nuba fighting so stubbornly.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Too weak to break out of their enclave, too unpopular to incite mass rebellion and too obscure to rally the support of the international community[/perfectpullquote]

The SPLA-N is however fighting a war it cannot win. With most of those who had fought with the Nuba during the civil wars now occupied with another war in South Sudan, the Nuba simply do not have the numbers to halt Khartoum’s campaign, let alone topple the regime. In November 2011, the SPLA-N loosely allied with rebel groups in Darfur to form the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF) — yet even with these combined numbers, the government is numerically and militarily superior (and backed by powerful friends such as Saudi Arabia).

If the Nuba are to win their struggle, the Arab Muslims of northern Sudan must be enticed by the “New Sudan” ideology. However, the centuries old prejudices, suspicions and animosities between the Arabs and black Africans are enough to hamper any functional cohesion. The Islamist message of Bashir’s regime is in any case popular across large parts of the North, which partly explains his 28-year stint in office.

The situation in the Nuba mountains can therefore be described as nothing short of horrendous. All the Nuba can do is break the genocidal waves of planes and tanks sent into the hills by a blood-soaked regime. Too weak to break out of their enclave, too unpopular to incite mass rebellion and too obscure to rally the support of the international community, their best hope is perhaps the military support of South Sudan. Yet with the South Sudanese civil war raging into its fourth year, the Nuba should certainly not be holding their breath.