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Mark Hackett 1/11/24 Mark Hackett 1/11/24

Darfur

The history of the geographic region known as Darfur stretches back centuries. This overview focuses on the time period after Sudan’s independence in 1956.

This historical overview provides a contextual background for understanding the issues Operation Broken Silence works on. It is part of our resource list for students, teachers, and the curious and was last updated January 2024. For more information about what's happening in Sudan and our work, please sign up for our email list.

Introduction

While the history of Darfur stretches back centuries, this overview focuses on the time period after Sudan’s independence in 1956. A chronological examination of the Darfur region in the contemporary era can be broken out into five main periods:

Pre-Modern & Colonial Background: 1200 BCE-1956 CE
Instability & Rising Tensions: 1956-1988
Rise of the Bashir Regime & Intercommunal Violence: 1989-2000
The Darfur Genocide (Part 1): 2001-2008
The Darfur Genocide (Part 2): 2009-2019

A summary of the post-2019 situation in Darfur is provided at the end as well.

*Map: Location of Darfur. (Operation Broken Silence*)

*Photo:* “*Young Girl from Darfur” by Pierre Trémaux (circa 1855) is thought to be one of the first photographs highlighting Darfur.*

Pre-Modern & Colonial Background: 1200 BCE-1956 CE

Darfur has an ancient history that offers few details, with the first known peoples belonging to several distinct ethnicities and related languages of the Daju people. Ancient Egyptian texts suggest an established Daju kingdom existed in the Marrah Mountains (present day central Darfur) as early as the 12th century BCE.

Although the geographic area known as Darfur has been inhabited for millennia, little direct documentation of life here is mentioned before 1600 CE, when more detailed information becomes available as the Fur people rose to power in Darfur. This undocumented history likely has roots in just how isolated the region has often been. Even today, archeological efforts in Darfur have been extremely minimal when compared to other parts of the world —despite potential excavation sites being known— leaving much of the region’s ancient and pre-modern historical understanding to tradition.

It is important to note that this isolation does not remove the historical causes of recent trouble in the region. Attacks on Darfur’s rich, diverse cultural tapestry by national military regimes in Khartoum, including the crime of genocide, have entrenched real historical grievances in countless communities.

Depending on who you ask, Darfur is home to between 36-80 tribes and ethnic groups that fall within the broader categories of African and Arab. The word Darfur refers to the region’s largest African ethnic group: the Fur. The first known historical mention of the Fur was in a 1664 account by Johann Michael Vansleb, a German theologian and traveler who was visiting Egypt. The Arabic word dar can be translated literally as home or house. Darfur then can be translated as home of the Fur.

*Photo: Sudan's flag raised at the independence ceremony in January 1, 1956 by Prime Minister Ismail al-Aazhari and opposition leader Mohamed Ahmed al-Mahjoub. (Sudan Films Unit, Wikimedia Commons*)

The vast majority of Darfuris are Muslim. A small Christian minority resides in Darfur, but estimates on the size of this community vary as many churches have met secretly in homes due to government persecution.

In 1899, the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium administrated Sudan as a colony. The joint British and Egyptian colonial government invested heavily in the Arab-dominated central and eastern parts of the country. Like other periphery regions of Sudan, Darfur was largely marginalized and ignored. The region was officially integrated into Sudan under colonial rule during World War I.

Shortly after Sudan’s independence on January 1, 1956, African Darfuri civil society groups advocated for a larger role in the country. Like many of Sudan’s ethnically African minorities, these groups were increasingly ignored by Arab-dominated governments in Khartoum. This led to mistrust between the country's powerful center and large swaths of Darfur and growing outside pressures on the region, both of which helped to set the stage for armed conflict that continues today.

Instability & Rising Tensions: 1956-1988

*Map: Darfur’s porous borders have exacerbated local issues for decades, bringing weapons, armed groups, and Arab settlers into the region. (Operation Broken Silence*)

Following Sudan's independence, African tribal groups in Darfur witnessed growing tension with Arab-dominated governments in Khartoum. The violent ideologies of Arabization and Islamization gained stronger traction in Sudan’s center. From the 1960s forward, Arab tribal groups in Darfur expanded their influence both within and outside of Darfur’s borders. Arab tribesman from across the Sahel also began settling in Darfur, often times near or on land belonging to ethnically African groups like the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa.

Changing regional dynamics between Sudan, Libya, and Chad pressed in on the region during these years. Darfur became a safe haven for Arab rebel groups fighting in Chad, with the governments of Sudan and Libya directly engaged on and off again in that conflict.

The situation in Darfur began to destabilize more rapidly in the 1980s. A horrific famine gripped the region and the Sudanese government was increasingly supporting Arab tribes in Darfur, who were seen as allies with the country's Arab political power base in Khartoum.

By the late 1980s, Darfur was awash in weapons after years of various government and rebel activities involving Sudan, Chad, Libya, and the Central African Republic and settlers from other countries across the Sahel.

Rise of the Bashir Regime & Intercommunal Violence: 1989-2000

In 1989, Colonel Omar al-Bashir and the National Islamic Front seized power in a military coup. Bashir took the titles of president, chief of state, prime minister, and chief of the armed forces. Wielding a Koran and an AK-47 rifle in Khartoum, Bashir declared to soldiers that he was going to reengineer the country into one dominated by an ethnic Arab elite and ruled by oppressive Islamic law.

Between 1989-1991, Bashir consolidated control over the government by banning trade unions, political parties, and other non-religious institutions. Over 70,000 members of the army, police, and civil administration were purged. The regime began to recruit, train, and arm Arab tribal militias in Darfur. This highlights a step in the 10 Stages of Genocide.

In 1991, Sudan's civil war in southern Sudan briefly spilled into Darfur. An armed southern rebel unit entered Darfur in an attempt to spread resistance to the Bashir regime. The southern rebel force was defeated by the Sudanese army and their Arab militia allies. African Darfuri communities seen as sympathetic to the plight of their southern neighbors were attacked and destroyed, a grim warning of what was to come a decade later.

In 1994, the Bashir regime divided Darfur into three federal states to hinder Darfuri African tribes, predominantly the Fur, from effectively mobilizing in support of ideas and policies that countered the regime.

As the century came to a close, war between large swaths of Darfur and the Bashir regime was becoming inevitable. Arab militias armed by the regime attacked Fur and Masalit communities at an alarming rate, causing the Fur and Masalit to self-arm. Clashes between both sides increased in scope and severity due to a number of decades-old issues including Arab racism against Africans, land use, basic rights, and access to markets.

Masalit fighters briefly gained the upper hand in 1999 by killing several Arab militia leaders who had led attacks on their communities. The Bashir regime responded by sending in the Sudanese army to arrest, imprison, and torture Masalit intellectuals and leaders and destroy Masalit villages.

In 2000, the brewing crisis reached the tipping point. A group of future Darfuri rebel leaders published The Black Book, a dissident piece of literature outlining Arab and regime abuses against African Darfuris. The Bashir regime failed to suppress The Black Book and talk of armed rebellion spread across Darfur.

*Photo: A member of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), one of the main armed rebel groups in Darfur that formed after years of regime oppression. (Hamid Abdulsalam, UNAMID*)

The Darfur Genocide (Part 1): 2001-2008

As the world entered a new millennium, Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa leaders organized their fighters into rebel groups. The largest two were the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and Justice & Equality Movement (JEM).

From 2001-2002, African Darfuri rebels attacked small regime army outposts, police stations, and Arab militias. Verbal threats from Bashir and regime counteroffensives failed to quell the rebellion. With the civil war in southern Sudan and genocide in the Nuba Mountains ongoing, the Sudanese army was ill-prepared to fight in Darfur. Regime soldiers were also facing a new kind of war in Darfur: semi-desert warfare, which was highlighted by fast-moving vehicles and hit-and-run tactics.

The Bashir regime began bombing known rebel bases and unarmed villages in the central Marrah Mountains, but failed to slow the speed at which the rebellion was catching on.

Early on the morning of April 25, 2003, organized SLA and JEM rebels entered El Father, the capital of North Darfur, home to a critical regime military base. The following four hour-long rebel assault saw seven Antonov bombers and helicopters destroyed and over 100 regime troops and pilots killed or captured, including the base commander.

The success of the rebel raid on such a critical regime military base was unprecedented. The Bashir regime would no longer ignore growing armed resistance to their iron-fisted rule.

Map: The Marrah Mountains have been a rebel-stronghold in Darfur for years. Regime forces have been unable to take control of the area, so government warplanes and artillery units have frequently targeted villages here. (*Operation Broken Silence*)

As government warplanes intensified bombings of unarmed African communities and rebel positions, the Bashir regime started to mass recruit, arm, and train large numbers of militiamen from several Arab tribes. The militias would become known as the Janjaweed, or devil on horseback. They would become the backbone of the brutal killing machine that was about to be unleashed against African tribes who formed the core of armed opposition groups - primarily the Zaghawa, Fur, and Masalit.

Initial Janjaweed recruits to the government's war and genocide in 2003 came mainly from two Arab groups - herders from North Darfur and immigrants/mercenaries from Chad. While some Arab communities remained neutral, specifically those who owned land, Sudanese government promises of war loot and new land encouraged thousands of young Arab men to join the Janjaweed.

By the end of 2003, large numbers of Janjaweed units mounted on horseback had unleashed a scorched-earth campaign against Zaghawa, Fur, and Masalit communities across Darfur. They destroyed everything that made life possible, including clean water wells, orchards, markets, and mosques.

The Janjaweed’s campaign inflicted death, displacement, and destruction on a shocking scale. Tens of thousands of civilians were killed and entire villages were razed to ground in the first few years of the genocide. Another two and a half million were driven into displacement camps, where small contingents of African Union peacekeeping troops —who had deployed into Darfur in 2006– had neither the mandate nor the resources to protect terrified Darfuris. More than 200,000 refugees fled across the border into Chad.

In 2004, senior U.S. government officials began describing the crisis as a genocide committed by the Bashir regime against African Darfuri groups.

*Photo: A rebel fighter examines a burnt animal in Tukumare, north Darfur. The village was abandoned after clashes between the Sudanese army/Janjaweed and Darfuri rebels. (Albert Gonzalez Farran, UNAMID*)

The genocide turned the tide of the war in favor of the regime. Darfuri rebel groups fractured underneath the Janjaweed’s widespread crimes and regime manipulation. The SLA and JEM’s guerrilla tactics remained an effective strategy; however, it did little to slow down the Janjaweed, who often times responded to rebel attacks by massacring entire Zaghawa, Fur, and Masalit villages.

In March 2005, the United Nations Security Council referred the human rights catastrophe in Darfur to the International Criminal Court.

The Bashir regime and a faction of the SLA signed the Darfur Peace Agreement in May 2006 after seven rounds of African Union-led negotiations. JEM and another SLA faction refused to sign, saying compensation guarentees and the disarmament of the Janjaweed needed to be prioritized in any agreement.

A handful of other individual rebel commanders and splinter groups signed Declarations of Commitment to the agreement. Some were then armed by the regime and turned against their former allies, especially in North Darfur. The regime’s divide-and-conquer strategy had an expanding number of rebel groups fighting each other and the Janjaweed. Meanwhile, daily aerial bombings of communities continued paving the way for Janjaweed units to pillage, rape, and kill on a horrifying scale.

In mid-2006, the Bashir regime ordered the military back to the frontlines in a new offensive against rebel groups who had not signed the Darfur Peace Agreement. For a brief time, many Darfuri rebel groups put aside their differences to fend off the army’s renewed invasion of Darfur. This short-lived alliance between over a dozen Darfuri rebel factions was effective in helping the armed groups survive, but the army’s offensive proved disastrous for ordinary Darfuri communities.

Photo: Ahmed Haroun, the former Sudanese junior interior minister responsible for the western Darfur region was named as a suspect for war crimes in Darfur by the International Criminal Court's prosecutor, Feb. 27, 2007, gives a press conference at the presidential palace in Khartoum, Sudan in this 2006 file photo. Harun and a janjaweed militia leader, Ali Mohammed Ali Abd-al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, were suspected of a total of 51 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, according to prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo. (*AP Photo/Abd Raouf*)

By September 2006, Darfur had become one of the greatest humanitarian catastrophes in the world. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people were out of reach of humanitarian aid due to expanding Janjaweed violence. With accusations of a government-backed genocide on the rise, the United Nations began working with the African Union to replace and enhance the weak international presence in Darfur.

In 2007, the International Criminal Court issued global arrest warrants for Ahmed Haroun, a senior regime official, and Ali Kushayb, a high-ranking Janjaweed leader, on dozens of counts of war crimes. In 2008, the court would also issue an arrest warrant for dictator Omar al-Bashir.

Meanwhile, the small African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur could barely protect itself, much less millions of terrified Darfuris seeking protection from the Janjaweed. By May of 2007, the peacekeeping force was on the verge of collapse due to a lack of resources and a hostile environment. The force would be transitioned to a stronger, United Nations-led command in 2008 called the United Nations - African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID). Thousands of international peacekeeping reinforcements would soon arrive in Darfur.

As Darfur continued to burn, the Bashir regime began resettling Arab tribes into areas of Darfur that had been "cleansed" of the African Zaghawa, Fur, and Masalit tribes. This highlights another step in the 10 Stages of Genocide.

*Photo: A woman rides a donkey while UNAMID troops from Tanzania conduct an armed patrol in South Darfur. (Albert Gonzalez Farran, UNAMID*)

The Darfur Genocide (Part 2): 2009-2019

By 2009, it was clear that international efforts to save lives in Darfur were facing serious challenges from the Bashir regime. UNAMID peacekeeping patrols were being blocked by regime soldiers and Janjaweed militias. Mass violence had eased, but peacekeepers could often not access areas of Darfur where conflict remained ongoing. The Janjaweed and other regime-armed Arab groups continued to settle on land that the African Zaghawa, Fur, and Masalit tribes had been driven off of.

Things only got worse in March of 2009, when the Bashir regime expelled international aid organizations from Darfur. This left hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable people with little to no international support.

Under intense pressure from the Bashir regime, United Nations peacekeeping officials took a series of devastating steps that undermined the integrity of UNAMID’s mission. Rather than challenging ongoing regime war crimes being reported by their peacekeepers, UN officials began covering them up as early as 2009. Whistleblowers from within the peacekeeping mission emerged to decry these actions. UN officials took no concrete steps to address them.

It’s also during this period that Darfur began to fall out of the international spotlight. South Sudan’s upcoming independence and new crises coming out of the Arab Spring pulled the world’s attention away. UNAMID peacekeepers continued to struggle to provide security to all of Darfur’s persecuted African tribal groups; however, the mere presence of the peacekeeping force kept much of the large-scale fighting and attacks on communities at bay in areas that had a UNAMID presence.

*Photo: Rapid Support Forces paramilitaries dismount from their vehicle in Khartoum. (Umit Bektas/Adobe)*

In 2013, the regime rebranded the Janjaweed as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and began outfitting the force with better equipment. Over the next few years, the RSF grew in size and strength, both by direct support from the regime and by using stolen land to mine gold, herd livestock, and more.

A grim warning of the RSF’s growing strength came in 2014, when the group launched a devastating assault on the rebel stronghold ofJebel Marra in central Darfur. While the brazen offensive failed to dislodge the rebels, the RSF forcibly displaced nearly 500,000 people in less than a month. The RSF’s new arsenal was on full display as well. Horses had been traded for modified SUVs with mounted machine guns. AK47s were supplemented with artillery, rocket-propelled grenades, and anti-aircraft guns.

Most concerning though was the increased international presence in the rank and file of the RSF. Survivors of RSF attacks noted that some of the paramilitaries were not Sudanese, but had come from neighboring Chad and Central African Republic. Islamist fighters from as far away as Mali had also entered the RSF’s ranks.

Over the next several years as the RSF grew in size, the paramilitary force spread to other hot spots in Sudan and beyond. RSF troops have committed mass war crimes in the southern Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile regions and have also popped up in major cities across Sudan. RSF units have also been implicated in illegal activity and war crimes in eastern Chad, the Central African Republic, and Yemen. The primary driver of on-the-ground violence in Darfur was now touching more and more aspects of daily life across Sudan.

Darfur Today (2019- Present)

In 2019, a civilian revolution swept across Sudan, leading to dictator Omar al-Bashir being overthrown by his own generals in April of that year. Following a horrific massacre by the RSF of peaceful protesters in Khartoum in June, renewed protests surged across Sudan and forced the regime to the negotiating table. A transitional government that was supposed to move the country toward free elections, democracy, and protection of basic human rights was implemented.

The transitional government was overthrown by surviving regime forces in October 2021. Leading the coup were the Sudanese army and RSF, two uneasy allies whose generals never saw eye-to-eye. Commanders in both organizations desired to see themselves as Sudan’s new ruling junta, with other armed regime groups beneath them.

From the time of the coup to early 2023, conditions in Sudan deteriorated on almost fronts. Inflation surged, peaceful protests resumed, humanitarian needs spread, and the web of oppression that transitional civilian leaders had been lifting was reinforced.

The RSF used this time to double down on becoming a self-sustaining force in Sudan, with Darfur as their stronghold. RSF generals fully secured their own weapons supply lines, launched international diplomatic efforts, entrenched themselves further in Darfur’s gold-mining sector, and began recruiting more fighters, both within Sudan and from other countries across the Sahel region. These actions almost always came at the expense of ordinary Sudanese, especially ethnically African Darfuris- who faced increasing attacks by RSF soldiers and dwindling economic opportunities.

Photo: A “Darfur Women Talking Peace” event at Al Salam displaced persons camp in El Fasher, North Darfur. Locally-led efforts like these to solve ongoing issues in Darfur continue to be blunted by RSF brutality. (*Mohamad Almahady, UNAMID*)

It also deteriorated the RSF’s tenuous relationship with the more dominant army, to the point of collapse. With long-promised progress on deeply-rooted fractures in Darfur elusive, evidence began to emerge as early as 2021 that Darfur was hurtling toward a new crisis.

The new war came on April 15, 2023. The RSF launched multiple attacks on army bases across Darfur and other regions of Sudan and attempted to seize government buildings in Khartoum. The lightening strike failed to knock the army out of power, with army units across the country putting up stiff resistance and bombing civilian areas RSF units attacked from. Both sides have engaged in large-scale war crimes, with the RSF using the fog of war to double down on their genocide of ethnic African minorities in Darfur.

While virtually every corner of Darfur has been negatively impacted by RSF violence, West Darfur especially has faced the brunt of the paramilitary force’s racism and brutality. Widespread genocidal massacres of the Masalit people group by the RSF and their local Arab allies abound. Tribal leaders and survivors of a two month-long massacre of the Masalit people in the city of El Geneina reported in June 2023 that over 10,000 of their people were killed in the city. Satellite imagery has confirmed entire neighborhoods and villages in West Darfur have been burned to the ground.

By the end of October 2023, most of Darfur had fallen under the control of the RSF. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of lives are in immediate danger. The crimes that began in Darfur over two decades ago are now being visited on much of Sudan, and the RSF is destroying the very government that created it.

The RSF and Darfur genocide highlight the interlinked issues of violence and silence across the country. The wars and attempted genocides in the Nuba Mountains, which the RSF has also participated in, highlight the structural issues of violence perpetuated by the regime. Due to the isolated location of both Darfur and the Nuba Mountains, violence and humanitarian blockades against ethnic minorities continue, and a lack of sustained media attention has kept the crises in Sudan from receiving the international attention they deserve.

The army-RSF war continues today and Darfur’s ethnic minorities are under siege. For more up to date information on the situation in Darfur and across Sudan, please visit our blog and sign up for our email list.

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Mark Hackett 1/10/24 Mark Hackett 1/10/24

Yida Refugee Camp

The historical overview of a critical Sudanese refugee camp stretches back to the year 2011.

Introduction

Yida Refugee Camp in northern South Sudan came into existence in 2011, when the second war and attempted genocide in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan began. We encourage you to read our historical background piece on the Nuba Mountains before continuing here.

A chronological examination of Yida can be broken out into three main periods:

Pre-Existence To Founding : 2010-2011
Camp Growth & Humanitarian Challenges: 2011-2014
International Tension, Stability, & Population Decline: 2015-2019

Since Operation Broken Silence’s primary Sudanese partners work in the Nuba Mountains and Yida Refugee Camp, a summary of the current situation is provided at the end as well.

*Map: Location of Yida Refugee Camp. (Operation Broken Silence*)

*Photo: A girl who survived an aerial bombing in the Nuba Mountains. Her mother brought them to Yida Refugee Camp in 2015. (Operation Broken Silence*)

Pre-Existence To Founding: 1992-2011

The history of Yida Refugee Camp in northern South Sudan is intricately connected to the Nuba Mountains just across the border in Sudan. Yida sits roughly 17 miles away from the international border dividing the two countries. This demarcation is illustrative of the historical religious and ethnic grievances the Nuba Mountains and South Sudan have suffered underneath national military regimes in Khartoum.

The locality was depopulated of its native African tribal populations in the 1990s during the Second Sudanese Civil War. The Nuba Mountains of Sudan north of the area now known as Yida are inhabited by roughly 100 African tribes who have been referred to collectively as Nuba for centuries. Estimations vary wildly; however, it is generally thought that roughly 45% of the Nuba people are Christian, making the mountains home to the largest community of Christians in Sudan. Other religious affiliations include 45% of the population identifying as Muslim, with the remaining 10% following local tribal regions or identifying with no religion at all.

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the Bashir regime of Sudan attempted to Islamize and Arabize the Nuba Mountains through war and genocide. This caused high levels of death and destruction on Nuba communities but ultimately strengthened the Nuba identity and armed resistance to the Bashir regime. The situation in the Nuba Mountains stabilized from 2003-2009 as the peace agreement that ended the Second Sudanese Civil War came into effect.

Some people resettled the area now known as Yida after the war ended in 2005, but it remained only sparsely inhabited by South Sudanese throughout the 2000s. By 2010, the area’s largest community was a small Dinka farming village of roughly 400 people. During the rainy season, the landscape transforms from being visually semi-arid into a lush, green wetland.

As southern Sudan prepared for an independence referendum in 2010, several soon-to-be international border areas between Sudan and southern Sudan witnessed rising tensions. The area that would become Yida Refugee Camp remained relatively quiet as it was shielded to north by the Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement-North (SPLM-N) in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan and southern Sudan’s own military.

That began to change in 2011. From January-May, the Bashir regime of Sudan escalated militia attacks on isolated frontline communities in the Nuba Mountains. With southern Sudan on the verge becoming an independent country, it was clear that a new war was coming to the Nuba Mountains.

The return to war came early on the morning of June 6, 2011. Regime forces invaded the state capital of Kadugli and began massacring Nuba civilians. Survivors witnessed army soldiers and regime intelligence agents dragging Nuba people from their homes and executing them in the streets. Additional agents hunted through the city for Nuba leaders and intellectuals to kill, a step of the 10 Stages of Genocide.

Over a three-day period, the Bashir regime oversaw the systematic mass killing of thousands of Nuba civilians in Kadugli and began a widespread aerial bombing campaign on communities across the Nuba Mountains. Large numbers of Sudanese army forces and regime paramilitaries began to advance on the outskirts of the Nuba Mountains. Heavy fighting broke out across the frontlines. Nuba civilians fled for the safety of mountains or toward the South Sudan border.

Most of the initial refugees who arrived in Yida were survivors of the Kadugli massacre. They brought with them firsthand accounts of the killings. Along the way they had no sustainable food sources or clean water. The small farming village welcomed the new arrivals, offering food and land for them to farm. Yida Refugee Camp was born.

Rapid Camp Growth & Humanitarian/Security Challenges: 2011-2014

The ebb and flow of Nuba refugees into Yida since the outbreak of the war has matched the severity of armed conflict in the Nuba Mountains. During particularly intense stretches of regime aerial bombings and ground offenses, the population of Yida Refugee Camp has swelled. The first three years of the war witnessed major assaults on frontline communities and widespread aerial bombing against schools, markets, and places of worship. Yida Refugee Camp grew rapidly as a result, even with the critical road from the Nuba Mountains to Yida in South Sudan under constant threat by regime forces.

Over 30,000 refugees fled into Yida during the first year of the war. The regime responded by sending a warplane across the border to bomb the fledgling refugee camp in November 2011. This war crime caused considerable international outcry, making the regime decide not to launch such a brazen cross border attack again.

By July 2012, local aid workers were reporting over 600 new arrivals a day and growing humanitarian needs. Children were showing up malnourished and parents reported having to scavenge for leaves, roots, and tree sap to eat to sustain their journey to Yida. The World Food Program quickly scaled an emergency food distribution program to 21,000 people, but struggled to keep up with the growing population.

Three months later in October, Yida had more than doubled in size to roughly 65,000 people, with over 1,000 new arrivals flowing in on peak days. Driving the influx were Sudanese government warplanes, which had increased the frequency of bombing runs and begun using cluster munitions on Nuba villages.

As humanitarian conditions worsened in the camp, crime and basic security began to deteriorate as well. With no signs of a ceasefire or peace agreement on the horizon and humanitarian support lacking, community leaders in Yida Refugee Camp and local South Sudanese government officials began to push for more structure and services to address basic needs. A South Sudanese police force entered the camp and arrangements were made for refugees to begin farming the areas around Yida. An on again-off again effort to collect and remove small arms from the camp also picked up pace.

By January 2013, Yida’s population had swelled to over 70,000 people and little progress had been made on the camp’s humanitarian and security challenges. Relationships with nearby South Sudanese Dinka villages had also deteriorated. Local South Sudanese accused the Nuba refugees of harvesting their resources –including fish, wood, honey, and tall grass— to turn a profit at the growing market in Yida Refugee Camp. The Nuba refugees reported being robbed by members of nearby villages and being forced to pay taxes without any sort of documentation provided.

These tensions exploded into violence in March 2013. South Sudanese police and a Nuba militia —primarily made up of members from the Angolo tribe in Nuba— opened fire on each other. Armed Dinka militias entered parts of Yida and began looting homes and shops with police participation. More than 7,000 Nuba refugees fled north to the town of Jau, which sits on the Sudan-South Sudan border. The violence was finally quelled when a heavily-armed South Sudanese army force entered the camp to restore order.

The violence forced refugee leaders, local South Sudanese officials, and humanitarian organizations to focus on permanently improving conditions in the camp, even as the United Nations moved forward with opening additional camps in less secure areas. Throughout 2014 and over the next few years, more clean water wells would be dug, shelter supplies and food provided, schools opened, and limited medical services launched. A major effort to reduce the proliferation of weapons in the camp took on a more concrete form as well, leading to a reduction of Nuba militias and soldiers and more lightly armed South Sudanese police units.

In January 2014, regime forces launched a major offensive to capture the critical route connecting the Nuba Mountains to Yida Refugee Camp. After briefly losing control of a handful of key towns, the Nuba SPLM-N managed to defeat the attack and drive regime forces out of the area, permanently securing the road for refugees and trade flows in the area.

*Photo: A Nuba woman waits for water to boil at her boon and tea shop in Yida’s market. (Operation Broken Silence*)

Cultural Sustainment, International Tension, & Population Decline: 2015-2019

By 2015, Yida Refugee Camp had grown to be the largest Nuba community despite being outside of the mountains and in another country. The camp’s sheer size and improving humanitarian and security conditions made it a cultural and trading hub of the Nuba people.

The camp’s residential landscape was increasingly dotted with boon shops —a traditional Nuba coffee infused with ginger, cardamom and cinnamon— tea stalls, churches, schools, and community gathering and laundry sites. Community leaders created a process to handle local disputes peacefully. Nuba wrestling matches —a famous, historic sport in the mountains— brought in crowds to watch. Barbed wire that had been put up to help secure the camp’s perimeter was taken down and repurposed as clotheslines.

Yida’s expanding market and improved farming access also allowed for refugees to improve their own humanitarian conditions, as well as become a trading hub between the Nuba Mountains and South Sudan and nearby local communities. The camp was beginning to look more like a permanent city and economic engine in the region. Nuba teachers at most schools in the camp were underpaid and not well-resourced, but more and more children —one of the largest demographics in Yida— had access to a classroom, sometimes for the first time ever.

Challenges in Yida persisted despite improving conditions. In 2016, three churches were burned to the ground. International groups focused on Christian persecution reported that agents sent by the Sudanese government were responsible, but one of the church’s pastors informed Operation Broken Silence that they had no evidence of that being the reason. The congregations chose to forgive the perpetrators and rebuild.

Most notably, the relationship between the refugee community and United Nations (UN) became a source of growing anxiety in 2016. The UN had long referred to Yida as a “temporary” settlement and as the agency opened other less secure camps in South Sudan had begun calling Yida a “transit” area.

The reasoning provided for the UN’s growing discomfort with Yida has left much to be desired. Over the years, UN workers have claimed that the camp is too close to the border, plagued by armed actors, and that overpopulation was occurring. Nuba refugee leaders have asked for evidence of the latter two and partnership time and time again and received less and less in response.

*Photo: Torched logs from one of the churches burned down in Yida. The rebuilt church sits in the background. (Operation Broken Silence*)

The solutions offered by the UN fell even further short than the arguments. Efforts to replace Yida with other camps over the years have seen mostly negative results. A new UN camp called Nyeli flooded so frequently it had to be closed. While Yida is less than the 50-kilometers minimum distance from the border set by UN guidelines, the new UN camp Ajuong Thok did not meet the UN’s distance guidelines either. To make matters worse, the camp is near a section of the border that has historically been controlled by Sudanese regime forces, and residents felt it wasn’t safe to leave the camp after being threatened by local communities. Ajuong Thok was also nearing capacity by mid-2016 when the UN intensified efforts to close Yida, and another camp at Pamir wasn’t even built before the UN tried to move Nuba refugees there.

Many Yida residents thus refused to leave for new UN camps, even as the UN slowly reduced humanitarian operations from 2016 onward. However, Yida’s population began to decline in 2017 after the first ceasefire in the Nuba Mountains was signed. With the end of regime aerial bombing and major ground offensives, as well as slowly deteriorating humanitarian conditions in Yida, families began returning to their villages in the Nuba Mountains to rebuild.

*Photo: A mother checks on her baby while cooking outdoors in Yida. (Operation Broken Silence*)

Yida Refugee Camp Today (2019-Present)

In 2019, a civilian revolution swept across Sudan, leading to dictator Omar al-Bashir being overthrown by his own generals in April of that year. Following a horrific massacre of peaceful protesters in Khartoum in June, renewed protests surged across Sudan and forced the regime to the negotiating table. A transitional government that was supposed to move the country toward free elections, democracy, and protection of basic human rights was implemented.

The transitional government was overthrown by surviving regime forces in October 2021. Leading the coup were the Sudanese army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), two uneasy allies whose generals never saw eye-to-eye. Military leaders in both organizations desired to see themselves as Sudan’s new ruling junta, with other armed regime groups beneath them.

The RSF used this time to double down on becoming a self-sustaining force in Sudan. RSF generals fully secured their own weapons supply lines, launched international diplomatic efforts, entrenched themselves further in Sudan’s gold-mining sector, and began recruiting more fighters, both within Sudan and from other countries across the Sahel region. These actions almost always came at the expense of ordinary Sudanese, who faced increasing attacks by RSF soldiers and dwindling economic opportunities.

*Photo: A Nuba woman walks home from a clean water well in Yida. The well she used has since fallen into disrepair and closed. (Operation Broken Silence*)

It also deteriorated the RSF’s tenuous relationship with the more dominant army, to the point of collapse. With a long-promised peace agreement elusive and coming fracturing of the regime all but sure, Nuba leaders had begun preparing for a new war shortly after the October 2021 coup. Meanwhile, in Yida Refugee Camp, clean water sites had begun falling into disrepair and schools struggled to gain access to basic supplies.

The new war came on April 15, 2023. The RSF launched multiple attacks on army bases across Sudan and attempted to seize government buildings in Khartoum. The lightening strike failed to knock the army out of power, with army units across the country putting up stiff resistance and bombing civilian areas RSF units attacked from. Both sides have engaged in large-scale war crimes, with the RSF using the fog of war to double down on their genocide of ethnic African minorities in Darfur.

At first, the Nuba Mountains were seen as a safe haven, with roughly 200,000 people from Khartoum and other areas fleeing into Nuba SPLM-N controlled areas and even into Yida Refugee Camp.

Fighting reached the western Nuba Mountains in June 2023. Small skirmishes between the army and SPLM-N devolved into major fighting around Kadugli and spread north to Dilling. The RSF entered the fray as well, attacking army forces from the west and north. While some Nuba communities near the frontlines have been forced to evacuate and prices of basic goods have soared, life goes on as usual in much of the rest of the Nuba Mountains and Yida Refugee Camp. There has been no widespread aerial bombings of villages as in previous wars, but the situation remains tense. It is believed that if the RSF makes serious gains in the region, more frontline communities will be at-risk, which would likely lead to new refugees entering Yida once more.

The army-RSF war continues today, as does fighting on the western frontlines of the Nuba Mountains. For more up to date information on the situation in the Nuba Mountains, Yida Refugee Camp, and across Sudan, please visit our blog and sign up for our email list.

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Mark Hackett 1/9/24 Mark Hackett 1/9/24

The Nuba Mountains

The history of the geographic region known as the Nuba Mountains stretches back thousands of years. This overview focuses on the time period after Sudan’s independence in 1956.

Introduction

While the history of the Nuba Mountains stretches back thousands of years, this overview focuses on the time period after Sudan’s independence in 1956. A chronological examination of the Nuba region in the contemporary era can be broken out into six main periods:

Pre-Modern & Colonial Background: 200 BCE-1956 CE
Cultural Oppression: 1956-1972
The Beginnings of the Second Sudanese Civil War: 1973-1988
Nuba Face A Genocide By Attrition: 1992-2004
Peace Agreement & South Sudan Partition: 2005-2010
Second War & Genocide: 2011-2019

Since Operation Broken Silence’s primary Sudanese partners work in the Nuba Mountains, a summary of the current situation is provided at the end as well.

*Map: Location of Nuba Mountains. (Operation Broken Silence*)

Pre-Modern & Colonial Background: 200 BCE-1956 CE

The Nuba Mountains have an ancient history, with the first known mention of the African tribes living here and other nearby areas dating to around 200 BCE by Greek scholars Eratosthenes and Strabo.

Although this geographic area has been inhabited for millennia, little direct documentation of life here is known to have been recorded before the 1900s. This undocumented history may have roots in just how isolated the region has always been; even today, the Nuba Mountains remains one of the most isolated and marginalized regions of Sudan.

This isolation does not remove the historical causes of trouble in the region. Sitting directly on the religious, ethnic, and political border of present-day Sudan and South Sudan, this demarcation highlights the roots of historical grievances and, more recently, north-south civil wars and two attempted genocides against the Nuba people by national military regimes in Khartoum.

*Photo: One of the first photographs taken of the Nuba people in eastern Kao-Nyaro in 1949. (George Rodger*)

The Nuba Mountains are inhabited by roughly 100 African tribes who have been referred to collectively as Nuba for centuries. These tribes are likely remnants of previous, larger tribal groups of varying languages and cultures who Eratosthenes and Strabo briefly referred to. Interestingly, until contemporary times, people living in the Nuba Mountains used their tribal name and didn’t really consider themselves to be Nuba. Famous Nuba leader Yousif Kuwa Mekki (1945-2001) mentioned this in the last interview he gave before his passing:

“It is one of the funniest things: when you were in the Nuba Mountains, you just knew your own tribe. We for example were Miri. So if we were asked: ‘Who are the Nuba?’ we would try to say: ‘The other tribes - but not us.’ Only when we came out of the Nuba Mountains, to the north or south or west, we learned that we are all Nuba.”

*Photo: An artistic rendering of British colonial troops fighting in Sudan, circa 1898. (Canva Pro)*

Today, virtually all of the people living here identify with their tribe and also collectively identify as Nuba. Estimations vary wildly; however, it is generally thought that roughly 45% of the Nuba people are Christian, making the mountains home to the largest community of Christians in Sudan. Other religious affiliations include 45% of the population identifying as Muslim, with the remaining 10% following local tribal regions or identifying with no religion at all.

For centuries, the Nuba Mountains have been considered a refuge for members of African tribal groups fleeing Arab slave raiders and oppression from the north. This historical reality helped cement core aspects of Nuba identity and culture that survive to this day, including tolerance, community, and an openness to the oppressed and general suspicion of non-African outsiders.

In 1899, the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium administrated Sudan as a colony. The joint British and Egyptian colonial government invested heavily in the Arab-dominated central and eastern parts of the country. Like much of the rest of Sudan, the Nuba Mountains were marginalized and ignored. British colonial troops tried to keep separate nearby Arab tribes who were hostile toward the Nuba. At various points though, the British found themselves at odds with all sides in the region.

Cultural Oppression & Rights Removals: 1956-1972

Following Sudan's independence from British and Egyptian colonial rule on January 1, 1956, the Nuba people began to witness growing tension with Arab-dominated governments in Khartoum. The violent ideologies of Arabization and Islamization gained stronger traction in Sudan’s powerful center. Government policies leading up to the 1970s saw the Nuba people become directly oppressed by Islamic Arab elites in Khartoum. Although successive governments pushed for an Arab-dominated country, relations between many African Nuba tribes and nearby, tolerant Arab tribes actually improved during this time period.

Photo: Jazira lives in the eastern Kao-Nyaro region of the Nuba Mountains, which has been targeted for Islamization and Arabization by the Sudanese government for decades. She is nominally Muslim and can speak Arabic, but mostly uses her tribal language. Government-funded childhood education is largely non-existent in Kao-Nyaro which, interestingly, has helped Nuba tribes in Kao-Nyaro maintain their identity. (*Operation Broken Silence*)

The First Sudanese Civil War began in 1955. The war itself had little direct impact on the Nuba Mountains; however, as Sudanese politics in Khartoum drifted toward extremism during the war, the Nuba people began to face increasing oppression that set the stage for two devastating wars and genocides in their homeland.

While the severity of the Sudanese government’s oppression varied at the local level, there are two primary areas that played critical roles: pressure on traditional Nuba culture and land seizures. Many of these pressures on Nuba culture at this time include actions which fit into the 10 Stages of Genocide, a processual model that aims to demonstrate how the crime of genocide is committed.

Government Attempts To Erase Nuba Culture

Khartoum’s oppression of traditional Nuba culture included attempts to force name-changes (from local names to Arab ones) and replace tribal languages with Arabic. Elements of the Sudanese government and Islamic political allies in Khartoum pushed an intolerant strain of Islam onto the Nuba people.

These colonizing efforts achieved mixed results. Arabic was largely adopted as a communication language, but virtually all Nuba tribal languages remain in use. A sizable number of the Nuba people consider themselves Muslim, but Nuba Muslims and Christians live largely in harmony to this today.

Government & Arab Tribal-Backed Land Seizures

The Nuba Mountains and surrounding areas are home to some of the most fertile farmland in Sudan. The national government introduced mechanized farming in 1968, which degrading security in the region further. Some Arab tribes near the Nuba Mountains who aligned more closely with Khartoum soon found their traditional grazing and watering routes blocked by large-farms built with the support of the government.

With nowhere to go, Arab tribes such as the Baggara began to use Nuba farmland —without permission— that they traditionally stayed away from. This heightened tensions between the Nuba people, Khartoum, and some Arab tribes at odds with the Nuba.

In 1970, the Sudanese government introduced the Unregistered Land Act. This law effectively abolished communal land ownership and was an attempt to destroy the centuries-long tradition of Nuba tribes considering the farming areas around the Nuba Mountains as belonging to their communities. It stipulated that all lands not privately owned and registered would automatically belong to the government in Khartoum.

Results

By the 1970s, it was clear to Nuba leaders that a systematic campaign to Arabize and Islamize their homeland was underway. Nuba tribes began to put aside the few differences they had and move toward deeper unity. Nuba political parties and social groups emerged that attempted to solve regional issues through the lens of a broader Nuba identity.

The 1972 Addis Ababa Peace Agreement ended Sudan's civil war in the south. The agreement granted significant regional autonomy to southern Sudan. It also promised the Abyei area, located to the west of the Nuba Mountains, the right to hold a referendum on remaining a part of northern Sudan or joining the newly formed southern region. Little changed in the Nuba Mountains though. In the coming years, Khartoum’s oppression only intensified as Sudanese politics was pushed into extremism.

Photo: Displaced Nuba children and women follow well-worn paths deeper into the Nuba Mountains after receiving news of regime-backed, Arab paramilitary forces nearing their farmland. Mountain paths such as these have now existed for decades and are well-known to Nuba communities. (*Operation Broken Silence*)

*Photo: Sudanese political leader Jaafar Nimeiry* *in 1983. In his second presidential tenure, Nimeiry caved to Islamists in hopes of staying in power, paving the way to the Second Sudanese Civil War and the 1985 coup that removed him from power. (US Defense Department*)

The Beginnings of the Second Sudanese Civil War: 1973-1988

In 1978, large quantities of oil were discovered in the southern Sudan. Hungry for cash and power, Sudanese government leaders swiftly attempted to seize control of these areas. This violated the 1972 Addis Ababa Peace Agreement. Meanwhile, in Khartoum, Arab-Islamic extremists were on the verge of seizing control of the central government.

By 1983, extremist political power had grown so much in the north that President Nimeiry, desperate to hold onto power, declared all of Sudan an Islamic state and made the fateful decision to terminate southern autonomy. Southern and Nuba leaders had watched with growing apprehension for years as the fundamentalists consolidated power in Khartoum. Now it was clear that the violent ideology building in the north would soon be unleashed against the Nuba Mountains and all of southern Sudan.

The Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) began forming in the south almost immediately. Southern soldiers mutinied across Sudanese government ranks and returned to southern Sudan to prepare for the inevitable northern invasion. SPLA forces seized large swaths of rural areas in southern Sudan.

The speed of the southern rebellion caught the Sudanese government off guard, so much so that President Nimeiry ended sharia law in the south in 1984. This did little to comfort Nuba leaders, who had been preparing for a defensive war as early as 1977. Sporadic clashes with armed Arab tribes such as the Baggara accelerated on the outskirts of the Nuba Mountains as extremism grew in Khartoum throughout the 1980s.

In response to the growing military threat from Khartoum, Nuba leaders deepened their ties with SPLA generals in the south. Small groups of Nuba leaders moved south to train with the SPLA. They returned to the Nuba Mountains with small arms and other military supplies. Tensions were on the rise in nearby Blue Nile as well, where the government of Sudan had begun arming Arab militias directly.

A coup unseated Nimeiry in 1985 and led to open fighting in southern Sudan between government forces and SPLA troops. The Second Sudanese Civil War had begun and would greatly eclipse the preceding war.

In 1986, the Sudanese army began deploying around the Nuba Mountains and arming a growing number of Arab militias. Nuba leaders responded by sending thousands of recruits to southern Sudan to train with the SPLA and return with weaponry. In 1987, a southern SPLA battalion deployed into the Nuba Mountains to strengthen Nuba defenses.

Protests swept across Sudan in 1988 as the war strained the economy. Under pressure from the economic-related protests, the government attempted to secure peace with the SPLA. A fragile agreement was finally reached; however, it was too little too late. The extremists in Khartoum were about to put their twisted vision for Sudan in motion.

Map: Facing a common a threat from Khartoum, Nuba recruits moved to southern Sudan throughout the 1980s to train with the SPLA and bring weapons and southern reinforcements back to the Nuba Mountains. (*Operation Broken Silence*)

Omar al-Bashir Seizes Power

Between 1989-1991, the Bashir regime consolidated control over the government by banning trade unions, political parties, and other non-religious institutions. Over 70,000 members of the army, police, and civil administration were purged. This highlights yet another step in the 10 Stages of Genocide.

By 1990, the Bashir regime had surrounded the Nuba Mountains with the army and Arab Islamist paramilitaries, which had been built up quietly since the junta seized power. The most notorious of these paramilitary groups was the Popular Defense Forces (PDF). The emergence of the PDF was a disturbing sign of the nature of the coming war. PDF soldiers behaved less like the armed Arab herders the Nuba people were used to seeing on their borders and more like members of a jihadist terror organization.

Skirmishes intensified in the coming months as Nuba SPLA fighters set up perimeter and fallback defenses around the Nuba Mountains. Outskirt Nuba communities were quietly evacuated for the safety of mountain caves and villages.

In 1991, the Bashir regime re-instituted sharia law for all of Sudan. Alarm bells sounded across the Nuba Mountains and southern Sudan: time to prepare for the coming war was running out.

The Nuba Face A Genocide By Attrition: 1992-2004

The war came in the summer of 1992. The Bashir regime launched a massive military offensive that swept around the Nuba Mountains and pushed deep into southern Sudan. The SPLA was driven into Sudan’s southern borderlands, far away from their Nuba allies. Tens of thousands of Arab Islamist paramilitaries were unleashed on the south Sudanese civilian population to massacre, pillage, and occupy.

Photo: A common scene in the Nuba Mountains since the early 1990s is displaced children sitting outside mountain caves. For some, a cave has been their home after their land was threatened by regime forces. For others, caves are natural bomb shelters and even a classroom. (*Operation Broken Silence*)

The plight of southern Sudan captured the world's attention, but the Nuba Mountains was completely cut off from the outside world. In the coming years, the Bashir regime systematically attempted to exterminate the Nuba people and their rich culture in what is now described as a genocide by attrition.

It is estimated that in 1992 alone, the Bashir regime mass murdered over 70,000 of the Nuba people. The regime’s Popular Defense Forces (PDF) seized surrounding farmland from unarmed Nuba civilians. The PDF offensive was only halted when they encountered Nuba fighters, who had entrenched themselves in perimeter foothill communities.

By 1993, hundreds of thousands of Nuba civilians had fled into mountains caves and villages. Those who did not escape were forced into what the Bashir regime dubbed "peace camps,” yet there was nothing peaceful about them. Nuba civilians were enslaved, tortured, raped, and starved by regime soldiers and paramilitaries. Survivors have since compared their experiences in the camps to the death and concentration camps of Nazi Germany.

Repeated attempts by southern SPLA forces to break through regime lines and open a relief corridor to their allies in the Nuba Mountains failed. The Nuba people were on their own.

Despite being outgunned and outnumbered, Nuba fighters blocked regime forces from entering the Nuba Mountains. Horrific battles lasted day and night for weeks on end. Eyewitness accounts report that combat between Nuba fighters and regime forces in some frontline areas was so intense that bullet casings were piled knee high.

By 1994, the situation in the Nuba Mountains had reached a truly desperate state. As Nuba fighters fought off multiple ground offensives, the Bashir regime began aerial bombing places where Nuba civilians were hiding. Survivors reported that conventional and chemical weapons were dropped on communities. The Sudanese military and their PDF allies also violently enforced a humanitarian and media blockade on the area.

Entire Nuba communities were facing living conditions that went well beyond emergency humanitarian thresholds; thousands were starving to death. Preventable disease outbreaks had become more deadly than daily aerial bombings. The PDF prevented civilians from farming by repelling Nuba attempts to retake critical farming areas. These early years of the regime’s genocide against the Nuba people represent one of the darkest chapters of Sudanese history.

Despite these bleak realities, there were glimmers of hope that this was not the way Sudan had to be. Nuba leaders quietly reached out to the nearby, moderate Arab tribes that they had built good relationships with for decades, who pledged that they would not bow to the Bashir regime’s pressure to join the war against the Nuba people.

Several dozen Arab tribesmen were so horrified by the genocide that they became smugglers for the Nuba people. In the coming years, they risked their lives and secretly slipped through regime lines to deliver food, medicine, and other basic goods to their Nuba neighbors.

*Photo: Systematically cut off from basic, lifesaving supplies the genocide by attrition decimated communities in the Nuba Mountains, leaving communities struggling for food. (Operation Broken Silence*)

The Silence Around The Nuba Genocide Begins To Break: 1995

With every regime effort to overrun the Nuba Mountains ending in a stalemate, the Bashir regime doubled down on the genocide by attrition strategy. Smuggling attempts of resources and supplies to the Nuba people were increasingly blocked. Aerial bombings of civilian areas were drastically expanded. What little farmland the Nuba people held onto was targeted to prevent agricultural activity.

Despite the near iron-fisted blockade on the Nuba Mountains, rumors of an armed conflict there had slowly slipped out of Sudan. As early as 1992, a small number of international organizations attempted to determine what was happening to the Nuba people. Yet, those efforts largely led to more rumors and no concrete information.

In 1995, British journalist Julie Flint slipped into the Nuba Mountains and returned with a harrowing documentary film. The film did not move world leaders to action, but it did spur a growing number of private organizations to search for ways to assist the Nuba people. In the coming years, various international NGOs smuggled relief into the Nuba Mountains by dangerous, low-profile ground transports and small aircraft. Flint's film also provided the first real counterargument to the Bashir regime’s denials.

These aid efforts were relatively small and had a minimal impact on the larger crisis the Nuba people faced. Several areas remained inaccessible for the entire conflict. Parts of the Nuba Mountains that were reached with humanitarian supplies managed to slightly improve their situation though.

By 1996, the Nuba people were fighting another war: one of cultural survival. Nuba political leaders rallied their people to make personal sacrifices for the betterment of the community. Fathers and mothers led classrooms from caves, even though there were no textbooks or chalkboards. Tribal elders orally passed down their traditions, stories, and history. Community organizers kept Nuba traditions alive by setting up famed wrestling matches. Nuba children helped their parents nurture small gardens wherever arable land could be found.

Humanitarian conditions remained abysmal, but these efforts to strengthen the Nuba identity and retain their distinct culture in the midst of the genocide were successful. Even today, many of the older generation who were part of these efforts call it “a miracle.”

The Bashir regime’s genocide against the Nuba people began faltering in 1998. Exhausted regime forces were now fighting a highly motivated, battle-hardened army of Nuba soldiers who knew the mountainous terrain by heart. Most of the civilian population was sheltered in mountain caves and knew the warning signs of impending bombings and Arab smugglers had once again found ways around the humanitarian blockade.

In 1999, regional pressure on the Bashir regime to end the broader war in southern Sudan began to have an impact in the Nuba Mountains region as well. The United Nations gained limited access to some regime-held areas around the Nuba Mountains in June; however, violence and intimidation by regime forces minimized the international presence.

Meanwhile, half a world away in Washington DC, a bipartisan group of American officials had come to view the Bashir regime as a harbinger of international terrorism that was committing genocide in southern Sudan. As the world entered a new millennium, American and international diplomatic activity concerning the crisis in Sudan ramped up.

In November 2001, over a decade after the Nuba Mountains was cut off from the outside world, the United Nations began to airlift emergency humanitarian relief directly into the Nuba Mountains. In October 2002, the United States government passed the Sudan Peace Act, comprehensive legislation that dramatically increased American support to the southern Sudanese and Nuba cause. Underneath the Bush administration, the US government began providing direct humanitarian relief and confronting the Bashir regime on the international stage. The Sudan Peace Act finally declared that regime crimes amounted to genocide.

On top of growing battlefield losses in southern Sudan and a never-ending stalemate in the Nuba Mountains, the Bashir regime found itself isolated on the international stage. Crushing American sanctions and diplomatic activity had turned Bashir and other regime leaders into global pariahs. The genocide had become too costly to continue. Fighting decreased in 2002-2004 and, seizing on the moment, American diplomats mobilized international partners and began brokering a peace agreement that aimed to address the majority of the issues between the north and south. Meanwhile in the western Darfur region of Sudan, an uprising against regime oppression had led to the beginning of another brutal genocide.

On January 9, 2005, the Bashir regime and the SPLA signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). The CPA secured a referendum vote on southern independence after an interim period of autonomy and provided solutions for a variety of other issues as well. A small UN peacekeeping and ceasefire monitoring force was deployed to the Nuba Mountains in June 2005. The war and genocide against the Nuba people had finally come to an end.

Peace Agreement & South Sudan Partition: 2005-2010

While the CPA dealt with a large number of issues that had plagued Sudan since 1956, undoubtedly the largest problem with the agreement is that it did not include a solution for the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile regions. Unlike southern Sudan, these two areas were not given the option to have more autonomy, declare independence, or join what was about to become the world’s newest country: South Sudan.

This was a devastating decision in the peace process. The Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile were essentially sacrificed to reach a deal that would permanently end the regime’s war in southern Sudan. Negotiators stated that the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile would be able to express what they wanted through “popular consultation votes;” however, in practice, this process was ill-defined and meaningless, creating no mechanism for either region to secure permanent peace.

Only a few short years after the CPA was signed, it was clear that peace would not last in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile. Under the agreement, the SPLA was supposed to withdraw from the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile. Regime forces were supposed to reduce their number to pre-war levels to reduce tensions. Neither side cooperated fully in this area.

As early as 2008, tensions were once again on the rise as Arab paramilitaries began attacking Nuba communities. Talk of armed resistance spread throughout the Nuba Mountains as it became clear the Bashir regime was once again arming the militias. Nuba leaders began stockpiling weapons, fuel, and food in preparation for another war.

*Map: Despite siding with southern Sudan during the war, the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile were left on the north side of the border. (Operation Broken Silence*)

The Second War & Attempted Genocide: 2011-2019

In January 2011 and in accordance with the CPA, a referendum vote was held in southern Sudan to determine whether the region would become an independent country or remain a part of Sudan. 99% of the southern Sudanese population voted for independence.

Meanwhile, in the Nuba Mountains, regime militia attacks on isolated Nuba communities increased throughout 2010 and 2011. Nuba leaders tacked a "N" onto SPLA for "North" and transitioned their self-defense forces into a more permanent, standing army. The Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement-North (SPLM-N) began to import and stockpile large amounts of weapons in expectation of another war and genocide.

In May 2011, the Bashir regime rigged a gubernatorial election in South Kordofan, where the Nuba Mountains are located. Ahmed Haroun, an indicted war criminal and member of Bashir's inner circle, became governor instead of Abdel Aziz al-Hilu, the widely popular Nuba candidate.

*Photo: Nuba soldiers on patrol during the rainy season near an area that would soon become the border of Sudan and South Sudan. The Nuba Mountains sit just north of the South Sudan border today. (Operation Broken Silence*)

On May 23, 2011, the Bashir regime sent an ultimatum to the south Sudanese SPLA. It stated that all Nuba soldiers must withdraw south of the 1956 North-South border before June 1, 2011. The SPLA responded that the Nuba soldiers were not southern Sudanese, so they had no authority to withdraw them from the Nuba Mountains. The Bashir regime responded by deploying large numbers of army and paramilitary forces around the Nuba Mountains. Regime attacks on outlying Nuba communities began to rapidly escalated.

The return to war came early on the morning of June 6, 2011. Regime forces invaded the state capital of Kadugli and began massacring Nuba civilians. Survivors witnessed army soldiers and regime intelligence agents dragging Nuba people from their homes and executing them in the streets. Additional agents hunted through the city for Nuba leaders and intellectuals to kill.

Over a three-day period, the Bashir regime oversaw the systematic mass killing of thousands of Nuba civilians in Kadugli. Survivors who could not escape the city began fleeing to the perimeter of the UN peacekeeping base in Kadugli seeking safe haven.

A small team of UN military observers who attempted to exit the base and document survivor reports of mass killings were arrested by regime army forces, stripped naked, and submitted to a mock execution by laughing soldiers. They were sent back to their base after being warned they would be killed if they ever returned.

Meanwhile, outside the UN base in Kadugli, roughly 9,000 terrified survivors of the massacre were begging the UN to protect them. The force’s lightly armed peacekeepers and unarmed military observers expanded the protective perimeter of the camp, placing a majority of the survivors under international protection, despite the UN having neither the manpower nor firepower to be a significant deterrent to regime forces.

On June 5, regime intelligence agents and Popular Defense Forces (PDF) militiamen began breaching the protective perimeter and dragging away men, women, and children for execution. Outnumbered and outgunned UN peacekeepers stood by as Nuba civilians were abducted. Survivors witnessed regime agents examining kill lists that named Nuba individuals to be executed, yet another step of the 10 Stages of Genocide. Several of these people were shot and killed within eyesight of UN forces and the Nuba people under their protection.

Hawa Mando, a teacher and mother who was seeking refuge inside the protective perimeter on June 5, said “They had lists of people they were looking for. Local spies would point people out and they would shoot them. In front of my eyes I saw six people shot dead. They just dragged the bodies away by their feet like slaughtered sheep. People were crying and screaming and the UN soldiers just stood and watched in their watchtowers.”

By mid-June, Kadugli was under the complete control of regime forces. Local army commanders approached the UN base and ordered survivors to return home or go to a local soccer field, where they would be allowed to leave Kadugli from there. Several large trucks were brought in and began shuttling thousands of people away from the UN base. Most were never heard from again.

Photo: Nuba civilians protest on the outskirts of a UN monitoring base in the Nuba Mountains on June 27, 2011, begging the force commander and international community to intervene. The UN would instead shutter their peacekeeping and observation force. (*Operation Broken Silence*)

Within days of the massacre in Kadugli, the regime had launched a widespread aerial bombing campaign on communities across the Nuba Mountains. Large numbers of Sudanese army forces and allied PDF paramilitaries began to advance on the outskirts of the Nuba Mountains. Tens of thousands of Nuba civilians fled for the safety of mountains caves as thousands of Nuba soldiers marched to the frontlines.

Several weeks later, satellite imagery combined with eyewitness testimony was released confirming the existence of multiple mass grave sites around Kadugli. It is believed that these mass graves are where the thousands of people who sought protection at the UN base in Kadugli were buried. Global outcry was brief, but world leaders quickly turned away. Once again, the Nuba people were on their own.

By the end of June, less than a month after the war began, it had became clear that the Bashir regime had severely underestimated the new strength of the SPLM-N. Nuba resistance now took the form of a much larger and more cohesive fighting force than the previous war. Nuba units were better armed and trained, more mobile, and supported by artillery fire. A rapid Nuba counter-offensive against the Sudanese army and PDF led to regime forces losing 55 of the 60 frontline positions that were attacked.

Seizing on these early gains, tens of thousands of Nuba soldiers pushed out of their mountain strongholds and took control of critical farmland they had not been able to hold during the previous war. Key Sudanese army units around Kadugli were pinned down and the SPLM-N seized control of border crossings with South Sudan, allowing Nuba refugees to flee into refugee camps and for humanitarian aid to flow into the mountains, although few humanitarian organizations expressed an interest in doing so. Specialized Nuba units launched hit and run strikes on regime supply lines.

*Photo: The Satellite Sentinel Project confirmed and documented mass grave sites around Kadugli. (DigitalGlobe/Maxar*)

Already high Nuba civilian support for the SPLM-N soared to unprecedented levels. As survivors of the Kadugli massacre began testifying to what they witnessed to communities across the mountains, the Nuba people came to accept the grim reality that the Bashir regime was determined to erase their communities and culture from existence. Similar to the previous war and genocide, volunteers surged into the ranks of the SPLM-N. Women were allowed to fight for the first time. Teachers and tribal elders doubled down on their sharing of Nuba history and culture in their communities.

Asked to speak to the state of the war at the end of 2011, Nuba leader Abdel Aziz al Hilu said “This is the not Sudan army I know—and we are not the SPLA we were. In 1987, we attacked a 10-man police post with a 100-man company and fought all day to defeat them; on July 1 this year, we routed two SAF (army) brigades in 35 minutes.” Advancing Nuba SPLM-N forces began capturing heavy weapons from retreating regime forces. Tanks, vehicles, artillery, and anti-aircraft weapons were incorporated into the SPLM-N's growing arsenal and turned back against regime troops.

The Bashir regime’s ground war floundered. In response to growing battlefield losses, the regime leaned hard into the genocide by attrition strategy that had been so effective in the previous war and subsequent genocide. Aerial bombings of civilian areas accelerated and a humanitarian blockade order was issued.

Throughout 2012 and in the coming years, food shortages became common in the Nuba Mountains and access to basic medical care was limited to a single hospital. The bombing campaign suppressed trade, farming, and schooling, generating a new humanitarian crisis. However, conditions were not nearly as dire as they were in the 1990s, with some localized exceptions.

By 2016, it was clear that the Bashir regime’s second attempted genocide of the Nuba people was a failure.

Khartoum’s plans for a new military offensive went off the rails when SPLM-N leaders caught wind of the attack early. Nuba soldiers ambushed regime supply lines and used hit-and-run tactics to curb the military buildup. This preemptive Nuba strike largely worked: regime forces repeatedly delayed their offensive for months, and their final attack was far weaker than expected.

Against the backdrop of the regime’s war against the Nuba Mountains, Sudan’s economy was growing increasingly unstable. Small protests had begun breaking out in major cities over rising costs of basic commodities, and the war being lost in the Nuba Mountains was draining government resources. Begrudgingly, Bashir and his generals began looking for a way to reduce the scale of the conflict while not losing any additional territory around the Nuba Mountains.

The first ceasefire was announced in 2016 and successive ceasefires largely held until 2023. There was little large-scale fighting in this time; however, regime paramilitary groups such as the new Rapid Support Forces, which were born out of the Janjaweed militias in Darfur, and Popular Defense Forces sporadically attacked frontline communities.

*Photo: A home smolders in the Nuba Mountains after being bombed by a regime warplane.* *Although much safer from ground attacks than the previous war, aerial bombings terrorized Nuba communities from 2011-2016. (Operation Broken Silence*)

*Photo: A Nuba mother and her daughter doing laundry in Yida Refugee Camp, the primary camp for Nuba refugees who still cannot go home. (Operation Broken Silence*)

The Nuba Mountains Today (2019-Present)

*Photo: SPLM-N soldiers in the Nuba Mountains stronghold of Kauda in January 2020. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty*)

The new war came on April 15, 2023. The RSF launched multiple attacks on army bases across Sudan and attempted to seize government buildings in Khartoum. The lightening strike failed to knock the army out of power, with army units across the country putting up stiff resistance and bombing civilian areas RSF units attacked from. Both sides have engaged in large-scale war crimes, with the RSF using the fog of war to double down on their genocide of ethnic African minorities in Darfur.

At first, the Nuba Mountains were seen as a safe haven, with roughly 200,000 people from Khartoum and other areas fleeing into Nuba SPLM-N controlled areas.

Fighting reached the western Nuba Mountains in June 2023. Small skirmishes between the army and SPLM-N devolved into major fighting around Kadugli and spread north to Dilling. The RSF entered the fray as well, attacking army forces from the west and north. While some Nuba communities near the frontlines have been forced to evacuate and prices of basic goods have soared, life goes on as usual in much of the rest of the Nuba Mountains. There has been no widespread aerial bombings of villages as in previous wars, but the situation remains tense. It is believed that if the RSF makes serious gains in the region, more frontline communities will be at-risk.

The army-RSF war continues today, as does fighting on the western frontlines of the Nuba Mountains. For more up to date information on the situation in the Nuba Mountains and across Sudan, please visit our blog and sign up for our email list.

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Mark Hackett 1/8/24 Mark Hackett 1/8/24

Sudan’s Independence to Partition With South Sudan

The history of the geographic region now known as Sudan and South Sudan stretches back thousands of years. This overview focuses on the time period after Sudan’s independence in 1956.

Photo: Children of South Sudan practice their dance routine for the performance at the football match between South Sudan and Kenya during the independence celebrations of South Sudan on July 9, 2011. (*UN Photo/Paul Banks*)

*Map: Sudan and South today. (Operation Broken Silence*)

Introduction

While the history of the geographic region now known as Sudan and South Sudan stretches back thousands of years, this overview focuses on the time period after Sudan’s independence in 1956.

A chronological examination of Sudan’s contemporary era can be broken out into four main periods:

Sudan’s Independence: 1956
First Sudanese Civil War: 1955-1972
Second Sudanese Civil War: 1983-2005
Peace Agreement & South Sudan Partition: 2006-2011

Since Operation Broken Silence’s mission is focused on issues in Sudan, this historical overview ends with South Sudan’s independence in 2011.

Sudan’s Independence: 1956

On January 1, 1956, Sudan gained independence from the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, the joint British and Egyptian colonial government that administrated the region. The new country came with a rich diversity of over 600 ethnic groups speaking more than 400 languages in an area roughly one-third the size of the United States.

The region could broadly be broken into two areas: the geographic north, which was home to roughly 65% of the population and is predominately Muslim, with various ethnicities falling into the larger categories of African and Arab. The geographic south is now largely the country of South Sudan, where many individuals consider themselves Christian or animist, with their various ethnicities falling primarily under the broader category of African. While there are evident demographic differences between these two areas, the colonial government only perpetuated division further by governing the north and south separately, with most investment going to Arab-dominated regions of the north.

Sudan’s founding constitution failed to address two crucial issues. First, it was not decided if Sudan should be a secular or Islamist state. Second, the country’s system of national governance failed to include the majority of Sudanese and protect the rights of large minorities. This has been a core driver of conflict in Sudan ever since. As the years went by and national governance became dominated by elite Arab tribal groups in Khartoum, the central government failed to fulfill its promises to create a federal system that was more inclusive.

*Map: Towns where South Sudanese troops mutinied against Khartoum. (Operation Broken Silence*)

First Sudanese Civil War: 1955-1972

The consolidation of the two regions following independence caused fear across southern Sudan that centralizing political power in the north would soon rule over them.

In 1955, an unorganized mutiny by southern army officers began. Sudan would never be the same again. The resulting war progressed into three stages over a roughly 17-year period.

Stage 1: Unorganized Guerrilla Warfare (1955-early 1960s)

Southern Sudanese army troops mutinied in the garrison towns of Torit, Yei, Juba, and Maridi. While revolts were quickly suppressed, many survivors fled into the countryside to begin an uncoordinated, poorly armed insurgency.

The newly formed Sudanese government and the outgoing British saw these groups and their insurgency as a mere annoyance. Regardless, the Sudanese government began rebuilding its armed forces in the south.

Stage 2: Anyanya Movement Forms (early 1960s-1971)

As guerrilla leaders consolidated control over rural areas, they began to coordinate more closely together. The Anyanya emerged as a secessionist movement composed of the mutineers from 1955 and southern students.

Despite their differences and internal conflict, armed Anyanya units began expanding their control over much of rural southern Sudan. Noticing this, the central government responded by reinforcing garrison towns in the south.

*Photo: President Jaafar Nimeiry, in office from May 25, 1969 – April 6, 1985. (US Defense Department*)

The Sudanese government faced just as many internal divisions as the southern Anyanya. Successive coup attempts hampered the central government during this time. Popular protests kept Khartoum’s security forces tied up in major cities, which allowed the ever-growing southern rebellion to spread further. Marxist and non-Marxist elements in the upper military and political class jockeyed for power, further exacerbating internal crisis. A short-lived coup in 1871 against Sudanese leader Nimeiry Jaafar ended when he jumped from a window while incarcerated and his supporters rescued him.

Stage 3: South Sudan Liberation Movement (SSLM) Emerges (1971)

By 1969, the Anyanya Movement posed a formidable military threat to the Sudanese government in the north. Despite its own internal divisions, Anyanya fighters now had large swaths of the rural south under control.

After several internal coups and leadership changes in 1971, various Anyanya factions united under a single command structure and vision as the South Sudan Liberation Movement (SSLM).

Southern secession from Sudan and the formation of an independent state was the goal of the SSLM. Increasingly organized and with fewer divisions, SSLM forces fought the northern government’s bloody counter-insurgency campaign to a stalemate.

The war ended with the signing of the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement between the SSLM and the northern government, granteing significant regional autonomy to southern Sudan. It also promised the Abyei area —located on the north-south geographic, ethnic, and religious fault line— the right to hold a referendum on remaining a part of northern Sudan or joining the semi-autonomous southern region.

Aftermath

It is estimated that the First Sudanese Civil War claimed roughly 500,000 lives, with only 20% being war-related civilian deaths or armed combatants. The Sudanese government’s violent counter-insurgency campaign left many southern Sudanese traumatized and deeply mistrustful of northern governments in Khartoum. Hundreds of thousands of southern Sudanese returned to reclaim their land; however, full reconciliation between the north and south never occurred. The seeds for the next war were planted at the end of the first, and the coming conflict would be one of the most destructive in human history.

Second Sudanese Civil War: 1983-2005

While the war and genocide in southern Sudan had racial and religious origins with roots in oppressive marginalization, the primary reason for this conflict was the system of exploitative and extremist governance in Khartoum that began to emerge in the 1970s. The Second Sudanese Civil War progressed in four stages over a 22-year period.

Stage 1: Rise of Islamic Extremism and Sudan People's Liberation Army (1983-1989)

Large quantities of oil were discovered in the south in 1978. Hungry for cash and power, Sudanese government leaders in the north violated the 1972 Addis Ababa Peace Agreement by attempting to seize control of these areas. Meanwhile, a much more terrifying force was gaining power in the shadows in Khartoum: Arab Islamic extremists.

By 1983, Arab Islamic political power had grown so much in the north that Sudanese President Nimeiry —desperate to hold onto power— declared all of Sudan an Islamic state. Under crushing pressure from the Islamists, he made the fateful decision to terminate southern autonomy. Southern leaders had been watching with great apprehension for years as the extremists consolidated power in Khartoum. Now it was clear that the violent ideology building in the north would soon be unleashed against their homeland in the southern Sudan.

The Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), the successor armed rebel movement to the SSLM, began forming almost immediately. Southern soldiers mutinied across Sudanese government ranks and returned to the south to prepare for the inevitable invasion. SPLA forces seized large swaths of rural areas in southern Sudan. The speed at which the southern rebellion grew caught the Sudanese government off guard, so much so that in 1984 President Nimeiry announced the end of sharia (religious Islamic law) in the south. However, this move did little to comfort southern leaders.

A short-lived coup unseated Nimeiry in 1985 and led to open fighting in southern Sudan between government forces and SPLA troops. Protests swept across Sudan in 1988 as the war strained the economy. Under pressure from across Sudan, the northern government attempted to secure peace with the southern SPLA. A fragile agreement was finally reached; however, it proved to be too little too late. The Arab Islamists were nearly prepared to put their twisted vision for Sudan in motion.

Stage 2: Bashir Regime Seizes & Consolidates Power (1989-1991)

Between 1989-1991, Bashir’s military regime consolidated control over the government by banning trade unions, political parties, and other non-religious institutions. Over 70,000 members of the army, police, and civil administration were purged.

In 1991, the Bashir regime instituted sharia law across all of Sudan. Alarm bells sounded across southern Sudan: the time to prepare for war was running out.

Stage 3: War & Genocide Consumes southern Sudan (1992-2001)

The full-blown war came in the summer of 1992. A massive Sudanese government offensive into southern Sudan drove the SPLA out of their rural strongholds and into the borderlands. Unarmed communities were bombed with conventional and chemical weapons. Tens of thousands of Arab Islamist militias —which the Bashir regime had built up quietly since seizing power— were unleashed on the southern population to murder, pillage, and occupy.

The rapid invasion of southern Sudan nearly crushed the SPLA and divided the rebel army into two factions that would only split further. For the next few years, SPLA factions fought each other as well as a manipulative Bashir regime, who attempted to pit SPLA groups against each other with promises of power, wealth, and ceasefires.

Southern Sudanese began fleeing into the few remaining areas underneath SPLA control. Endless streams of refugees arrived at the Ugandan and Ethiopian borders, bringing with them horrifying stories of widespread massacres and rape. Regional distrust of the Bashir regime skyrocketed. Fearful that the war would soon spill across their own borders, Uganda and Ethiopia began providing the SPLA with direct military assistance and training.

Meanwhile, the SPLA began sending arms and small units throughout southern Sudan, even as far north as the Nuba Mountains region, where war had broken out as well. Sudanese government forces soon found themselves fighting a near-invisible enemy. The guerrilla warfare strategy adapted by the SPLA began to strangle regime supply lines. Government forces regularly carried out reprisal massacres against southern Sudanese following hit and run battles with the SPLA.

Successive famines from a regime-enforced humanitarian blockade rocked southern Sudan and caused the death toll to accelerate. As horrific images poured out of southern Sudan, international efforts to end the conflict and cripple the Bashir regime increased. Half a world away in Washington D.C., a bipartisan, furious group of American leaders viewed the Bashir regime as a harbinger of international terrorism that was committing genocide in southern Sudan.

Stage 4: International Intervention (2002-2005)

By the late 1990s, the tide of the war was shifting. With arms and training from Uganda and Ethiopia, the SPLA had once again taken control of larger swaths of rural southern Sudan. Regime supply lines between government garrison towns were being strangled by the SPLA. The Bashir regime responded with more scorched-earth tactics and increased bombings on civilian areas.

In October 2002, the US government passed the Sudan Peace Act, comprehensive legislation that dramatically increased American support to the southern Sudanese cause. Underneath the Bush administration, the US government began providing direct humanitarian relief and confronting the Bashir regime on the international stage. The legislation declared that Sudanese government crimes in southern Sudan amounted to genocide.

On top of growing battlefield losses, the Bashir regime found itself fully isolated on the international stage. Crushing American sanctions and diplomatic activity had turned Bashir and other regime leaders into global pariahs. The regime’s genocide in the south had become too costly to continue.

Fighting began to recede in 2003 and 2004. Seizing on the moment, American diplomats mobilized international partners and began brokering a peace agreement that aimed to address the majority of the issues between northern and southern Sudan.

Meanwhile in the western Darfur region of Sudan, an uprising against regime oppression was beginning to be met with another brutal genocide at the hands of the Sudanese government.

Peace Agreement & South Sudan Partition

On January 9, 2005, the Bashir regime and the SPLA signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). The CPA secured a referendum vote on southern independence after an interim period of autonomy and provided a wide-array of potential solutions for a slew of other issues.

The implementation of the CPA deteriorated leading up to southern Sudan's vote for independence. The vote went ahead despite concerns of a renewed conflict and intense pressure from the international community on the Bashir regime.

After decades of war, the people of southern Sudan voted 99% in favor of independence. On July 9, 2011, mass celebrations swept across South Sudan as it became the world's newest country.

Noticeably left out of the CPA though were any paths forward for the Nuba Mountains, Blue Nile, and Abyei three areas that straddled the north-south fault line. Abyei remains a flashpoint between Sudan and South Sudan today. The Bashir regime launched new genocidal wars in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile during South Sudan’s independence, and successive military junta’s in Khartoum have refused to seek peace in these two areas ever since.

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Mark Hackett 1/4/24 Mark Hackett 1/4/24

Movement Spotlight: Emily Selby Smith

How one graduate student helped to expand our suite of educational resources on Sudan.

Operation Broken Silence is a small nonprofit with a big mission of empowering Sudanese heroes in some of the most oppressed parts of their country. We’re only able to do this with the help of our movement, which includes donors, fundraisers, volunteers, and partnerships found around the world.

We want to share about a recent partnership that benefits you and everyone else in our movement, and beyond! Meet Emily Selby Smith, a graduate student in the Anthropology Department at the University of Memphis:

“Currently, I am a master's student in UofM’s Applied Anthropology program. I was drawn to the department and UofM because they are deeply engaged with helping the community.
My research interests are in genocide education and recovery, so working with community organizations collaboratively is very important to me. One thing that drew me to genocide education and recovery is the need to discuss what is happening, often it can be so difficult to speak about it but with more education efforts I believe that things can change!”

Sudan is not well-known to many people, and that’s not their fault. The country is rarely in the news for sustained periods of time and makes even fewer appearances in high school and college textbooks. Learning about the diversity of people living there and their challenges is not as easy as it should be.

Emily has partnered closely with our team since May 2023 to help us begin changing that. She worked across the organization to overhaul and expand our educational materials so they can be more useful to teachers, students, and people who want to learn more:

“After some preliminary searching of what is out there, I began to interview supporters, educators, and people within the organization to understand how they used the Educators and Learners pages, what they would like to see, and what steps could be taken in the future. I then continuously worked to write, rewrite, and edit while paying attention to the images and videos we could use.
One thing that stood out to me during my research was the lack of resources on women’s experiences in Sudan. Often it can be both difficult to address and underreported, but many interviewees shared that they hoped to be able to teach about it and have the language and resources to do so. By creating a resource page specifically for women’s experience I believe that it brings together this very difficult topic to address in ways that can spark hope and change.”

As the crisis in Sudan continues to escape the world’s attention, resources like these are critical to closing knowledge gaps with veteran and new supporters alike, as well as help to bring in new faces who want to learn more and get involved. Emily says:

“Often violence does not start out of the blue, and the violence in the Nuba Mountains and Sudan highlight that. The new resources are able to inform teachers and students about the multiple and complex issues of Sudan while also presenting information about international genocide prevention and protection. By presenting both sides, I believe it shows not only what is happening but how international processes work and might bring about change in the future!”

Our desire is that partnerships with Operation Broken Silence benefit and encourage everyone involved. For Emily, that meant deepening her educational drive and benefiting others along the way:

“After speaking with teachers and supporters about how they use these resources it gave me a larger drive to continue genocide education. But also, being able to make changes based on what everyone wanted to see to benefit all in the future was such a fulfilling experience. Changing and adding resources only helps the OBS and the people of Nuba for more visibility and advocacy.”

Go To Educators & Learners

Thank you to Emily and our friends in the Anthropology Department at the University of Memphis for helping us with this critical project. Improving our educational resources was not something we could have accomplished on our own, and we are always encouraged when we get to partner with the university.

Join Our Mission In 2024

The current crisis unfolding in Sudan is now the most dangerous and destructive humanitarian catastrophe in the world. Entire communities are being destroyed by extreme violence and hunger. Our Sudanese partners are struggling as the war spreads and program costs skyrocket.

In 2024, we’re searching for 100 supporters who can give $50/month to their life-saving work. ⚡️Your first three monthly gifts will be matched by a private donor.⚡️

The Renewal is our passionate family of monthly givers supporting Sudanese heroes. When we match their grit with a monthly financial commitment, we become an unstoppable force for good.

91 more monthly givers are needed.

You’ll receive updates from our partners roughly every 4 months and an annual giving statement at the beginning of each year.

Operation Broken Silence is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Your donations are tax-deductible within the guidelines of U.S. law.

Other Ways To Help

Online Donations - You can make a one-time gift above by selecting One time.

Checks - Make payable to Operation Broken Silence and mailed to PO Box 770900 Memphis, TN 38177-0900.

Stocks & Mutual Funds - Use this giving form to donate stock. To give from a mutual fund, download our Investment Fund Transfer Form and follow the instructions. Please note that all stock and mutual fund donations are nonrefundable.

Cryptocurrency - Use this giving form to donate crypto. Please note that all crypto donations are nonrefundable.

Fundraise - Start a fundraising page and ask friends and family to give! These last few days of the year are the perfect time to fundraise.

Mark Hackett 12/22/23 Mark Hackett 12/22/23

Nuba Education Update - December 2023

Get the latest news from the Nuba teachers and students you support in Yida Refugee Camp!

In 2015, Operation Broken Silence began funding four Sudanese teachers in Yida Refugee Camp. They were giving lessons underneath a tree with a broken chalkboard. They had no textbooks, paper, pencils…nothing.

With your support, their small but brave effort has blossomed into the Endure Primary and Renewal Secondary Schools. 24 Nuba teachers and a headmaster work here every day. They run the show, not us, and serve 1,157 students in their classrooms every week. Endure Primary is the top performing elementary school in the region and a treasured possession of the Nuba community. Renewal Secondary is the only fully-functioning high school in Yida. More than 10,000 children have been served by the school to date.

Operation Broken Silence is the only organization in the world supporting childhood education in Yida Refugee Camp. Beyond these schools, we support Yida’s only other secondary school, a national exam preparation program for all primary students in Yida, and deliver a limited amount of classroom supplies to the eight other schools in the camp.

Nasrah’s Story

Nasrah was born in the Nuba Mountains. Her family arrived in Yida almost 9 years ago after the Sudanese government attacked their village. She barely remembers her home, saying:

“We did not have clean water or a school near to us at home. When the Antonov (regime plane) came and dropped bombs on us we ran and my mother brought us here to Yida.”

Humanitarian conditions in Yida were rapidly improving when they arrived. Nasrah’s mom was surprised to find clean water easily accessible and multiple schools for Nasrah and her brother.

“My mother still talks about how strange it is that life is usually easier here than it was for us at home. I know she wants to go back to our land, but she does not feel secure now that there is another war.”

Like most families in Yida, they hope to return one day to their homes in the Nuba Mountains. Until then Nasrah is enrolled at the Renewal Secondary School, which is funded entirely by people just like you. Her teachers and friends provide a sense of hope in this time of great upheaval in Sudan. She says:

“Yida is home because my people and family are here. My mother and her friends talk about how much Sudan needs new leaders who care about us. At school my teachers tell us we are the future leaders and that we can end the wars one day. I have learned to read and write from them and have good grades, but having teachers and people on the other side of the world who believe in me is what I will always carry with me from this place. Thank you for joining my people’s struggles. I don’t know what would have happened to us without our teachers and all of you who hear my voice.”

GIVE $35/MONTH

Recent Updates

Schools In Yida. It’s been a bittersweet year as refugee families once again begin trickling into Yida. Children displaced by the new war in Sudan have been warmly welcomed at the schools, but the reality of the world’s most dangerous armed conflict and worst humanitarian catastrophe weighs heavy on the hearts of everyone.

Thankfully, the teachers you support are uniquely positioned to help. Attendance at Endure Primary has climbed from almost 500 students daily before the war up to 720. Daily attendance has surged nearly 70% to 437 students at Renewal Secondary. Families continue trickling into Yida and are seeking to enroll their children at both schools. The teachers have informed us they still have some breathing room; but, if education needs keep climbing as we expect, both schools will likely be at maximum capacity by Summer 2024.

*Photo: Renewal Secondary students* *celebrate* *their school achieving* *first place in national exams. (Operation Broken Silence*)

Another round of national exams were conducted in August. Endure Primary and Renewal Secondary remained the top-performing schools in the region just as they have the past several years. And a record 43 out of the 45 students who took the Grade 8 national exam passed and are now enrolling at Renewal Secondary! A perfect score is 400 points and the five top-performing students were Yesmin Khamis Hassan (368.2), Makabula Peter Abdu (354.3), Amin Luke Nadir (353.4), Emmanuel Abdu Abdurahaman (352.5), and Sabri Andraws Junub (350). Congratulations!

Earlier this year, repairs and infrastructure upgrades were completed in most classrooms at both schools. This included more weatherproofing, new roofs and over 4,500 new bricks for replacement walls. Additional materials and backup tarps are also in storage for future repairs. This was made possible with some extra giving from our donors and is already paying dividends. With costs of most supplies skyrocketing from the war, these completed upgrades have kept classrooms in good shape at a time when extra financial support for this type of critical work is difficult to come by.

*Photo: Children playing in Yida Refugee Camp at the end of a school day. (Operation Broken Silence*)

Broader Education Support In Yida. Endure Primary School continues serving as the central national exam preparation facility for primary students in Yida. The camp’s eight other primary schools receive support and resources annually from our teachers for student test prep. This ancillary program positively impacted 1,458 additional students this year!

Vision Secondary, the only other high school in Yida, remains afloat with help from our teachers. The school was founded several years ago with pledges of support from outside nonprofits and churches, none of which materialized. This is one chapter in a long history of unfulfilled promises to the Nuba people that our education partner is having to mitigate. The teachers at Vision are all untrained, so a handful of the teachers at Renewal Secondary have stepped in to help teach science and provide guidance and crash course training.

Our Nuba education partner continues delivering a limited amount of basic supplies to Yida’s other primary schools, most of which operate with little to no outside support. Chalk, paper, pencils and notebooks remain the most requested items. These deliveries are critical to sustaining Yida’s already fragile education system, but are becoming more difficult to pull off due to rising prices brought on by the war.

We’re working with these incredible teachers to carry the mission forward, but we need your help.

How You Can Help

2023 has been a difficult and remarkable year in Sudan. Difficult in that the regime’s civil war has inflicted unprecedented death and destruction on the Sudanese people. Remarkable in that we’ve seen more bravery, love and grit in our Sudanese partners than ever before.

Funding for the schools remains an uphill battle due to rising costs from the war. The teachers are also receiving fewer donations due to internationally-minded donors moving their focus to the wars in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine, despite the humanitarian crisis in Sudan being the worst in the world. The result is that our Nuba education partner is running on roughly 60% of the funding they need to provide a more holistic education experience for Sudan’s next generation of leaders.

The good news is that you can help them overcome these challenges. Your generosity will help our teachers and students make progress against the odds:

$2,200: Fund an entire classroom at Endure Primary for one semester.

$1,000: Support one teacher for an entire semester.

$750: Deliver three new chalkboards to classrooms.

$500: Give additional materials and extra pay to teachers who are working with students to prepare them for national exams.

$250: Provide for maintenance needs in classrooms.

$100: Give pencils, notebooks and other supplies to 16 students in Yida Refugee Camp.

$50: Give soccer balls and other sporting equipment to students.

Operation Broken Silence is a registered 501(c)(3) organization. Your donations are tax-deductible within the guidelines of U.S. law.

Other Ways To Give

Checks - Personal checks and grants from DAFs can be make payable to Operation Broken Silence and mailed to PO Box 770900 Memphis, TN 38177-0900.

Stocks and Mutual Funds - Use this giving form to donate stock. To give from a mutual fund, download our Investment Fund Transfer Form and follow the instructions. Please note that all stock and mutual fund donations are nonrefundable.

Cryptocurrency - Use this giving form to donate crypto. Please note that all crypto donations are nonrefundable.

Fundraise - Start a fundraising page and ask friends and family to give! These last few days of the year are the perfect time to fundraise.

Give Monthly - The Renewal is our passionate family of monthly givers supporting Sudanese heroes. Sign up here.

News & Updates

Darfur

Introduction

Pre-Modern & Colonial Background: 1200 BCE-1956 CE

Instability & Rising Tensions: 1956-1988

Rise of the Bashir Regime & Intercommunal Violence: 1989-2000

The Darfur Genocide (Part 1): 2001-2008

The Darfur Genocide (Part 2): 2009-2019

Darfur Today (2019- Present)

From Learning To Action

Yida Refugee Camp

Introduction

Pre-Existence To Founding: 1992-2011

Rapid Camp Growth & Humanitarian/Security Challenges: 2011-2014

Cultural Sustainment, International Tension, & Population Decline: 2015-2019

Yida Refugee Camp Today (2019-Present)

From Learning To Action

The Nuba Mountains

Introduction

Pre-Modern & Colonial Background: 200 BCE-1956 CE

Cultural Oppression & Rights Removals: 1956-1972

The Beginnings of the Second Sudanese Civil War: 1973-1988

The Nuba Face A Genocide By Attrition: 1992-2004

Peace Agreement & South Sudan Partition: 2005-2010

The Second War & Attempted Genocide: 2011-2019

The Nuba Mountains Today (2019-Present)

From Learning To Action

Sudan’s Independence to Partition With South Sudan

Introduction

Sudan’s Independence: 1956

First Sudanese Civil War: 1955-1972

Second Sudanese Civil War: 1983-2005

Peace Agreement & South Sudan Partition

From Learning To Action

Movement Spotlight: Emily Selby Smith

Join Our Mission In 2024

Other Ways To Help

Nuba Education Update - December 2023

Nasrah’s Story

Recent Updates

How You Can Help

Other Ways To Give

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