WORKING DOCUMENT II:
QUANTIFYING GENOCIDE IN SOUTHERN SUDAN AND THE NUBA MOUNTAINS 1983-1998

by Millard Burr, Ph.D.
December 1998

This report was written by Millard Burr, a retired U.S. government official and a consultant to the U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR). It is based on his experience as director of logistics operations for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in Sudan from January 1989 to March 1990, and subsequent investigations. [...]

This new report is an effort to update and expand that first study. [It] expands the scope of research to include the Nuba Mountain area of central Sudan, for which virtually no information existed at the time of the first study. [...]

AUTHOR'S PREFACE
[...] In this new Working Document II, published nearly five years after the first, and which includes specific data on the Nuba Mountains, research suggests that no fewer than 600,000 people have lost their lives since 1993. Thus, more than 1.9 million southern Sudanese and Nuba Mountains peoples have perished since the inception of the cataclysmic civil war that began in 1983.

From 1983 to the present, the civil war has juxtaposed a succession of Khartoum governments dominated by riverine Arabs against a rebel force dominated by ethnic Nilotes and African tribes from southern Sudan and South Kordofan. For more than 15 years, warfare, drought, famine, and attendant diseases-all accompanied by government indifference to human suffering-have caused widespread death and destruction. [...]

Unlike the period 1983-1993, during which foreigners and the media were able to observe a series of catastrophic events that caused the death of tens of thousands, in recent years, the Khartoum government has impeded the collection of field data. It has been relatively successful in sealing off much of Sudan from the prying eyes of journalists, aid agencies, and social scientists. Thus, the single most important cataclysmic event of recent date-the Nuba Mountains massacre-has transpired outside the field of vision of observers.

The first USCR working document barely covered the conflict in the Nuba Mountain region. Since 1993, a number of eyewitness reports have underscored that the Khartoum government military activity and social policy directed against the Nuba peoples of South Kordofan have been nothing short of genocidal. Thus, this document reflects an attempt to obtain as much information as possible on the effect of government activity in the Nuba Mountain region since the June 30, 1989 revolutionaries took power in Khartoum.

Eventually, this working document should include a study of the Beja and their allies in eastern Sudan and the Fur and Messalit of western Sudan. Like the Nuba, the Arab-dominated Khartoum government has applied a political and economic straightjacket, and authorized military attacks, on these "untrustworthy" ethnic minorities found on the Sudan's periphery.

Note on tables: This table and others in the text employ the following symbols: > = Greater than [...]; i/d = insufficient data. [...] Through this and other tables, the author has consistently employed conservative estimates of the number of deaths. The regional and yearly subtotals take into account these conservative estimates, and represent what the author believes to be the minimum number of deaths within each region or each year.

(J.M. Burr, September 1993).13

B. War Related Deaths of Southern Sudanese 1994 - 1998

A. Bombing the Civilian Population

Estimated Deaths: Direct: x1,000 Indirect: x10,000
[...] Villages allied with the SPLA or located in the path of government attacks became special targets; conventional bombs were dropped, as were rockets, vicious cluster bombs, and even anti-personnel land mines, whose deadliness survived well after the bombing event itself.(1) [...]

The author's search for bombing data found that from 1994-1998, nearly 100 towns and villages in southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains were bombed by Sudan Air Force planes. Though hardly exhaustive, a search by month uncovered nearly 300 different air strikes. [...]

The widespread use of aircraft to attack civilian targets indicated that Khartoum had declared war not just on John Garang and his SPLA, but on its own people. It seemed the NSRCC was ready to commit any war crime in order to crush the southern rebellion. [...]

Air attacks increased literally within minutes of the unsuccessful conclusion in December 1989 of the Nairobi peace talks chaired by former United States President Jimmy Carter. [...] Invariably, the Antonov bombers operated at heights beyond the range of ground-to-air missiles that the military was convinced the SPLA had in abundance. The air raids had little or no military significance other than to terrorize the helpless civilian population. [...]

The sporadic bombing that continued through early 1991 increased exponentially after the Ethiopian government of Mengistu Haile Miriam began its collapse. [...]

Even the normally circumspect UN-OLS information officer condemned the NSRCC for its relentless and indiscriminate policy of bombing civilian population centers with "old Soviet-made cargo planes flying at 12,000 feet or higher over rebel-held areas," that dropped "500-pound bombs out of the back cargo hatch."(12)

In early 1993, the re-armed Sudan army was everywhere on the attack in the South. [...] From Juba southward, SPLA towns and villages were bombed. In August 1993, the Sudan army initiated the protracted bombing of civilian population centers in western Equatoria. [...] Despite numerous international appeals to halt the indiscriminate bombing, the Khartoum government denied it had ordered such air attacks. [...]

In a November 1993 response to the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly, the Khartoum government complained bitterly that an interim report submitted by Special Rapporteur Gaspar Biro was factually incorrect. Specifically, Biro had written

"Many reports have been received concerning indiscriminate and deliberate aerial bombardments by government forces on civilian targets, e.g. camps for displaced persons."

The government of Sudan responded:

"Deliberate, yes, but they are not indiscriminate. The aerial bombardments took place, but against military targets where heavy weaponry is used by the rebels against the civilian population."

It then added:

"For the record, we would like to state that there are no displaced camps in the SPLA-controlled areas. All displaced camps are situated in the northern part of the Sudan [sic] for those fleeing the combat zones."

In June 1994, 23 celebrated Sudanese-representatives of opposition political, social and religious organizations [...] condemned "the NIF Regime" for "committing the most flagrant violations of human rights in the history of Sudan." Of particular concern was "the indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets in southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains, including refugee camps," which had resulted in the "uprooting of populations" and the "mass exodus of hundreds of thousands."(21)

And still the bombings continued. A horrible attack on Yambio in November 1995 left numerous dead and wounded [...] A few months later, a report submitted to the UN Commission on Human Rights noted 37 incidents of aerial bombing "in areas inhabited by civilian populations."(23)

By 1996, it was evident that the Sudan Air Force was dropping "cluster bombs" on villages in the SPLA-controlled areas. The cluster bombs sprayed delayed-action bomblets and anti-personnel minelets in and around villages. They killed and maimed humans and severely aggravated civilian suffering long after the raid itself. They also destroyed cattle and halted cultivation.

Nuba Mountains
Balol 04/92. Buram villages 02/97. Debri 02/97. Heiban villages 02/97. Jebel Tulishi 04/92. Namang mountains, 09/95. Moro Hills villages 06*/95. Regife villages 06*, 07*/95. Tabanya 12/94. Turoji, 12/94. Ungurban villages 02*/97.

B. The Nuba Genocide

Estimated Deaths: x100,000 (multiples of 100,000)
The Nuba Mountain region of South Kordofan comprises 30,000 square miles, or an area slightly larger than the Netherlands and Belgium combined. The region, which is shaped in the form of an irregular pentagon with its short side to the northwest and long side to the south, is home to 52 different ethnic groups. Prior to the onset of a military campaign initiated by the Khartoum government in 1990, the Nuba congregated in 50 to 60 villages of 5,000-10,000 people. A few were towns, per se, but most were actually linear settlements where people lived in round huts (tude) spread over a long distance. Despite the fact that some villages (payam) are overwhelmingly Islamic or Christian, and some communities practice traditional religions, the Nuba have a long tradition of religious tolerance. There is still found a shared cultural affinity based on geographical proximity and similar "conditions of life." A multiplicity of languages and dialects have been clustered into ten distinct linguistic groups, each sharing a generally distinct geographic region.(1) Traditionally, communications were maintained by officials who often walked days or even weeks to reach their destination. TABLE: LANGUAGES IN NUBA

The Nuba tribes inhabited the Sudan long before the arrival of Arab tribes. However, centuries of attacks by their Arab neighbors forced the various Nuba peoples to find sanctuary in what are now called the Nuba Mountains. Until very recently, the region was isolated and certainly far removed economically from the Sudanese heartland. Prior to the Sudan's independence, a colonial governor of Kordofan reported in 1931 that the Nyimang and Koalib were the only authentic Nuba because they were not Arabized nor "Arab-dominated".(2) Ironically, following the creation of the Republic of Sudan, the Nuba - whether Arabized or unacculturated - were marginalized by a succession of Arab-dominated governments in Khartoum.

In the third census of Sudan, taken in 1983, the population of South Kordofan totalled 1.287 million people; two-thirds of that total (850,000) were classified as "rural settled," and of that total, the vast majority were Nuba. Nearly one-quarter of South Kordofan's population (320,000) was "rural nomadic," comprised almost exclusively of Baggara tribes.(3) Undoubtedly, the largest congregation of Nuba were found in Kadugli District, where 330,000 people were enumerated.(4)

Given an estimated annual population growth rate of 2.8 percent, by 1989 there were probably close to a million Nuba in South Kordofan. However, no one could say for sure because the 1983 census was in many cases a hit-and-miss affair, especially in the Nuba Mountains.(5) An expert who has written numerous articles and books on the Nuba Mountains estimated that in 1989, there were some 1.3 million Nuba located in South Kordofan. (6) The figure may have been generous, but given the lack of data it is impossible to dispute. Certainly, claims by ethnic Nuba that the tribes comprise about 2 million people seems unjustifiably high.(7)

B-2. Nuba: Military Activity
During the period 1983-1988, the Nuba generally sought to refrain from choosing sides in a civil war that pitted the North against the South. Nevertheless, given government neglect, militia raiding, and the myriad and not so subtle forms of racism to which they were subjected, by 1989 many Nuba were allied with the SPLA, and some had even joined its military. The Nuba themselves trace their distrust to 1985, when they felt the government instituted policies to marginalize or eliminate educated Nuba leadership from participation in the Sudanese polity. By January 1989, the SPLA New Cush Brigade, comprising Nuba rebels and led by former schoolteacher Yusif Kuwa Mekki, made its appearance in the Nuba Mountains.

The tenuous peace in the Nuba Mountains ended for good in October 1989, after SPLA and Sudan armed forces collided in Blue Nile region near the Ethiopia-Sudan frontier. Literally within hours, a Sudan armed forces column went on the attack in the Nuba Mountains. The SPLA-Sudan army battle was truly engaged, and the NSRCC began to pursue with great vigor a military conclusion to the civil war. From 1989 through 1991 alone, "scores of villages were burned and thousands of villagers killed in joint army and militia assaults" in the Nuba Mountains.(8) The Sudan army purged Nuba officers and noncommissioned officers, and.29 thousands of educated Nuba were arrested (200 in Kadugli). Hundreds of Nuba leaders simply "disappeared."

To eliminate the SPLA presence in the Nuba Mountains, the Sudan army initiated a series of penetrations designed to destroy villages and force occupants to flee. In 1990 alone, scores of villages were torched and thousands were killed in government "scorched earth" raids carried out by soldiers quartered at the Kadugli and Talodi garrisons. While the attacks were military in nature, the underlying rationale seemed economic in nature: as Nuba abandoned their land, it was claimed by government satraps who sought to introduce large-scale mechanized agriculture. In the east and north, the Sudan government forces supported locally organized Peoples Defense Forces (PDF), Missiriya Arab militias (Murahileen) and, eventually, the Khartoum government's own Mujahideen (Holy Warriors).

By 1991, the government had blocked nearly all trade in and out of the Nuba Mountains, and when the Sudan army and its support elements attacked villages, the indigenous economy was targeted and Nuba shops and markets were destroyed. Food stores were carried off or destroyed. Such attacks on cultivators, and the destruction of crop stores and crops in the field, would eventually cause thousands of Nuba to flee the lowlands for the hills. The result would be widespread famine. The Sudan government's slash and burn campaign led many Nuba to join the SPLA. In turn, the government arrested more Nuba leaders. Hundreds were jailed in El Obeid and were never heard of again.

In 1991, a widespread drought and regional insecurity caused thousands of famine stricken families to move to displaced camps that had been formed around government-controlled towns.

In June 1992, the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum reported that Governor al-Hussein had "announced plans to relocate some 25,000 displaced from the Nuba Mountains" to the "three provinces in Northern Kordofan": the result would be the "detribalization and scattering of the Nuba people"; the relocations themselves were "construed as no less than an overt military strategy to depopulate the Nuba Mountains."(14) Despite the protests of INGOs and Western embassies, 17,000 Nubans were removed from well-run camps for internally displaced persons at Kadugli and dumped on unsuspecting city commissioners in En Nahud, Bara, and El Obeid. None of them "either requested or wanted the relocated displaced." And of the homeless and "traumatized" who had been taken from Kadugli, the "majority [were] sick and malnourished."(15) The embassy reported "fear among the donors that the relocated displaced would be forced into indentured labor on agricultural schemes or in households." In all North Kordofan relocation sites, where no INGOs were allowed to operate, there were 43 deaths reported in Um Ruwaba and 44 in En Nahud in the first month after the arrival of the Nuba displaced.

Given the Sudan army bombing and strafing campaigns and the numerous reports of human rights violations, including the purposeful attacks on civilian populations, the U.S. Congress enacted in October 1992 its Resolution 140, "Relating to the humanitarian relief and human rights situation in Sudan": The Resolution ordered the American representative to the UN Commission on Human Rights to support the appointment of a special rapporteur to investigate conditions in Sudan. The Commission on Human Rights responded by naming Gaspar Biro to the post of Special Rapporteur on Sudan.

In North Kordofan, the camps at Um Ruwaba, En Nahud, Sheikan, Sidra and Hamrat al-Shaykh began as little more than death traps. In July, as many as 15 people a day perished at the concentration camp at Um Ruwaba. USAID-Sudan reported many deaths and terribly high malnutrition rates in children under five.(28) Other camps that soon housed more than 30,000 displaced were created in the Nuba Mountains at Angarko near Dilling, Rashad, and at six camps surrounding Kadugli. The SPLA reported that in late 1993 the government had taken children from parents and "ten thousand were sent to Libya from Sheikan concentration camp."(29) The report was denied by the governments of Sudan and Libya.

The numbers of Nuba displaced people would increased substantially in the following months, as a man-made famine lasted through 1993 and affected all Nuba Mountain peoples. As more and more peace villages were occupied, reports reached Khartoum and the outside world that the encampments really served as prisons where the displaced were kept "against their will."(30) Because government health and food provisions were minimal, thousands would die in and be buried near the camps. Within a year, the government claimed it had created 91 peace villages comprising some 170,000 people. In general, the able-bodied were used as labor in the towns and in the fields. In many cases, children were separated from mothers, and whether families approved or not, children were educated in Islamic schools.

The relocation of tens of thousands of Nuba and the attendant human rights violations led the U.N. Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs to address the issue in September.34 1992. From that date, the Nuba issue was internationalized, but the Khartoum government would not accede to the request of Gaspar Biro (the UN rapporteur) to undertake a personal on-site investigation of conditions in the Nuba Mountains. In May 1993, the first film reportage on the Nuba Mountains appeared in the West. In the United Kingdom, a television program helped verify reports that "between late 1991 and 1993" the Nuba Mountains had suffered "the most severe famine in Sudan."(31) The drought had an indescribable effect on Nuba society, as the usual coping mechanisms employed to outlast a drought and preclude famine had been destroyed by the military. The region is everywhere in flux.

Small units attacked defenseless villages after it was learned the SPLA was not in the vicinity. The attacks began with the onset of the dry season, and their object was to steal what one could, destroy the harvest, and torch homes. Attackers killed those who ran, while abductions of women and children were an integral part of the operation itself. Lack of food, shelter, and incipient starvation would lead Nuba to migrate to the larger towns where the government could force the displaced into Peace Villages and impose its control. Instead of major operations causing the deaths of thousands, there were a myriad of small incidents in hundreds of villages where a score of Nuba were killed here, and one or two there. The results were just as deadly, and thousands were killed outright. On occasion, operations were supported by helicopter gunships, MiG jets, and Antonov bombers.

Beginning in October 1991, the NSRCC denied Western INGO access to the Nuba Mountains. Despite an OLS-government of Sudan agreement reached on September 15, 1992, which affirmed the "critical importance of access to all people in need of humanitarian assistance where ever they may be," the Nuba Mountains prohibition was not lifted until June 1994 when the government allowed the Save the Children Fund-United States to institute humanitarian assistance programs among the displaced at Dilling and Rashad.(36) Access to Kadugli was not allowed, however, until late 1996 when SCF/United States extended its activity to 16 Peace Villages located in and around Kadugli where "needs were great." The Khartoum government remained adamant, however, that no Western INGO operating under the OLS umbrella could conduct relief activities "in 'rebel-controlled' areas of the Nuba Hills."(37)

Gaspar Biro, the UN rapporteur on human rights conditions in the Sudan, reported that a series of inhumane acts had been sponsored by the Khartoum government in the Nuba Mountains. He noted the relocation of thousands of Nuba, including the irrational movement of thousands to ghastly camps located outside Port Sudan in the Red Sea region where they were left to rot. In his report issued in February 1996, Biro noted: "In the Nuba Mountains, a large number of civilians, including women and children, Muslims, and Christians alike, have been killed in [aerial] attacks or summarily executed."(44) He noted in particular a June 1995 air.37 attack on Regifi and judged that the government tactic was designed to force villagers to flee and thus depopulate the region.

Still, following the success of SPLA attacks in Equatoria, and the growing presence of NDA forces in Blue Nile, the feeling was that the outgunned SPLA would soon be re-armed. In 1997, outsiders who visited the region learned that of "eight massive military columns" that had just penetrated the SPLA region, six were repulsed. The two that got through, however, "devastated many villages, burning crops, vandalizing churches, destroying villages, looting livestock and murdering many villagers."(51)

Economically, it seemed the Khartoum government had achieved one of its major goals when the SPLA was forced to retreat from a large region south of Dilling. Shortly thereafter, one million acres of prime sorghum and sesame cultivation claimed by Koalib Nuba and east of the Kawalib range would be given over to Sudanese Arabs.

In August, Christian Solidarity International appeared before the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva and accused "the Sudan regime of condoning the abduction and enslavement of people from religious and ethnic minorities." Nevertheless, despite international criticism there was no let-up in government attacks on the Nuba people. Politically, it seemed that a "final solution" for the Nuba was decided upon in December 1997, when the government named the sinister Minister of Interior, Bakri Hassan Salih, to take charge of Transitional Council of Southern Kordofan. As President Bashir explained it, the government was about to initiate a campaign of "peace by force" in the Nuba Mountains.(55)

By mid-1998, the government objectives in the Nuba Mountains had nearly been accomplished. The government had created 72 Peace Villages with an estimated population of some 172,000 people, 60 percent of whom were called "war affected Nubans." Nonetheless, the SPLA endured.

In a 1997 OLS assessment, 41 Peace Villages and 106,000 people were found "most vulnerable" because crop production had "barely reached" subsistence levels; a food deficit approaching 40 percent was estimated for the period May to August 1998.(56) In May, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urged Sudan government approval of air flights to the Nuba Mountains in order to "deliver food to the 20,000 people that local aid workers say are at risk of starvation."(57) The appeal worked, and the UN "warmly welcomed" the Sudan government announcement that "it would, for the first time, grant access to rebel-held areas [south and northeast, west of Talodi Province and south of Dilling] of the Nuba Mountains," where "several thousands of people in rebel-held areas" had been displaced and were "facing severe food shortages."(58) The SPLA admitted that "tens of thousands of their people are at risk from famine and disease," but it wanted "nothing to do with foreign aid if it is controlled by the government."(59) It would only accept food aid flown in from Lokichoggio. However, the UN soon reported that the assessment would be postponed until June 1998.(60)

INGOs delivered 13,000 pounds of sorghum to an airstrip near SPLA Commander Yousif Kuwa Makki's headquarters-enough to feed about 500 people for a month.(61) It was very little, but it was a start. Unfortunately, the honeymoon did not last long. In July 1998, Khartoum media reported that fighting had resumed, while 50,000 people had arrived in Kadugli after fleeing internecine warfare in Al-Wihda state involving Nuer militias of Riak Machar and Paulino Matep.

1. There are 250,000 Nubans located under SPLA administration (although the figure could be somewhat less)..41
2. The Khartoum government achieved its February 1992 goal of resettling 500,000 Nuba displaced people (although in mid-1998 the government counted only 72 Peace Villages with an estimated population of some 172,000 people, 60 percent of whom were called "war affected Nubans").
3. There are 100,000 Nubans who have moved from the Nuba Mountains region, including those found in displaced persons camps from Khartoum through North Kordofan.
4. That 50,000 Nubans have joined the PDF or the military, or are active in urban centers and exist outside of the Peace Camps milieu created for Nubas in South Kordofan.

If one assumes a population of one million Nuba in 1983, and even discounting a natural annual population growth estimated at 3 percent, at a minimum, more than 100,000 Nubans have disappeared. Given an estimated population growth of 3.0 percent per annum, the Nuba population loss likely has exceeded 200,000 persons since the NSRCC came to power on June 30, 1989.

The Nuba who have been lost through acculturation, deracination, and the results of "ethnic cleansing" can only be guessed.