Images from the Nuba Mountains 1986 - 2001

Once the war reached the Nuba Mountains, travelling to the area became extremely difficult. One of the last people to work freely in the Nuba Mountains must have been Arthur Howes, who filmed Kafi's Story in Torogi at a time when the SPLA had already captured large parts of the Southern Mountains.

It took several years for the first alarming reports to emerge (see the 1991 Africa Watch report Destroying Ethnic Identity - The Secret War Against the Nuba). Images were even more rare. In 1993 French Filmmaker Hugo D'aybaury spent several weeks in the Nuba Mountains and made The Right to Be Nuba, a 45 minutes documentary film. There are no stills from the film to show here.

In 1994 Jack Picone took a great set of pictures in the Nuba Mountains but from what I have seen he didn't focus too much on the war or the suffering of the people.

The 1995 African Rights report Facing Genocide has several pictures by Julie Flint and Alex de Waal. In the same year David Stewart-Smith made a beautiful serie of photo's which won him a third prize in the World Press Photo contest. Slowly more journalists and human rights activists found their way to the Mountains. Among them Arthur Howes who returned to make Nuba Conversations.

Another source of images are the aid organisations that already worked in the SPLA area before the cease fire agreement of 2002. The photos made by the German Doctors can be found here, and I included some images from USAID. There must be so much more material - do send me your pictures when you have any!