In Mad Times II

In my last post "In Mad Times", I wrote with hope that the Nuba Mountains might find some peace, well at least some sort of stability to keep its sons and daughters safe and sound. In the past three weeks, I have been combing through the daily news and would read anything and everything that mentioned 'Kadugli' and 'Southern Kordofan'. What I read doesn't make me feel any better.

Widespread atrocities are taking place again in Southern Kordofan - a state on the  edge of the North-South borders. This is more than the just the claim on border issues or oil. The Nubas and their rights are at the heart of this conflict. Just Muslims and Christians wanting to live and co-exist peacefully as they did before. Christians, Blacks, Muslims, the different tribes have live together for many years and repeatedly have been denied their basic social and economical rights. But now they are targets of the Khartoum's government. Too many reports and sources have indicated that the military forces are deliberately targeting Nubas or basically suspected of aligning with the opposition forces, the SPLM. And the blatant fact is that this horror has happened before in the 1990s and which was later formally brought to a close with the signing of the CPA in 2005.

I was there in May when state election results was released and while there was some sense of tension, what happened subsequently was perhaps beyond our immediate imagination. Kadugli has always been safe for me, and I've never come across anyone who's been there, passing through or lived there who felt threatened. Without wanting to sound wishy-washy, I've always thought there's an unspoken sense of charm and protection the Nuba Mountains bestow upon it guests.

So really what's really going out there?

There's certainly deliberate targeting of ethnic groups - the darker and blacker, the more at risk they are. Door-to-door round-up of Nubas have been reported and the air strip in Kauda (critical for transporting essential humanitarian aid) completely destructed leaving the region virtually cut off from relief supplies. Aid agencies offices have been looted and humanitarian aid presently limited on the ground. Further to that, the UN peacekeeping forces have been reportedly inefficient, ill-informed and in my honest opinion, is just reacting too slow and a tad too late. Some reports indicated summary executions right smack in front of the UN compound. How the UN can let that happened is beyond me.

I'm no expert on legal terms or how best to describe the violence and what all this means. But logic tells me this is not right and something ought to be done to stop the fighting. I'm not sure how one can help but I certainly think the situation in Southern Kordofan deserves more mention and coverage beyond a 30 second glimpse, somewhere tossed between Libya and Yemen and the rest. This is a conflict one hardly talks about and sometimes I asked with silent desperation for an answer or a solution if we are really letting this happen all under our watch. Are we?

What would it take for the world to sit up and take notice?