65 dead after fighting in the Nuba Mountains

About 65 people have been killed this week in the clashes between Arab nomads and the African people in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan.This was reported by the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) in Göttingen on Friday. The fighting began last Tuesday with a dispute at a market. „Just before the seventh anniversary of the signing of the armistice in the Nuba Mountains this incident makes it clear how explosive the situation is in the Nuba Mountains ”, said the Africa consultant of the GfbV, Ulrich Delius, on Friday in Göttingen. The armistice signed on 19th January 2002 with the good offices of Switzerland ended 16 years of war and genocide in the federal state of South Kordofan . 500,000 Nuba fell victim to the genocide.

While the „Sudanese Organisation Against Torture” (SOAT) reported 19 dead this week, eye-witnesses held the figure to be 65 killed in the attacks of the nomads on Nuba villages and counter-attacks by the fighters of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) stationed in the region. Thousands of people from the black-African peoples fought between 1985 and 2001 on the side of the South Sudanese in the SPLA against the South Sudanese Army.

On 8th January 2009 the GfbV warned of a new war in the Nuba Mountains . Many people were disappointed since their living conditions had not improved since the signing of the armistice agreement on 19th January 2002. The black-African inhabitants of this area in North Sudan, which has an Arab character, feel themselves neglected and left out as losers of the peace agreement between North and South Sudan . For neither the armistice nor the peace agreement has brought any more development.