A Satellite image of aircraft at SAF airbase at El Obeid, North Kordofan, taken on 14th Nov, 2011. (Photo: Satellite Sentinel Project)

The map shows the potential range of the aircraft from the base. (Photo: Satellite Sentinel Project)

South Sudan became the world’s newest nation this past July.

Its independence from Sudan was supposed to bring an end to violence in the region.

Instead, deadly clashes continue along the border between the two nations and artillery bombardments are still driving thousands from their homes.

Human rights activists have looked for a way to monitor from afar what is happening on the ground. Aided by the “star power” of actor George Clooney, they have come up with the Satellite Sentinel Project. It purchases satellite imagery of Sudan and South Sudan and analyzes it to help find those who are waging war.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to Harvard University’s Charlie Clements, one of the project’s leaders.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: Two weeks ago Africa’s newest nation was born.  South Sudan came into being on July 9.  But the celebrations there have been tempered by reports of violence in South Kordofan.  South Kordofan is a region of Sudan rich in natural resources.  It’s just north of the new border.  Human rights observers accuse the government in Khartoum Sudan of using its military to commit atrocities against the area’s ethnic Nuba people.  The government denies that. Callum Macrae is an independent journalist and a filmmaker.  He made a documentary which aired this week on Al Jazeera’s English language service on what he says is the Sudanese government’s ongoing aggression against the Nuba people.

Callum Macrae: Although the southern Kordofan people see themselves as being part of the north and accept their part of the north, they do not accept the legitimacy of the Khartoum government.  They have been traditionally discriminated against and indeed in the ’90′s were the victims of what was effectively ethnic cleansing, a huge campaign in which hundreds of thousands of Nuba people were killed by the Khartoum government.  The fear is that that is about to happen again as the Khartoum government tries to assert control over the area and its resources.

Mullins: What evidence did you find of those attempts of ethnic cleansing on the part of the Sudanese government?

Macrae: Well, the whole area has been sealed off.  The skies about southern Kordofan have been declared a no-fly zone by the Khartoum government, so nobody is allowed to fly in and nobody is allowed to see what’s happening on the ground.  But there are very disturbing reports of executions, door-to-door searches looking for SPLA supporters in the capital, Kaduguli, and mass murder.  So we decided to get in there, which we managed to do.  There are a few clandestine flights being run by humanitarian operations who defy the threats to shoot them out of the sky.  So we managed to fly in on one of those.  And you know, this was very, very clear.  People are being bombed and terrorized.  The Khartoum government is using at least one if not more Antonov bombers.  Now, these aren’t actually technically bombers; these are old Russian transport planes which they literally roll bombs out of the back of by hand. These bombs are dropped from a height and they are completely random.  They are being used quite clearly as weapons of terror to terrorize the people and drive them into the mountains, and effectively drive them out of the area if they can.

Mullins: Now, you saw some of this going on yourself.  You saw the results of some of these bombs having been dropped.  Take us through what you saw on the ground.

Macrae: Well, we saw massive craters — in some cases these are huge, huge bombs.  We saw the victims in the hospital and a very high proportion of these are children.  And when I asked why I was told it’s very simple, when you hear the Antonov bombers overhead then you throw yourself into the ground, you get into a hollow, as low as you can, and indeed we had to do that when we heard them overhead.  And children don’t — children run and they get hit with the shrapnel and the glass.  So there is a disproportionately high proportion of children being injured and killed by these bombs.

Mullins: I want you to briefly tell us, Callum, about another major part of your journey, and this is about finding the man who is very much wanted by Khartoum, by the Sudanese government.  He is the head of the forces in this one region that’s being bombed by Sudan.  Tell us who this man is and the nature of your conversation once you managed to find him.

Macrae: Abdul Aziz is the leader of the SPLA in the north.  He was formerly a very senior commander in the SPLA which was the organization which fought for the independence of the south.  He is now left fighting as head of his own section if you like, of what is now effectively a rebel force within the North.  What is fascinating about this man is that he’s very clear that they are not fighting at this stage for independence.  They’re not fighting to become part of southern Sudan. They’re fighting to change the government in Khartoum.  And they’re calling upon all that are dissatisfied and discriminated against, groupings within northern Sudan, to form an effective united front and fight to change the Khartoum government and build a government which is accountable.

Mullins: And this gets fairly complex because he wants to change the government in the North.  They are right now geographically located in the North, but they fought on behalf of the South earlier.  It’s hard to imagine any kind of a peaceable end to this, but what direction are things going in?

Macrae: Well, it’s important to remember that originally the SPLA in the South under its leader, John Garang, fought for a change in the government in the whole of Sudan and did not fight for the splitting of Sudan.  The independence position if you like, was a fall back.  I suspect that Abdul Aziz has an independence position as a fall back for southern Kordofan as he would eventually end up in some sort of alliance with Southern Sudan.  But at the moment they are quite clearly saying we are calling on everyone who’s unhappy with the Khartoum government to unite and to fight the Khartoum government.

Mullins: If the fighting is still going on and as you say it’s still going on on both sides, but the Sudanese government if it is moving in with such rapaciousness and against civilians there, why is it that the United Nations has not moved to protect the area, to protect the civilians as it has for instance, in Libya because the situation sounds something like what Muammar Gaddafi has been doing in Libya.

Macrae: Well, it’s a very interesting question and I think you’d have to ask the UN that.  The UN will sometimes act and sometimes won’t, and there are a variety of important reasons for that.  Certainly the UN has to be clear what it’s doing.  It has to be clear about what its forces are doing.  In cannot go on doing what it appears to be doing, which is basically sticking its fingers in its ears and humming lowly, and hoping that the situation goes away.

Mullins: Journalist and filmmaker, Callum Macrae, talking to us about what’s happening in Sudan’s South Kordofan region.  Thank you very much, Callum.

Macrae: Thank you.

Mullins: You can see Callum Macrae’s film about the Sudanese government’s bombing of the Nuba people.  It’s at theworld.org.

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Marco Werman: The simmering tensions between north and south are highlighted in areas along the new border separating the two sides.  In the Kordofan region just north of that border deadly clashes have been reported.  The clashes are between government troops from the north and fighters allied with the south. The regime of President Omer Al-Bashir denies it’s engaged in a military campaign against ethnic Nuba fighters and civilians in the area.  But many observers say that’s exactly what’s going on.  Reporter Trevor Snapp is in the Nuba mountains region.  He says the government’s campaign includes air strikes.

Trevor Snapp: The bombing started as part of a campaign by Al-Bashir to eliminate the threat of Nuba rebels and also to spread terror in the valleys of the Nuba mountains.  The bombing has eased up slightly in the last week as SPA, Sudan People’s Liberation Army has made advances toward Al-Bashir’s troop controlled areas. And so they’re able to distract Al-Bashir from bombing the citizens, but it can happen any day.  Every day we look up.  We go outside.  You’re constantly looking up into the sky.  You’re constantly, you hear this giant Antonov lumbering across the sky and it sounds like a huge mosquito, but it’s a frightening noise.  And every time you see it you run and hide under a tree or the fox holes that have been laid out near different facilities.  So, it’s still a real threat and people have a difficult time living a normal life.

Werman: You actually had a chance to speak with somebody yesterday who’s been witnessing these attacks.  Let’s hear what he had to say.

Nuba Witness: Today, since morning at 6 o’clock, the Antonov came and woke us up.  And it through like seven bombs at once…one, two three…seven like that.  And the jet fighters also.  And that’s very terrifying.

Werman: So, Trevor Snapp, you’re now at a hospital.  Tell us what you’re seeing as a result of these attacks.

Snapp: Right now in the hospital you’ll see dozens of soldiers lying on beds with bullet wounds.  You see children walking around with amputated arms because they’ve been hit by bombs.  You see people who’ve had shrapnel pierce their lungs.  You see what looks like a war, a war hospital.

Werman: How is the medical care there, Trevor?  How many doctors do they have?

Snapp: There’s I think three doctors in all the Nuba mountains.  One I’ve been speaking with is an American who has decided to stay here.  He’s settled in for the long run and he’s the only doctor working at this hospital.  There are two nurses that remain, but all the other trained staff has left.

Werman: Trevor, tell us who are the Nuba people?

Snapp: The Nuba people are very, very proud people with a long history.  They’ve actually been probably the least developed area of Sudan because they live up in these mountain ranges where they’ve been very isolated.  For that reason they’re also very affected in the war between the north and the south because they were never really able to be driven out from this area.  Like in the south, Bashir would go in and he would push all people out of the area and take over the control; whereas here he’s unable to do that. They’re still a very proud people who feel like the true people of Sudan.  But they’ve also been incredibly unrepresented.  There are very schools here, so they haven’t been able to go to school.  They haven’t been able to get representation in the government, and so they continue to be incredibly isolated in that part of the country.

Werman: Now, the Nuba I understand actually wanted to be part of the south; they wanted to be part of this new nation that will be forming tomorrow, the independent nation of Southern Sudan.  So what’s the mood among the Nuba today on this eve of independence?

Snapp: They still want to be part of the south and they’ll tell you that.  And even though they kinda know in their hearts that maybe it’s impossible, people you talk to on the streets, they want to be part of the south.  That’s very much a bittersweet day.  I mean for the Nubans, they feel a little bit like they were betrayed in negotiations.  They’re very happy for what they call their brothers and their comrades, but they’re also I think sad and worried about what’s going to happen next.

Werman: Journalist Trevor Snapp in the Nuba mountains in Sudan, thanks very much for your time indeed.

Snapp: Thanks for talking with me.

Werman: You can see some of the pictures Trevor Snapp has been taking in the Nuba mountains region there at theworld.org.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Still, President Hu Jintao made time for a meeting Monday with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. The problem is Bashir didn’t show up.

It was not an auspicious start to an already controversial visit. The international criminal court indicted Bashir two years ago. But China’s special envoy on Africa, Liu Guijin, says China doesn’t have to do anything about that. “China is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court, so is not legally obliged to turn Bashir over,” Guijin said.

China prefers a more pragmatic approach. It’s long done business with Sudan – buying its oil, and selling it arms. Bashir has received the money and weaponry to attack both insurgent and civilian populations in Darfur. And that’s resulted in the charges of war crimes.

Bashir dismissed those charges in an interview with the London-based Guardian Media division in April.

“It’s a political issue,” Bashir said, “and there are double standards.” He said it’s a government’s responsibility to fight insurgents. The Sudanese leader claimed his government never fought civilians of Darfur despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

A second conflict, with southern Sudan, went on for 21 years and cost 2 million lives.

A peace accord was signed in 2005 and earlier this year, and southern Sudanese voted for independence in a referendum this year. They were finally granted it on July 9th.

That will affect China, says Stephanie Kleine-Albrandt, Northeast Asia Project Director for the International Crisis Group.

“China’s interests will, I think, be severely affected, given that the majority of the oil fields, I think 85 percent, are located in South Sudan,” Kleine-Albrant said. “Now, the refining and pipelines are still located in the north. But this will have major implications. There hasn’t been an agreement yet on revenue distribution, but the North is going to lose a lot of revenue from oil.”

Kleine-Albrandt says she and researchers at the International Crisis Group have other causes for concern as South Sudan’s independence approaches.

“We’re very worried about the fact that there’s actually no agreement as of the 9th of July as to how really anything with regard to the post-referendum period is going to go forward,” she said. “That’s with regard to freedom of movement, citizenship, resource allocation, let alone the fate of Abaye.”

Abaye is an oil-rich town on the border that both sides claim. Northern Sudanese troops seized Abaye in May, but both sides have agreed to allow Ethiopian peacekeepers in.

“We hope the Chinese will be pressing the North very hard on pulling its troops out, ensuring some kind of viable political solution, ensuring that peacekeepers can remain because Bashir doesn’t want that,” Kleine-Albrandt said. “And to try to put pressure on both sides to come to the table and agree on all of these outstanding issues.”

Kleine-Albrandt gives China credit for having pressured Bashir to accept the peace process and South Sudan’s self-determination. It’s in China’s interests to have a stable Sudan for investment and for the safety of Chinese personnel there.

Toward that end, Chinese envoy Liu Guijin has been shuttling to the North and South of Sudan. Guijin says China has good relations with both sides and that they can help ensure they make good on the peace accord.

The South may be a little wary, since China was, for a time, the main supplier of arms used against the region. But South Sudan, as a new and fragile country, will need all the help it can get.

China will want to reach out, because the South has most of Sudan’s oil. And Bashir will want his own assurances that China, which now buys 60 percent of Sudan’s oil exports, and 70 percent of its other exports, will remain a friend and economic lifeline, no matter what the international pressure.

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Marco Werman: Sudan is on the verge of a big change.  The countries north and south are due to split next month, giving rise to the new nation of South Sudan.  A peaceful transition was mapped out according to the 2005 peace agreement that ended Sudan’s long civil war, but now that transition is threatened by violence.  Fighting between northern troops and southern forces has erupted in two areas: The disputed and oil rich Abyei region and south Kordofan, a northern state that borders the south.  The  Vice President of South Sudan says the violence there requires action by the United Nations.

VP of South Sudan: What is happening in the Nuba Mountains in Southern Kordofan is ethnic cleansing.  It may even begin a raid into genocide as happened in Rwanda.

Werman: The UN has a base in the region and today UN officials announced their sending peacekeeper reinforcements to the area.  The United States is also trying to mediate.  Ambassador Princeton Limen is the US Special Envoy to Sudan.  He joins us from Washington.  Ambassador Lyman, it’s been a longs road to independence for southern Sudan, what are you doing diplomatically at this point to keep the situation from fraying the peace agreement, and the transition from Sudan becoming two nations.

Princeton Lyman: Uh, were working very hard on several fronts. Uh, the, eh, issues to be resolved are the subject of complicated negotiations, and that has been interrupted by the crisis in the area of Abyei, and in the state of southern Kordofan.  And so much of our effort in the last two to three weeks has been to bring those situations under control, and we’ve been working, uh, virtually non-stop diplomatically, uh, to do that.

Werman: Could this derail, uh, the peace agreement and the transition to Sudan, uh, becoming two nations though?

Lyman: It won’t derail the South Sudan’s declaration of independence on July 9th, but what it does do is cast a hull over the relation between those two.  And they need to have conductive cooperative relations between them because they are so intertwined economically.  So this, these, cris-, recent crisis have changed the atmosphere between them.  And they’ve also held up the negotiation of those other issues.  And those are serious threats to the process.

Werman: I mean what does independence on July 9th for South Sedan really substantively mean though if there is a new crisis, right, on the north-south divide.

Lyman: It means a great deal to them, not only because its the culmination of decades of war, and so will be emotionally, extremely important to them.  But they also feel that as an independent nation they will be negotiating on a different bases with the North because they will be the sovereign owners of the oil in the south, uh, and they will be an independent nation.  So psychologically and politically, uh, its a very important step.

Werman: The UN is sending peacekeeping reinforcements to this area, what other efforts are being made to help the people of Kordofan right now?

Lyman: Well we are very concerned to get a cessation of hostilities in Southern Kordofan, because there is forty thousand or more people who have been displaced and it’s extremely difficult to get aid into the area.  And we are still working to get both sides to agree to a cessation of hostilities, and then they get on to the necessary political discussions.

Werman: Why do you think this is happening now, so close to the July 9th, uh, independence day?

Lyman: I think its because in the north theres been a growing frustration with the whole process, and feeling amongst some that the, uh, the process wasn’t going their way, and there was a need to exert strength and force in the final stages, uh, as a way of asserting their, their positions.  Uh, I think its an unfortunate decision, and we’re working very hard to get that turned around.

Werman: Ambassador Princeton Lyman and the US Special Envoy to Sudan speaking with us from Washington.  Thank you very much.

Lyman: You’re welcome.

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But it’s not a peaceful place right now. Violence is rising here, as South Sudan prepares to become an independent nation in a few weeks. The UN says that more than 60,000 people have been displaced by new fighting. Some observers say this mountainous region could become Sudan’s latest flashpoint.

The answer is the Nuba Mountains in (South Kordofan) Central Sudan, home to the Nuba people.Anchor Marco Werman speaks with journalist and Sudan expert Julie Flint about the recent flareup of violence in the region as the July 6th date for South Sudan’s independence approaches.

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Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman, and this is The World. There have been steps in the past several years to bring peace to the African nation of Sudan. An agreement in 2005 ended decades of civil war between the north and the south. Then, this year, southerners voted to secede. The south is set to declare independence in less than a month, but peace remains elusive, especially in the border state of Kordofan. A bombing campaign there is causing huge suffering to civilians and endangering humanitarian assistants. The BBC’s Peter Martell is in Sudan. He joins us from Juba, the South Sudanese Capital. Peter, what’s the latest you’re hearing about what’s going on in Kordofan, this area between the north and south of Sudan?

Peter Martell: Well, it’s a terrible humanitarian situation there. The fighting began around the 5th of June. This is between the forces of the northern army, fighting against former rebel soldiers, who are loyal to the now official army in the south. Perhaps a very complicated situation, but, in short, what’s happening is that government airplanes are bombing areas. There’s heavy fighting in the state capital. Almost half the state capital according to U.N. estimates. That’s  around 30,000 or 40,000 people have fled. Then out in the more rural areas, there’s been more bombing. Today, we heard that bombers blew up one of the airstrips in one of the main areas opposed to them. So horrific reports of killings, of bombings, of churches being looted, eight agencies being ransacked, and very difficult to get supplies or support into these areas.

Werman: It’s odd because things in Sudan seemed to be on track for a peaceful transition to dividing Sudan into two nations, north and South. President Bashir seemed to have finally softened on his approach to the south. What happened on June 6th? Why this crisis now?

Martell: Well, tensions have been building for a long time. The January referendum, that’s when the south voted to split away. The world was incredibly peaceful. People were worried, but in the end, it was successful, it was peaceful, and it was calm. But as the months have come closer and closer towards, of course, that final independence date, the efforts to divorce the two sides of Sudan, as people here call it, have created tensions and problems.

Werman: Could this derail the independence for South Sudan?

Martell: Well, the southerners are determined not to let that happen. The north has actually been bombing across the south into the southern border areas. In the south, they said they’re not going to retaliate. The north even took a contested border region, an area called Abyei that most sides claim. The south again said they’re not going to retaliate. They’re desperate that their independence will not be derailed. It will not be stopped, and it will happen as is planned on the 9th of July. So I think that is certain. It’s just how the two sides of Sudan split apart, and whether they can do it in peace, or whether, as at the moment, whether there’s going to be further conflict.

Werman: The United States has invested so much in helping to stabilize Sudan in recent years. I’m wondering if this current crisis could be the undoing of those efforts. Have you seen any signs of the U.S. stepping in to make sure independence for south Sudan happens?

Martell: Well, certainly, the U.S. government and U.S. aid agency in the USA have been making enormous efforts. They have huge projects to develop the South, these border areas, and the north itself. Of course, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in the region meeting with southern president Salva Kiir yesterday and trying to put pressure on both sides to resolve these issues amicably, to not allow the conflict to return between north and south. So, yes, the U.S. has been making huge pressure, but at the end of the day, it’s got to be an agreement between the two sides, between Khartoum and Juba, where I’m speaking to you from.

Werman: The BBC’s Peter Martell speaking with us from Juba in South Sudan. Thanks so much, Peter!

Martell: Thank you very much!

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• Thousands flee Sudanese bombing amid food and fuel shortages
• Rebecca Hamilton’s book Fighting for Darfur: Public Action and the Struggle to Stop Genocide at Amazon

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Lisa Mullins: On the other side of the world tens of thousands of people have fled their homes, but for a different reason.  They escaped the fighting in the Abyei region of Sudan.  The African nation is scheduled to split into two in July, but Abyei which straddles the border of the north and south is in dispute.  Troops from northern Sudan seized the area earlier this month. Rebecca Hamilton is a special correspondent in Sudan for the Washington Post.  She is now in the souther Sudanese town of Juba.  She traveled to the Abyei region on Sunday.

Rebecca Hamilton: You could see still the smoke rising from the remains of buildings, and you can see the charred foundations of the mud, brick and grass hut homes that the people of Abyei were living in. The town now is almost entirely emptied of its civilian population, and those are the people estimated to be over 80,000 people that I’ve been interviewing.  And they mimic the sounds of the bombing –zoom, zoom — and so many of them once the cover of darkness fell, they all tried to flee.

Mullins: And remind us whether or not Abyei is northern or southern territory.  I mean this is one of the key issues in this north-south divide.

Hamilton: That’s right.  So the 2005 peace agreement that ended decades of civil war between north and south Sudan never managed to resolve the question of whether Abyei would belong to north or south.  Essentially both north and south are still claiming Abyei as their territory.

Mullins: Rebecca, one more thing, could you bring Washington into the mix here.  The U.S. was on track to remove Sudan from a list of state sponsors of terrorism.  At this point where does that stand and how much leverage does Washington have?

Hamilton: So the Sudanese government’s seizure of Abyei has complicated the Obama administration’s strategy in Sudan.  It had planned to remove Sudan from the state sposnors of terrorism list if Sudan finished all the steps in the peace agreement.  And Abyei was obviously an important part of the peace agreement.  So with the seizure of Abyei it will be difficult to remove them from that list, but it’s unclear what leverage the U.S. government has because already there are comprehensive diplomatic and economic sanctions on Sudan.  Short of military force, which nobody is advocating for, there is relatively little that the Obama administration has in terms of pressures that it can put on Khartoum.

Mullins: And Rebecca, those people with whom you spoke, those displaced from Abyei, especially the mothers and the children there, what happens to them now?

Hamilton: I guess I want to convey just how difficult the journey from Abyei was for these people.  I spoke to a woman, her name is Sunday, who is seven months pregnant and she fled with her five children.  And on the way one of them, her two year old son died she thinks of dehydration.  And she said I have to bury him and just keep running with my other children. So this is the sort of trauma that this group has faced.  They want very much to return home, but only if it is safe.

Mullins: Journalist Rebecca Hamilton spoke with us from Juba in southern Sudan.  She’s the author of the book Fighting For Darfur.

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Lisa Mullins: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World.  Southern Sudan is scheduled to become an independent nation in July.  The region voted to separate from the north back in January.  But south Sudan’s march toward independence is being overshadowed by violence. The fighting is in the disputed region surrounding the small town of Abyei.  It’s an oil-rich region that straddles the north/south divide, and there’s concern that the conflict could widen just as south Sudan prepares for its official independence. The BBC’s James Copnall is covering the story from the northern Sudanese capital of Khartoum.

James Copnall: The United Nations say that there’s a lot of looting and burning taking place in the town.  Now Abyei is a pretty sleepy place, just a few brick buildings, a lot of thatch huts.  Now, since Saturday the town and the region around it are under the control of the northern armed forces. They came into Abyei with tanks following artillery and aerial bombardment after northern soldiers were ambushed they say by southern troops, and in response they took control of the entire area.  All of these incidents have caused thousands, more than 20,000 civilians to flee to the south; several of them suffering from injuries, and they’re being treated in the nearby town of Agok.

Mullins: This is certainly not the first time that the people of Abyei have been caught in combat between the north and south.  This is as you said, a small town that sits though on a sea of oil, which is part of course, of what makes this area so incendiary.  But are the people of Abyei themselves taking up arms in this latest battle, or are they simply the victims of what’s happening again between north and south?

Copnall: Well, Abyei is very sharply divided between southern ethnic group, the Dinka Ngok, who want the region to be part of the south, and the Misseriya, who are northern nomads.  Now, both those groups are armed, there’s no doubt about it.  And Abyei should’ve had a referendum in January on whether to join the north or to join the south.  And that didn’t happen because there’s no agreement on whether the Misseriya could vote. Since then there’s been a string of clashes between the Dinka Ngok and the Misseriya.  What makes these latest incidents so serious, so worrying for the peace process, is the fact that it didn’t involve the two groups from the region; it involved the southern armed forces and the northern armed forces.  That means the impact of these clashes are not local, they’re national.  And when you consider the north and south Sudan have fought two very bitter civil wars — the last one lasted more than two decades and cost an estimated two millions lives — there’s no reason to be surprised when a lot of people are concerned that these clashes in Abyei, again, a lot of people worried about a possible new north/south war.

Mullins: This is exactly what many people were trying to avoid because the place has been caught in the crossfire before this.  Is there any indication that forces there, particularly forces from the north, will be withdrawing its troops, which is what this U.N. delegation has asked?

Copnall: Well, the U.N. security council, which is in Sudan at the moment, did say that they’d had a commitment from say a high to mid ranking north official that their troops would withdraw at some point in the future.  The northern authorities haven’t confirmed that, and I think there should be a degree of skepticism as to whether that will actually happen. It’s very interesting to see the United States condemnation of these vicious attacks and they mention that this could affect America’s relationship with Sudan.  Now, at the moment is very keen to get off a list of states that America consider sponsors of terrorism.  And America in essence is saying if you don’t deal with Abyei and if you don’t let the south become independent we’re gonna keep you on this list.  That’s a point of currency approach. Having said that, northern Sudanese politicians have lost faith in the Americans because they think these same promises have been made on a number of occasions, in 2005 when they signed a peace deal with the south, when they allowed a peaceful referendum in January this year, and then again now.  They think the U.S. keeps promising rewards for good Sudanese behavior and it doesn’t deliver it when the Sudanese do as they’re asked.

Mullins: That again, the BBC’s James Copnall.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Refugees return to South Sudan (Photo: Caroline Gluck/Oxfam)

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By Matthew Brunwasser

Operation Lifeline Sudan, launched by the United Nations in 1989, was one of the biggest humanitarian efforts ever seen. It brought together UN agencies and some 35 non-governmental organizations (NGO).

Decades of civil war ended in 2005, when a peace treaty gave the south defacto autonomy. The former rebel group — the SPLA — has been governing the south ever since. Vassar College Political Scientist Zachariah Mampilly says the situation created an unsustainable relationship between foreign NGOs and the SPLA.

“The SPLA focuses on legal and policing issues to provide a degree of stability in areas that they controlled, and they basically outsourced the rest of governance provision, health care, education, to international NGOs,” Mampilly said. “Inevitably, they are going to have to deal with this question of how do you get the NGOs to follow the directives of the new government of South Sudan?”

In the wake of January’s vote for independence, the SPLA will have to take full responsibility for all aspects of governing. That won’t be easy. Aaron Shapiro, from the Samaritan’s Purse, an American faith-based organization (FBO), or a religious NGO, says NGOs still provide basic services in maybe 90 percent of South Sudan.

“It’s a catch 22 in that if all the NGOs left, eventually something would have to give,” Shapiro said. “The government would have to be responsible, be held to account but if they all left, a lot of people would die without health care and clean water.”

Jok Madut Jok, an American-educated anthropologist who returned last year to become undersecretary of South Sudan’s Culture Ministry, says he’s well aware of the bind his government is in.

“If we dictate how we use help from outside, we will be accused of being too controlling; if we let the donor community tell us what to do with our nation, we won’t have a nation,” Jok said. “It would be a nation conceived and delivered by foreigners; it will not be raised from within our own philosophies; something that we own, that will fit in our traditions and our culture, something that will be symbolic of us being a sovereign state.”

The government in Juba is feeling pressure to provide more services itself. But it lacks what NGO types call “capacity.” There’s a short supply of educated, experienced and motivated administrators. And its institutions are far from solid. South Sudanese have only just begun to make their own.

And there’s another unforeseen consequence of having a country run by NGOs … armies of young, foreign do-gooders. There are so many 20-something Americans working at places like Save the Children that Juba can appear like a massive fraternity party.

At the Juba chapter of the Hash House Harriers, there’s a “drinking club with a running problem” that’s popular worldwide, especially with expats. This video of a charity fundraiser was posted online.

Marina Peter has worked as an advocate on peace and reconciliation issues in Sudan for 25 years. She says Sudanese have a lot of respect for their elders so young NGO staff can be hard to swallow.

“They see these young people coming in and telling them what they should do,” Peter said. “Very often with no experience in Africa, let alone in Sudan, and they are running these NGOs with thousands if not millions of dollars, and so people are saying but who are they, they don’t listen to us, they don’t ask what we really need. And they are just disconnected from our society.”

The large numbers of internationals and their international salaries create a separate economy as well. Juba has Thai, Indian and Chinese restaurants. There’s a Cuban place with a weekly salsa night. Locals say its one of the most expensive cities in the world. It’s normal to pay a hundred dollars a night to sleep in a tent.

With full South Sudanese independence expected in July, the threat from Khartoum is receding. So the public expects less money spent on the military and security and more for schools, hospitals and roads.

And that means the country must learn to take care of itself and stop depending on NGOs.

Matthew Brunwasser’s Sudan coverage on The World:
• Racism in Sudan
• Evangelical role in Sudan
• More of Matthew Brunswasser’s Sudan stories

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By Matthew Brunwasser

At Sunday morning services at the Pentecostal Juba Christian Center in South Sudan, similar to American-style Christianity, the preacher says “the holy spirit is moving in this nation, a lot of prayers are being poured…”

It’s not unheard of for politics and pulpit to mix. But in relations between states, faith usually takes a backseat to realpolitik. In the case of the 2005 peace treaty between northern and southern Sudan, though, it was the opposite. Douglas Johnston, with the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy in Washingon, says American Christians essentially drove the politics.

“Because a lot of them were doing missionary work down there and they had seen a lot of the very bad stuff going on,” Johnston said. “They would report back and then the churches got involved. Had it not been for that element, I don’t think we would’ve ever gotten involved in Sudan. Nor do I think anyone would have ever cared about Darfur.”

President Bush appointed retired senator and ordained Episcopal priest John Danforth as his Sudan envoy. There was war between north and south, and the Sudanese Council of Churches was lobbying for peace in the US and Europe.

“They were to collect the data of every bomb dropped in the south by the Sudan government air force, by location, by time, by whatever injured the people, all this information proved useful, when John Danforth came, he got that information, and he used it to press the parties, both sides, the Sudan government in particular, to agree to stop killing civilians,” said Enoch Tombe, the Episcopal Bishop of Rejaf, was at the time head of the council whose monitors documented human rights abuses.

The story of the suffering Sudanese Christians resonated loudly with American Christians. Aaron Shapiro works in the juba office of Samaritan’s purse, run by Franklin Graham – Billy’s son — one of the biggest faith based organizations in Sudan.

“I think it was probably a very easy story to sell, for better or for worse,” said Shapiro. “Arab Muslims versus black Christians. It definitely goes over as a good headline and a good story, within the Christian community. It’s much more complex than that.”

Political bedfellows

There was a strange coalition of political bedfellows pushing for action in Sudan: conservative Christians, the congressional black caucus and human rights groups. The signing of the peace treaty six years ago ended the war and paved the way for last January’s secession vote in South Sudan. It also mandated freedom of worship. Christianity is alive and well.

After services at the Pentacostal Juba Christian Center parishioner Christine Poney said she expects Christianity to grow in South Sudan. She throws around the names of American televangelists like they’re movie stars.

“I watch them on TV so many times,” said Poney. “I’m a fan of TD Jakes, sorry to call it a fan, but I really like his preaching, they are real, practical. Benny Hinn is another Pentcostal gentleman … I even subscribe to his incoming mails and so forth. despite the recent issues about his family life, Benny Hinn is the man.”

There’s some concern here that a particular form of American Christianity is spreading too quickly. Marina Peter, the European coordinator of the Sudan Ecumenical Forum, said South Sudan is ripe for exploitation by unscrupulous preachers. She expects independence to set off a gold rush for souls.

“For those churches who want to have an influence, who want to grow, its just wonderful,” Peter said. “They have many people who are not educated, who will just follow whatever they are told. My fear is that these poor people will be misused.”

Some amount of exploitation may be the price South Sudan pays for progress. But however South Sudan’s new religious freedom develops the new country will have Christian believers to thank for its new freedoms.

Darfur refugees in a camp along the Chad-Sudan border in 2007 (Photo: Jeb Sharp)

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by Jeb Sharp

The pace of the Libya intervention has stunned the people of Darfur and the activists who worked so hard to protect them. Back in 2004, the assumption was that if you raised a loud enough outcry, governments would act to stop mass atrocities. In Libya the outcry had barely begun when governments intervened. The difference has not gone unnoticed by Rebecca Hamilton the author of ‘Fighting for Darfur: Public Action and the Struggle to Stop Genocide’.

“What Libya has that Darfur never had, still does not have to the present day, and desperately needs, is a unified international commitment to do civilian protection,” said Hamilton.

Hamilton says Libya underscores for her how the battle to protect civilians takes place in the realm of global geo-politics. In this case it was the Arab League’s request to the UN Security Council to enforce a no fly zone and protect civilians that made the difference.

“Without that then you would have had China in particular doing what it did in Darfur–and which is its typical position–which is to threaten to veto anything that looks interventionist,” said Hamilton.

“But with the Arab League specifically requesting to the UN Security Council that they do this, I think that led to China agreeing to abstain and let such a strong civilian protection resolution go through.”

The Arab League was willing to forsake Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in a way it was never ready to forsake Sudanese President Omar al Bashir. Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy says a key motivating factor in the Libya intervention was the widespread desire to see Gaddafi fall.

“The Arab League generally has no love for Gaddafi,” said Knights. “Many of the key players have a strong desire to see Gaddafi fall because of prior disagreements and bitter conflicts that they’ve had with him. Likewise the West has long-lasting grudges against Gaddafi whether they be the U.S., the British, the French.”

Even so, it wasn’t a given that the Arab League would sideline Gaddafi, notes Rebecca Hamilton. At the height of the outcry over Darfur, the Arab League stood by Sudanese President Omar al Bashir.

“I think what made the difference is the high-level defections of some of Gaddafi’s closest inner circle,” said Hamilton.

“And that again is something that you have not had in Sudan. Bashir’s inner circle have stayed tight and in support of him. But I think that when Gaddafi’s inner circle started to split it was easier for regional bodies like the Arab League to say, well we can stand beside Libya, whilst isolating Gaddafi.”

But Hamilton says there’s another striking reason things have played out differently in Libya and Darfur.

“If I had to put it in one word, I’d say Iraq,” said Hamilton.

“The problem during the early days in Darfur was that it was really only the U.S. government that was leading the charge for civilian protection, and it was in many ways the worst-placed actor to do so in the context of the recent invasion in Iraq. It just looked like hypocrisy and double standards for the Bush Administration to be talking about human rights in Darfur whilst you had Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and all of the other consequences of Iraq.”

It also made it easy for President Bashir of Sudan to paint any discussion of an international peacekeeping force for Darfur as an American-led attempt to invade yet another Muslim country. But things are different today. Time has passed. There’s a different administration in the White House, and the rest of the world is less cynical about US motives. There is surprising support for the Libya intervention in the Arab World.

But even if there had been similar agreement on Darfur there’s another glaring difference between the two cases, according to Robert Pape of the University of Chicago.

“The main difference between Darfur and Libya is actually the geography,” said Pape.

Pape points out that Libya is close to Europe and right on the coast. That means Gaddafi’s forces are vulnerable to NATO’s sea-based air power. Darfur, by contrast, is in western Sudan, hundreds of miles from the sea, with mountainous terrain and lots of small arms fire. Protecting civilians there is a different proposition.

“As a result, nearly every plan that was serious included significant numbers of ground troops,” said Pape. “The African Union put together the smallest plan for 2000 ground forces, the UN began to look at this and very quickly the number got up to 30,000 ground troops. And once you’re talking about tens of thousands of ground troops going into a very hostile environment, now we begin to balance out the humanitarian goal with the serious risk of life to ourselves.”

The UN Security Council did eventually deploy a peacekeeping force to Darfur, but not before hundreds of thousands of people had died and millions had been displaced. Even now, says Rebecca Hamilton, there’s an urgent need for international pressure for a peace settlement and the enforcement of a ceasefire in Darfur.

Slideshow from 2007 – all photos: Jeb Sharp

Read more:
• ‘Fighting for Darfur’ by Rebecca Hamilton
• ‘Beyond a No-Fly Zone: How to Protect Civilians in Libya’ by Michael Knights
• ‘The New Standard for Humanitarian Intervention’ by Robert Pape

• FAQ: Sudan’s Darfur conflict
• War in Darfur ‘over’ (2009)
• Jeb Sharp’s history podcast: How We Got Here
• Jeb Sharp’s 2007 Darfur coverage
• Follow Jeb Sharp on Twitter

The name Sudan comes from “bilad al sudan”: Arabic for “the land of the blacks.”

So you might expect Sudanese to be comfortable with the color of their skin. But they’re not.

“They are equating black with dullness, so a black person is stupid, automatically a slave,” says southerner Agnes Silver Nyarsuk. She explains that Southern Sudanese consider themselves black, while northerners see themselves as Arabs — and treat blacks as second class.

“For transport, an Arab lady when she enters, the men will stand up and give the place, for an Arab lady, because she’s a woman,” Nyarsuk says. “But a black lady, even if she is old, and she’s shivering, dying, they will not respect because you are automatically a slave.”

The differences between north and south might seem like one of religion but that’s only a secondary conflict. Most northerners are Muslims. And most southerners follow traditional African religions or Christianity.

Sudanese journalist Godfried Victor Bulla has written extensively on race issues. He says even when northerners and southerners are the same religion, perceived racial difference keeps them apart.

Black or Arab?

“An Arab looks at a black southerner, despite the fact that he’s a Muslim, they look at him as inferior,” Bulla says. “Someone, you know you’re nothing. It has never been that a black southerner is a sheik. This attitude grows bigger.”

In South Africa’s Apartheid system of racial division, the white power structure was easy to see. Sudan’s Apartheid isn’t so clear cut. If the president of Sudan, Omar Al Bashir, were to walk down a street in Washington DC, he’d be considered black. But Bulla says not in Sudan.

“Bashir is an Arab, Bashir is not black,” Bulla says. bashir is a chocolate kind of color, it’s a color which is not black totally,” says Victor Bulla.

Retired southern Gen. Joseph Lagu says that what the Sudanese have been fighting is “Arab racism, apartheid in the Sudan.”

He led the first armed resistance against the north in 1963. He says Institutionalized racism is what led southerners to war against their northern neighhors. He blames the 19th century British war hero, Lord Horatio Kitchener, for the racist attitudes held by northern Sudanese even today.

“The racism which the British brought, Kitchener planted it here, divided the people in the in 4 catagories,” says Lagu.

A tiered system of racism

The top category was the white race, represented by Kitchener and the people he brought followed by the Arab Egyptians who made up much of his army.

Category three were the Sudanese working as porters and servants. And at the bottom were black southerners. So it’s logical that the post-independence elite who have ruled the country since 1956 see themselves as Arabs.

“They associated themselves and identified themselves with Arabs, although they are not accepted by the Arabs,” Khartoum-based analyst Albaqir Muhktar says. “But they claim to be Arabs, they are not really Arabs, they are nubians, and indigenous people of Sudan have been Arabized, in a way that that their language become Arabic and religion becomes Islam, that’s all. But their looks remain Africans.”

Mukhtar says Sudanese people have a wide spectrum of skin colors — and concepts of skin color to match.

“And we describe the color of a northerner who is very black, we call him green,” says Mukhtar. “Although two different people, one northerner and one southerner, having the same color, when we describe the southerner we call him black, bluntly. When we describe the northerner, they call him green.”

Mukhtar says that North Sudanese rarely admit there’s such things as racism, so the mentality will likely persist for the foreseeable future. But with South Sudan set to officially declare independence in July, the north will have to deal with southerners as a sovereign country — and not an internal minority.

And that will be key to future stability and relations between the two states.

From Matthew Brunwasser’s ‘Arabs in Sudan’s South’ report.

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Marco Werman:  Things are also tense in Sudan.  Police broke up student protests in the capital of Khartoum today, and army units clashed in the southern town of Malakal killing at least 9 people.  In Darfur, in the west of Sudan, hundreds of people are on the run after a recent surge in violence. Rebecca Hamilton is author of the new book “Fighting for Darfur:Public Action and the Struggle to Stop Genocide”.  She’s just back from a reporting trip to Sudan and joins me in our studios in Boston. Thanks for being here.  The big news out of this part of the world is Egypt this week, but it’s interesting how much is actually going on in Sudan today.  We’ll talk more directly to Sudan in a moment.  For you, Rebecca, with Sudan right next door to Egypt, what are the implications for Sudan of Egypt but also of the other uprisings in the region?

Rebecca Hamilton:  I think it’s got to be making the ruling regime in Sudan very nervous because they know that in many quarters they don’t have the popular support of the people.  There were supposedly democratic elections last year, but they were neither free nor fair, and there are many in the north of the country who don’t want to see this regime stay in power.

Werman:  It’s a delicate time for Sudan.  The country’s about to split in two after southerners voted overwhelmingly last month for independence.  Before the referendum there were great fears of a return to civil war.  What do you think the prospects are now?

Hamilton:  I think the referendum went off incredibly well, successfully, peacefully; and there’s no doubt that southerners have voted for independence.  The question is not only the viability of a new southern state, which is starting from a position where there’s a population that’s 85% illiterate, where there are only 40 miles of paved roads in the entirety of the country, but also what is the viability of the new northern state?  At the moment, the northern economy is in a terrible situation.  It’s about to lose some significant share of the oil revenues when the south splits, and how long can it sustain this population if the economy goes south?

Werman:  Now, Rebecca, your new book is about Darfur and specifically the U.S. advocacy movement to stop genocide there.  Before we get to that movement, what’s happening in Darfur today?

Hamilton:  The situation in Darfur today is bleak.  All of the causes that led to the massacres that we saw in 2003 and 2004 that captured global attention, all those factors are still in play.  The people who perpetrated those massacres are still in power.  There has been no accountability.  There has been no compensation.  There are 2.7 million people who are still in displaced camps who can’t return to the land that they were forced to flee from.  And whilst the international attention has been on the south, you’ve seen the government ramping up again, it’s military campaign [indiscernible] doubtful.

Werman:  Are there people dying?  Are people getting killed?

Hamilton:  Yes, people are dying.  More than mass deaths, you’re seeing mass displacement because people are scared.  They don’t feel secure.  The situation has become so much more complex than if we had got involved properly early on, because now in addition to what are seen as victim groups, and non-Arab groups in Darfur, the Arab groups themselves that were manipulated by the government to to conduct some of these atrocities back in 2003 and 2004 also feel like they’re disenfranchised.  They’re turning against each other and against the government.

Werman:  Well that leads us directly to your book and what it’s about.  You’ve done some incredibly extensive reporting and also some soul searching about what activists were able to achieve.  You were yourself an activist for Darfur in the beginning.  The movement on the surface seems to be a force for good, the movement to get around this genocide in Darfur, from the United States.  But how much did it complicate the reaction to the genocide do you think?

Hamilton:  Hugely complicated, the policy response.  There are dynamics that come with a mass outcry.  They demand strong rhetoric from whomever they’re targeting, which was in this case the U.S. government; and they pushed them to come out with rhetoric that consistently said Darfur is a genocide, very strong language. That could have been useful if they had the policy option to back that up, but the U.S. government was in many ways the worst placed government at this particular period in history geopolitically speaking.

Werman:  And remind us why.

Hamilton:  After the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan, U.S. credibility was at an all-time low to be the one that was speaking out on human rights abuses.  And so I think the theory of the movement had been coming out of a kind of twentieth century analysis that if the U.S. gets out there in front and speaks on human rights, then the world will follow.  In actual fact the reverse happened.  When the U.S. got out in front and started talking about Darfur, it completely turned off the rest of the world from engaging in the issue.

Werman:  Where do you think the Darfur activists in the states got it wrong and perhaps made things worse?

Hamilton:  I think we, and I have to include myself in the start of this, were over reliant on the analysis that we had been given of what had gone wrong in Rwanda, the genocide there in 1994.  People who did the lessons, learned writing from that, came out with the conclusion that what was missing was an outcry from the American people.  It was a very post cold war analysis.  If the American people just raise hell, then the U.S. government will do something and then the situation can be resolved.  That was not the geopolitical reality at the start of the twenty-first century.

Werman:  So today, trouble still in Darfur in the north.  In Egypt, crisis.  Secession likely in the south of Sudan.  That must build up a lot of pressure on President al-Bashir, and there’s still that arrest warrant for the President.  Where does this leave him?  What’s he going to do now?

Hamilton:  At the moment, he’s being promised an awful lot by the U.S. government to let southern secession continue.  The U.S. government is going to have to deliver on those promises.  But that cannot wipe the slate clean for the ongoing human rights abuses in the north; and I think it’s going to be a very tricky line for the U.S. government to walk, how to balance those things.

Werman:  Rebecca Hamilton, author of “Fighting for Darfur:Public Action and the Struggle to Stop Genocide”, thanks for coming in and speaking with us.

Hamilton:  Thank you.

Werman:  Check out our in-depth coverage of Sudan, including some amazing photos, at theworld.org.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.