Sudan Now

There was a myriad of events in Washington last Thursday that focused on South Sudan’s newly-gained independence, all attempting to answer one question: Now what? The lineup of Sudan-focused events included a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, a White House conference call, and panels at the United States Institute of Peace, or USIP, the Society for International Development, and the Heritage Foundation. While the panels and individuals represented different organizations and ends of the political spectrum, they all reached a strikingly similar chord on what was at stake in the two Sudans.  Read More »

The condemnation expressed by U.S. government officials over the recent violence in Sudan must translate into meaningful action toward those most culpable, to force them to rethink their calculations. Call the White House at 1-800-GENOCIDE and urge Obama to impose consequences against the government of President Bashir.  Read More »

Long before the outbreak of fighting along Sudan’s North-South border broke out last month, partners at Sudan Now were identifying a series of conditions fundamental to lasting peace in the two Sudans and formulating key recommendations for the U.S. government. The dire humanitarian conditions along the border – that show no signs of letting up – provide a devastating illustration of the stakes: “Unless the United States approach toward Sudan changes on multiple fronts, increasing violence in Sudan will become an international conflict that could threaten the wider stability of the region and will continue to cause new levels of human suffering,” Sudan Now said today in a statement announcing the release of a new paper.  Read More »

Aerial bombardments, restrictions on humanitarian access, and the targeting of civilians continue to take place in the Sudanese border state of South Kordofan, amid continued fighting between the Sudanese army and elements of the SPLA. Churches, aid workers, and NGOs have described the Sudanese government’s actions as ethnic cleansing. Now, the latest satellite images analyzed by Satellite Sentinel Project and confidential U.N. reports reported in the news indicate that a major ground offensive by the Sudan Armed Forces may be in the works, suggesting that the violence may be far from over.  Read More »

Achol’s face and neck were dotted with white burns from the sparks of a cluster bomb. Her daughter, one-year-old Nyibach, suffered from the same painful sores. Achol’s family, which includes four other children who went missing in the chaos of the recent attack, is from Abyei, the hotly contested region on Sudan’s North-South border. But casualties like Achol and Nyibach aren’t simply “collateral damage” of a confrontation between the northern and southern armies.  Read More »

JUBA, South Sudan -- As I walked into Bentiu’s state hospital last week, I expected it to be overcrowded with wounded civilians who had fled the most recent onslaught between the SPLA and Peter Gadet’s forces in Mankien. But I could not find one such person. Instead it was bustling with soldiers getting their battle-scars dressed. “No person without an SPLA uniform is allowed to escape Mayom,” said one man, referring to a western county in Sudan’s Unity state where militia fighting has been rampant.  “There are no civilians in Mayom, only rebels.”  Read More »

“White airplanes” had been circling ominously overhead for a couple of days before they started dropping bombs.  It was Saturday when one fell on Achai Ajak Atem’s house, killing her mother and baby brother. At 14, Achai is the oldest of her four siblings. Their father died five years ago. Suddenly in charge, Achai gathered the other children and started running.  Read More »

The latest analysis of satellite images by the Satellite Sentinel Project, or SSP, confirms reports of Sudan Armed Forces-led attacks on Abyei, including the razing of one southern-aligned base north of Abyei town. The project, which has consistently documented military build-up in and around the Abyei area, says that northern occupation of the disputed border area was premeditated.  Read More »

Sunday, as the Khartoum regime was solidifying its military occupation of Abyei and beginning to loot and burn the town, I heard from one of the foremost experts on Sudan in the world, Dr. Douglas Johnson. We agreed that Bashir's government felt certain that it would face no international consequences for its attack on Abyei, which threatens to plunge the North and South back to full-scale war. In the absence of any cost or accountability, to have believed that Khartoum would NOT strike would have been foolhardy.  Read More »

The U.S. government’s incentive-oriented policy toward Sudan has not achieved its objectives. The Khartoum regime has militarily occupied Abyei, escalated bombing and aid cut-offs in Darfur, and increased support for ethnic militias throughout the South.  The process toward normalization between the U.S. and Sudan should be suspended and offered incentives should be supplanted by escalating consequences for government officials in Khartoum and any other party that promotes violence, commits human rights abuses, and targets civilians, said a group of prominent anti-genocide and human rights advocacy organizations.  Read More »