Islamic Government of Sudan (GoS) troops surged into Nuba territory in mid-January and were just 20km east of the strategic town of Kauda, which serves as the de facto capital of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N).
The SPLM-N’s armed wing, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army-North (SPLA-N), is fighting to protect the Nuba from Islamisation and genocidal jihad. However, with artillery of the Sudan Armed Forces in range, the areas around Mendi, Angartu and Kara Jumous in the Nuba Mountains have been evacuated. The SPLA-N recently managed to fight off GoS forces that had attacked the state capital of Kadugli, which was the site of massacres and ethnic cleansing in June 2011. It was the second major attack in 2015. The gravely imperilled Nuba are fleeing deeper into SPLA-N held territory without any assurances that they will find refuge from a regime that is determined to eliminate them.
The Islamic GoS has expressed its intent to bring the conflict in the Nuba Mountains to an end, not through negotiations, but through genocide. Defence documents leaked in August 2014 revealed that the regime plans to starve the non-Arab and mostly Christian Nuba just as it did in the early 1990s. Once the people are starving, the GoS will attempt to recruit them, with offers of food, to fight against their own people. Those who resist will perish. An estimated 100,000 Nuba died in the genocide of 1992-1993.
