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The Nuba Mountains war isn’t going away
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August 02, 2011 01:16 AM
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One thing is clear about the new war in the Nuba Mountains region of South Kordofan, the first war of the shrunken Republic of Sudan presided over by President Omar al-Bashir: No one outside Sudan knows how to address it. Most wish it would simply go away – that those pesky Nuba would put...
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Probe U.N. neglect in South Kordofan
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July 05, 2011 01:34 AM
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The United Nations, already examining the performance of its peacekeeping troops in Abyei in May, must widen its investigations to their performance in the Nuba Mountains region of South Kordofan in June. In Abyei, Zambian peacekeepers stand accused of staying in their barracks during fighting...
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War clouds gather in South Kordofan
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June 21, 2011 02:21 AM
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High in the Nuba mountain region of central Sudan a few months ago, an old Nuba woman who experienced the jihad of the 1990s declared by the Khartoum government explained to me why she believed a return to war was inevitable, and most probably necessary, no matter how high the price. Almost a...
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Spare a thought for the other Sudanese
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January 14, 2011 12:00 AM
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As southern Sudanese celebrate their self-determination referendum, spare a thought for those they leave behind – all those in northern Sudan for whom the birth of an independent state in the south of the country will be the death of a dream: the democratic, decentralized “New...
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Sudan's election boycott: the underside
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April 13, 2010 12:00 AM
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The Sudanese elections currently underway were never going to be easy. The figures alone are daunting. In a country where more than two-thirds of the population is illiterate, and where there have been no multiparty elections since 1986, 12 million northerners will potentially fill in 104 million...
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Back to bloody square-one in Darfur
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March 16, 2010 12:00 AM
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In 2002, when Darfur was as familiar to most people as Outer Mongolia, Sudanese regular forces and aircraft as well as pro-government militias attacked Jebel Marra, the mountainous center of Darfur where rebels were organizing an insurgency. I learned about it when Abdul Wahid Mohammad al-Nur, the...
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Bashir is guilty, but does Sudan benefit?
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July 18, 2008 12:00 AM
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It was a first for the International Criminal Court: the request for an arrest warrant for a head of state, Sudanese President Omar Bashir, on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Darfur. But the ICC's attempt to indict Bashir is also a first for the...
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Darfur has gone regional, and the UN is useless
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May 27, 2008 12:00 AM
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Rarely in the annals of United Nations peacekeeping has so much been spent, with such high expectations, for so little result. When the Darfur rebels of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) recently attacked Omdurman, advancing within less than 3 kilometers of the presidential palace in...
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Giving a voice to the forgotten Arab victims of Darfur
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April 29, 2008 12:00 AM
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Too often, Darfur's war is portrayed as a racial contest of indigenous African farmers against interloping Arab nomads. The reality is very different and much more complicated. Arabs have been part of Darfur's social fabric for many centuries. Farmers and herders, they make up about a third of the...
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Talking about Lebanon with Bobby Fischer
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February 01, 2008 12:00 AM
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Twenty years after I first saw him, tall and gangling and infinitely appealing, I finally sat down, alone, with Bobby Fischer. I wanted to talk about him. He wanted to talk about Lebanon, and me. The world chess championship between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky in Reykjavik in 1972 was my first...
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A seismic political shift is taking place in Darfur
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December 31, 2007 12:00 AM
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As 2007 draws to a close, and with it the fifth year of war in Darfur, a seismic shift is taking place in Sudan's westernmost region. This emerging situation will determine the course of the conflict there more than any other single factor, except the collapse of the North-South peace agreement...
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A bad idea is about to deploy in Darfur
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December 14, 2007 12:00 AM
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For the last several years, international efforts to end the war in Darfur have focused on the deployment of a 26,000-man peacekeeping force which Darfurians have come to believe will "save" them. In the words of one of the force's strongest supporters: "Activists have pressed relentlessly for the...
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An 'incongruous' force enters Darfur
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June 20, 2007 12:00 AM
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There is, at last, a "breakthrough" in the crisis in Darfur. The Sudanese government has given "unconditional" acceptance to a 20,000-strong force of United Nations and African Union peacekeepers. Under proposals put forward by UN and AU planners, the force will have a strong mandate and a...
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Good, and unworkable, ideas in Darfur
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June 11, 2007 12:00 AM
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At last we have it. Five months after the United States promised to unleash "Plan B" against the Sudan government unless it agreed to allow United Nations peacekeepers into Darfur, President George W. Bush has finally announced a package of economic sanctions. Plan B is on the road. In announcing...
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Time to take a fresh look at Darfur
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April 13, 2007 12:00 AM
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In the fifth year of Darfur's war, it's time to take a fresh look at the conflict. In the newspapers, the stories of death, displacement and rape are unchanged from 2004, when the world first awoke to the enormity of the catastrophe. The firestorm of those days encouraged parallels with the...
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