Internal Displacement

The Nuba

The Nuba, whose culture embraces both Islam and Christianity, as well as traditional beliefs, live just north of the north-south dividing line – itself a contentious issue – and have enough in common with the southern rebels that they formed a Nuba wing of the SPLA to resist the depredations of government-armed militia. The government declared a jihad in the Nuba Mountains in 1992, and mounted a campaign of devastating effectiveness, for which the term ‘ethnocide’ was coined by the researcher Alex de Waal.

After soldiers of the regime had killed the Nuba cattle and burned their villages, Nuba land was seized for profitable mechanised agriculture. An estimated 60,000 orphaned Nuba children ended up in ‘Peace Camps’, under pressure to convert to Islam. Boys, some as young as 12, were taken into the Sudanese army, at least one-third of whose ranks are Nuba men.

Previously estimated at 1.5 million, the Nuba population in the area was reduced to 400,000. Of those who remained, many were forced to leave their homes and farms in the fertile plains for the safety of the barren mountains above, and for years neither government nor rebels would allow aid workers access to the region to feed the people struggling to survive.

A ceasefire has held since 2002, but uncertainty remains over the government’s announced intention to incorporate the Nuba Mountains into the state of Western Kordofan, which has a culturally Arab population. The insensitive enforcement of Sharia law in a gerrymandered constituency could shatter the peace. Meanwhile there are thousands of displaced Nuba living in the outskirts of Khartoum who want to return voluntarily to their homes in the Nuba Mountains.

[TOP]

Oil and Displacement in South Sudan

Ever since 1978, when oil was first discovered near Bentiu in Western Upper Nile, South Sudan, it has been accompanied by human displacement and death. In the early 1980s the dictator Jaafar Nimeiri tried to redraw the borders of the south, bringing the oilfields into a newly created ‘Unity State’ under central control and abrogating the 1972 Addis Ababa peace agreement. In 1985-86 the democratically elected Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi began the arming of tribal militias in the area, a process which the National Islamic Front regime accelerated when it seized power in 1989. Soon a scorched-earth policy was implemented against local populations by a combination of the regular army, various militias and Nuer warlords who had turned against the SPLA and who were government-armed. One by-product of the policy was the re-emergence of slavery. While significant numbers were enslaved, much greater numbers were displaced.

In 1999, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) acknowledged that ‘hostilities have reached particular intensity in Unity State/Western Upper Nile region and adjacent areas as the protagonists vie for control of oil-rich areas.’

Once driven out of their homes by military force, southerners were systematically prevented from returning by the burning of crops and stores and the denial of relief. After oil came on-stream in August 1999, the war worsened, with the intensification of aerial bombardment by Sudan Air Force Antonov planes and helicopter gunships – and the exodus of civilians living in and around the oil fields grew larger. The displacement continued, both in order to defend existing oil fields, and to push the front line forward in order to develop new oil fields.

Bentiu was historically inhabited by the Nuer and Dinka tribes. In the days before oil, pastoralists migrated within southern Sudan in search of water for their herds. Economically marginalised Arab groups encroached on lands occupied by their southern African neighbours periodically, and disputes and displacement were not unknown. But after the discovery of oil, central governments armed elements of the Baggara cattle herders of southern Kordofan and gave them free rein to attack Dinka and Nuer in and around the Unity and Heglig fields north of Bentiu. These Baggara militia – dubbed ‘murahleen’ - raided and burned villages, looted cattle, drove southerners off their pastures and abducted women and children.

Organised and armed by the government, and often acting in unison with government forces, the Baggara ‘murahleen’ figured prominently at key moments in the development of the oil fields. In November 1992, as Khartoum began planning for oil exploitation in a new consortium with Canada’s Arakis Energy, the government and its murahleen allies began a five-month offensive designed, according to Human Rights Watch, ‘to permanently dislodge the civilians’. ‘In November 1992 through April 1993, these forces looted, burned, killed and abducted people,’ Human Rights Watch said. ‘The survivors said that the government was trying to clear the area so the SPLA would not be near the oil fields.’

In October 1996, two months before China and Malaysia joined Arakis in the so-called Greater Nile Oil Project Corporation (GNOPC), a new government-murahleen offensive displaced many thousands more, furthering the deliberate creation of a cordon sanitaire around the oil areas. Cattle and grain were looted, food stores looted and burned. In October 1998, a much larger Canadian company, Talisman, took over from Arakis as the leader in the oil consortium and began constructing a 1,000-mile pipeline linking the oil fields to a new supertanker terminal on the Red Sea coast.

The government had exploited the 1991 split in the SPLA, co-opting breakaway Nuer warlords to fight on its side against the largely Dinka SPLA. However, as estimates of the reserves grew, and the oil prize became greater, divisions emerged among the government’s Nuer allies over control of the oil fields and the lucrative protection of the companies doing business there. The government encouraged these divisions. It armed its most trusted Nuer ally, Paulino Matiep, against other Nuer warlords aligned with Riek Machar, a more recent defector from the south, in order to keep the Nuer divided among themselves and so to prevent the Heglig and Unity oil fields from disappearing into a united South.

‘Since both armed factions were Nuer, the government had set up a situation where it could dismiss fighting between them as ‘tribal clashes’ remote from the central government and not controllable by it,’ Human Rights Watch has said. ‘Nothing could be further from the truth... It was all about power, control of natural resources, primarily oil.’

The United Nations’ Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS), the primary coordinator of humanitarian aid, reported in 1998 that Western Upper Nile was experiencing pre-famine conditions ‘in almost all cases as a result of military activity.’ Malnutrition rates reached as high as 40 percent. OCHA reported that more OLS personnel were evacuated from the region due to fighting than from any other area where OLS operated. By the end of 1998, humanitarian coverage in the region was the lowest of all major OLS areas. OCHA classified Western Upper Nile as one of two ‘areas of acute emergency’ in all of Sudan, the worst classification possible. The other area was Bahr al-Ghazal, where almost a million people were affected by famine in 1998.

In May 1999 the government dispatched a new militia, the ‘Protectors of the Oil Brigade’, to the oilfields. Government forces with Antonov bombers and helicopter gunships, tanks, armoured personnel carriers and militia began a two-month offensive on villages in the area. A Canadian delegation estimated that the offensive caused a decline in population ‘in the order of 50 per cent’.

The spreading insecurity caused most NGOs to pull out of Western Upper Nile, leaving the population dependent on OLS relief flights. These were dependent on government permission – which was often denied.

In August 1999, with the pipeline completed, oil fields south of Bentiu became potential drilling sites for the first time. The (then) UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Sudan, Leonardo Franco, accused the Khartoum government of using its army to clear a 60-mile security zone around the oilfields.

By the end of 1999, the World Food Programme estimated that 70,500 civilians had been displaced from the oil fields. Most had fled empty-handed. Deprived of homes and livelihoods, and weakened by disease and malnutrition, they walked as far as 200 miles south of oil-producing areas. Others fled into the swamps bordering the Nile or to other inaccessible areas.

In January 2000, a Canadian fact-finding mission led by former Foreign Minister John Harker agreed that ground and air attacks by the government on civilians had increased significantly as a result of oil exploration, drilling and pipeline construction. It charged that these attacks were part of a strategy to clear the region of populations perceived to threaten the pipeline and the security of oil operations. It said civilians were also caught in the middle of fighting for control of the oil fields.

In April 2000, Amnesty International reported that aerial bombardments, the strafing of villages by helicopter gunships, unlawful killings and torture including rape and abduction were taking place on a ‘massive’ scale. Southerners who were forced out of oil-producing areas were being prevented from returning by the destruction of their harvests and the looting of their cattle.

[TOP]

Conditions for Internally Displaced People

Forced Relocation

Many Sudanese from marginalised areas such as South Sudan and Darfur live in camps on the fringes of Khartoum. These are regularly raided by the police, and homes demolished, in order to relocate their inhabitants (without advance warning or the right to appeal) further into the deserts on the outskirts of the capital. They often have no access to basic facilities such as water, housing and transport. The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that since 1989 at least 665,000 IDPs have been forcibly relocated in Khartoum State - some 300,000 since 2004. (IRIN 7 October 2005)

The UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan noted in his report on Sudan in October 2005 that - contrary to previous commitments made by the then Governor of Khartoum State, Abdel Haleem Ismail al-Mudafie - there had been new forced relocations of IDPs and squatters in settlements around Khartoum. ‘Thousands of people have been forcibly moved to sites in desert areas tens of kilometres outside Khartoum where there are no, or wholly insufficient, life-sustaining services,’ Annan observed. ‘These relocations, and the violence accompanying them, increase tensions in the greater Khartoum area, violate the right of the displaced to return voluntarily, and in dignity and safety, and also have the potential to undermine the transition towards peace and stability in the whole country.’

Between January and February 2005, some 750 people who had fled to Khartoum from Darfur were sent to a school in Mayo camp, Khartoum, to be looked after by a group of local voluntary associations. They included young and old men and women, and young children from the Fur, Zaghawa, Massaleit and other, smaller African tribes. At the end of February, the police raided the school, using batons and tear gas indiscriminately. Although a few individuals managed to run away, there is no news of what happened to the rest. They may have been imprisoned, killed or detained indefinitely, according to an investigation by the Aegis Trust published in June 2005. ( http://www.protectdarfur.org/Pages/Download_Docs/Lives_in_Our_Hands.pdf)

In May 2005, violent protests by IDPs against an attempted relocation in the squatter area of Soba Aradi left 16 policemen and an estimated six civilians dead, while several hundred people were thrown in jail. Mohamed Ahmed Abd Al-Gadir Al-Arbab, one of the lawyers representing 136 people detained in connection with the clashes, was arrested on 1 October 2005. Amnesty International considers him a prisoner of conscience, detained solely for his work in defence of human rights, and comments that many if not all, of the 136 are detained arbitrarily, and four have reportedly died as a result of torture in custody. Mr Arbab has reportedly been charged, together with the 136 detainees, under articles 21 (complicity to execute a criminal agreement), 24 (criminal conspiracy), 50 (undermining the constitutional system), 51 (waging war against the state), 77 (public nuisance), 107 (‘screening and harbouring an offender’) and 130 (murder) of the 1991 Penal Code. Articles 51 and 130 carry the death penalty, which indicates the government’s powers in such cases.

Amnesty International reports: ‘At 4 am in the morning of 17 August 2005, armed police surrounded the Shikan IDP camp, located in Omdurman, Khartoum. National security forces had notified some members of the camp leadership the previous day that they would be checking the camp for stolen property, following the recent riots marking First Vice-President John Garang’s death. National security forces arrived with lorries, emptying the entire camp of its residents. 500 families were moved to Thawra camp, 170 families were relocated to Al-Fatah III, and 371 families will be allotted places to return to in Shikan. ‘Al Fatah III and Thawra are locations lacking the most basic means of survival. Thawra, located 55km north of Khartoum, was previously a garbage dump, and lacks all essential services. Water, healthcare, and educational facilities are non-existent as the location is no more than a patch of desert. Al Fatah III is better only in that it possesses one water pump.’

More permanent settlements have also been raided by the authorities in search of suspected rebel sympathisers. In long-established settlements such as Hajj Yousif and Souq Sitta, the authorities closed off areas and conducted house-by-house searches in August 2005, following the unrest that was triggered by the death of Vice-President John Garang on 30 July.

The Director of the Inter-Agency Internal Displacement Division of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Dennis McNamara, was interviewed by the IRIN news agency on 30 September 2005. Asked about the key interventions the UN was planning over the coming dry season, he replied: ‘One of the necessary interventions which is taking place already, is to stop the pressure in Khartoum on forcible relocations to unsuitable areas, which is a push-factor for returns. That is clear from the [UN] Secretary-General's report [on Sudan to the Security Council], and something the UN is very concerned about. Not that people are relocated, that's possible, but they need to be relocated properly with respect for their rights. That's a major issue and has to be linked to the return process.’

IRIN pointed out that almost half of the IDPs are based in the Khartoum area, in settlements that are being destroyed on a regular basis, giving them little choice but to return. It asked what the international community was planning to do about this.

McNamara replied: ‘There is a monitoring group, the Consultative Committee, chaired jointly with the EU and the government and with other donors and UN agencies, which is supposed to be the mechanism to make sure that any relocations are properly and fairly carried out to areas that are sustainable. That obviously did not have that much success because the most recent locations were not done properly and were not sustainable. But the idea is to reactivate that consultative committee and try and make sure there is a coordinated, agreed, proper process and there is no undue pressure on people to go to unacceptable conditions and maybe thereby, involuntarily.’

Actions against protective civil society organizations

The Sudanese government has launched legal proceedings against the Sudan Organisation Against Torture (SOAT) in apparent attempt to silence it. Local press reports said Sudan's Bureau of Crimes Against the State began proceedings against SOAT at the end of August 2005 but did not inform the organisation itself. It is being charged under articles 59 (Disclosure of Military Information), 66 (Propagation of False news), 69 (Breach of Public Peace), 77 (Public Nuisance) of the 1991 Sudanese Penal Code. If found guilty, its members could face more than 5 years in prison.

On 4 August 2005 President Bashir enacted ‘The Organization of Voluntary and Humanitarian Work Act, 2005’ on the basis of a provisional constitutional order/decree pursuant to his powers under Article 109 (1) of the Constitution. Its impact on freedom of organisation is profound, and a large number of Sudanese voluntary organisations whose role is central to the functioning of civil society (including the protection of displaced people and refugees), have registered complaints against the decree.

A memorandum from the mainly southern New Sudanese Indigenous NGOs Network (NESI), issued in Nairobi, Kenya, on 6th October, 2005, declares: ‘The Decree is not favourable to the growth of the civil society in Sudan as it impedes and dampens the efforts of indigenous Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), which form the largest part of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to complement government efforts in ensuring a peaceful and developed Sudan, which is emerging from decades of civil strife.’

In northern Sudan, hundreds of civil society organisations responded by holding discussion fora and issuing statements, culminating in an appeal calling for abolition of the decree. This appeal was delivered to the Constitutional Court on 3 October 2005, with supporting signatures from 400 national organisations. The appeal goes on to note that a ‘Human Rights Commission has not been established yet, making it impossible to resort to any competent body to promote, safeguard and monitor [the] state’s compliance to guarantee and safeguard the right of appellants to organise.’

Darfur

Two million people from the Darfur region of western Sudan have been displaced since the escalation of warfare there in 2003. By the end of 2003, the UNHCR was calling the flight of Darfur refugees to Chad ‘the world’s largest exodus’ (UNHCR Refugees magazine, Winter 2003).

The current crisis in Darfur developed over more than a decade, but intensified dramatically in 2003. The primary cause of displacement was raiding by ‘Janjaweed’ militia; self-described ‘Arabs’ pursuing a campaign of raiding and land seizure from non-’Arabs’ such as the Masalit, Fur and Zaghawa. They carried out indiscriminate killings, looting and mass rape -- all in contravention of Common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions that prohibits attacks on civilians. Repeated investigations have concluded that these militia are supported by the government of Sudan, operate under the command of senior figures in the security forces, and that the entire campaign is remarkable for its explicitly racist political ideology.

The militia, together with government air and ground forces, targeted Darfur tribes of African extraction. These communities are being subjected to a strategy of ‘collective punishment’ designed to drain the support base of the rebel groups which had come into being in response to unchecked militia raiding in the 1990s. The strategy has been to move the people or kill them, as in the South and the Nuba Mountains.

Ethnic animosities between groups in Darfur, which had not hitherto been a major factor, surfaced in the racially infused language that now characterises the Darfur conflict. Once-fluid ethnic identities have become more sharply distinguished.

Although disputes in Darfur between settled ‘African’ farmers and ‘Arab’ nomads moving south in search of water and pastures have been commonplace for centuries, there were also mechanisms for settling the arguments and minimising harm. During the 1980s and 1990s however, these conflicts intensified, aggravated by drought, the influx of arms from wars in neighbouring countries, and the policy pursued by the Government of Sudan of arming ‘Arab’ tribesmen and - later - actively disarming ‘non-Arab’ groups.

In the 1980s a regional government was established in Darfur, and competition between a handful of leading politicians took on an ethnic dimension. A Fur block was formed, allied with a number of other indigenous groups including the Berti, Birgid, Tunjur and Daju, and intermittently with the Masalit block of the far west. This was in opposition to, and in response to, a self-styled ‘Arab’ alliance consisting of many of the indigenous groups within the Baggara confederation plus camel herders in northern Darfur (including the Um Jalul and Mahariya clans of the Rizeigat and others). Initially, the traditionally nomadic Zaghawa were aligned with the Arabs.

Khartoum consistently favoured the ‘Arab’ alliance , which in 1988 declared a ‘War on the Blacks’, as it termed the ‘African’ tribes. This led ultimately to the creation of so-called ‘Janjaweed’ militia which gained international notoriety in 2003. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the chief or Nazir of the Rizeigat refused to allow official co-opting of members of his tribe into the government-backed militia: those who join it do so on their own.

The older ‘native administration’ system based on village sheikhs had been dismantled by President Nimeiri, and while the individuals remained, possessing some social authority, they rarely had the resources to intervene.

Selective arming by the government of ‘Arab’ groups, while ‘African’ groups were disarmed, continued throughout the 1990s. Traditional negotiation mechanisms between the parties were abandoned, and land seizures by the ‘Arab’ groups were reportedly legitimized by the local administration. Assassination of tribal leaders, arrests of civil rights defenders, and detention of educated members of the African groups became systematic. The proliferation of small arms, continuous raids and looting by militia encouraged ‘banditry and acts of armed robbery’ – the government’s preferred terms - and led to a situation of general insecurity.

In June 1999, a government-sponsored conference was held to put an end to the intertribal conflicts. An agreement was reached but, according to the UN reports at the time, ‘there have been continuing reports of extensive violence and human rights abuses against Masalit civilians on the part of Arab militias allegedly supported by the government, driving more than 30,000 people into exile in Chad and Egypt and reportedly displacing some 350,000 in areas within West Darfur State itself’.

Since 2001, Darfur has been governed under central government decree, with special courts to try people suspected of illegal possession or smuggling of weapons, murder and armed robbery. The security forces have used these powers for arbitrary and indefinite detention of anyone suspected of criticising the government.

Low-intensity conflict continued to worsen until early 2003, with Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa people forming defence groups against continuing attacks. A number of interacting factors including ethnic conflict, an increase in armed robberies and a perception of marginalisation, led to the formation of two political and military resistance movements, the Sudanese Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A – originally the Darfur Liberation front) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM – formed in Khartoum by dissident Islamists). These rebel forces from the disadvantaged tribes, having failed to end their marginalisation by civil political means, announced an uprising against the Khartoum government in February 2003 and launched attacks on police and military targets, including El Fasher airport.

The government’s response was a security clampdown and a military onslaught. Its massive intensification of war, targeting civilians it assumed to be siding with the opposition, was out of all proportion to the original threat. The result over the next two to three years was the deaths of between 180,000-300,000 people, the internal displacement of around 1.8 million people and the exodus to Chad of another 220,000 refugees.

Displaced people in Darfur often have no aid and no protection from Janjaweed militiamen, some of whom have been integrated with the security and official militia forces and have terrorised the displaced people's camps with impunity.

Moreover, ‘The Sudanese government is blocking new arrivals ... from getting registered [in camps], which means they can't get food and tents.’ (New York Times [dateline: Nyala, South Darfur, 31 May 2005])

Alongside the scorched-earth tactics against villagers, the government has engaged in widespread arrests of community leaders from the target Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa communities, and been complicit in their assassination. Other members of the educated elite, such as teachers and doctors, have been subjected to various forms of persecution, including detention and torture. Numerous merchants, doctors, teachers, lawyers, bankers, civil servants and other professionals in Nyala and other towns in Darfur have been detained without trial. Equally, in Khartoum and other towns outside Darfur, a broad range of ‘suspects’ has been subjected to surveillance, persecution and arrest.

The emergence of smaller armed groups and a split within the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement has made the situation even more volatile. In October 2005, two Nigerian African Union peacekeepers were killed in a gunfight with armed men who were robbing an African Union civilian contractor. The perpetrators turned out to be Janjaweed. Dozens of AU military observers and other staff were later abducted by insurgents.

‘Ongoing peace-talks in Abuja, Nigeria, have not prevented the conflict from deteriorating further with deliberate attacks, systematic sexual violence and the killing of IDPs in camps, humanitarian workers and personnel from the African Union peace-keeping mission. As a result, more of the displaced may be pushed across the border into neighbouring Chad, which is already struggling to cope with the refugees from Darfur in an extremely hostile environment and a poor host community.’ (Global IDP Project, October 2005)

[TOP]