Editions of Africa Messenger typically report on the situation in Sudan and on the various ministry activities in which PPF is engaged. But the really beautiful thing about the ministry work is not always the work itself, but how it came to pass.

PPF is 100 percent supported by the prayers and giving of individuals, churches, businesses, clubs, foundations, and other non-profits. Therefore, behind every story of a Sudanese refugee receiving a cup of cold, clean water from a PPF well, is a story of compassion and sacrifice from a Christian far away who decided to get involved.

I am reminded about this every week, as I receive notes, pictures, and other testimonies of people actively engaged in compassion for the persecuted.

Church members gather for fellowship and bracelet-making (Photo courtesy of Emily Eckerson).

Recently, I received several pictures from a lady named Marilyn. Marilyn lives in Massachusetts and has a heart for the persecuted. She decided to make the 100 Wells Campaign bracelets that PPF offers on its website(https://secure.giftwrapplus.org/ppf/EU/cart/default.aspx?) to help raise funds and awareness for the Darfur refugee community in Jaac.

In her own words, this is what Marilyn had to say:

“One of the most frustrating aspects of growing old is feeling useless – especially when you have always been really active and involved.”

“The Sunday that Ed Lyons spoke at our church, I was sitting up front in a special rocking chair reserved for me. As he talked about the Persecution Project and the bracelets he needed for the 100 Wells, my heart started pounding, and I got so excited. ‘This is something I can do!’ I raised my hand as soon as he finished and volunteered.”

“Everyone in the church said they wanted to help as well – and they have. We’ve held sessions at church, but at home I sit with my children and my grandchildren (from 8-80 years old), making the bracelets.”

Marilyn making 100 Wells bracelets with family members.

“I thank God for the opportunity to help others once again.”

Marilyn did not just start working by herself; she recruited several ladies at her church to help as well. This is just one small but significant way concerned Christians can get involved. I often tell stories like this to the Sudanese people we help, just to encourage them. When someone gives us a gift, often we don’t know the story behind it. When we hear the story, it can sometimes bless us more than the gift. That was certainly the case with Marilyn and her friends.

In 1997, I started Persecution Project. Through all these years I have had the honor to participate with you in a range of programs and projects to demonstrate “Active Compassion” for the persecuted in Sudan. It has been a journey filled with great joy and pain to come alongside believers who have experienced great loss and undergone intense suffering because of their faith.

Village of Lohutuk in South Sudan

We have witnessed so many challenges and changes. As I look back I am overwhelmed by the prayers answered and obstacles overcome. As I enter my 15th year of working in this field, I have never been more excited about the future as I am today.

Of course, there are still many negative things happening right now in the region. The genocidal war and aerial terror campaign against innocent civilians in the Nuba Mountains, Darfur, and the Blue Nile state is a growing calamity that you will continue to hear about from us. We will continue to provide ways in which you can partner with us to bring encouragement and some relief to the suffering.

One of the areas of ministry which I believe will make a long-term impact is in the area of mentoring, training and discipleship.

This January edition of the Africa Messenger provides a window into one of PPF’s projects which is designed to be a platform for discipleship, education, training and evangelism. The Jebel Lopit Training Center (JLTC) is a project of PPF that has being initiated in partnership with several other local and international partners including The Voice of the Martyrs (VOM), the Africa Inland Church (AIC) and Diguna-AIC.

The Early Years in Lohutuk (photos from It’s a Battle by Sidney Langford)

Pioneers Sidney Langford and Ed Schuit. Sidney drove the first team to visit Lohutuk.

Early pioneers, Martha Hughell and Barbara Battye, translating the Latuka New Testament.

Missionary and Lopit warriors.

Current Vision

The purpose of the JLTC is to provide a platform to facilitate programs and projects that will mentor, train, disciple and develop the first generation of leaders in the world’s newest nation – South Sudan.

The idea for the JLTC developed as we have watched South Sudan emerge from Africa’s longest war and transition during the last six years to a free and independent country.

Nation-building requires people-building and that is the vision of the JLTC. In order for a people to really be free they must be able to govern themselves.

Self-government begins with individuals, families and churches and reaches to businesses, communities and civil government. Biblical concepts such as “thou shalt not steal” and “thou shalt not covet” are the bedrock of a free society and the foundation for private property and free enterprise. Students who come to the JLTC from all parts of Sudan and Africa will receive foundational teachings that they will take home and use to transform their families and communities.

Pastor training.

The JLTC is currently being developed in the community of Lohutuk in Eastern Equatoria State, South Sudan—an ideal location for the JLTC located in the beautiful Lopit mountains.

PPF wants to facilitate the growth and development of leaders to provide a firm foundation for a growing country.

Mission House

To achieve our vision for this facility, PPF has partnered with the African Inland Church (AIC) and the German Christian organization DIGUNA. DIGUNA’s history in Lohutuk goes back to the late 1970s, but it continues the rich tradition started by African Inland Mission (AIM) which dates back to the 1950s. DIGUNA occupies AIM’s old mission station and carries on with ministry outreaches they started before and between the two wars. Together with AIC Sudan, DIGUNA helps run the schools, church and clinic there.

Lohutuk Hospital 2010

AIC Lohutuk primary school

AIC Lohutuk

There are presently several DIGUNA missionaries living in Lohutuk, including long-time PPF friend and partner, Stephan Matusik, along with his wife, Iris, and their five children.

Stephan has been a leader in the com-munity for nearly seven years and has built up the DIGUNA mission station to become an important beacon for the gospel in the area.

PPF has supported the community in Lohutuk in various ways for more than a decade including crisis relief, supporting development of a Bible School, primary and secondary schools, a hospital, agricultural projects and other projects.

The land for the JLTC has been donated by the AIC and sits adjacent to the DIGUNA mission station. Utilizing containers, fencing materials and a Hydraform brick machine provided by PPF donors, construction of the JLTC compound and campus is underway!

The JLTC will provide a venue for churches, universities, and other ministries to have a platform for teaching and training. The JLTC will include accommodations for students, volunteers, short or long-term missionaries, teachers, classrooms with VSAT capability for distance learning, a mess hall, a library, storage and access to a range of ministry projects.

Food production is a basic need in South Sudan. Independence means self-reliance. One of the best methods of education is apprenticeship. Toward that end, PPF has initiated a number of “demonstration projects” that are designed to provide mentoring and to teach self-reliance, while addressing real needs such as food production. Growing vegetables and raising chickens are two “demonstration projects” initiated in 2011 in partnership with Diguna and The Voice of the Martyrs (VOM).

Growing vegetables, raising chickens and eggs locally is providing food for the community.

The Hydraform machine which produces “interlocking” bricks is another vehicle for mentoring and training. Housing and food production are two vitally important needs in a poor country with little infrastructure and one which currently relies upon imports for most of its food.

Hydraform bricks drying in Lohutuk.

One of the greatest development needs in South Sudan is education. The JLTC will provide a platform for academic, spiritual and business training. Several American universities and educational institutions approached PPF in 2011 and asked to partner with PPF to provide distance learning and short- and long-term courses.

At the beginning of 2011 PPF provided a VSAT (satellite Internet system) to the Matusik family to improve communication for the community there, and we anticipate additional VSAT systems will be installed in 2012 to facilitate distance learning courses at the high school, undergraduate and graduate levels.

During the war in South Sudan PPF worked hard to respond to the immediate needs of the persecuted, such as food, medicine, clean water, etc. During this new era of peace, the JLTC is our attempt to go beyond crisis relief to sustainable development. We want to bless our brothers and sisters in a more substantial way. By providing educational, spiritual, and economic training opportunities, PPF is helping build Africa’s newest nation one person at a time.

As the year 2012 unfolds, we will continue to update you on the progress of the JLTC—and to give you opportunies to get involved directly with our efforts.

God has blessed the people of South Sudan with peace, independence, and an opportunity to prosper. Thank you for your prayers for this ministry and for your role in providing life and hope to so many people.

While the world’s attention has been preoccupied on the fall of Libya’s Gaddafi, and the growing violence in Syria, and the continuing turmoil in Egypt, there has been more strategic and significant events happening in the Arab world of the Republic of Sudan.

The last few weeks have seen tremendous changes in Sudan. A full-scale war has been launched by the terrorist-led NCP government in Khartoum to eliminate all political opposition in the country. Of course, the excuse by the government is that they are trying to root out all “criminals” and “rebels” who violate the laws.

The war in Sudan is spreading...

Recall in May, the NCP launched an attack on the oil-rich area of Abyei on the border of South Sudan. Abyei was sacked and hundreds, maybe thousands were killed. More than 100,000 native Dinka residents displaced.

Then, a few days later on June 5th, the NCP launched a new war in the oil-rich Southern Kordofan State, north of Abyei. Persecution Project Foundation travelled to Southern Kordofan in July and brought out documentation of war crimes committed by the NCP.

East of the Nuba Mountains is another disputed area of Sudan, the Blue Nile State. Like its neighbors in Abyei and Southern Kordofan, the Blue Nile is primarily African, not Arab, in its ethnicity. But perhaps most significant, all these areas are home to large numbers of supporters of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement North (SPLM-N) – the primary political resistance to the murderous NCP regime.

Al-Bashir has been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

In late August, Sudan President Omar al-Bashir declared a two-week unilateral ceasefire in Southern Kordofan. This declaration was met with skepticism by almost every organization watching events in the region. After all, Bashir was the one who instigated the war in Southern Kordofan. Why was he now calling for a temporary cease fire?

We didn’t have to wait long to find out.

Blue Nile Governor Malek Agar

On September 1st, Bashir’s forces attacked the residence of Blue Nile Governor, Malek Agar. This initial attack was quickly followed by a full-scale invasion and aerial bombardment from SAF planes. Thousands of people have already been displaced. The UN records that more than 27,500 alone have fled to Ethiopia.

Bashir then ordered SPLM-N offices in every northern state to be raided and closed. Dozens of party officials were arrested, offices vandalized, and documents and equipment stolen. This took place only weeks after an agreement was signed in the Ethiopian Capitol of Addis Ababa, where the NCP acknowledged the legitimacy of the SPLM-N.

Why is all of this happening?

While South Sudan was preparing for independence earlier this year, some NCP officials were telling their constituents that the departure of the South would ultimately be a positive for the nation, because it would remove a large obstacle in preventing Sudan from fully enforcing sharia law and creating a pure Islamic state. But that was just the public message to the masses. The reality was that the NCP was scrambling to figure out how to make up the loss of most of the oil revenue that would belong to the new Republic of South Sudan in July.

Bashir moved quickly to secure what remained of the oil located in the North. He started in Abyei. Abyei is located in the North, but its people are mostly loyal to the South. Then, Bashir invaded Southern Kordofan. This state is home to the rest of the oil in the North. And, like Abyei, Southern Kordofan is mostly loyal to the South, having provided thousands of troops to fight for the South in the previous war. These attacks took place prior to the South’s independence on July 9th. Bashir knew that the South would not oppose him, because it was too close to its own “finish line” and would not want to do anything to potentially restart the war.

PPF's Matt Chancey with Fmr. Nuba Governor Abdelaziz Adam Al Hilu.

And now, the Blue Nile State has been invaded. All opposition offices have been closed. Any official opposing Bashir has either been arrested or declared a fugitive and outlaw. Trade with South Sudan has been halted, because the NCP accuses the Juba government of harboring and supporting “rebels” in the North.

In our opinion, these acts represent the “high-water mark” of Bashir’s NCP regime. The Republic of Sudan is teetering on the brink. The economy is in shambles. Prices are shooting up as inflation runs out of control. There are shortages everywhere. Protesters have taken to the streets. The national debt currently stands at an unsustainable $37 BILLION.

Desperate for cash, the NCP is trying to strangle as much money as possible out of its new oil-rich neighbor to the south. Seventy-five percent of the oil produced in the old Sudan now resides in the new Republic of South Sudan. But the only pipeline to get that oil to market runs through the north. So Khartoum is trying to slap a hefty “surcharge” on every barrel that is piped through its territory. Originally, Khartoum wanted $50 a barrel (the current market price of oil is around $85 a barrel). This outrageous sum was rejected of course, but the two nations have still not arrived at a solution and the clock is ticking for Omar al-Bashir. Once the north begins to default on debt payments, the economy will really take a dive.

The economic woes for the NCP are combined with unresolved (and expensive) conflicts in Darfur, and now Abyei, the Nuba Mountains, and the Blue Nile. The failure of the NCP to hold the country together is causing consternation within the minority factions of the party, weakening Bashir’s grip on power.

After 22 years of war, mass murder and economic looting of the country, the chickens are finally beginning to come home to roost for President Bashir and his cronies in the NCP. The violent outbursts in the southern border states represents the death throws of a monstrous regime whose time has finally come.

These Dinka soldiers from Southern Sudan could go back to war soon if the conflict in the north continues to spread.

Why then is the US government so silent on the subject of Sudan? Why is President Obama continuing to treat Omar al-Bashir and the victims of his endless wars on a moral equivalency basis? As we have shown above, a casual look at the current national situation easily explains what’s going on.

For now, Sudan’s marginalized people, including the country’s largest Christian community in Southern Kordofan, face a growing humanitarian crisis. Khartoum’s actions make it very clear that any opposition to its rule will result in arrest, exile, enslavement, or extermination. International aid, as well as access by reporters and other foreign observers, is still prohibited to the conflict areas.

After returning from the Nuba Mountains in July, we realized that the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Sudan has finally been completely overthrown. Our hope is that this new war will not last as long as the previous one, but President Bashir has shown himself to be a very resilient leader. Many violent dictators who cannot hold a candle to Bashir’s regime have been overthrown for much less. Our prayer is that this elusive cat is about to run out of lives.

Please pray for the safety of all Sudanese people who now find themselves facing escalating persecution at the hands of their own government. Pray that PPF can fill the role as an advocate for the victims of war and as a facilitator for bringing aid and comfort to the persecuted church in Sudan.

[Editor's note: The war of ethnic cleansing and genocide in the Nuba Mountains of Southern Kordofan State in Sudan has predictably spread to the other ethnic African-dominated Blue Nile State. Long-time Sudan expert Eric Reeves wrote an excellent commentary on this latest development, excerpts of which we have reprinted with permission for your information. Please pray for the many missionaries that have already been evacuated as a result of aerial bombardment. You can keep track of the latest news by signing up for our e-alerts.]

September 3, 2011

Those hoping that Sudan’s 2005 “Comprehensive Peace Agreement” (CPA) and the July secession by South Sudan as an independent nation would bring an end to war in this ravaged country have been bitterly disappointed by recent events.  Aside from continuing to wage a ghastly war of civilian attrition in Darfur, the Khartoum regime has militarily seized the contested border region of Abyei (May 20), has begun a widespread campaign of ethnically targeted destruction in South Kordofan (June 5)—targeting the Nuba and relentlessly bombing the Nuba Mountains—and in recent days has launched a major military offensive in Blue Nile State.

Many thousands have fled into neighboring Ethiopia, the state capital of Damazin has been over-run, and there are reports of large numbers of civilian casualties and destruction of civilian infrastructure.  There are also many reports of indiscriminate bombing attacks by Khartoum’s air force elsewhere in Blue Nile—continuing a pattern of more than twenty years—and fighting seems to be escalating rapidly.  Calls for an immediate ceasefire by the UN and other international actors have fallen on deaf ears in Khartoum.

Blue Nile has many similarities with South Kordofan, which is also part of what is now North Sudan; this includes in particular a close alliance militarily and politically with the SPLM/A of the South during the long civil war (1983-2005).  Its elected governor, Malik Agar, heads the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army-North.  Like the comparable political and military entity in South Kordofan, the SPLA-North in Blue Nile is made up of indigenous soldiers, who cannot be “sent home to the South” because they are home. And as was true for South Kordofan, Blue Nile was promised by the CPA “popular consultations,” which were to have determined the nature of the ongoing relationship with Khartoum after a Southern self-determination referendum.  There have been no meaningful “popular consultations” in either South Kordofan or Blue Nile, nor does Khartoum intend to permit such.

As was also the case in South Kordofan (and in Abyei as well), Khartoum militarily provoked the fighting in Blue Nile and then claimed that they had been responding to attacks by rebels.  But the recent arrival of a brigade-sized force near Damazin—accompanied by a dozen tanks along with 40 trucks carrying heavy Dushka machine-guns—makes nonsense of the claim.  And again, as was the case in South Kordofan, it is clear that this military offensive had been well-planned in advance (in South Kordofan, for example, the Sudanese Red Crescent Society [SRCS] has confirmed that Khartoum gave them some 2,500 body bags and plastic tarps prior to the fighting and ethnically targeted executions that began on June 5; by the end of the month the SRCS was publicly declaring the need for more body bags).

This young girl was killed in the Kauda bombing.

The offensive in Blue Nile has long been threatened, and Malik Agar said two months ago that the longer the conflict in South Kordofan went unresolved, the more likely it was that Blue Nile would be drawn into the fighting.  And several months ago, internal UN situation reports contained ominous intelligence about large troop movements and military threats in the general region of Blue Nile.  It’s not clear whether the UN and international actors of consequence simply didn’t believe that Khartoum would move against Blue Nile—or disingenuously chose not to believe so.  But the failure of anticipation is staggering, and suggests diplomatic incompetence of the first order.  Certainly much was revealed with the breakdown of the important framework agreement signed by Malik and the powerful Nafi’e Ali Nafi’e of the NIF/NCP on June 28, and then was promptly disowned by President al-Bashir on his return from China (July 1, 2011).  More than disowning the agreement, al-Bashir declared at Friday prayers:

“‘[Al-Bashir] directed the armed forces to continue their military operations in South Kordofan until a cleansing of the region is over,’ SUNA quoted Bashir as telling worshippers during Friday prayers.” (emphasis added)

This should have been a clear signal of what would follow.  But whatever the reason for lack of an effective international response—then and now—it yet again shows that there has been far too little preparation for, or anticipation of the events of the past few days, a terribly familiar pattern on the part of the UN, the U.S., the African Union, and the Europeans in dealing with Khartoum.  All this is consistent with the exceedingly slow and still hesitant acknowledgement of the massive atrocity crimes that were committed in South Kordofan in June, which have been amply documented in a leaked UN human rights report on the situation.  Moreover, satellite imagery has authoritatively confirmed the existence of many mass gravesites, capable of holding many thousands of bodies.  The photographic evidence is confirmed in every case by eyewitness accounts provided to the UN human rights investigators (and included in their unredacted report) and to the Satellite Sentinel Project, with human intelligence assets in Kadugli.  Many Nuba escaping from South Kordofan into South Sudan have also reported mass gravesites…

This Nuba church building was bombed by the Sudan Air Force.

What Khartoum fears most is that with the secession of South Sudan, the forces rebelling against marginalization and discrimination—as well as against the relentless denial of political freedom and a fair share of national wealth and  power—are now all in the North.  If these variously rebellious forces are allowed to create a powerful military coalition—reaching from eastern Chad to Ethiopia and northward to the Beja region near the border with Eritrea—they could topple the regime, even without much help from the traditional Northern political opposition, which is in any event badly weakened after twenty-two years of NIF/NCP tyranny.

Several observers of the recent large-scale military actions in Blue Nile have made this point, if in somewhat different fashion. Chris Phillips from the Economist Intelligence Unity put it this way to Reuters: “(Khartoum’s) objective is to knock out the SPLM-North before they become a serious military force.”  Fouad Hikmat of the International Crisis Group argues that Khartoum believes the SPLM in the North is “a threat for them politically, not just militarily” and that what we are seeing “could be a vanguard to mobilise the new South of the North of Sudan.”  In other words, what South Sudan was to Khartoum during the civil war could take new form in the North—what Hikmat calls “the new South of the North of Sudan.”

But by attacking Blue Nile, and targeting the house of its elected governor Malik Agar, the Khartoum regime has burned its bridges to a negotiated settlement with the SPLM/A-North.  It was Malik who brokered the agreement between the SPLM/A-North leader in South Kordofan, Abdel Aziz el-Hilu, and senior regime official Nafi’e Ali Nafi’e; it is now exceedingly difficult to see how negotiations might even resume while the governor himself is being attacked and pursued…

IDPs from Southern Kordofan are hiding in the rocks of the Nuba Mountains.

War as it is unfolding in South Kordofan and Blue Nile is in no one’s interest—not in the South and not in the North.  The only ones who see themselves as beneficiaries are the most ruthless and brutal members of the NIF/NCP cabal and the military and security apparatus: for they well understand that if they lose power, most will end up in The Hague facing prosecution for crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes…

This is the face of power in Khartoum, and until the world awakes to the consequences of this “vengeful, bitter” outlook, war will continue moving closer and closer to engulfing all of Sudan.

Eric Reeves is a professor at Smith College and author of “A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide.” See www.sudanreeves.org.

On September 25th, I spoke to a missionary friend at church who was recently evacuated from the war-torn Blue Nile State in Sudan. He confirmed to me the reports I had heard that weekend about the NCP government bombing the state capitol of Kurmuk. One of the targets in the attack was the office of the NGO Save the Children. This perfectly illustrates the contrast between the victims in this war who focus on saving children and those perpetrators who “bomb the children.”

It's time to stand together!

After sending out an emergency appeal for $25,000 to help PPF receive a large medical consignment valued at $2.2 MILLION, you gave– and gave generously. After only a couple of weeks, PPF raised $28,581.34. Praise the Lord!

And it gets better.

While awaiting the arrival of the shipment in question, one of our partners, Voice of the Martyrs, sent us an additional medical consignment valued at another $2 Million!

Because of your generosity, we were able to quickly put together a distribution plan. Tomorrow, those meds begin their transit! We will try to send you an update next week with more details. Because of security concerns, we will not yet disclose the destination. Be assured that the communities receiving these medicines desperately need them. So, God’s timing could not be better (as always!).

We continue to receive offers of medical consignments that allow us to stretch every penny of donations to the maximum. By God’s grace working through your generosity, we will reach more refugees and displaced families before the end of the rainy season.

The result is yet another NCP-manufactured humanitarian crisis in the Blue Nile region, with some fifty thousand residents forced to flee the fighting to neighboring Sennar State, and an additional 16,000 people fleeing to Ethiopia.

The real motive behind Bashir’s unilateral truce in Southern Kordofan State has become all too clear by last Thursday’s offensive. Having shifted a substantial amount of troops and military hardware into Blue Nile State, the SAF have sacked the elected SPLM Governor and launched a new genocidal war against the indigenous Africans.

In this way, the NCP has completely abandoned the CPA and destroyed any hope for peaceful departure from totalitarianism to self-determination. One by one, through military force, Bashir has carried out the systematic unravelling of CPA promises first in Abyei, then in the Nuba mountain region and now in Blue Nile State.

These soldiers are fighting, because they refuse to be "Arabized" and "Islamized."

Sudan expert Eric Reeves observed, “The only beneficiaries of this ruthlessly destructive military action against Blue Nile State are the most extreme members of the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party cabal, and senior members of the security and military apparatus; the calculation on which their decision has been made could not be more brutal.”

Please pray for the innocent people of Blue Nile State who are victims of these war crimes and atrocities. Please also pray that God will continue to open doors for His people to intercede through advocacy, relief and other means of encouragement.

The Republic of Sudan has a turbulent history. Since its independence from the British in 1956, it has been in an almost constant state of war. The causes of wars can sometimes be hard to pin down. But the wars in post-independence Sudan have essentially arisen from the long-standing friction between the Arabized culture in Khartoum and the diverse indigenous black African cultures in the rest of the country.

Viewed by the minority Arab Islamist elites that dominate the government as either infidels or apostates in faith and inferior in race, the indigenous African tribes in the regions of central, western (Darfur), southern Blue Nile, and former southern Sudan have suffered marginalization, persecution, and genocide for more than 50 years.

Brad testifies before an emergency congressional hearing on war crimes being committed in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan.

The ruling regime in Khartoum, the National Congress Party (NCP), officially came to power through a coup in 1989. The NCP (at that time called the National Islamic Front, or NIF) immediately began an intensive campaign of ethnic cleansing to “Arabize” and “Islamize” all of Sudan. The main resistance to this assault came through the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), led by a charismatic leader, Dr. John Garang de Mabior. Garang was a Christian from South Sudan, but he desired freedom and self-determination for all people groups in Sudan. His vision was called the “New Sudan.”

The war between the SPLM and NCP resulted in more than 2.6 million deaths in southern Sudan, southern Blue Nile, and the Nuba Mountains. In January 2005, brokered by the United States Government and bolstered through international pressure, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement(CPA) was signed in Naivasha, Kenya.

The CPA opened the way for the historic Referendum for Self-Determination on January 9, 2011 and the resulting secession of the southern region forming the world’s newest nation, the Republic of South Sudan. Included in the CPA were the Machakos Protocols which addressed the issue of self-determination for the marginalized Nuba people of Southern Kordofan State as well as the people of southern Blue Nile.

But in 2003, even as the negotiations were ongoing between the NCP and the SPLM/A, Sudan President Omar al-Bashir redirected his genocidal energies to a region not covered by the CPA: Sudan’s western region of Darfur. And so far, that campaign has claimed an estimated 400,000 lives. The Darfur genocide did not go unnoticed, and international pressure led the International Criminal Court (ICC) to indict Sudan President Omar al-Bashir and his main executioner in Darfur, Ahmed Haroun, for war crimes and genocide. Haroun did not gain his experience in genocide from Darfur. He had been Bashir’s executioner in the Nuba Mountains during the 1990s. In the Nuba region of Southern Kordofan, home to fifty indigenous African tribes, Haroun oversaw the deaths of 500,000 people, roughly half the population.

If you have read this far, you can see that the NCP easily makes al Qaeda look like an amateur terrorist organization.

But this is all in the past, right?  We wish that were true.

The Nuba Mountains are located on the southern border of what is now the Republic of Sudan, but its population consists of largely black, indigenous communities. The Nuba are also home to the largest Christian community in Sudan, although there are large numbers of Muslims living there as well. Because of the unique landscape and history of the area, to be Nuba is to be part of a diverse and tolerant culture. Christians and Muslims live together and often intermarry.

The hero of the Nuba people who rallied them to join the rebellion of Dr John Garang and his SPLM/A against the NCP regime in Khartoum was the late Yousef Kuwa Mekki. Abdelaziz Adam Al-Hilu was selected by Yousef Kuwa and the Nuba people to be his successor and lead the Nuba people to freedom from the totalitarian policies of Bashir’s NIF/NCP regime. Tragically, the hard-fought promises negotiated in the CPA for Nuba self-determination died with Dr. Garang in 2005.

The CPA specified that the Nuba people would have a free election, followed by a popular consultation, whereby elected leaders would interview their constituents and determine what the people wanted with regard to their political future. This consultation process would hopefully pave the way for a regime change or power-sharing arrangement in Khartoum that recognized and respected the rights of all of Sudan’s diverse communities.

This popular consultation never happened.

During the elections in May of this year, evidence points to massive fraud by the NCP, which chose a very well-known person to run for the top position as Nuba Governor: Ahmed Haroun—the indicted war criminal who had been called back to the Nuba Mountains from Darfur to finish what he started in the 1990s.

After being declared the winner of the rigged election by the NCP, Governor Haroun attempted to disarm and expel the SPLA from the Nuba Mountains. This action was yet another violation of the CPA, which provided for the continued presence of the SPLA in the Nuba Mountains up to 90 days after the end of the Interim on July 9th, 2011.

When the SPLA refused to disarm, President Bashir sent in the troops. On June 5th, war began. On June 6th, the capitol city of Kadugli was attacked and sacked. Thousands of Nuba people in Kadugli were killed in the days that followed. Reportedly more than 13,000 Nuba people sought refuge in the UNMIS compound in Kadugli.  An estimated 7,000 were removed by SAF forces and then “disappeared.” Reports of bulldozers demolishing homes and mass graves have trickled out through eye witnesses and satellite photos.

Dead children in Umdorein.

In July, we spent two weeks on the ground in Southern Kordofan. Our team received eye-witness testimony from more than a dozen individuals who escaped the massacres in Kadugli.  The consistent theme was of NCP/SAF forces conducting house-to-house searches, specifically targeting people who fit any of these three descriptions: 1. ethnic Nuba, 2. Christians, and 3. anyone affiliated with the SPLM.

Soon after all the Nuba people had either fled Kadugli or been slaughtered, the SAF expanded the scope of its Nuba cleansing campaign by conducting daily aerial bombing of civilian areas in the five counties where most Nuba people live. Thousands were killed in June and July, but hundreds of thousands were displaced–forced to flee to the mountains to escape the bombings.

During our two-week visit, we interviewed dozens of people from all five affected counties, including deposed government ministers, pastors, and farmers. The testimonies, evidence of war crimes, and attempted genocide by the Khartoum regime against its own people is tragically reminiscent of the same story well documented by Julie Flint and others in the 1980s and 90s.

A bomb victim in Kauda.

The only essential difference between the Nuba in the 1990s and today is that the SPLM/A has clearly taken the fight to the NCP. After 500,000 dead and years of broken promises, marginalization, and persecution, the Nuba people have had enough. If it were not for the stubborn resistance of the SPLM/A, led by their inspirational leader, Abdelaziz Adam Al-Hilu, we would be witnessing another Rwandan-style genocide.

But what about the West and the rest of the international community? Have we had enough of the NCP? Are we willing to continue tolerating this bloodthirsty, bigoted, and genocidal regime currently murdering its own people yet again?

Why is the US bombing Libya and treating Gaddafi as if he is some genocidal maniac, yet remaining effectively silent while the Nuba people are slaughtered and starved out by a leader who has easily killed 100 times more of his own people?

A wounded boy in Kurchi.

Some members of the Obama Administration are claiming that there is insufficient proof that the NCP is committing war crimes in the Nuba Mountains even though seasoned, credible reporters from The New York Times, Time Magazine, Aljazeera English, The Independent, and others have visited the region and published testimonies, pictures, and videos clearly proving that war crimes are taking place.

President Obama campaigned on a very strong position against the NCP, including the support of a no-fly zone in Darfur. He has since been criticized for his paltry action in the region. Now, the NCP is at it again next door in the Nuba Mountains. Three million dead and counting, Mr. President. How many more will be added on your watch?

Brad Phillips and Matt Chancey recently returned from 12 days in the Nuba mountains of Southern Kordofan State, where they were eyewitness to the ongoing genocidal campaign against the indigenous Nuba people sponsored by the NCP regime in Khartoum.

Brad Phillips is President of Persecution Project Foundation (persecutionproject.org) and Founder of The 100 Wells Campaign (100wellscampaign.org) Matt Chancey is a founding Board Member of Persecution Project Foundation.

“There is no justification in my mind for bombing Libya, while doing nothing in the Nuba Mountains,” said Phillips in his testimony, as he provided evidence of genocide against the Nuba peoples in the oil-rich region that lies on the border between Sudan and the new country of South Sudan.

“Based on the history of the [National Congress Party], and what we know about what they are doing today in Darfur, in Abyei, and in the Nuba Mountains,” Phillips continued, “it amazes me how the U.S. and the international community could tolerate these killers for so long, yet aggresssively pursue other civilians who have not killed 1/100th of the people for which Omar al-Bashir and his regime are responsible.”

To read this interview in its entirety, please click on the following link: http://tinyurl.com/3vmjbz5

Brad has been a long-time friend of Nuba resistance leader, Abdelaziz Adam Al Hilu.

Persecution Project Foundation President, Brad Phillips, was a key witness in providing testimony of the atrocities being committed by the government of North Sudan.

A destroyed village in the Nuba Mountains is evidence of the recent attacks by al-Bashir's forces against the Nuba people.

C-SPAN broadcast the hearing in its entirety.

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