ABSTRACT
The intensive violence that characterized the two phases of war in the Nuba Mountains (1987-2002 and 2011 to the present 1 ), together with the Sudanese government media’s attempts to represent the regime of Omar al-Bashir (1989present) as a protector of Islam and the Arab community, has led some people to conclude, quickly and naively, that the crisis constitutes a racially or ethnically motivated attack by Arabs against “Black African” Nuba people. 2 This simple conclusion is a misinterpretation of the real nature of the crisis. The problems in the Nuba Mountains are not sudden, but evolved from a sequence of political complications that shaped the current crisis. This chapter traces the origins of the contemporary crisis in the Nuba Mountains from colonial-era land laws and colonial and postcolonial developmental neglect through the two civil wars and the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). In particular, this chapter argues that the Nuba people were caught between two powerful political agents: the Khartoum government (in the north) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/ Army (in the south). I conclude by suggesting that the current mechanisms available through the CPA and the “popular consultations” process it stipulates will not resolve the current crisis in the Nuba Mountains. Instead, there must be a unification of Sudan and the implementation of a national democratic system that addresses the needs of all the country’s constituents.
