This book provides a comprehensive overview of the embattled Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan, where the Government of Sudan committed "genocide by attrition" in the early 1990s and where violent conflict reignited again in 2011. A range of contributors – scholars, journalists, and activists – trace the genesis of the crisis from colonial era neglect to institutionalized insecurity, emphasizing the failure of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement to address the political and social concerns of the Nuba people. This volume is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the nuances of the contemporary crisis in the Nuba Mountains and explore its potential solutions.
This volume documents the Sudanese government's campaign of genocidal attacks and forced starvation against the people of the Nuba Mountains in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Genocide by Attrition provides powerful insights and analysis of the phenomenon and bears witness to ongoing atrocities. This second edition features more interviews, a new introduction, and a revised and more detailed historical overview. Among the themes that link most of the interviews are: the political and economic disenfranchisement of the Nuba people by the government of Sudan; the destruction of villages and farms and the murder and deaths of the Nuba people; the forced relocation into so-called "peace camps" and the impact of forced starvation. The book also documents the frustration of the Nuba people at being left out of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed between the South and the North in 2005, President Omar al Bashir's threats against the Nuba people, and the crisis in the Nuba Mountains since June 2011. Genocide by Attrition provides a solid sense of the antecedents to the genocidal actions in the Nuba Mountains. It introduces the main actors, describes how the Nuba were forced into starvation by their government, and tells how those who managed to survive did so. Samuel Totten provides a valuable resource to study the imposition of starvation as a tool of genocide.
This book brings to fruition the research done during the CEA-ISCTE project ‘’Monitoring Conflicts in the Horn of Africa’’, reference PTDC/AFR/100460/2008. The Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) provided funding for this project. The chapters are based on first-hand data collected through fieldwork in the region’s countries between 4 January 2010 and 3 June 2013. The project’s team members and consultants debated their final research findings in a one-day Conference at ISCTE-IUL on 29 April 2013. The following authors contributed to the project’s final publication: Alexandra M. Dias, Alexandre de Sousa Carvalho, Aleksi Ylönen, Ana Elisa Cascão, Elsa González Aimé, Manuel João Ramos, Patrick Ferras, Pedro Barge Cunha and Ricardo Real P. Sousa.
Analyses the involvement of the agro-pastoral al-Hakkamat Baggara women of Darfur in Sudan's recent civil wars and the implications of this for conflict resolution and peacebuilding.
Anthropology of Law in Muslim Sudan analyses the hybridity of law systems and the plurality of legal practices in rural and urban contexts of contemporary Sudan, shedding light on the complex relation between Islam and society. It is the outcome of the international research program ANDROMAQUE (Anthropologie du Droit dans les Mondes Musulmans Africains et Asiatiques), funded by the French ANR (Agence National de la Recherche) between 2011 and 2014. Crossing two disciplinary perspectives, anthropology and law, the present volume contains original fieldwork data on contemporary urban and rural Sudan. Focusing on two major domains, land property and courts, several case studies demonstrate the relevance of an approach based on “legal practices” to underline, first, the plurality and hybridity of law systems and the relative role of the Islamic reference in Sudanese society, and, secondly, the reshaping of legal behaviors and norms after the breaking point of South Sudan's independence in 2011. Contributors are: Zahir M. Abdal-Kareem; Azza A. Abdel Aziz; Musa A. Abdul-Jalil; Munzoul M.A. Assal; Mohamed A. Babiker; Yazid Ben Hounet; Barbara Casciarri; Baudoin Dupret; Philippe Gout; Enrico Ille.
This collection of first-person accounts chronicles the experiences of 12 humanitarians who entered Sudan illegally to variously provide food, medical care and spiritual support to the besieged people of the Nuba Mountains. A diverse group of men and women of various ages, professions and religious beliefs, the chroniclers describe in detail the tragedies of the current war in the state of South Kordofan, their own close calls with death, and why they are committed to helping a little known group of people--Nuba civilians--as the United Nations, the African Union and all nongovernmental organizations are forbidden from crossing the border.
This working paper describes the first year (June 2011-July 2012) of renewed war in South Kordofan, focusing on the conduct and dynamics of the conflict and the primary armed actors. It also identifies shared weapons and ammunition holdings based on detailed accounts of material seized, as well as photographs and first-hand physical inspections. While the war in South Kordofan is fundamentally a conflict between primarily (Northern) Sudanese actors for control of the state, it also has clear cross-border implications--as SAF's air strikes in Unity state and the Southern fighters' temporary seizure of the Hejlij oil fields attest. This paper reviews these border aspects of the conflict and its impacts on relations between Khartoum and Juba.
"Nowhere has a range of case studies of Sudan been brought together in a single volume. Given the concern with the growing number and complexity of conflicts in Sudan and South Sudan there is a significant readership in academic circles and from those involved in humanitarian organisations of all kinds." Professor Peter Woodward, University of Reading "A timely contribution to an important set of debates ... tackles questions emerging from discussions about modernisation, urbanisation and globalisation from an explicitly local angle with regards to Sudan." Dr Harry Verhoeven, University of Oxford Sudan experiences one of the most severe fissures between society and territory in Africa. Not only were its international borders redrawn when South Sudan separated in 2011, but conflicts continue to erupt over access to land: territorial claims are challenged by local and international actors; borders are contested; contracts governing the privatization of resources are contentious; and the legal entitlements to agricultural land are disputed. Under these new dynamics of land grabbing and resource extraction, fundamental relationships between people and land are being disrupted: while land has become a global commodity, for millions it still serves as a crucial reference for identity-formation and constitutes their most important source of livelihood. This book seeks to disentangle the emerging relationships between people and land in Sudan. The first part focuses on the spatial impact of resource-extracting economies: foreign agricultural land acquisitions; Chinese investments in oil production; and competition between artisanal and industrial gold mining. Detailed ethnographic case studies in the second part, from Darfur, South Kordofan, Red Sea State, Kassala, Blue Nile, and Khartoum State, show how rural people experience "their" land vis- -vis the latest wave of privatization and commercialization of land rights. J rg Gertel is Professor of Economic Geography at Leipzig University; Richard Rottenburg is Chair of Anthropology at the University of Halle; Sandra Calkins is a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle
This state-of-the-art critical ‘development’ reader examines the inter-relationships between globalisation, poverty and conflict. It complements current debates in the field of development studies and, in an era in which development fatigue seems to have become more profound than ever before, it brings the importance of development once again to the forefront. The contributions represent current thinking on (and practice of) development policy, poverty reduction, the need for multi-level democratic institutions, and the containing and prevention of conflicts.
