Nuba mountains

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Nuba mountains
Nuba Mountains south of Al-Ubayyid

Nuba Mountains south of Al-Ubayyid

location South Sudan / Sudan
part of Africa
Coordinates 12 ° 17 ′  N , 30 ° 38 ′  E Coordinates: 12 ° 17 ′  N , 30 ° 38 ′  E
Nuba Mountains on the southern border of Sudan

Nuba Mountains on the southern border of Sudan

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The Nuba Mountains ( Arabic جبال النوبة Dschibal an-Nuba ) are a mountain range in the state of Dschanub Kurdufan (South Kordofan) in the south of Sudan . Before South Sudan's independence in2011, they formed roughly the center of the country. The area is between 500 and 1325 meters high, is comparatively rich in water andpopulatedby theblack African peoples knownas Nuba . The land between the hills is fertile. Geographically and politically, the Nuba Mountains are located in Sudan, but ethnically and culturally they belong to South Sudan.

history

An outstanding feature of the southern Nuba Mountains in particular are the numerous population groups that have settled due to political events at different times in the recent past. From pre-colonial times, when the Nuba Mountains were under the influence of the Sultanates of Darfur and Sannar , to Egyptian rule from 1821, the Mahdi uprising from 1881, which was ended by the Anglo-Egyptian army in 1899 , to after the independence of Sudan In 1956 the Nuba Mountains formed a political and cultural border region. The economic view of the powers exerting influence on the Nuba Mountains in the 19th century was primarily directed towards the slave trade , and also towards the exploitation of ivory and gold.

In Sudan, which came under the rule of the Ottoman viceroys ( Khedives ) of Egypt from 1821, the Mahdi uprising broke out in 1881. In order to evade the access of the authorities, the Mahdi went on a "march to Kordofan". To his followers, he compared this resettlement with the hijra , Muhammad's emigration from Mecca to Medina . After an arduous march through the desert, the Mahdists reached the Nuba Mountains on October 31, 1881. There the Mahdi explained that Mount Jebel Gebir is the legendary Mount Masa, from which one day the Redeemer will descend. Here he established a base where he was able to win his second victory on December 9, 1881. As a result, the Governor General of Sudan, Rauf Pascha, was recalled. In June 1882, the new governor, Giegler Pascha , sent a force of 6000 men under the command of Jusuf el-Schallali Pascha to the Nuba Mountains. On June 6th, the Mahdists also crushed this force. During the campaigns of Abdallahi ibn Muhammad, successor of Mahdi, who died in 1885, around 10,000 Nuba died as a direct result, and another 10,000 were kidnapped as slaves of the Mahdist army. After the British put down the Mahdi uprising in 1898, the Nuba Mountains became part of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan until the country's independence in 1956.

In the 19th century, especially during the Turkish-Egyptian rule and up to the rule of the Mahdi, the trade in Nuba slaves flourished, which was operated by the Arab Baggara as middlemen . Many Nuba therefore withdrew to remote mountain regions. The British tried to persuade the Nuba to return from the mountains and to improve relations with the Arabs by isolating the area from 1922. Arab traders now required special permits to enter the area. In 1937 isolation was given up and the North Kordofan region was added. Nuba continued to suffer structural disadvantages due to a lack of education and underdevelopment. An aggressive assimilation campaign by the Arab north led many Nuba to convert to Islam. During the first war of civil war in South Sudan , which began in 1956, the Nuba behaved politically indifferent and did not join the south.

From the 1980s, however, the Nuba were increasingly drawn into the Second Civil War. Nuba intervened in the conflict with the Misiriya Arabs (Baggara) on the side of the Ngok- Dinka ethnic group, who traditionally settled in the neighboring Abyei oil production area . The Baggara were asked by the northern Sudanese side to loot and expel black Africans. The war in the Nuba Mountains was started by the government in the fall of 1991 and was declared a jihad . After taking power in 1989, General Omar al-Bashir set up the Popular Defense Forces (PDF), a paramilitary unit whose recruits were supposed to wage the holy war against the south. This army also attacked the Muslim population in the Nuba Mountains, destroyed mosques and murdered the men, while women and children were taken to the north as slaves. Entire villages were wiped out and the tribal leaders killed. At a conference in April 1992 in Khartoum , attended by 120 tribal leaders loyal to the government, the governor of Kordofan announced a resumption of jihad in Kordofan province. Each of the participants was given the honorary title of emir and each received a submachine gun and 200 boxes of ammunition. Shortly afterwards, Bashir personally came to the Nuba Mountains to proclaim the jihad.

The serious human rights violations on the Nuba were barely noticed by the international public. In 1993 the first peace negotiations between Baggara and Nuba took place. In 2002, the Bürgenstock Agreement restricted the fighting in the Nuba Mountains. Since the conclusion of the peace treaty between the government and the SPLA in 2005, which ended with the Naivasha Agreement , the previously isolated Nuba Mountains have again been partially accessible from the north. Some areas were still mined in 2008. The people of the Nuba Mountains accused the SPLA of having fought over the distribution of Abyei oil, but not about a fair distribution of the soil in the Nuba Mountains, during the peace negotiations with the government in Khartoum.

There was renewed unrest in early 2011 after the independence referendum in South Sudan . Sudan recognized the independence of South Sudan, but the border disputes were not settled. The planned referendums on the political affiliation of the Nuba Mountains, the Abyei region and the Blue Nile state have not yet taken place. All three areas still belong to Sudan. Subsequently, the underground military organization Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North ( SPLM-N ), a split from the SPLM , fought for the region to be separated from Sudan. Many residents have fled. The Sudanese government responded to attacks by the SPLM-N with the ongoing bombing of the Nuba Mountains, which activists said also targeted hospitals and civilians. According to Human Rights Watch , cluster bombs were used in civilian areas in at least February and March 2015 .

Geography and population

Village near Kau in the southeast of South Kordofan

Around 90 percent of the region's population is subsumed under the umbrella term Nuba . This is understood to mean around 50 black African arable farming ethnic groups who speak just as many different languages, which can be divided into 10 language groups. The remaining 10 percent are Arab cattle herders who immigrated from the north around 1800, who are called Baggara and consist of the two groups of Hawazma and Misiriya Arabs. The small minority of Arab traders is popularly known as "Jellaba".

About 60 percent of the population in the Nuba Mountains are farmers who practice subsistence farming and some cattle breeding on small plots. 30 percent are semi-nomadic cattle breeders, 8 percent are large farmers. The relationship between Nuba and Baggara is still historically burdened. In general there is a conflict over land rights.

Typical for the area are a few mountain peaks, which protrude as table mountains with steep flanks over the flatter hills. The highest peak at 1460 meters is called Temading . It is located north of the small town of Rashad in the eastern center of the Nuba Mountains. The second highest elevation is the 1,413 meter high ad-Dair on the northern edge of the mountainous region.

The precipitation falls from mid-May to mid-October. The most fertile soils are along the wadis in the valleys. In the southern Nuba Mountains, sorghum is mainly grown for the market , followed by peanuts and the cotton imported by the British in the 1920s . The Nuba cultivates shifting fields on the hills, fallow periods and the division of fields are regulated by traditionally anchored Nuba land rights. Land that has not been cultivated remains in communal ownership. The main reason why the conflict between the ethnic groups broke out was the introduction of mechanized agriculture, financed by a World Bank loan, in 1968 and the land law reform that made this possible. The new land laws were introduced following strong pressure from circles during the British colonial rule of ascended businesspeople. The government participated in the suppression of the Nuba, who opposed the conquest of the land. Many Nuba were expropriated and communal land fell into the hands of a few large landowners, who received over half of the fertile land in the plains and formed a temporary alliance with the Baggara. Baggara shifted their cattle routes and now claimed land from the small farmers. As a result, when the civil war broke out again in 1983, the farmers sympathized with the south. From 1985, the Baggara were supplied with weapons by the North Sudanese government, and the war began in the Nuba Mountains.

How the Nuba Mountains are politically and culturally in the borderland between north and south is also evident in the rituals and annual festivals that have been slowly changing in recent years. During the festivals around harvest time, drinking Merisa (millet beer) from a large vessel also plays an important role in the Islamic Nuba. Younger Nuba who want to be accepted in the Islamic community have to struggle with an identity problem and try to demonstrate their faith to the outside world by adhering to seclusion and abstinence from alcohol. The harvest festival with beer is replaced by Id al-Fitr and the sacrificial animal eaten together.

Economical meaning

A pipeline runs through the Nuba Mountains , which transports crude oil from the production area immediately to the south on the Gazelle River with its center in the Abyei region to Port Sudan on the Red Sea .

literature

Web links

Commons : Nuba Mountains  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Leif Ole Manger, 2001, p. 139
  2. ^ Dawood H. Sultan, 2009, p. 47
  3. ↑ Andrew Mc Gregor: Sudan's Oil Industry Faces Major Security Challenges. The Jamestown Foundation. Terrorism Monitor, August 11, 2008
  4. ↑ Annette Weber: Power structures and political camps. In: Bernhard Chiari (ed.): Guide to history. Sudan. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn a. a. 2008, p. 84f
  5. ↑ Peter Nyot Kok: The "Jihad" concept of the Sudanese army to solve the civil war. In: Sigrid Faath and Hanspeter Mattes: Wuquf 7–8. Contributions to the development of the state and society in North Africa. Hamburg 1993, p. 181f
  6. ↑ Sudan's Southern Kordofan Problem: The Next Darfur? ( Memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) International Crisis Group, Africa Report 145, October 21, 2008
  7. ^ Tristan McConnell: Hidden war: scores killed: displaced in Sudan's Nuba Mountains. GlobalPost, June 24, 2013
  8. ↑ Nicholas Kristof: A Rain of Bombs in the Nuba Mountains New York Times, June 20, 2015
  9. ^ Sudan: Cluster Bombs Used in Nuba Mountains Human Rights Watch, April 15, 2015
  10. ↑ Sara Pantuliano: Changes and potential resilience of food systems in the Nuba Mountains conflict. Institute of Development Studies, University of Dar es Salaam, April 2005
  11. ↑ Leif Ole Manger, 2001, p. 142
  12. ↑ Mohamed Suliman: The Nuba Mountains of Sudan. In: Daniel Buckles (Ed.): Cultivating Peace. International Development Research Center, Ottawa 1999, pp. 205-220