No one could possibly have foreseen that there would be mass killings and that mass killings would lead to mass graves in the province of South Kordofan. No one, that is, except everyone who was paying attention. The Arab dominated North, have been intermittently fighting with the religiously diverse, black Africans of the Nuba Mountains since the early 80s.
For weeks and months, the Satellite Sentinel Project and other human rights groups have been documenting the military build-ups (here, for example), history of genocidal activities and unambiguous intentions of the government of Sudan, prior to the planned, negotiated independence of the new nation of South Sudan.
When the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) (northern Sudan) brought more troops and equipment into the border province of South Kordofan and began the attacks that led to mass killings and caused tens of thousands to flee, the world reacted with little more than sternly worded statements of concern. Meanwhile, refugee Nubans have been hunted by helicopter gunships in the mountains and towns have been bombed by the SAF.
It was inevitable that the mass killings would eventually lead to mass graves. Its what happened in Darfur. And when hundreds and thousands are killed, something needs to be done with the bodies.
I recently reported at the internet magazine, Religion Dispatches that Anglican Bishop Andudu Adam Elnail of Kadugli, Sudan thought that if he not been in the U.S. for medical treatment, he might now be in a mass grave back home.
So when a dramatic new report by the Satellite Sentinel Project (SSP) titled: “Crime Scene: Evidence of Mass Graves in Kadugli” revealed that Andudu could not have been more chillingly correct, I published a follow-up this morning. Excerpts below, as well as a slide show, courtesy of the Enough! project, of images confirming eye witness reports of the presence of SAF troops, the mass graves and body bags.
Through the forensic use of satellite images combined with credible eyewitness testimony, SSP has located and documented at least three mass graves. These 26 x 5-meter trenches (and perhaps others yet to be discovered) may be the final resting places for bodies that had previously been piled in white body bags (or tarps) near the Episcopal church complex in Kadugli before being loaded onto trucks that had reportedly gone around collecting bodies from systematic killings of Nuban civilians.
White body bags were also seen at a second site containing two apparent pits, where, according to the SSP report, a witness saw men “unloading dead bodies from the trucks and depositing them in the open pits” including some that appeared to be in bags that were ‘white’ and ‘plastic’; others were in light brown bags made of a different kind of material. Some bodies were not in any type of body bag or wrapping.” No one can say with certainty who is in the body bags in the mass graves, though the timing and the circumstances may be telling.
Andudu and other Anglican Church leaders had been among the targets of house-to-house searches by armed men looking for ethnic Nubans—especially leaders. What Andudu called Khartoum’s “final solution” has been cast by others as persecution of Christians, but in fact the campaign to exterminate the Nuba has spared no one.
The story is also being covered around the world by, among many others, the Associated Press and the BBC.