III. Blue Nile

In September 2011, the conflict spread from Southern Kordofan to neighboring Blue Nile state when fighting erupted in Damazin, the state capital, between government forces and SPLA-North. Witnesses from Damazin told Human Rights Watch that during the clashes government soldiers used tanks and heavy weapons to target civilian property, including residential homes and the Malik Agar cultural center. Soldiers and national security forces then rounded up suspected members of the SPLM-North, many of whom are still presumed detained, and looted civilian property extensively.[41] 

In the months that followed, Sudanese forces, in an attempt to rout out rebel forces, attacked villages in Roseris, Geissan, Kormuk, and Bau localities and bombed indiscriminately across the state, forcing the civilian population to seek shelter in the bush and hills where they lacked food, shelter, access to clean water and sanitation, and health care.

In addition to indiscriminate aerial bombings, government forces have shelled populated areas, and, along with allied militias, burned and looted homes and other civilian property. The government-led attacks have killed and injured scores of civilians, destroyed property, and displaced tens of thousands of civilians largely from ethnic groups with perceived links to rebel groups.

Since September 2012, Sudanese government forces have intensified attacks with increased strikes on populated areas in Bau and Kormuk localities, perhaps to forcibly displace the civilian population away from rebel-controlled areas. Evidence obtained by Human Rights Watch from displaced civilians from Blue Nile point to repeated indiscriminate attacks that have harmed civilians and damaged their properties that could amount to war crimes.

The bombing, shelling and attacks have continued to displace civilians in Blue Nile. More than 140,000 refugees have fled Blue Nile and crossed the border into South Sudan and Ethiopia, but tens of thousands remain displaced inside the state. The situation appears increasingly dire. Some displaced families reported they had to reduce their food intake in October and November to one meal every five days.[42]

As in Southern Kordofan, the government has largely shut off Blue Nile from the outside world by restricting movement into rebel-held areas and refusing to allow aid groups to those areas, effectively blockading the region.

Indiscriminate Bombing and Shelling of Civilian Areas

Sudan’s indiscriminate bombing and shelling has killed, maimed, and injured scores of civilians since September 2011 and destroyed civilian property including markets, homes, schools, farms, and the offices of an aid group.

Human Rights Watch visited more than a dozen bomb sites in Blue Nile state during two visits in April and October 2012, and interviewed dozens of victims of the bombardments and attacks, including refugees in South Sudan as well as internally displaced civilians inside Blue Nile who abandoned their villages and farms, mainly because of the consistent bombardments. On both visits, researchers visited bomb sites and examined evidence.

Researchers also examined the remnants of barrel bombings at bomb sites near Yabus in late October 2012. Barrel bombs are improvised crude devices filled with nails and other jagged pieces of metal that become deadly projectiles upon impact.

These and other unguided munitions are often dropped from Antonov cargo planes or other aircrafts flying at high altitude. Such methods do not allow for accurate delivery. Use of weapons including bombs and shells in a civilian area that cannot accurately be targeted at a military objective makes such strikes inherently indiscriminate, in violation of international humanitarian law.[43]

Witnesses in Blue Nile described several recent indiscriminate bomb attacks on, and shelling of, towns and villages in Kormuk and Bau localities in which civilians were killed. In one example during an August 2012 attack on Wadega village, west of Kormuk, Jubara Salim saw a shell kill his neighbor, whom he knew as Ahmed, while he was working in the field. He had not seen any rebel forces in the vicinity either before or during the shelling that killed Ahmed. He said the shelling takes place every two or three days in Wadega.[44]

When the shell hit, it cut Ahmed’s body into pieces. It was difficult to even identify him. We all ran away when the shelling started. And when we came back we just found pieces of him. When there is shelling, you don’t hear any noises before…  It’s not like the Antonov bombings where you can hear the planes coming and can look up and see them and have time to run.

He was the fourth civilian Salim had seen killed since the conflict began in September 2011; the other three were killed during aerial bombardments. The indiscriminate bombing and shelling has spread palpable fear among the civilian population in Blue Nile. In all areas Human Rights Watch visited in Sudan including IDP camps, residents had dug foxholes for shelter in the event of a bomb attack. 

Tahani Nurin, a mother of seven, fled from Surkum in late 2011 to escape the bombardments which hit the area around her home as many as three times a day. As a consequence of the relentless attacks, she and a group of 25 civilians started to walk in the direction of South Sudan when what she described as a barrel bomb hit them along the way as they rested and prepared food. The bomb killed her 17-year-old daughter Fatallah and two others, including a 12-year-old child.[45]

When [the bomb] hit, there was just smoke and dust and I couldn’t see anything. Moments later I saw my daughter and I called to her to see if she was injured. And then I saw the blood of my daughter. Within minutes the Antonov dropped a second bomb.

Refugees in South Sudan who arrived from villages around Tamphuna and the Ingessana Mountains told Human Rights Watch that since September 2012 they had noticed more frequent use of planes flying at high altitude and dropping bombs in rapid and multiple succession.[46]  As a result of the more intense bombardments, victims and witnesses reported an increase in the number of deaths.

In late October 2012, Al-Tahir Jubatala said he fled to the refugee camp from his village in the Tamphuna area, near Kormuk, because of the intensification of bombardments and shelling.[47] A bomb landed on his house around July, killing all his livestock and destroying his house, and killed a neighbor from the village. He told Human Rights Watch that he endured months of bombardments so that he could harvest his crops to feed his family, but after the destruction of his home he was forced to leave his harvest behind, hoping it would feed the community’s elderly and frail who left to take shelter in the surrounding bush, unable to make the arduous journey to South Sudan during the rainy season.

Another villager from Tamphuna, Osman Mahmoud Mohamed, said that since September 2012, the army’s tactics have expanded from dropping crude bombs to more conventional weaponry, including rockets. “If you go to Tamphuna now, you find every house has a hole in it.  The army is constantly hitting us,” he said. 

One morning [in October 2012], I came back from looking for food and saw an explosion kill Ibrahim Gumus.  He was 300 meters away. First I saw lots of dust and then I ran toward him. He was in one of the last houses in the village. Ibrahim had injuries to the head and he died after two hours. There was dark blood coming out of his mouth. No one else died that day. He was a 35-year-old butcher, with one wife and five children.[48]

Refugees in South Sudan as well as internally displaced civilians inside Sudan told Human Rights Watch that they often fled their homes because of the increased intensity and frequency of the bombardments, bringing only what they could carry. They abandoned their crops and farmlands which were often their only source of income and food. Many spent several months on the move with limited access to food and health care. When food ran out, they boiled bitter and sometimes poisonous roots that needed to be boiled for hours before becoming edible.

One group of five farmers from Gordala village near Wadega who arrived in the Doro refugee camp in late October 2012 with their families, had fled because of the intensification of the bombardments, forced to leave behind their food stocks from the recent harvest and family members who were too old and frail to make the journey:

We have farms and we didn’t want to leave because we were waiting for the harvest. But we were scared because the shelling became very intense and we were afraid that maybe the government would block the road to Doro so we left everything on the farms and came… Only the elderly are there. They can’t cross at this time. The mud, rain, and distance… is too difficult for them. They have our harvest to survive on, that’s all they have.[49]

Those who continue to be displaced in Blue Nile told Human Rights Watch they had limited access to food, water, and medicine and were surviving on wild fruits and plants. Human Rights Watch also saw recent photos of families in Chali district, preparing grubs and other insects to sustain themselves.[50] The displaced have no access to hospitals and their children have no access to school.

Zainab Ali, a 37-year-old woman from a village near Yabus, told Human Rights Watch that when Antonovs bombed close to her village in November 2011, she was pregnant and fell hard on the ground, causing her sustained pain.[51] When she and her family hid in the bush, they did not use any mosquito nets for fear that the Sudanese air force would spot the white fabric from the air.  She said that living in the bush had increased the family’s health problems including greater susceptibility to malaria. Her cousin’s 10-year-old daughter died in the bush because there was no hospital to treat her after she fell ill with stomach pains and bloody diarrhea.[52]  The family continues to live in Blue Nile.

Kareema Nasr, age 35, another internally displaced woman from Yabus, said the main problem for displaced peoples is hunger and health care, since they can no longer access their farms and the hospitals have closed.[53]  One of Nasr’s daughters died shortly after her birth in the bush. Nasr believes the death was related to her malnourishment, her illness during the pregnancy, and to the fact that she did not have a midwife to assist her because she was hiding. In order to earn an income, she now pans for gold fragments, which can be sold in Ethiopia to buy basic food stuffs to sustain the family.

Attacks on Civilians

In areas near the frontline of the Blue Nile conflict between government forces and the SPLA-N, Sudanese ground forces have attacked villages from the ground and killed civilians even in areas that Human Rights Watch could find no evidence that there had been a rebel presence or threat or other legitimate military targets. In one incident shortly after outbreak of fighting, on September 3, soldiers at a checkpoint between Damazin and the neighboring town of Roseris shot dead two family members and the driver of Shukri Ahmed Ali, the local administrator of Roseris and SPLM member, apparently believing the he was in the car.[54]

After fighting broke out in Damazin, Sudan’s forces moved south, advancing on Kormuk, a rebel stronghold they captured in November 2011.  Community leaders who fled to South Sudan told Human Rights Watch that Sudan government forces clashed with SPLA-North forces and conducted military operations in dozens of villages along the main road to Kormuk, and in villages in and around the Ingessana mountains.

Clashes have continued in that area and in the past three months there has been a reported intensification of aerial attacks, particularly near the village of Gebanit in Bau locality. According to one local Ingessana leader, he had recorded at least 29 civilian fatalities, including nine women and nine children, as a result of aerial bombardments and ground attacks in the area between May and July 2012.[55]  He and other community members told Human Rights Watch that no rebels lived or operated near the villages.

One of the villagers, a 98-year-old man, was killed in in May 2012, when security forces launched an assault against another village near Gebanit called Gaman al-Tom.  According to a witness, camouflaged trucks and land cruisers mounted with heavy weapons arrived at the village at 6 a.m. and started shooting. He said the shooting was not directed at any military target or at the rebels, since none lived in or operated out of the village. “When the shooting started, the rest of the village climbed up the mountains but the old man could not climb.  After a few hours the military entered the village and burned everything. We ran down after they left and found the old man inside his house. He was totally burnt.”[56]

Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that in many locations, including the area around Damazin, they saw Popular Defense Forces (PDF), an auxiliary force drawn from Fellata and other nomadic ethnic groups whose members Sudan is actively recruiting.[57] Sudan has also deployed large numbers of PDF in Southern Kordofan.  According to witnesses, they are active in the Ingessana mountain region and have attacked groups of refugees as they were fleeing.

A 25-year-old woman and her mother-in-law from a village around Gebanit said that they had witnessed multiple attacks by PDF militia at different times during the conflict, most recently in October 2012 as they tried to flee to South Sudan. She said the men, who were not in uniforms, were armed with AK-47s; they shot and killed her brother, a civilian.  Previously, in May, the militia raided her village and kidnapped the wife of her brother-in-law.[58]

The Jalaba [Arab nomads] came to our village with cars and starting firing over our heads. I was there. …  I ran one direction and she ran the other way into the direction of the Jalaba and she was caught. I saw her being captured and put in the car. They came and shot randomly at people and then just ran off.[59]

She told Human Rights Watch that in June, the militia shot at villagers while they were harvesting and she saw them kidnap three people including two women. She said that she and other villagers had wanted to flee earlier but that the road out of the mountain had been blocked by the militia so they felt captive. After months of sustained bombardments and increasing ground attacks by Sudanese military, they attempted to leave by taking unused routes and walking through thorny grasslands.

Saudi Idris, a 25-year-old woman from a village near Gabaneet, a witness to a separate attack, said that after the militia had burned down their village in June 2012, her community had no choice but to take refuge and live in the surrounding mountains.  She said the attack that destroyed her village lasted for five hours after the militia arrived in seven vehicles. “They got down from their cars and they started the fires with a small matchbox. They went house to house and burned each of them down. They burned all our houses, all of our clothes.”[60]

She explained to Human Rights Watch how she and her group of 35 adults were ambushed by militia in October as they tried to flee to South Sudan. The militia shot and killed three of the 20 men in the group at Jabal al-Tien; seven others were missing after the group scattered. “For 15 days we were walking without shoes and water.  When they shot at us we just took our kids and ran barefoot,” she said. “We also had no food in Jabal al-Tien. We had taken some seeds with us but they had run out.”

The woman’s mother-in-law, Batul Musa, said she was forced to abandon her mother during the attack. “When we were attacked at Jabal Al-Tiem, I was carrying my elderly mother on my back. I had to throw her on the ground and hide her in the tall grass. I don’t know if she’s alive or dead. Her name is Mariam.”[61]

Under international law, all parties to the conflict are required to take all feasible precautions to minimize civilian casualties during military operations, and deliberate targeting of civilians and extra judicial killings are always strictly prohibited and constitute war crimes.[62]

Arbitrary Arrests, Extrajudicial Executions

In September 2011, as fighting broke out in Damazin and other towns where SPLA-North forces were present, witnesses told Human Rights Watch, government forces rounded up and placed in prolonged detention, verbally and physically abused, and killed civilians based on their presumed ties to SPLM-North and its armed wing, SPLA-North.[63]

A 26-year-old man from Roseris, now living in South Sudan, told Human Rights Watch that national security officers arrested and removed him from his house, accusing him and his 36-year-old brother of being SPLA-North soldiers, and detained them in a crowded cell for more than three weeks.  “They tied our hands and put us in the land cruiser and beat us with belts, feet, hands and said, ‘We are going to use you,’ and ‘You will see many things,’” he recalled. “If you complained that people are sick [the commander] would say, ‘Let them die, they are kufar [infidels].”[64]

During his detention, he saw other inmates badly beaten and, on one occasion, he saw a military officer shoot two men in the head at close range outside the cell, killing them instantly. Upon his release, the national security officials pressured him to work with them and ordered him to check in every day; he eventually managed to leave the area.

Issa Daffala Sobahi, a 33-year-old guard for a state minister who is a known SPLM-North member in Damazin, told Human Rights Watch that soldiers arrested him on the morning of September 2, 2011 at the minister’s home, beat and shackled him, and insulted him by calling him “kufar” [infidel] and saying, “You don’t know Allah.” He said they held him in a detention facility in their military compound with other civilians arrested that morning. 

“They took people to the river and shot them,” he told Human Rights Watch. “I myself was taken to the river with three others on the second day.  They killed two of us.” Soldiers threatened to kill him, but did not. “They said, ‘You are all with Malik [Malik Agar, the SPLM-N governor], we are going to kill you,” he recalled. Later the same day, he saw the soldiers shoot a woman who was carrying a baby as she resisted arrest. He managed to escape from the prison compound that night.[65]

Scores of detainees were released only after being forced to renounce their political affiliation, according to reports from local groups and former detainees. Many people remain in detention because of their real or perceived links to the SPLM-North. The African Center for Justice and Peace studies reported that 92 men have been detained in prisons in Blue Nile and Sennar states since September 2011, mostly because of their real or perceived links to SPLM-North. The detainees have yet to be charged with any crimes, and many reported that they had been beaten while in custody.[66]

In the context of a non-international armed conflict, arbitrary detention – detention not conducted on a lawful basis - is prohibited, and all detentions should comply with the applicable standards on treatment of detainees in both international humanitarian law and human rights law. Sudan should make known the names of all those in detention, their whereabouts, release all those detained without legal basis, and  ensure full due process rights and safeguards apply to all those detained on a legal basis .

Refugee Camp Conditions for Women and Girls

As of November 2012, 110,000 refugees from Blue Nile have registered in four refugee camps in South Sudan run by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) and humanitarian agencies, and 30,000 have sought shelter in Ethiopia.[67]

According to refugees at the camps interviewed by Human Rights Watch, female-headed households make up a significant proportion of many of the communities present in the camps – as many as 50 percent of some of the camp communities.[68] Female refugees and protection officers in the Doro camp told Human Rights Watch that female-headed households are one of the groups most vulnerable to exploitation at the camp and are in need of more protection and resources. “It’s very difficult for women to carry their rations after food distributions,” said a female refugee from Surkum. “Sometimes they get help, and sometimes the men ask for money to help. If the women can’t find a way, they have to give away a portion of their rations for the help.”[69] 

The reliance on others, particularly male community members, and the lack of livelihood options for female-headed households also makes women more vulnerable to sexual exploitation and abuse.  While female-headed households are able to register for camp food distributions, they have no ability or means to buy their children clothes and other basic necessities that are not included in the ration.

The risk of attack while outside the camp is one of the gravest safety and security concerns faced by female refugees. According to a Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Rapid Assessment of the Doro camp released by the Danish Refugee Council in October, 2012, “incidents of physical and sexual assault happen mostly in firewood collection places outside the camp and sometimes at water points within the camp.”[70]

Female refugees expressed similar concerns to Human Rights Watch at the Jamam camp. Aisha A., a 17-year-old member of the Women’s committee, acknowledged that “there are a lot of problems for women and girls here. When women and girls collect wood in forests, men force themselves on the women. [The perpetrators] are the local people from the [host] community. They touch the women by force.”[71] 

Women in Jamam camp regularly walk 1.5 hours each way, sometimes alone, at least once a day to collect firewood for cooking and to sell.  According to Aisha, the sister of one rape victim had described how the young woman had been raped while collecting firewood outside the camp. She said that the victim had remained silent about the attack and not sought out medical or psychological support. “Some of the women feel ashamed so they never tell anyone. They can only talk about it to a close female friend,” she said.[72] Given such barriers, the total number of cases is not known, however Human Rights Watch was told by service providers and camp residents that the threat of physical harm or rape whilst collecting fire wood was a constant threat and concern.

The proximity of Jamam camp to a South Sudanese military base also has security implications for the women and exposes them to greater risk of sexual violence.  Aisha also described an attempted rape of a woman who was milking her cows near a market outside the camp.

She [the victim] told me that a number of soldiers [from the South Sudan army] passed by. One of them came to her and told her that she has to carry his bag, and that he would be taking her home to spend the night with him. He told her ‘you’re not going home tonight.’ He gave her some money and told her to wait at the spot or he will shoot her. After she sat down and cried, her brother and some refugees found her and took her away” before the soldier had returned.[73]

Aid workers told Human Rights Watch that women and girls at the camps faced other gender-based abuses including sexual harassment and domestic violence.[74]