In Sudan’s Blue Nile, a sequel to the violence and abuses in Darfur

MABAN COUNTY, South Sudan — Asir, a 49 year-old farmer from Blue Nile in Sudan, had just completed a grueling eight-day trip, walking through tall grass, mud and rain, often at night, leading a group of men, women and children to safety in a sprawling refugee camp in neighboring South Sudan. He had only the clothes on his back.

While the vast majority of Blue Nile residents had previously fled to refugee camps, many thousands stayed behind in government-controlled territory. Far from finding refuge, these communities have endured horrific abuses at the hands of government soldiers and armed militia.

Three years on, a steady stream of civilians is risking the treacherous journey to South Sudan. Asir, whose name was changed for this story, is among them.

Since the beginning of the war, he had been forced to live in a camp-like settlement next to a Sudanese army base in a place called Khor Maganza. Soldiers prevented him from working his fields or going out after dark. Food was rationed, soldiers said, to prevent villagers from sharing with rebels.

The conflict erupted in 2011 in South Kordofan and in Blue Nile states, on the border with South Sudan, between Sudanese government forces and the SPLM/A-North – a spinoff of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army that fought for independence for South Sudan.

In both states, the Sudan government’s indiscriminate bombing and large-scale attacks on civilians forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.

One night last summer, government soldiers came to Asir’s house and forced him to leave. Two soldiers then raped his wife while six others stood guard. Asir has scars from repeated beatings by Sudanese soldiers. The same soldiers tried to force him to join their ranks. He escaped after 21 days, but they kept his 16-year-old son, who is now a soldier in the army that has destroyed his family’s life.

Asir’s story is all too familiar among the refugees who have escaped these prison-like conditions in parts of Blue Nile. While the international community attempts to put out fires from Ukraine to Syria, Sudan’s government is getting away with a dirty war eerily reminiscent of its Darfur campaign.

As in Darfur, the rape of women and girls by government forces appears to be a common tactic. A shocking proportion of the refugees interviewed by Human Rights Watch in South Sudan reported being victims of or witnesses to rapes and other sexual violence.

An 18-year-old woman described in harrowing detail how her friend and neighbor, 14, was raped by three soldiers who “took their time” after tying the hands of the girl’s parents and blindfolding them.

Many of the abuses reported to Human Rights Watch by dozens of refugees were attributed to Sudan’s notorious Rapid Support Forces and allied “Fellata” militias — nomadic herders whom the residents accused of rapes, killings and cattle theft.

Human Rights Watch went to Sudan’s Blue Nile state to investigate the impact of the war, traveling along an endless muddy route controlled by irascible SPLA-North fighters. In this rebel-controlled part of the state, large swaths of land are now empty, the fields fallow, markets are sparsely stocked.

The residents, most of them displaced from other parts of the state, told us they lack sufficient food, medicine, clothes and schools for the children; many were anxious that fighting would resume.

The conflict in Blue Nile and South Kordofan is expected to intensify as the dry season approaches, opening up the roads. Bombing has already resumed in Blue Nile. Peace prospects are dim, as talks in Addis Ababa seem to be faltering.

Sudan should halt its indiscriminate aerial bombing and order a stop to sexual violence and other abuses. The SPLA-North, for its part, should stop any recruitment that compromises the civilian nature of the refugee camps in South Sudan.

Sudan is paying no price for its crimes in the two areas. Russia and China have stood in the way of meaningful action by the UN Security Council, partly as a response to Washington’s failure to recognize that South Sudan is helping its former brothers-in-arms in their struggle against Khartoum.

To turn the tide, the UN Security Council should demand a thorough investigation into all abuses in Blue Nile state and South Kordofan. Once the facts are established, the council should, as it did in Darfur, escalate targeted sanctions on rights violators and expand the existing arms embargo on Darfur to apply to the two states, until violations stop — so Asir, and the 320,000 refugees like him, can go back home.

Philippe Bolopion is the UN director at Human Rights Watch. He recently returned from the border area in Sudan, where a deadly conflict rages, and from the area in South Sudan where thousands of refugees are fleeing.