Arriving in the Nuba Mountains

It’s hard to get to the Nuba mountains right now. It’s even harder to get out.

Sudanese Armed Forces’ (SAF) Antonov planes have been bombing the area for weeks. Reports of ethnic cleansing have been seeping out of the provincial capital, Kadugli; the UN peace-keepers there seemingly having done nothing to protect the people of South Kordofan. Aid groups have been banned, and journalists forbidden from going there; Al-Jazeera bravely tried, but were stopped. A few Nuba have escaped it to Juba, where colleagues have interviewed them—gathering eye-witness reports—and written their stories.

It started back in May when Ahmed Haroun—wanted by the International Criminal Court for charges of war crimes committed in Darfur—won the provincial elections. The Nuba, the majority people there, claim that the vote was rigged, and that their own candidate, Abdulaziz Al-Hilu, had won. SAF forces moved into the region to disarm Al-Hilu’s followers.

Within half an hour of arriving, we heard the sound of bombs detonating and the whining of a plane overhead. The vehicles hid under the cover of trees, their bodywork smeared with diesel and mud to camoflage them in the bush. And a line of people walked, bags in hand, trying to find a way out.

The Displaced of Mogadishu

Thousands in Somalia’s war-torn capital, Mogadishu, live in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs). Many are displaced by the conflict, either within the city or from other parts of the country; but an increasing number of people are coming to the city as a result of the drought that is ravaging parts of the Horn of Africa.

Conditions in the camps are basic, with people living in metal shacks or in makeshift huts made of sticks, rags and plastic sheeting, lacking adequate sanitation. Many of the children I saw there were visibly malnourished. There is little opportunity for employment, denying mothers the means to buy food for their children.

The World Food Programme delivers a little food aid, but thousands go without. With Somalia being such a difficult environment in which to operate, there are few humanitarian organisations. This is exacerbated by the lack of a properly functioning government, and the zone that the government controls in the city is small.

Organisations such as Concern Worldwide do provide aid—food vouchers, sanitation, education and health facilities—for those most at need in the capital, but their resources are limited, and the challenge they face is great. In the meantime, a further generation of Somalis are growing up in a country without peace, ravaged by war for twenty years.

Sandstorm at the border

Chadian men walk through a sandstorm that engulfed the region around the Egyptian border near Sallum on March 31, where an estimated 2500 people are still stranded, having fled the Libyan revolution. Many of those at the border are sleeping outside under blankets and make-shift shelters, the Egyptian authorities refusing to allow even any semi-permanent structures, such as tents.

For me, this would be my final day working at the border. This last trip would cost me my left eye for a few days. An infection would seal it shut for a week. But I had an out. A comfortable bed in Khartoum, and then Cairo. Clean water and time for repose. For the thousands stranded at the border, right now, there is no end in sight. And no sign of an end to the fighting raging in Libya.