Enough Project

On Friday, three villages north of Abyei town were reportedly bombed, and a fourth reportedly bombed or shelled, according to multiple reports from sources on the ground, said the Enough Project. Sources say the Sudan Armed Forces conducted the bombings. These reports have not been officially confirmed. The U.N. Security Council had been scheduled for a visit to Abyei this coming Monday.

With the growing military presence in northern Abyei, an already dire humanitarian situation looms on the edge of becoming worse. The most recent crises, involving the burning of three villages, forced the displacement of thousands of people to south of Abyei town along the River Kiir.

The Abyei region, long anticipated to be a trouble spot in post-referendum Sudan, has lived up to the expectations, creating an impasse in high-level political talks and erupting in skirmishes on the ground between various forces loyal to the North and the South.

Enough field researcher Mayank Bubna has made numerous trips to the contested region since Southern Sudan’s vote in January, and he filed a new Enough Project field dispatch based on interviews there. He wrote:

In a segment on PBS NewsHour last night, Tom Bearden reported on the Satellite Sentinel Project’s use of imagery from space to track and document the deliberate razing of villages in the Abyei region of Sudan.

PBS NewsHour visited DigitalGlobe's satellite control room and analysis center in Colorado and sat down with the Enough Project’s Jonathan Hutson to discuss the significance of having private satellite companies monitor violence in Sudan in real-time. Hutson explained:

The Enough Project has released a video statement from an eye witness of the razing of Maker Abior village who said he saw combatants wearing SAF uniforms as well as other armed actors who appeared to be Janjaweed.

“Arabs attacked the village. Some were wearing SAF uniforms. Some were dressed like Janjaweed,” said Kuol Alor Kuol, a 73-year-old eye witness and resident of the village. “We will stay here because it is our land. This is our ancestors’ land.”
 

In the aftermath of a wave of violence in Abyei that left over 100 dead and saw the systematic burning of three villages just north of Abyei town, tens of thousands of civilians have fled while residents still in town are angry, disillusioned, and anxious, according to on-the-ground reporting and visuals from Enough photographer Tim Freccia. Freccia, who has been based in Abyei since violence broke out early last week, reports that the situation in the contested and highly-volatile border region today is relatively quiet, if fraught with tension.

JAAC, Southern Sudan -- Angelina, 25, was nine months pregnant when Antonovs started flying over her village of Liet in South Darfur. Then the janjaweed militias arrived. Angelina, her husband, and their five-year-old son fled south, eventually settling in a newly formed settlement of displaced people in this remote village in southern Sudan’s Northern Bahr el Ghazal state.

“The running made my baby come,” Angelina said, describing how she gave birth during the journey, which took two weeks by foot.