By Matthias Muindi
A humanitarian crisis is looming
in western Bahr el Ghazal region in southern Sudan following attacks
on civilians by pro-government Arab militias, said the Sudan Peoples Liberation
Army (SPLA) in a statement issued Thursday in Nairobi.
According to the SPLA, the Sudanese government has unleashed the militias known as Murahileen on civilians living around Raga town, which the government army recaptured from the SPLA on October 14. Numbering about 2,000 and operating on horses, the militias have in the past few days forced thousands of civilians to flee further south. The militias are also accused of raping women and under-aged girls, stealing cattle, plundering foodstuffs and burning crops in the fields.
"This callous action by the GOS (Government of Sudan) has resulted in the entire population of Raga county being displaced".They (civilians) are being bombed along the Raga/Wau and Raga/Tombura roads as the people move in search of refuge," said a statement signed by SPLA spokesman, Samson Kwaje.
The group also castigated the government offensive for targeting the civilian population yet Khartoum knew where SPLA units were based in the area. "It is deliberately concentrating its genocidal aerial bombardment campaign against the civil population far away from SPLA positions."
The SPLA also charged that the militias had kidnapped thousands of people to be sold into slavery in northern Sudan. "These will be sold to rich Arab farmers in the Northern Sudan as domestic slaves while the rest may be taken to the Middle East in a trans-Arabian slave trade that is currently taking place," said Kwaje.
Kwaje has requested for an immediate response from relief agencies to the crisis so that food, medicine and shelter be found for the fleeing civilians. "This is a humanitarian crisis of a very great magnitude".The situation is extremely desperate particularly for the elderly, women and children. They have no food along the route towards the south," he said.
Reports reaching the SPLA's humanitarian wing, Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Association (SRRA) in Rumbek, said Kwaje, indicate that most of the fleeing people don't have any food or places of shelter as the government aerial bombers were pursuing them.
He equated what was happening in Raga with the displacement of civilians in areas bordering the oilfields in Western Upper Nile. "It is clear that the GOS is waging a war of displacement on the civil population in Western Bahr el Ghazal along the same pattern it has been using in the other areas particularly in the regions of the oil fields. This barbaric behaviour confirms our assertion that the National Islamic Front (NIF) is not interested in the people but the land," he said.
Consequently, the SPLA official called on the international community to condemn Khartoum for the crisis. "We urgently call on the United Nations Security Council to impose a no fly-zone for GOS (Government of Sudan) aircraft not only in Western Bahr El Ghazal but all over the New Sudan so as to protect the civil population," he said.
The skirmishes in Raga, a strategic trading town near the border with Central African Republic, are the latest in a series of government-linked attacks to fully secure the town, which it seized, from the SPLA on October 14. The town located 1,045km southwest of Khartoum fell to the SPLA on June 4 and was seen by many analysts as an essential launch pad for an offensive on the government held provincial capital, Wau. A week after the recapture of Raga, the SPLA issued a statement accusing Khartoum of dropping 12 bombs which killed 20 people in Raga, Sopo and Mangayat areas.
The group said most of the dead were displaced people fleeing from Raga town. It was also the same time that the World Food Programme withdrew from the area after a government bomber disrupted a food distribution exercise in Mangayat, which was hosting 20,000 people displaced from Raga.
In mid-October, the SPLA claimed to have shot down two government helicopters near Raga as they were ferrying replacements for senior offices killed in an earlier battle. The government denied it lost any aircraft.
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