SOUTH OF ABYEI – I heard a plane way up high and then ‘Doom!’, the sound of a bomb hitting the ground,” explained Mary Ajiang Kur, 37. “My neighbor called out: ‘The Arabs are coming!’” recalled Kur, who said she grabbed her children and hid in the bushes. Soon after, men arrived in her village, […]

TURALEI, Sudan — As the rainy season begins in this tiny rural village in southern Sudan, thousands of frightened women and children are seeking cover under makeshift shelters of bedsheets and rugs, strung up between tree branches lodged in the mud. They fled their homes in the contested north-south border region of Abyei a little […]

[Published in print on May 28, 2011] JUBA, South Sudan – Weeks before southern Sudan formally breaks from the north, the region is on edge. Harried government officials and army officers rush to meetings in the capital of the soon-to-be nation as rumors circulate that the north intends to occupy territory all along the border. […]

The residents of Abyei, the largest town of the contested border region between north and south Sudan, have deserted their homes in search of safety after the northern government took the town by force this weekend. The seizure of the town follows an ambush by a southern group on a convoy of northern forces who […]

“Why does the world care about Libyans and not about us?” I was asked during a phone interview with a Darfuri leader recently. He told me that the displaced people in the camp he was speaking to me from had been listening to radio reports about how swiftly the world had moved to protect civilians […]

Barack Obama’s got a new point man in Sudan. On March 31 the U.S. president announcedthat Princeton Lyman, a retired ambassador with a diplomatic pedigree as distinguished as his name, will replace J. Scott Gration as his special envoy to the war-torn country. Lyman’s credentials are strong. He has been working the Sudan file since last […]

The Sudanese government is preventing aid organizations from delivering food and health services to hundreds of thousands of people in the conflict-ridden Darfur region of the country, according to one of the largest remaining groups there.   The crackdown has left displaced populations at risk of disease and malnutrition as the government increases military operations […]

BENTIU, SUDAN – At an oil field in southern Sudan’s oil-rich Unity state, a tar-colored sludge flowed out of the back of a truck into a man-made pool. A mile down the road, the flags of China, Malaysia, India and Sudan – the nationalities of the companies operating the field – fluttered in the breeze. […]

In January, southern Sudan held a historic self-determination referendum. Final results, announced this Monday, show that 98.83 percent of voters cast their ballots in favor of the region becoming independent, and Sudan’s president, Omar Al Bashir, is making all the right noises to suggest he is willing to let one-third of his territory go peacefully. […]

Across the globe, southern Sudanese are celebrating their imminent independence from the rule of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and his predecessors in Khartoum. These northern rulers spent much of the past half-century engaged in a brutal effort to Arabize and Islamize the southern people. International attention is now focused on helping the chronically underdeveloped region […]