THE FIRST REPORT FROM INGASSANA HILLS, SOUTH BLUE NILE PROVINCE, SPLA SUDAN – Saturday, January 2nd, 2011

I can say that after the South Sudan Independence Referendum the Nubas are unanimously indignant, angry and determined to fight a new war with Arabic military junta on the Sudan’s north. Now, after three days in capital town Kurmuk, right on the Ethiopian frontier line, now that I have overslept the comments of tradesmen on the most untidy market place, the comments of farmers who carry the most organic millet on their donkeys and speak Arabic, of shepherds who supply the least toxic meat and know only a few English words, of students and teachers in the most wrecked up schools on the planet and of the SPLA soldiers (Sudan People Liberation Army) and of the beggars who have lost everything... now, at 6 a.m. I dare to report that the native people and the immigrants from all ends of Sudan are massively hurt, dispirited and desperate.

I will know more today after the Public Consultation. The »Comprehensive peace agreement« from 2005 should give the locals a chance to express their wishes about where they want to go after the separation of South Sudan; to the old northern country or the new south country. Their own independent country is not an option they would have anymore.

The indigenous Ingassana, Uduk and Barta people and those who immigrated during the war as refugees or SPLA soldiers, namely Dinka people, Nueri people and others, they can choose but there is no guarantee they will be heard – between the joining with their co-fighters against the then slave hunters, the freed Africans in the South Sudan to whom they are close by African blood not African culture and who deserted them already at the negotiations in Tanzania where they wouldn’t let them have their representative... and the returning to those who never stuck to any contract because one doesn’t have to keep his word when it comes to the infidels, the ‘bloody dogs who eat pigs’ and drink millet beer and live half naked in the wild... whose president Omar Bashir, accused of the biggest crimes against humanity, is promising enforcement of the fundamental Islamic laws into every pore of the remaining country that the foreigners haven’t yet managed to steal, because in these marginalized and forgotten hills of the planet on the eastern Ethiopian frontier line there is nothing except for good soil that would attract their greed...

Except for the Blue Nile.

But every local in Sudan knows that the Arabs will never give the river away, even if they need to fight a mighty war for it, because the power plant in Demazin supplies electricity to the capital Khartoum.

Tomo Križnar

Photo: On the main street in Kurmuk