After years of desperately fighting for survival in the Nuba Mountains, the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA) launched a full-scale military offensive in the Nuba Mountains of South Khordofan. Seven garrisons of the National Islamic Front (NIF) government's occupying force were captured and two concentration camps liberated. With the fall of Bilinia, the provincial capital, Kadugli, came within artillery range of the resistance movement. In an exclusive interview with the SPLA Commander for the Nuba Mountains, Yosif Kowa Mekki, a Frontline Fellowship mission team was told that the Nuba people had finally managed to turn their defensive war for survival into an offensive campaign to liberate the long suffering Nuba.
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Much of our ministry in Sudan had been carried out in stifling heat which sometimes reached 58ºC (136ºF). Hiking up and down the Nuba Mountains, with 35 kgs (77 pounds) of kit, for hours on end in the heat of the day tests one's endurance. During the day our eyes continually scanned the skies, the horizons, the bushes and the paths for any signs of danger. There was the very real danger of an air attack or ambush and landmines had been sown throughout the area. At night time the danger of an air attack subsides, but the possibility of stepping on a landmine or walking into an ambush remains. We strained our senses to try to recognise shapes and sounds in the darkness. Our pace had to slow down as we carefully negotiated jagged rocks and precipitous slopes. A series of co-ordinated military assaults launched by the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA) in March has succeeded in capturing 24 garrison towns previously held by the National Islamic Front (NIF) government forces. The spectacularly swift offensive swept all opposition aside and killed, wounded or captured a total of 16 000 enemy soldiers. By the end of March the strategic towns of Kaya, Yei, Lainya and Kajokeji had been captured by the victorious SPLA forces.
The entire border with Uganda is now effectively under SPLA control (as is the Zaire, Kenyan and Ethiopian borders with Sudan). The SPLA’s dramatic new offensive has, therefore, broken the stranglehold of the NIF blockade on Western Equatoria and opened the road for relief supplies to be driven through Uganda into Western Equatoria. The SPLA is now also able to link its liberated territories in Eastern Equatoria to Western Equatoria and onto Bahr El Ghazal. |
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