JUBA, SOUTH SUDAN — It was early evening in South Sudan, and my colleagues and I had made our way to the compound of a Member of Parliament in the country’s troubled Jonglei state. We were there to meet with several people who had sought refuge from violence in the town of Pibor. People like Mary, who had arrived with five members of her family in tow. The stories that Mary told us were disturbing. She spoke of government forces shooting civilians, burning houses, and looting homes and the local market.

Sadly, Mary’s story echoed other reports that have been coming out of Pibor over the last days and weeks. And they all speak to the growing humanitarian crisis in this war-torn part of the world.

For several weeks, residents of Pibor have been terrorized by the government forces known as the SPLA (Sudan People’s Liberation Army). We’ve heard reports of shops and homes being looted, civilians being killed, and dwellings being burned (sometimes with people still inside of them). Thousands of people sought shelter in the bush, making forays into town to get whatever food was still available in the local market.

The breaking point for many came a couple of weeks ago, when a woman was killed along with her teenage daughter and infant child, while a toddler was left barely alive after being stabbed multiple times. After this, the idea of even short trips into Pibor became untenable for some. We heard of two separate incidents of people who had stepped on landmines but chose to stay in the bush rather than seek medical help for fear of being attacked.

Compounding the problem has been the activities of a local rebel leader named David Yau Yau, who launched an uprising in Jonglei after failing to win a local election in 2010. He recently captured the town of Boma, not far from Pibor. As he threatened to march on Pibor, the last of the civilians fled the town, along with the few remaining humanitarian agencies. The SPLA took advantage of the departures by looting those agencies’ compounds.

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Dara McLeod is the Director of Communications for Refugees International, a non-profit organization that seeks to end displacement and statelessness crises worldwide and accepts no government or UN funding.

No one could call it a happy anniversary: roughly ten years ago, the Sudanese government embarked on a genocidal campaign in the Darfur province against local non-Arab ethnic groups, a decision which the U.N. estimated as taking around 300,000 lives. Today, violence is still ongoing in Darfur (albeit at a lower level) and, to make matters worse, the government in Khartoum is escalating a murderous military campaign against rebels and local civilians in two other provinces — South Kordofan and Blue Nile. While many experts will likely weigh in this week with detailed and knowledgable assessments of the violence in Sudan past and present (CAP’s Enough Project, for example, is doing a ten-day commemoration event), it’s also worth exploring the values at work in anti-genocide campaigns. Because a concern with protecting international human rights, and legal accountability for their violation, has deep roots in the American liberal tradition — a point that should remind us why the suffering in Sudan today should be a critical issue for progressives today.

First, we must understand what’s actually happening in Sudan today. In June of 2011, the Sudanese central government attacked the southern province of South Kordofan, home to a series of ethnic groups collectively referred to as the Nuba. The incursion spread to nearby Blue Nile in September. In a sense, the offensives were outgrowths of the semi-settled conflict with the recently independent South Sudan: the anti-government forces in both provinces, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), began as part the original SPLM, now better known as the South Sudanese Army. The government’s move into South Kordofan and Blue Nile was an attempt to destroy the SPLM-N and exert total control over the provinces.

The government’s murderous tactics in these fights have proven its leaders have learned the most terrible lesson of Darfur: you can kill civilians with impunity. Khartoum indiscriminately drops dumb bombs from Antonov cargo planes on heavily populated areas in both states. Human Rights Watch has found that “vast majority of bomb victims” in South Kordofan are civilians, largely “women, children, and the elderly.” Government forces, who particularly target the ethnically distinct Nuba people, in the province have routinely “shelled and bombed residential neighborhoods, looted and burned down homes and churches, shot at civilians, killed civilians including UN staff, and arrested scores of people suspected of links to the SPLM.” The story is the same in Blue Nile: one observer describes the government strategy as “controlling the population and its movement: sometimes by creating the conditions of famine; sometimes by forcing people to flee; and most insidiously, by encircling them to prevent them from moving into rebel-controlled areas or escaping to neighboring countries offering sanctuary.” “The result,” he writes,”has been immense suffering and slow death.”

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Ahead of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s first visit to South Sudan, which officially seceded from Sudan just last year, the Enough Project’s John Prendergast and author Dave Eggers write in the Washington Post that the United States, with partners in the international community, should increase humanitarian aid and support to the nascent pro-democracy there to prevent Sudan from deteriorating into another Syria:

Since South Sudan seceded, [Sudanese President Omar al-]Bashir’s regime has reignited the war in Darfur and is dropping bombs on restive populations in Blue Nile state and the Nuba Mountains. It is stoking potential war with South Sudan and is using excessive force against urban protesters; 2,000 people are now under arrest.

As Sudanese refugees pour into neighboring countries and new reports of thousands of unaccompanied minors — another generation of “lost boys” and “lost girls” — keep Sudan’s suffering on the radar, it’s time to ask what to do about the Bashir government.

Small Arab Spring-like protests began surfacing in Sudan in June which were set off by student objections to austerity measures imposed by the government. However, the movement quickly waned as security forces violently suppressed the movement. Just this week, a local activist group said Sudanese security forces killed 12 protesters demonstrating against high prices and yesterday, police used tear gas and batons to stop protests in Darfur’s biggest city Nyala against the government and its austerity program.

Prendergast and Eggers write that “it’s time for the United States and others to take a stand with those protesting and fighting — and dying — for democracy in Sudan”:

This support can take many forms, including rapid and substantial support to the Sudanese opposition and civil society, which are working assiduously for real democratic transformation. Washington and others should also work within and outside the U.N. Security Council to create a meaningful consequence for Khartoum’s aerial bombing and humanitarian aid blockade.

“If change can be achieved in Sudan, the country could become a catalyst for peace in the region,” they write, “rather than the engine of war and terror it has been for nearly a quarter-century.”

Arab Spring protests so far have toppled governments in Tunisia and Egypt, led to a government-toppling civil war in Libya, and what looks to become a protracted civil war in Syria where the dictatorial regime remains, by most accounts, firmly entrenched, for now at least.

Now the Arab Spring protests, more than a year and a half after their inception, are hitting another North African country: Sudan. Student demonstrations against Omar Al-Bashir’s government have been bubbling up over the past couple weeks. Activists called for protests on Friday, which so far appear to have drawn hundreds to various towns across the country, according to a map of reported demonstrations posted by The Atlantic.

The protests — referred to in Sudan as “elbow licking,” after a colloquial phrase for doing the impossible adopted by the government — were set off by student objections to austerity measures imposed by the government. As the protests have grown over two weeks, reliable details have been more difficult to come by because of a government crackdown against journalists and bloggers.

Authorities ignored U.N. warnings against “heavy-handed suppression” and used tear gas to break up demonstrations near the capitol Khartoum and in eastern Sudan. The protesters chanted, “freedom, peace, justice and revolution is the choice of the people,” according to the BBC.

Our guest blogger is Peter Orr, the Senior Sudan Advocate for Refugees International.

In the last few weeks, the media has ramped up its coverage of violence in the South Sudanese state of Jonglei — and rightly so. Inter-ethnic clashes in Jonglei flared up in January, pitting the Lou Nuer and Murle ethnic groups against each other in what is the latest round of recurrent attacks between the two.

At the same time, however, violence on a much larger scale is hitting Sudan’s “new south”: Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile States. Fighting between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement – North (SPLM-N) has forced tens of thousands of people to flee to Ethiopia and South Sudan. Nearly as many have been internally displaced and face dire food shortages.

Displacement is a growing problem in the region, and aid groups face immense challenges providing enough emergency food and care to support the displaced population. Bombing and fighting in the area have prevented local families from cultivating their crops, and a poor harvest in November left food stocks even lower than usual. The most insidious problem, however, is the aid blockade imposed by Khartoum.

The government’s refusal to allow international aid agencies (both UN and private) into its territory is putting tens of thousands of lives at risk. Only the Sudanese Red Crescent, seen as neither impartial nor capable of handling the needs of civilians in government and SPLM-N areas, has been allowed to enter the area.

The U.N. and countries including the United States have tried to shift Khartoum and stave off a humanitarian disaster. In recent weeks, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and the U.N.’s top humanitarian official both visited Sudan and pressed Omar al-Bashir’s government for greater access. But neither visit was successful in opening Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile to desperately needed assistance.

Khartoum is clearly in bunker mode. Feeling that it was not sufficiently “rewarded” for allowing South Sudan to break away, it is now wary of any incentives the West might offer for opening up these war-torn states. It is also keen to avoid a second Darfur, where Khartoum saw humanitarian assistance as merely a friendly façade for Western meddling. More than that, Bashir’s regime sees the aid blockade in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile as another way to force the SPLM-N to surrender for the sake of suffering civilians.

Given the dire need in these two states and the lack of movement by Sudan, some in the U.S. are now calling for forced access to Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile – whereby food and medical supplies might be flown or trucked into the two areas against Khartoum’s will. Certainly, the need is clear; but leaving aside the prospect of Sudanese military retaliation, the practicalities of such a move are thorny indeed. Dropping aid from the air would be incredibly costly, and it’s unclear how the supplies would be distributed once the aid hits the ground. Meanwhile, the land routes from South Sudan into Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan are either impassible or go through Khartoum-held areas. Ethiopia, another possible entry point, would be wary of provoking Khartoum by cooperating with such a plan.

For the time being, Khartoum’s recklessness and intransigence is certain to push more families from Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile into South Sudan and Ethiopia – adding to the over 100,000 Sudanese refugees already there. Those who can’t flee will face even more danger and deprivation; many will surely die.

As humanitarians, we continue to hope that this time Khartoum will prove its critics wrong; that this time it will welcome assistance and not endanger thousands of lives out of pique. But after years of disappointment, it is hard to expect anything better from Sudan. And the fear is that the most the world can do is prepare for the human tragedy that is about to unfold.

Our guest blogger is Laura Heaton, the writer-editor for the blog, Enough Said. She is reporting from Juba, South Sudan

“I’ve got 99 problems but Bashir ain’t one” is emblazoned on t-shirts for sale in the capital of the brand-new country of South Sudan, which officially gained its independence from the North on Saturday.

Even before Sudan gained independence from the United Kingdom and Egypt in 1956, civil war had broken out between the North and South, where rebels rose up to protest the region’s marginalization. Decades and 2 million deaths later, the South is now independent. The weekend was jubilant — from midnight on Friday when crowds filled the streets waving South Sudan flags, through the official declaration ceremony attended by dozens of heads of state and high-level delegations, to the Monday holiday.

“The independence we celebrate today transfers the responsibility for our destinies to our hands,” said newly sworn-in President Salva Kiir, addressing the tens of thousands of people who gathered for the independence ceremony on Saturday. “From today on we will have no excuses or scapegoats to blame.” The president thanked the international community for “addressing the gap” in providing basic services to Southern Sudanese and said that his administration would make public interest its “first, second, and final priorities.”

South Sudan may no longer have to deal with Omar al-Bashir as its leader, but there are many potentially explosive issues that the two countries must continue to work together to sort out, as well as internal issues ranging from the development basics — education, health, infrastructure — to the region’s propensity for conflict. The 99 problems is “just the condensed list,” as one journalist quipped.

Since 2009, a high-level panel convened by the African Union has been facilitating discussion between the North and South governments over big-ticket issues like how to share oil revenue, which is mostly found in the South but must be refined and transported for export through the North. Oil experts estimate that about half of the North’s revenue comes from oil, so finding a compromise is necessary for the viability of the North’s economy, thus regional stability as well. The new international border, 1,200 miles in length, must be demarcated and arrangements made for the communities on either side who are used to being able to travel freely in search of water and pasture. Citizenship more broadly must be settled to ensure that people who have long lived in the other part of what’s now two countries don’t become vulnerable – or at least not more so. Read more

Our guest blogger, Lauren Jenkins, works on post-conflict peacebuilding issues and writes about national security at her blog International Development Without Pity.

As July 9 and South Sudan’s independence from northern Sudan draws nearer, violent attacks by the North on the South and its border areas are increasing in frequency and intensity. In Abyei, a disputed border region, upwards of 113,000 people have fled clashes between the northern and southern armies.

Yesterday, President Obama met with Princeton Lyman, his Special Envoy to Sudan, and the readout from the White House was one of cautious condemnation:

The President expressed deep concern over the violence and the lack of humanitarian access, and he underscored the urgent need to get back to cooperative negotiations to enable full and timely implementation of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

The President is “following the situation closely” while Ambassador Lyman works to achieve “a cessation of hostilities across the region and to support the emergence of two viable states at peace.”

Indeed, a peaceful conclusion to twenty years of civil war was the goal of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement and should be still. That’s why suggestions by Representative Donald Payne (D-NJ) to arm South Sudan made at a subcommittee hearing on Thursday are so worrisome. Specifically, he referred to revisiting a 2008 decision by President Bush to provide air defense systems to South Sudan. That request was never fulfilled because, according to Bush administration officials, the Southern Sudanese army was not trained and equipped to use and maintain the systems.

Arming South Sudan with air defense systems would put them into deeper conflict with the North, not bring the two closer to peace. Further, South Sudan’s army still doesn’t have the requisite training to use and maintain an air defense system. That poses a distinct problem when it comes to distinguishing friendly aircraft from the North’s attack aircraft. In 2007, a UN panel of experts sent a report to the Security Council documenting the North’s use of attack aircraft painted to look like UN aircraft in bombing raids of Darfuri villages. Were the North to use this tactic in the South, it could put UN aircraft at risk.

If UN aircraft are at risk, more than just their aircrews’ lives hang in the balance. When the international community floated the idea of a No-Fly Zone over Darfur in 2007, Sudan expert Julie Flint noted humanitarian agencies were “quietly but unanimously appalled by the prospect” and even if northern Sudan didn’t forcibly ground humanitarian flights in retaliation, “the United Nations most likely would, for fear of sending its planes into a potential combat zone.”

An ill-trained South Sudanese army firing surface-to-air missiles at planes that look like UN aircraft could easily ground UN flights in South Sudan and the border regions. Without access to life-saving humanitarian assistance, the 113,000 people already displaced in Abyei would suffer. Air defense systems might curtail northern Sudan’s onslaught of aerial bombardments, but they would not stop its ground forces or artillery batteries from launching equally deadly attacks against the South. In the end, arming South Sudan could endanger already vulnerable civilians, not protecting them.