Nuba

2008/9 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Peoples

Nuba is a collective term used for the peoples who inhabit the Nuba Mountains, in Kordofan province, Sudan, Africa. Although the term is used to describe them as if they were a single tribe, in fact the Nuba are quite diverse, and are made up of different ethnic and linguistic groups. Estimates of the number of Nuba vary widely; the Sudanese government estimated that they numbered 1.1 million in 1993.

Leni Riefenstahl, better known for directing Triumph of the Will and Olympia, published a collection of her photographs of the people titled The Last of the Nuba in 1976.

Effect of private agriculture schemes

Between 1973 and 1994, the Sudanese government introduced programs to promote large-scale, privately owned agriculture to many regions including the Nuba Mountains. The efforts were redoubled as a result of IMF structural adjustment programs instituted in 1978. Large-scale mechanized farms were introduced, which pushed small peasants into marginal land between semi-arid and lusher savanna areas. Sudanese governments during the period misperceived the Nuba as a unified ally of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), which furthered the oppressive measures against the tribes. These measures were indiscriminately applied, even to groups having no connection to the SPLA, such as the numerous Nuba Muslims. An example of these measures is the refusal to grant leases for undeveloped land that had been marked for future large-scale agricultural uses to peasants who were starving during the drought between 1983 and 1985. By 1999, over 100,000 people had been forcibly displaced by the agriculture programs, many of whom moved to urban areas, and are forced to face the difficulties associated with that type of transition.

In the 1986 elections, the Umma Party lost several seats to the Nuba Mountains General Union and to the Sudan National Party, due to the reduced level of support from the Nuba Mountains region. There is reason to believe that attacks by the government-supported militia, the Popular Defense Force (PDF), on several Nuba villages were meant to be in retaliation for this drop in support, which was seen as signaling increased support of the SPLA. The PDF attacks were particularly violent in nature, and have been cited as examples of crimes against humanity that took place during the Second Sudanese Civil War (Salih 1999).

The War in the Mountains

After some earlier incursions by the SPLA, the sudanese civil war started full scale in the Nuba Mountains when the Volcano Battalion of the SPLA under the command of the Nuba Yusif Kwa Mekki and Abdel Aziz Adam al-Hillu entered the Nuba Mountains and began to recruit Nuba volunteers and send them to SPLA training facilities in Ethiopia.The volunteers walked to Ethiopia and back and many of them perished on the way. During the war, the SPLA generally held the Mountains, while the Sudanese Army held the towns and fertile lands at the feet of the Mountains, but was generally unable to dislodge the SPLA, even though the latter was usually very badly supplied. The Governments of Sudan under Sadiq al-Mahdi and Omar al-Bashir also armed militias of Baggara Arabs to fight the Nuba and transferred many Nuba forcibly to camps. 1998 Yousif Kuwa was diagnosed with cancer and died early 2001. Early 2002 the Government and the SPLA agreed on an internationally supervised ceasefire.

Abbasid familes moved and lived in Nuba

After the Tatar invasion to Baghdad, some Abbasid families moved to different countries and one of which was upper Egypt. Mousa was one of the those who moved and settled in, then his children moved to different cities of upper Egypt like Asuit, Qena and Aswan. The ones who lived in Aswan settled in Aljozayerah, small village 1 km away from the city of Aswan. They quickly mixed with the Nubians and learned the language.