Imagine the pressure on them: 46 young Sudanese rebels under orders to protect-and provide for-a foreigner entrusted to their care. "This person is a very important person," they had been told when they had set out more than a week earlier. "If she is tired on the way, she must rest. If she wants to sleep, she must sleep and we must defend her." I had already slept, collapsing while still in territory controlled by the government of Sudan, and now, after an all-night walk without food or water, had seen a paw-paw tree growing in a village. Abboud Karib Ismael joined the Nuba division of the Sudan People's Liberation Army at the age of nine after government soldiers killed his father, a farmer. That was in 1987, the same year that the first SPLA forces entered the Nuba mountains to join southern Sudan's fight for a democratic country in which black Africans would not be a marginalised underclass. He is now 21, dressed in an oversized jean jacket. But when asked to climb up and bring down a paw-paw, he looked distinctly embarrassed.
"I cannot," he replied. "That paw-paw is a civilian paw-paw." And he walked away. An hour later he returned with a smiling woman. "This is that paw-paw's civilian," he said. "You can ask her."
Safely back at headquarters, the cook fanned the fire under our supper with a copy of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Abboud Karim Ismael busied himself making us comfortable. I asked why he didn't shin up the tree and get the paw-paw himself. Much quicker; much less palaver. This was his response, in the English he had learnt during three scant years of schooling: "No no no no. Something like that, it is not good because the civilians will be angry with you and then they can go to join with the government forces. If you are hungry, you take your gun, you go to bush and hunt animals."
Once upon a time there were animals in the Nuba mountains. When the photographer George Rodger visited in 1944, he "slept with the distant cries of hyenas and the rumbling of lions." There were ostriches, deer, baboons and, some said, the occasional winged devil. In three visits to the mountains, I have seen only one wild animal-a small deer. War has taken its toll on beast and man. Since the National Islamic Front came to power in 1989, an attempt to defeat the Nuba rebellion has grown into a war of annihilation against a people whose tradition of political and religious tolerance threatens the NIF's project of Islamic extremism. A blockade of the mountains, a scorched-earth policy and a ban on all relief work has left the Nuba destitute. Thousands of young men are under arms. And yet this paw-paw was safe.
The Nuba are a remarkable people. As Rodger observed 50 years ago: "Although we had already trekked through 20,000 miles of tribal Africa, it was not until Kordofan that we found real peace and tranquillity." That peace and tranquillity continue to reign among the Nuba, despite the atrocities heaped upon them, is due not only to their good nature but to their leader, Yousif Kuwa. A former teacher, Kuwa has put at least as much effort into empowering civilians as he has into training soldiers. He is loved by civilians for being "a common man"; respected by soldiers for acknowledging mistakes.
Under Kuwa's leadership, the Nuba have held a popular vote on whether to continue fighting or to surrender (after six days' debate, they voted overwhelmingly to fight). They have a judicial system, a fledgling police force, nursing and teacher-training schools, and a civilian administration with an advisory council in which civilians outnumber soldiers two to one. In the mountains, Kuwa is both civilian governor and military commander. The chairman of the council is a rather lowly medical assistant, and yet he did not hesitate to rule the commander out of order when he tried to introduce a last-minute change to the council's agenda at its most recent session. Seeing a rebel leader overruled in this way is remarkable-seeing him sit down in embarrassed silence even more so.
The respect that is so characteristic of the Nuba is all the more striking for the lack of respect that they have always been shown. Kuwa was initially refused admission to secondary school on the ground that "Arabs go to secondary school; Nuba become house boys."
Today there is real equality in rebel-held areas. Tribe and religion are irrelevant. Women fight alongside men. Civilians are unafraid to criticise soldiers. One of Kuwa's own bodyguards is currently under arrest accused of murdering a government informer; one of his senior commanders has been publicly reprimanded for paying a dowry of five cows (two is the limit under a law introduced to ensure that even those most affected by the war can afford a wife) and obliged to hand three back.
In a world in which respect for human rights were rewarded, the Nuba would not be standing alone. But they are. The UN humanitarian agencies work with the rogue regime in Khartoum, which violates human rights and manufactures chemical weapons, but at Khartoum's insistence they turn a blind eye to the need in the Nuba mountains.
Kuwa has never asked for much. His message from the beginning has been: "Help us to help ourselves." But self-reliance, too, has gone unrewarded. Exactly one year ago, Khartoum promised Kofi Annan that the UN's Operation Lifeline Sudan would finally be permitted to send an assessment mission to the mountains. That promise remains unfulfilled. Kuwa has now warned the UN that he cannot be expected to commit suicide. "We are like a sinking man in the river and they are standing on the bank shouting encouragement," he says. "If they continue to help the government at our expense, I will know what to do."
