War footing

Sudan | Sudan’s president calls out his militia while southern leader draws his own line in the sand | Priya Abraham

Southern Sudanese President Salva Kiir Mayardit

In 1990, as civil war flamed between Sudan's North and South, Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir met with a UN official to discuss 400,000 Ethiopian refugees camped in Sudan. The UN official agreed that Bashir needed help caring for them but said an equal number of Bashir's southern Sudanese, also refugees, were languishing in Ethiopia. "They're not my people," Bashir retorted.

It's a conversation Roger Winter, U.S. former special representative to Sudan, remembers well. Bashir, a Sudanese Arab, apparently views his southern African countrymen with the same disdain today. On Nov. 17 the president re-activated his war-time militia during a rally south of Khartoum called to celebrate the 18th anniversary of his Popular Defense Force (PDF). In his speech Bashir referred to the PDF as his "mujahideen" and "the legitimate son of the people" and ordered it to "open its camps and mobilize troops and get prepared for any eventuality."