The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) reported that government forces have recruited more than 3,000 young men in the Nuba Mountains, South Kordofan. They have been transferred to military camps, to be trained and integrated into the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The SPLM-N spokesman for the Nuba Mountains, Jatigo Amoga Delman, told Radio Dabanga that the “Rapid Support militias, under the command of the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS), during the past few days have recruited more than 3,000 boys between 15 and 17 years old from the areas under control of the regime in South Kordofan”.
“They were taken to Khartoum, where they were transferred to military camps in Udeya, El Eilofun, El Merikhiyat, Jeili, El Gadaref, and El Disa.”
Education
Delman stressed that “those children should be in school instead of battle zones”.
He appealed via Radio Dabanga to “all the forces of change, lovers of humanity, and activists inside and outside Sudan to immediately intervene, and stop the forced recruitment of minors from the Nuba Mountains”.
Omda Juma Kuku Rakuba, from the area of El Dar in Buram locality, South Kordofan, said in a message sent to the Nuba in Sudan’s capital and other cities in the country, that “the Sudanese government forcibly recruits our sons to support the RSF, while the children of the regime’s officials are enjoying education in schools and universities”.
RSF
Last year, under NISS command, about 6,000 new RSF recruits were trained in military camps around Khartoum, to fight and “eliminate the insurgency” in Darfur and South Kordofan. Since February this year, the well-organised militia attacked, pillaged, and destroyed hundreds of villages in Darfur, mostly in South and North Darfur. Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced.
In April, a RSF force was sent to South Kordofan, to fight alongside the Sudanese army against the SPLM-N. Tens of thousands of civilians were driven from their homes by the attacks.
Late May, the Director of NISS operations, Maj. Gen. Ali El Nasih El Galla, said that more than 6,000 RSF troops were distributed at petroleum sites, co-deployed with the armed forces at borders, and cooperating with the police to protect the national capital and other major towns.
Reporting by Radio Dabanga
File photo: RSF troops in the field (RSF official facebook page)