The Nuba still standing: branded as infidels by Sudan's Islamic rulers, a traditional people fight for their lives.

Bearing loads home the only way they can, Nuba women walk through the hills where their people have often fled to escape the civil war, abandoning the surrounding plains. In 1985 the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), based in the south, infiltrated the Nuba Mountains, the Nuba homeland in central Sudan.

Long discriminated against by the north's Arabized, Islamic majority, many Nubas--members of a minority that clings to indigenous traditions--joined the rebels. In response the government declared all Nuba the enemy; militias surrounded the mountains, occupied the towns, ...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.