It isn’t easy to reach the Nuba Mountains. With only one unpaved road in rebel hands, the SPLA-North fighters of Sudan’s south kordofan province have little means of getting supplies in – or news out.

Yet they claim to now control 75 PERCENT of this isolated region, and their morale remains high.

SOUNDBITE—‘we are here mainly, mainly fighting Omar Hassan al-Bashir because he’s trying now to take our rights here in Nuba Moiuntains and he’s trying even to kill all the Nubans and to kill the owners of the country, of this Sudan, and we now we come that we shall not believe that, we shall go back for the forests and we carry the guns and we come and liberate our country.”

The Nuba feel they have little choice but fighting to the bitter end.

When neighbouring South Sudan declared independence last July and withdrew its troops from South Kordofan, the Nuba fighters found themselves alone.

Outnumbered, outgunned, and ignored by the outside world - the Nuba people are a nation under arms.

Almost every adult male is now a soldier- and their mothers, wives and children (at least those who haven’t fled to the safety of UN camps across the border) find themselves living on the frontline.

The government in Khartoum has pledged to retake these arid hills within weeks- and everyone is bracing for the onslaught.

SOUNDBITE—“Last week he [Bashir] was talking in radio and television, he say that he want to pray in Kauda. Kauda is our capital. He want to pray in Kauda, and to hit the SPLM, and now we waiting him to come. To pray. We say why, that he want to pray in Kauda? We are waiting him to pray with him (laughs). And now the people and the forces they are ready. We are ready now. We are ready everywhere in Jebel Nuba and any time we are ready to hit him.”

Perhaps fear is Bashir’s greatest strategic asset- while they wait to defend their fields and homesteads, the Nuba villages come under daily assault from bombing raids by air and artillery and rockets on the ground.

The SPLA-N relies on civilians to grow and rear its food, draw its water and gather its firewood. In this war, civilians are a strategic asset- and for the Khartoum government, an easy target.

A journey across the region reveals a population under siege. Villages, homes and even churches torn apart by bombing litter the landscape.

This isn’t just collateral damage.  In the village of Angolo, we discovered the first confirmed proof of the use of cluster bombs against civilians in this forgotten war- a crime under international law.

This Russian-made RBK-500 bomb has sat in the quiet farming village for over a month.

Luckily for the villagers, the bomb malfunctioned.

None of its deadly cargo of bomblets, filled with thousands of ball-bearings designed to kill any human within range, exploded as designed.

But while the villagers of Angolo had a lucky escape, they don’t see it that way.

The unexploded bomblets still present a lethal threat to anyone nearby. No-one in the region has the expertise to defuse these unstable devices. And still the daily onslaught continues.

SOUNDBITE—(Arabic, translated on scene): “Today the airplane came and bombed us… they bombed Abdey and they bombed the place is called Jabrona [a district of Angolo] here. That is what happened today. Today.”

The villagers of Angolo pleaded for Western munitions experts to defuse the bomb.

But the UN Mission in Sudan is heavily constrained by the Khartoum government.

This isn’t an image Bashir wants the world- or the UN Security Council- to see.

Sudan has never signed the convention banning the use of cluster munitions, but its government has denied stockpiling the controversial munitions, or ever using them in war.

But their use here in Angolo disproves Khartoum’s claims once and for all. 

Already wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Darfur, perhaps the Sudanese leader feels he has little left to lose.

The use of cluster munitions against civilians, though illegal, has a brutal military logic.

The SPLA-North fighters have only a few ineffective machineguns to defend the Nuba villages from government bombing raids.

SOUNDBITE—“we are still struggle, we will struggle till, till we reach our aim, until we reach our rights. And our rights we want to hit al-Bashir. Yeah. This is our… this is our aim.

Many of the region’s villagers are already voting with their feet.

Village after village lies deserted.

If South Kordofan’s last remaining civilians flee to the safety of refugee camps across the border, the SPLA-N will starve.

Their only road to the outside world will become impassable when the long-overdue summer rains finally break.