John Bradshaw: Sudan's Bashir must be held to account for pogrom in Abyei

With General Ratko Mladic now in the dock at the Hague to face charges stemming from the atrocities allegedly committed by troops under his command during the Bosnian war, the contrast with events in Southern Sudan could not be more appalling.

Sudan's government, led by president Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, has taken a page from its Darfur book by waging war once again on civilians and their property, this time attacking the disputed border region of Abyei on the eve of South Sudan's legal secession next month.

This is the same Bashir charged with genocide by the International Criminal Court. And it is the same set of Sudanese officials who received plaudits from diplomats for the agreement that purported to end Sudan's two-decade North-South civil war, and for publicly committing to abide by the ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration on the territorial dispute in Abyei. In Abyei, Bashir's regime planned and conducted a pogrom, a premeditated act of ethnic cleansing intended to rid the city of Ngok Dinka and replace them with northern-aligned Misseriya people. Eyewitnesses report villages were razed, civilians shelled, and children left dead by the roadside.

Between 60,000 and 150,000 people fled, leaving behind their meagre possessions. They are the lucky ones. Bashir's forces destroyed the only bridge linking Abyei to areas of safety, trapping many and impeding the safe return of refugees.

Unlike in previous cases of attacks on civilians by Bashir's regime, this time we don't need to wait for fragmentary reports from the ground to piece together what happened. We have real-time satellite imagery. The Satellite Sentinel Project (SSP), initiated by George Clooney and the Enough Project, has provided irrefutable evidence of this new wave of crimes committed against the civilian population in and around Abyei. Its report shows at least ten Sudan Armed Forces battle tanks, mobile artillery pieces and infantry fighting vehicles in Abyei. Analysis also reveals that up to one-third of civilian structures in Abyei have been burned, and corroborates reports that tens of thousands have been displaced.

The United Nations Security Council should now exercise its Chapter VII authority to mandate an independent team of international experts to assess the evidence of crimes committed in Abyei and preserve the testimony of witnesses before the Sudanese Government can silence them. If Bashir, who has been indicted by the ICC for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Darfur, is indeed responsible for the assault on Abyei, that fact alone should compel all states to agree to expand the tribunal's ongoing investigation to encompass crimes committed in Abyei.Moreover, the northerners who "settled" in Abyei following the assault should be seen as complicit in the regime's crimes rather than as peaceful civilians building a community.

• John Bradshaw is executive director of the Enough Project, a Washington DC-based anti-genocide group.