Sudanese Provincial and State flags

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[Bahr el Ghazel province was renamed Central Equatoria in 2005 and is one of ten Sudanese States that make up the newly independent Republic of South Sudan.  The state capital of Juba is also the national capital of South Sudan.  The flag shown here is no longer in use. - Ed]

The flag of Blue Nile State has the state emblem in the centre of a white background.  There is also a variant with an inscription in Arabic below the emblem.
Valentin Poposki, 06 April 2022

image sent by Valentin Poposki, 06 April 2022

The flag of Gadarif State has a green background with the state emblem in the centre and an inscription below.
Valentin Poposki, 06 April 2022

      images by Valentin Poposki, 17 July 2020

Khartoum State is one of 18 states in Sudan. It has 22 142 km², with about 5 300 000 inhabitants. Its administrative center is the capital, the City of Khartoum. The state has 7 sub-divisions: Jabal Awliya, Karari, Khartoum, Khartoum North, Om Badda, Omdurman, and Sharq an-Nil.

The flag of the state is white with state emblem in the center and inscription in Arabic below it. However, on photos that I could see, in 2017 it appears as a blue flag with emblem in the center and since 2019, it appears as a green flag with emblem in the center, both without inscription in Arabic. The white flag appears all the time which I suspect is as the state flag. The blue and green flags appears to be some sort of rank (Governor) or government flag.

       images by Sergiy Besh and Valentin Poposki, 17 July 2020

Here are several variants of the white flag and several photos, plus photos and images of the blue and green flags.
Valentin Poposki, 17 July 2020

The former Sudanese provinces adopted flags - as a rule these were monocolour with a local symbol in the center.  The flag of Kordofan (also spelt Kurdufan)  shown here was used prior to the province being split into three new federal states of North Kurdufan, South Kurdufan and West Kurdufan in 1994.
Jaume Ollé, 03 Mar 1996

[In August 2005, West Kurdufan State was abolished and its territory divided between North and South Kurdufan States as part of the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement which led to the independence of South Sudan in July 2011. - Ed]

Nuba Mountain People

"Nuba" is a collective term used for the peoples who inhabit the Nuba Mountains in Kordofan province.  Although the term is used to describe these people as if they composed a single group, the Nuba are multiple distinctive strains and use different forms of speech.  Estimates of the Nuba population vary widely; the Sudanese government estimated that they numbered 1.1 million in 1993.

The Nuba people are primarily farmers, as well as herders who keep cattle, goats, chickens and other domestic animals. They often maintain three different farms: a garden near their house where vegetables needing constant attention, such as onions, peppers and beans, are grown; fields further up the hills where quick growing crops such as red millet can be cultivated without irrigation; and farms farther away where white millet and other crops are planted. A distinctive characteristic of the Nubas  is their passion for athletic competition, particularly traditional wrestling.  The strongest young men of a community compete with athletes from other villages for the chance to promote their personal and their village’s pride and strength. In some villages, older men participate in club or spear-fighting contests.  The Nubas’ passion for physical excellence is also displayed through the young men’s vanity — they often spend hours painting their bodies with complex patterns and decorations. This vanity reflects the basic Nuba belief in the power and importance of strength and beauty.

The majority of the Nuba, those living in the east, west and northern parts of the mountains are Muslims, while those living to the south are either Christians or practice traditional animistic religions. In those areas of the Nuba mountains where Islam has not deeply penetrated, ritual specialists and priests hold as much control as the clan elders, for it is they who are responsible for rain control, keeping the peace, and rituals to ensure successful crops.  Many are guardians of the shrines where items are kept to insure positive outcomes of the rituals (such as rain stones for the rain magic), and some also undergo spiritual possession.

In the 1986 elections, the Umma Party lost several seats to the Nuba Mountains General Union and to the Sudan National Party, due to the reduced level of support from the Nuba Mountains region.  There is reason to believe that attacks by the government-supported militia, the Popular Defence Force (PDF), on several Nuba villages were meant to be in retaliation for this drop in support, which was seen as signaling increased support of the SPLA.  The P.D.F. attacks were particularly violent, and have been cited as examples of crimes against humanity that took place during the Second Sudanese Civil War (Salih 1999).

Wikipedia describes the Nuba as people residing in one of the most remote and inaccessible places in all of Sudan--the foothills of the Nuba Mountains in central Sudan. At one time the area was considered a place of refuge, bringing together people of many different tongues and backgrounds who were fleeing oppressive governments and slave traders. As a result, over 100 hundred languages are spoken in the area and are considered Nuba languages, although many of the Nuba also speak Sudanese Arabic, the official language of Sudan.

The Nuba Mountains mark the southern border of the sands of the desert and the northern limit of good soils washed down by the Nile River.  Many Nubas, however, have migrated to the Sudanese capital of Khartoum to escape persecution and the effects of Sudan’s civil war. Most of  the rest of the 1,000,000 Nuba people live in villages of between 1,000 and 50,000 inhabitants in areas in and surrounding the Nuba mountains.  Nuba villages are often built where valleys run from the hills out on to the surrounding plains, because water is easier to find at such points and wells can be used all year long.  There is no political unity among the various Nuba groups who live on the hills. Often the villages do not have chiefs but are instead organized into clans or extended family groups with village authority left in the hands of clan elders.

After some earlier incursions by the SPLA, the Sudanese civil war started full scale in the Nuba Mountains when the Volcano Battalion of the SPLA under the command of the Nuba Yousif Kuwa Mekki and Abdel Aziz Adam al-Hillu entered the Nuba Mountains and began to recruit Nuba volunteers and send them to SPLA training facilities in Ethiopia.  The volunteers walked to Ethiopia and back and many of them perished on the way.  During the war, the SPLA generally held the Mountains, while the Sudanese Army held the towns and fertile lands at the feet of the Mountains, but was generally unable to dislodge the SPLA, even though the latter was usually very badly supplied.  The Governments of Sudan under Sadiq al-Mahdi and Omar al-Bashir also armed militias of Baggara Arabs to fight the Nuba and transferred many Nuba forcibly to camps.  In 1998 Yousif Kuwa was diagnosed with cancer and died early 2001.  In early 2002 the Government and the SPLA agreed on an internationally supervised ceasefire.

Image by Eugene Ipavec, 31 Dec 2009

In the Encyclopedia of the Stateless Nations - Ethnic and National Groups Around the World (Volume III) by James B.Minahan, the Nuba flag is described as follows:
"The Nuba national flag, the flag of the Nuba Mountains United Front, is a horizontal bicolor of pale green with two yellow hills centered and a yellow five-pointed star on the upper hoist."
Eugene Ipavec and Chrystian Kretowicz, 31 Dec 2009

image by Jaume Ollé Casals, 14 Dec 2011

The flag of the Upper Nile region (1983-1991) and later state (1991-1994) has a light blue field with the regional emblem in white in the centre - a cow and suckling calf - with the name of the region on a scroll below. 
Jaume Ollé Casals, 14 Dec 2011

[This state has now been incorporated into South Sudan - Ed]

West Dafur State

  image sent by Jens Pattke, 17 June 2022

The flag of West Dafur State, in the extreme west of Sudan, is one of five state which comprise the Dafur region.   The flag has a white field in the centre of which is the state emblem in blue which comprises a hand making an "okay" gesture above a ring of eight five-pointes stars, above a crescent, all in white.
Jens Pattke, 17 June 2022

      images sent by Valentin Popski, 18 June 2022

Photographs of a number of variants of the flag of West Dafur can be seen here which show the emblem in different colours on a white field.  One variant is in the reverse with a white emblem on a blue field.
Valentin Popski, 18 June 2022

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