The mountains, actually hills, provided protection from many raiders over the decades as the Nuba sought to preserve their unique and tolerant culture. Nuba civilian leaders led by a school teacher and elected assemblyman Yousif Kuwa were long involved in a civic struggle against second-class citizenship. The rebel areas of the Nuba Mountains are under siege by the government, whose blockade seeks to strangle the economy and force starving civilians into government garrison towns. Despite periodic agreements the SPLA reaches with private small traders to sell such basics as used clothes, salt, and sugar in small Nuba markets, the government has successfully cut off commerce to the area, so even these basic items are rarely available. As a result, almost all Nuba wear threadbare clothes, even many SPLA soldiers.
Many civilians have no clothes and have to share a garment with other family members.
Teachers in the rebel areas report that some children come to school naked, and nakedness has not been the Nuba custom for decades. Others without clothes stay away from school, too ashamed of their nakedness to venture out. The siege is coupled with periodic military incursions where villages are burned down, crops and animals looted, and all civilians found alive taken off as captives. The government focuses on displacing those they cannot capture from fertile valleys into the higher and less fertile hills. Therefore even those not captured may be driven to garrison towns by hunger.