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Photo by David Blumenkrantz |
Fear and Madness in South Sudan
September 19, 1989
(Journal entry)
By David Blumenkrantz
I
recently traveled again to southern Sudan,
where I witnessed the ravages of war on
the towns and especially on the people.
The road from the Kenyan border to the town
of Bor is long, slow and treacherous. Running
parallel to the hidden Nile River, the landscape
is one of man-made destruction set against
natural beauty. Every bridge has been turned
into a mass of snarled metal, and the roadside
is littered with the remains of dozens of
vehicles. Just as one starts feeling the
relief of knowing that the hellish twelve-hour
ride is near it's end, you encounter the
most horrific sight of all: charred skeletons
and the occasional human skull, strewn about
on the burnt-out site of some recent, seemingly
futile confrontation.
History
is often represented in large bold type.
Perhaps this damned war in southern Sudan
will be remembered as a noble struggle of
liberation. Leave that for the historians
to decide. While ideologues, profiteers
and warriors perpetrate man's age-old aggressions,
the lives of the innocent ones are disrupted.
There is suffering, there is pain, and there
is fear. There is still not enough food,
not enough medicine, and not enough education.
Only ten days before we were to arrive,
mothers had clutched their babies to their
breasts and fled into the bush, escaping
the wrath of powerful airplanes they knew
little about, except that they made life
miserable.
We
eventually reached Bor, the little town
on the banks of the Nile that had become
the frontline of the rebel resistance. The
level of corruption we found surrounding
the United Nations' Operation Lifeline there
was disheartening. I heard stories that
made me want to write a real investigative
piece, but I have a moral dilemma. Our organization
is assisting in some areas, and I was only
allowed access based on that contingency.
How can I walk into the office of Lifeline
coordinator Rolf Huss in Nairobi, and ask,
"Say, Rolf, what happened to that 800
TONS of food that was stolen from the storehouses
in Torit," or "what about the
solar panel that was taken from WFP, and
later found on top of a mosque, powering
the rebel's radio?" Or the missing
petrol . . . this would jeopardize our organization's
relationship with WFP, which in balance
is resulting in good work. Not to mention
my position.
Yet
it's better-- much better-- than nothing.
Their efforts, however imperfect, are bringing
food relief to thousands of innocent people
that have been displaced, sickened, made
hungry, and left ultimately disillusioned
by the unfulfilled promise of the revolution
in southern Sudan.
LIBERATION
BLUES
The inefficiency and corruption of the rebels
themselves is truly remarkable. Remarkable,
yet understandable, if one pays attention
to the words of Commander Mark, who refers
to the conflict as a terrible but inevitable
war. "That's Commander Mark, not Deutsch Mark," he boomed inside his Bor office.
He laughed heartily in his pressed uniform,
while outside hundreds of poorly dressed,
underfed young men carried everything they
owned on their heads. They were leaving
wives, children and livestock behind for
what a strapping Dinka rebel told us was
a three-week trek to refugee camps in Ethiopia.
We thought it more likely that they were
forcing these guys into the army, for the
rumored assault on Juba, the central government's
last southern stronghold. His claim seemed
even more ludicrous with his assertion that
"they've been given enough food for
the twenty-one day walk, and when they reach
Pibor (at the border), the authorities will
give them more."
No
one wanted to challenge this soldier, who
we knew only as "Dudu." Quick
to anger, Dudu wielded his AK-47 when a
point needed to be made to a careless relief
worker. Our veterinarian friend from Argentina,
who staggered around in a malaria-induced
fog wearing surfing trunks and a Mickey
Mouse t-shirt, found this out when he demanded
the return of some stolen property. He lost
his temper when they laughed at him, but
was faced down by Dudu's big gun and red
eyes . . .
It
appeared that some of the men were heading
toward where we could hear drums beating.
We were told that a rebel party was going
on. They were carrying bags of maize, which
our mosquito-bitten, skin-headed British
food monitor was certain had been misappropriated
from Operation Lifeline relief supplies.
Even the $3,000 token donation of medicines
made by InterAid to the SRRA (to prove our
good faith upon entering the liberated region)
was going directly "to the war machine,"
it was later confided to me.
How
do I tell our fundraisers that we are actually,
however inadvertently, supporting the SPLA
rebels, who have turned the mosque in Bor
into a site for an anti-aircraft machine
gun, positioned on the roof, facing north
towards Mecca?
The
World Food Program seems to be in a bit
over their heads on this one. The pilot
that flew us back to Nairobi from the WFP
base camp at Lokichogio told me that the
flying outfit he works for, Safari Air,
charges 30,000 Kenya shillings (around $1,500)
per round trip. He himself had made twenty-six
trips, often taking nothing more than tires
for the relief vehicles, which could be
easily driven up there on a new road in
one day for a tenth of the expense. It seems
the boys at WFP are scrambling to keep pace
with the highly unpredictable events, often
changing plans on a minute-by-minute basis.
This is leading to some poor decisions.
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Relief workers fighting off mosquitoes
in Bor.
Photo by David Blumenkrantz |
The
relief workers bear the brunt of this chaos.
The U.N. bigwigs live in relative luxury
at camps like Lokichogio (safely across
the border in Kenya), where the beer is
cold and steaks like those devoured on high-class
tourist safaris in the Masai Mara are served.
On the other hand, food monitors, nurses
and other field workers in places like Bor
face constant danger, if not from lawless
soldiers then from the mosquitoes. The latter
cannot be discounted: The camp for the relief
workers in Bor is, by SPLA decree, set up
in what used to be a Dutch rice project.
The swamp conditions dictate that they can't
leave their tents after 6:30 p.m. lest they
be eaten alive. The malarial creatures are
still there in the morning to torture you
incessantly until around 10-11am. In the
meantime they are being hassled and bullied,
and are having a hard time keeping the food
inside the storehouses until they can distribute
it to needy villagers and displaced people.
The
SRRA (Sudanese Rehabilitation and Relief
Association), which serves as the civilian
administration for the rebel movement, is
desperately trying to prime the country
for the day when they finish "liberating"
the "oppressed " people of the
south. Realizing they're completely unprepared
and under-funded for the necessary development,
they allow agencies like ours in, to help
with medical programs. But they can't keep
the lid on their own corruption. There are
signs around Kapoeta propagandizing the
SPLA/SRRA future for south Sudan, with slogans
such as "Unity for the Future."
Ian Lunt, our intrepid British engineer
brought down from northern Sudan to work
on upgrading relief roads, could only comment
dryly, "That's a joke."
If
it's not a joke, then what are they fighting
for? The SPLA have legitimate claims. The
Arab leaders from the north are imposing
their Muslim beliefs on the animist and
Christian southerners. Sheria law forbids
alcohol (thus bootlegging is big in Sudan),
and the hands of thieves are cut off, to
mention two common complaints. But look
deeper, and it becomes a struggle for autonomy
and the sovereignty of the black, sub-Saharan
peoples.
If
the politically concerned approach is too
complex or depressing, one can indulge himself
in the ("Goddamn it them Africans is
in one hell of a mess!") tact favored
by our American pilot. A hell of a job it
is, flying the "forklift," as
the UN plane that hops from town to town
in the south ferrying materials and personnel
is called. The forklift is a strictly utilitarian
machine, excessively loud, and none too
fast. Perhaps out of fear that they won't
restart, he never turns his engines off
unless it's an absolute necessity. Alas,
our friendly American pilot cannot see fit
to wait even five minutes for a relief worker
who for some reason is not at the airstrip
at the designated time. ("Nope--
he's not here. Let's go!") Never mind
that it might have been some exhausted relief
agency nurse who was finally getting the
hell out of a miserable four-month stint
in Kapoeta or Torit, and had a plane to
catch to Nairobi waiting for her in Lokichogio,
as was once the case.
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Photo by David Blumenkrantz |
Oddly
enough, he didn't seem concerned about any
split-second scheduling when we took off
from Nimule's heavily fortified grass airstrip
and spotted a herd of elephants. His bark
was more an insistent plea than invitation:
"You want to see some elephants?"
Ignoring our less-than-enthusiastic response,
he shouted, "Well you're going to see
plenty! There's a big herd around the Nile."
Sure enough, we were treated to a low-flying
buzz over the Nile delta, where the forklift's
sonic drone terrified the creatures into
a mad stampede . . .
MEDICAL
PROBLEMS
One sweltering morning we visited the Baidit
health center, around 20 kilometers from
Bor. It is one of the four dispensaries
that InterAid is responsible for. Our organization
has placed two nurses in the Bor region
to supervise and train local staff, schedule
and implement immunization and feedings,
plan workshops and conduct nutritional surveys.
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The health dispensary at Baidit.
Photo by David Blumenkrantz |
The
atmosphere was subdued and tense. Because
of the recent fighting, the local doctor
explained, there were not many people around:
so few in fact, that the feeding program
had come to a complete, though temporary
halt. Shipments of relief food had been
delayed. The doctor, Paul Maka Makuac, seemed
very affected by the war, almost to the
point of madness. His moods alternated between
friendly accommodation and sudden hostility,
berating me for making photographs of something
I could "see with my own eyes."
When he spoke of the plight of his people,
and the lack of medicines available to treat
even the simplest of illnesses, he would
fly into a rage. "You see with
your own eyes the situation of the people
here!" he screamed, shaking with
frustration, and perhaps shame at his own
inability to deal with the crisis.
What
was clearly evident was that there weren't
many people at the dispensary to receive
their immunizations. One nurse explained,
"As with the feeding program, the EPI
(Extended Program for Immunization) also
suffers whenever there is a military maneuver.
Only it's worse with the EPI, because it
is crucial that we keep track of these children.
Most of the injections they receive need
to be repeated periodically over a period
of a few months. If we immunize a child
once for polio, then he disappears into
the bush, we can't give him the follow-up
injection. But they'll come back,"
he said optimistically. "Sometimes
it takes one or two weeks."
Nevertheless,
the mobile immunization team went about
their business that day in Baidit, vaccinating
perhaps a dozen or so mothers and children
in the decrepit, undersupplied facility.
One woman who brought her nine-month-old
daughter for immunizations was Kuei Malou.
She had walked to the dispensary from two
miles away. She looked terminally depressed,
deep into her own internal struggle, and
far older than her twenty years. She proceeded
zombie-like through the motions of having
her baby Akom orally administered her final
polio vaccine, and showed little reaction
at all when she herself was injected in
the arm with the tetanus toxoid vaccine
that all mothers receive.
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Kuei Malou and baby Akom wait for immunizations in Baidit.
Photo by David Blumenkrantz |
When
questioned, Kuei Malou explained that although
she hadn't been turned a Christian by the
missionaries, and still followed her traditional
Dinka beliefs, she was glad for the opportunity
to immunize her children. Baby Akom's older
sister had already finished her immunizations
a few months before. She had been told that
measles and diphtheria were killing people.
"I was told that this immunization
was protecting-- I like my children to be
immunized," she said without expression,
through an interpreter.
Greed,
exploitation, lust for power, racism. The
world here seems insane, and sometimes one
can't help but write about these events
with a jaundiced eye. It is however unspeakably
sad for the victims: the innocents, the
peasants, the children and the elderly;
non-political villagers who could care less
who their "leaders" are, as long
as they are left in peace to carry on simple
lives. The good news, I suppose is that
I saw no signs of slavery.
* * * *
Links:
South Sudan photo gallery (b&w) Sudan (northern) photo gallery
(b&w)
South Sudan photo gallery (color) Sudan (northern) photo gallery (color)
SOUTH SUDAN: A HISTORY OF POLITICAL DOMINATION
- A CASE OF
SELF-DETERMINATION by Dr. Riek Machar Teny-Dhurgon
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/Hornet/sd_machar.html
CRISIS IN DARFUR: SOUTH SUDAN TODAY: The
conflict in Darfur began in February 2003
when two rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation
Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality
Movement (JEM) rose against government military
installations in the region in retaliation
for economic and political marginalization.
They also accused the government of arming
the Arab militias, called the Janjaweed,
to drive out African farmers from their
lands in a campaign of ethnic cleansing
which the US congress has now called a “genocide.”
http://www.gng.org/sudan/darfur.html
January 09, 2005: South Sudan peace deal
signed
http://platform.blogs.com/passionofthepresent/2005/01/_south_sudan_pe.html
Amidst Sudan's on-going civil war, Arab
militias armed by the Sudanese government
raid black African villages and abduct civilians
as chattel slaves.
http://www.iabolish.com/today/background/sudan.htm
United Nations’ World Food Programme
http://www.wfp.org/
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