New arrivals in South Sudan tell of worst war crimes since Darfur
Daniel Howden reports from the Batil refugee camps, where nine children a
day are dying in flooded, crowded conditions
<
http://www.independent.co.uk/biography/daniel-howden> Daniel Howden Author
Biography
Monday 23 July 2012
Idrissa Suleiman has watched bombs rain down on her home. She has been
chased through the mountains of Blue Nile state in Sudan by helicopter
gunships. The mother of two fled on foot from soldiers burning villages and
massacring civilians. And she survived the "road of death" into neighbouring
South Sudan, watching friends and relatives die of thirst and exhaustion.
Now, in a rain-soaked and crowded United Nations refugee camp in Upper Nile,
she waits to see whether dirty water and diarrhoea will claim her son and
daughter. Hassan, 2, bound against his mother in her brightly coloured
shawl, has the sunken eyes and stick limbs of a toddler suffering his third
bout of serious diarrhoea in recent weeks. Doctors were unsure if they would
be able to save him.
Ms Suleiman, 28, is one of nearly 120,000 refugees who fled the fighting
north of the border only to find themselves crowded into camps on an Upper
Nile flood plain at the onset of rainy season. Serious flooding has already
forced the partial evacuation of one of the three camps at Jamam. Plans to
move the refugees by truck to another site, known as Batil, three hours away
have been hindered by the flooding of areas of that camp as well.
"It's going to get worse," one aid worker said. "July is worse than June and
August is going to be worse than July."
With tens of thousands of people living in sodden tents surrounded by
contaminated floodwater, the number of deaths has risen to double the
internationally recognised emergency rate. According to Médecins Sans
Frontières (MSF), nine children are dying every day in the worst-affected
camp at Jamam. The foetid water is ideal for mosquitoes to breed, and
malaria cases have begun to appear. Conditions are also perfect for cholera
and agencies have already built a quarantine facility in preparation for an
outbreak.
Three waves of refugees have arrived in the camps, the first coming late
last year when the government in Khartoum began a fierce counter-insurgency
against former civil war foes in Blue Nile. Bombardment of civilian areas
brought a second wave in February this year, and a third came in May after
ground troops began a "scorched earth" offensive, burning villages and
driving the population towards the border.
Testimony from Ms Suleiman and dozens of others who made the forced march
tells of the worst war crimes seen in Sudan since Darfur more than eight
years ago.
While earlier waves had faced treks of several weeks to reach the
comparative safety of South Sudan, the final group – some 35,000 people –
overwhelmed the UN refugee agency's inadequate preparations and had to be
held back in border transit centres while aid agencies scrambled to prepare
food, water and shelter at the already crowded camps.
The refugees, including another 50,000 at least in neighbouring Unity State
who fled a similar conflict across the border in South Kordofan, are the
clearest human example of what is at stake in negotiations between the two
Sudans. The north-south conflict has continued despite the secession of
South Sudan last year, and the former civil war foes face a 2 August
deadline from the UN Security Council to resolve their border dispute.
The conflict defies the traditional narrative of an Arab and
Muslim-dominated north at war with the predominantly Christian south. The
Jamam camp's population is overwhelmingly Muslim.
The camp's community leader and leading sheikh, the Nazir Abode, accuses
Khartoum of a campaign of ethnic cleansing to free land for its proxies and
to silence complaints that electricity from a local hydro-electric plant is
sent to Khartoum while most residents of Blue Nile remain without power.
"The only way back for us is if Bashir [Sudan's President, Omar al-Bashir]
is arrested," the Nazir said. "What he has done in Darfur, he has done in
Nuba Mountains, he has done in Blue Nile."
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Received on Mon Jul 23 2012 - 18:38:49 EDT
