Fear and trauma prevent displaced South Sudanese from returning home
By Stephen Graham
MALAKAL, 16 June 2014 (IRIN) - Civilians displaced by brutal fighting in
South Sudan are ignoring calls from government officials to return to their
homes, preferring the safety of squalid UN bases to the risk that conflict
could again engulf towns already devastated in the six-month conflict.
Amid a massive humanitarian operation, aid agencies had hoped that a
cease-fire agreed in May would allow some populations to return and sow
crops before the rainy season begins in earnest, thereby reducing the
likelihood of a famine in the months to come.
But tension remains high, and interviews with internally displaced persons
(IDPs) near the northern town of Malakal as well as in the capital, Juba,
suggest slow-moving peace talks held in neighbouring Ethiopia must yield
concrete results before civilians will consider returning home en masse.
"If a peace deal is signed, and the rebels really go back to where they came
from, then maybe we can return to Malakal," said Bongjak Chol, a 39-year-old
warden for the South Sudan Wildlife Service. "But not before. I could be
killed."
Civilians abandoned Malakal and many other towns after a power struggle
within the ruling Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) boiled over into
vicious fighting that began in Juba in December and swept across the north
and east of the country.
The conflict has split the army and pitted loyalists of President Salva Kiir
against supporters of his former deputy, Riek Machar. Government troops as
well as opposition fighters have been accused of massacring civilians on the
basis of their ethnicity. Kiir is an ethnic Dinka, while Machar is a Nuer.
Thousands of people have been killed and an estimated 1.5 million driven
from their homes, crippling government services and economic activity in
much of the world's youngest nation. Some four million people are in urgent
need of humanitarian assistance.
While about 400,000 people have crossed into neighbouring countries
Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda and Kenya, an estimated one million are displaced
within South Sudan. That includes some 90,000 sheltering in the bases of the
UN peacekeeping mission, UNMISS, which are now known as Protection of
Civilian (PoC) sites.
Chol is one of 18,000 civilians squeezed into the PoC site in Malakal, where
UN officials and relief organizations are striving to improve the dire
living conditions.
Makeshift shelters made of sticks and plastic sheeting are packed together
either side of a single main access road. Drainage is so poor that many of
the shacks stand in water and mud that in places rises above the knee, even
before the rains begin in earnest.
Children play along the road among garbage and razor wire, as trucks
carrying earth from the site of a planned new camp edge past the tight rows
of tea shops and food stalls. Flies buzz around dead dogs and cats, and
smell of human waste is ever-present.
"Nobody can be happy here in the water and the dirt," said Peter Gony, a
52-year-old ethnic Nuer community leader. "They are just waiting for the
government and the opposition to make peace. But there is no peace."
On the southern flank of the base, which lies a few miles (kilometres) north
of the town, earthmovers were levelling a huge area to which most of the
IDPs will be shifted in the coming months. IDPs have begun moving into
scores of clean white tents erected on the first section. Relief
organizations have built water points and latrines. Indian UN troops guard
the perimeter, which is lined with earthen berms and razor wire.
Nyamet Nyibong, a grandmother who said she saw a nephew and a sister killed
in the fighting, said the new facility was a big improvement.
"People were getting sick, sleeping on the wet ground. Here there is space,
some wind and I can breathe," she told IRIN, sitting on a low stool outside
the new tent she shares with two sisters-in-law and other relatives. But she
said she was frustrated by her forced inactivity.
"In the village we would be out planting sorghum and beans," said Nyibong.
"Here we just sit from morning until night, and we don't know if this
situation will improve."
The difficulties at the base have persuaded some survivors to seek refuge
elsewhere.
Across the nearby White Nile River, an estimated 60,000 people have
descended upon the fishing hamlet of Wau Shilluk. Shanty-like settlements
have spread along the banks of the broad river. A field behind has turned
into a vast open defecation site.
Thomas Amun, a 33-year-old shopkeeper, said two of his relatives were shot
for failing to hand over money and phones to opposition fighters who stormed
Malakal in December. Amun and his family were among thousands who sought
refuge at Malakal teaching hospital.
"Gunmen came looking for their enemies there. They were executing people at
random," he said.
When government troops re-took the town, which has changed hands repeatedly,
Amun brought his family by boat to Wau Shilluk, rather than head for the PoC
site. Friends loaned him a cow, and he sold its meat to raise the money to
re-open his shop.
Amum said he was earning enough to keep his family fed. He was unsure he
would ever return to Malakal. "I saw a lot of things there that were very
bad for me. Until I can get it out of my mind, I don't want to go back," he
told IRIN.
Malakal had been an important regional centre before the latest fighting
broke out. The capital of Upper Nile State, it was home to many government
offices. It was an important hub for traders bringing goods along the White
Nile or from nearby Sudan.
When this reporter toured the town, the streets were largely deserted. A few
small shops served tea and snacks to soldiers and a handful of civil
servants ordered back to work. Some of those living at the UNMISS base were
checking on their homes - or those of their neighbours - for anything that
hadn't already been looted. Many of the houses and shops had been burned to
the ground.
The most visible human presence was a group of 26 families who had arrived
three days earlier on foot and taken up residence in a ransacked mission
school. In the school yard, children played among piles of scattered
textbooks. The charred wrecks of five cars stood in an adjoining compound.
Peter Bol, a 34-year-old farmer, said rebels driven back from Malakal had
been preying on his and neighbouring Dinka villages in Panyikang County.
If you don't give them what they want, they threaten you," he said. "There
have been rapes and beatings."
Having lost his stocks of maize and sorghum and his 30 cattle, Bol said he
led the group to Malakal in hope of finding assistance. He said government
troops advised them against going to the base because of the grim conditions
there.
Still, UNMISS bases remain a magnet for scared civilians in a string of
other towns, including Juba.
A semblance of normality has returned to the capital, where four-wheel drive
vehicles clog the dusty streets. However, several residential districts
remain emptied of their ethnic Nuer population. Thousands of the missing are
crowded into a section of the UN compound beside the airport, while others
have skipped the country. Many wealthier citizens of all ethnicities have
evacuated their children to neighbouring countries.
In early June, this reporter watched as IDPs from the UN compound loaded
suitcases and boxes bound with string onto two minibuses that would take
them to Kakuma, a refugee camp just over the Kenyan border.
Mary Nyaluak, 48, said she already spent five years in Kakuma during the
civil war in Sudan that ultimately led to the south gaining independence in
2011.
"I came to live in Juba because it was the capital of our new state,"
Nyalauk said before boarding the bus. "Now I am going back to Kakuma because
the government is against my tribe. They are killing us, even the children,
and it is not safe to stay."
She said 23 of her relatives had been killed in Juba in December, some of
them beheaded. Surviving family members were already in Kakuma, she said.
International pressure for South Sudan's leaders to end the war have been
fronted by the regional grouping IGAD. Under its aegis, Kiir and Machar
signed a ceasefire agreement on May 9, and promised "bold decisions" to
bring peace and reconciliation, including the formation of an interim
government of national unity.
However, fighting has continued in several locations and there has been
little tangible political progress. It is unclear exactly when IGAD plans
for the deployment of a regional Protection and Deterrent Force, mandated to
protect IGAD military observers, will be realized.
"There has been a growing tendency to continue with the war," Ethiopian
Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn complained at a regional summit attended
by Kiir and Machar in Addis Ababa on June 10.
Relief officials are not banking on any easing of the pressure on civilians
any time soon.
"People are going to need to see much clearer signals that the fighting
really is over and that there is reconciliation before they feel confident
enough to start rebuilding their lives," Toby Lanzer, the top UN
humanitarian official for South Sudan, told IRIN. "I think we are still on a
very downward trajectory."