Why Is the World Abandoning South Sudan?
Updated: 04/17/2014 12:59 pm EDT
by Chris Palusky
"Priests, pastors, old people; it doesn't matter. We kill them all." These words from a boy soldier in South Sudan echo in my mind, as he threatened to kill a pastor and a busload of over 50 elderly Sudanese people. As violence between the Sudanese government and anti-government forces began to overtake the town of Malakal, World Vision staff was frantically transporting busloads of Sudanese people to safety when they were stopped and threatened at gunpoint by a soldier who could not have been older than 15.
As an emergency response director at World Vision, I have witnessed countless scenes of human suffering in the world's most dangerous places. But my recent trip to Malakal, South Sudan is like nothing I've witnessed before. And with a looming food crisis projected to be the worse since the Ethiopian famine, I fear the worst is yet to come. As our team flew into Malakal, we could see smoke billowing from miles away from homes that were being burned. 2014-04-16-Malakalburnthp.jpgWhen we arrived, this city of 175,000 was a ghost town, with the exception of the anti-government forces who had seized the town and scorched it from end to end. Most of the residents had fled or were killed.
More than 20,000 people, mostly women, children and elderly people were packed into the UN peacekeeping compound on the outskirts of Malakal, a space the size of two football fields. They represent those who were unable to run fast enough or far enough to get out of town away from the violence. There is a massive internal conflict happening in the newest country on earth-- a country that the U.S. was pivotal in helping bring its independence. Over one million people in South Sudan have been forced from their homes and an estimated 10,000 killed. I heard reports of people killing their own countrymen through mass executions, looting and burning of homes.
Along with horrific violence making humanitarian access difficult, the political instability is threatening South Sudan's harvest season, so the real fear is hunger. Now is the time when people should be planting before the rainy season arrives in May, but instead they are running for their lives. Their homes have either been destroyed or are unsafe to return to because of the ongoing violence. When harvest season comes in a few months, there will be nothing to harvest. Millions will go hungry, and children will suffer from malnutrition and disease. To prevent this catastrophic hunger crisis, the UN has made urgent appeals to the international community for $1.27 billion, but to date have only a quarter of the funding needed.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/world-vision/why-is-the-world-abandoni_b_5159839.html
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Nasir, South Sudan: Like many 13 year-olds, Gach Chuol is timid, shyly looking down at the ground as he speaks to a stranger. But he is also joining South Sudan's war to avenge the death of his parents, and brandishes an AK-47 assault rifle as he recalls why he traded his school books for arms. "I just want to fight because of what they have done to my parents," said Chuol, speaking at a rally organised by the White Army, a militia that took up arms again to fight government troops in South Sudan's four month-old civil war
Brutal fighting has pitted President Salva Kiir's forces against those loosely allied with rebel chief Riek Machar, sacked as vice president in 2013. The conflict has spread from the capital Juba to oil-rich states, with the rebels this week celebrating the recapture of the key town of Bentiu in a renewed rebel offensive they claim will seize crucial oil fields. But it has also taken on an ethnic dimension, pitting Kiir's Dinka tribe against militia forces from Machar's Nuer people, and the scale of the fighting has led aid workers to warn of possible famine.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned on Wednesday that "without immediate action, up to a million people could face famine in a matter of months". However teenagers like 15-year-old Matt Thor, whose father was killed shortly after fighting broke out on December 15, are consumed by the desire for retribution. "I want to go and kill," he said, holding a gun too big for his small frame. "I want to go to the place of war, because I want to fight with Dinka."
Dressed in civilian clothing and posing with rifles and machine guns grabbed from those they've killed, the White Army is loosely tied to Machar's army, but follow their own informal command structures. They are named after the white ash the fighters smear over their bodies, both as fearsome war paint and to ward off the mosquitoes that infest the vast roadless swamplands and grasslands they control. For them, the war appears an ethnic not political struggle, a fight for revenge that promises to perpetuate a conflict in which thousands have already been killed and forced a million people to flee.
http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/child-soldiers-battle-in-worsening-south-sudan-war-509676
