Thanks to Roving Bandit for identifying this infographic by Smith College professor Eric Reeves showing the extent of Sudan’s bombings of its neighbor, South Sudan. This long-running conflict may have become a bonafide war.
George Clooney, who has praised the Stop Kony campaign aimed at ridding east-central Africa of warlord Joseph Kony, is trying to make sure our focus on such efforts isn’t too singular.
The actor and human rights advocate has long been focused on the ongoing atrocities in Sudan and recently testified in Congress to draw attention to the killings, conflict and suffering. He recently snuck into a dangerous part of the country and produced this powerful, disturbing video.
While there’s no denying the criminality and terrible legacy of Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army, Kony’s ability to inflict death and destruction is fairly limited these days. Clooney’s efforts in southern Sudan should serve as a reminder that there are many fronts in the war on those who commit crimes against humanity.
Some related stories
GlobalPost George Clooney says Sudan government guilty of war crimes
Washington Post Clooney urges Congress to take action to stop South Sudan war crimes
Foreign Policy The Other Sudanese Civil War
NOTE: Clooney’s video has had about 26,000 views on YouTube as of this writing. That compares to something like 70 million so far for the Stop Kony video.
Flickr, Utenriksdept
Celebrating new nationhood in Juba, South Sudan
Not that long ago, the world was celebrating South Sudan as the world’s newest nation. Actor George Clooney set up satellites to try to monitor activities and encourage best behavior.
But things have gotten worse. As the Washington Post reports, more than 120,000 people are now in need of humanitarian assistance due to ethnic conflict. CNN quotes top officials warning of famine in Sudan as the violence makes aid and relief more difficult:
“There is a looming humanitarian disaster in Sudan,” said Princeton Lyman, United States envoy to Sudan. Lyman said a lack of leadership, history of ethnic violence and the indictment of Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir by the International Criminal Court are all factors that have complicated the crisis in that country.
Last week, I spoke to a Seattle man from South Sudan for his perspective on the internal conflict, and the reasons for the cycles of violence and instability. He had been accused by some of raising funds in support of tribal violence back home.
There are lots of theories, or episodes of finger-pointing, aimed at explaining why things are going sideways in Sudan.
But one reason may be the international community’s attention-deficit response to such crises.
The Guardian has an op-ed by the director of Refugees International, Michel Gabaudan, who argues that we don’t know how to shift from an emergency response sprint to a longer-term, deliberative development marathon run:
During Sudan’s long north-south civil war, international humanitarian agencies got used to providing vital basic services (such as healthcare) for the civilian population in the south. When the war finally ended, and South Sudan became independent last July, the needs of its population began to change. The aid community’s response should have changed as well.
It’s an interesting article that examines the international community’s tendency, however well-intentioned, to respond to immediate emergencies but then fail to support the changes — economic, social, political — needed to make for lasting positive change. Concludes Gabaudan:
As we have seen in South Sudan and elsewhere, this failure to bridge the gap from humanitarian to development assistance can prevent people from rebuilding their lives. The human toll of conflicts and disasters is too high as it is. What the world needs is an aid system that can respond quickly to those crises, and provide effective development assistance – and seamlessly bridge the two so that no more lives are threatened.
Flickr, babasteve
Law and order in South Sudan
The BBC reports that ethnic clashes continue in Southern Sudan:
Gunmen have killed at least 51 people – mostly women and children – in the latest clashes in South Sudan’s troubled Jonglei state, regional governor Kuol Manyang has said. At least 22 others were injured after attackers raided and burned the village of Duk Padiet, he added…. The cycle of violence has lasted months and killed hundreds of people. It began as cattle raids but has spiralled out of control.
This might sound like a relatively small problem compared to conflicts elsewhere. But it is a disturbing indicator of instability in a war-torn region the international community was not too long ago celebrating as the world’s newest nation, South Sudan.
Gai Bol Thong
One Seattle man, a refugee from South Sudan, I interviewed last week says the problem is a lack of government, of law enforcement. Gai Bol Thong was accused by some media of funding a massacre. Bol Thong says he has been raising money here in the U.S. to help his friends and family defend and care for themselves — because nobody else will.
“Yes, just as the United Nations and the South Sudan government did nothing when the Murle came and killed our people,” Bol Thang said. “If the government and the international community do nothing to defend us, we need to defend ourselves.”
There are a number of perils now facing South Sudan, which include threats of conflict from former countrymen (north Sudan), poverty and now increasing internal conflict.
AP
People who escaped ethnic violence in Jonglei state wait for food rations at a World Food Program distribution center on Thursday. South Sudan gained independence just six months ago, and already ethnic tensions inside the new country have forced tens of thousands to flee their homes.
South Sudan gained independence just six months ago, but the country is already plagued by ethnic violence at home and ongoing tensions with its previous rulers in Sudan.
Potential humanitarian crises are brewing in both Sudans, and U.S. diplomats are sounding frustrated that the two are not talking to each other enough.
U.S. officials still don’t really have a handle on the violence that exploded this month in a remote part of South Sudan. But U.S. envoy Princeton Lyman says the deadly cattle-raiding and ethnic clashes that have forced tens of thousands to flee shows that the new government’s reach is still weak.
“There are real fragile points in this society and years of neglect of their basic needs,” Lyman says. “The government is going to have to move very, very fast to get a handle on it and not let ethnic politics get in the way.”
Humanitarian groups are desperately trying to reach people in South Sudan’s troubled Jonglei state.
Flickr, babasteve
Law and order in South Sudan
Violent conflict is on the increase in the world’s newest nation, South Sudan, and many are calling for action by the United Nations, the international community and others to prevent this from escalating into full-blown civil war.
But success in curbing such violence depends upon having an accurate picture of what’s driving the conflict.
A Seattle man and refugee from South Sudan, Gai Bol Thong, recently gained critical attention for raising funding to support local militia groups that have killed thousands.
Gai Bol Thong
“That is wrong,” said Bol Thong, a very tall father of eight who lives in a modest north Seattle home. (Listen to the interview at KPLU.org.) He and his family moved to the U.S. in 1995, settling in Seattle 10 years later, after fleeing the civil war violence that killed millions of people in Sudan between 1983 and 2005.
Bol Thong is director of an organization called Nuer Youth of North America. He said his organization exists to support the Nuer, one of the predominant ethnic/tribal communities of South Sudan.
The Nuer, who mostly raise cattle for a living, are frequently in conflict with another cattle-raising South Sudanese community known as the Murle tribe.
“This goes back hundreds of years,” Bol Thong said. At the root of it, he says, is competition for land, resources and, of course, the cattle.
Last year, the Murle attacked a Nuer community killing hundreds of people including women and children. In December, the Nuer retaliated — and even announced ahead of time that they were planning the attack.
“In the Nuer culture, you warn them ahead of time so they can remove the women and children,” said Bol Thong. “The Murle made genocide on us. We do not kill old people, women and children.”
But somebody did, according to the news reports. An estimated 8,000 Nuer fighters are said to have attacked the village they had warned, leaving hundreds, possibly thousands, dead — including women, old people and children. The United Nations, given the advance notice, had sent in 400 UN Peacekeepers but the force was much too small to do anything to stop the Nuer assault.
“Yes, just as the United Nations and the South Sudan government did nothing when the Murle came and killed our people,” Bol Thang said. “If the government and the international community do nothing to defend us, we need to defend ourselves.”
Not surprisingly, the Murle recently retaliated for the Nuer retaliation, killing 57.
To those who condemn the Nuer assault as offensive rather than defensive, he says such views are simplistic and ahistorical. What of the United States’ attack on Afghanistan, he asks? Are the Neur supposed to just wait to be attacked?
“We are not a militia, or terrorists,” said Bol Thang. “This is an ongoing tribal conflict … They killed one of my family members last year.”
Most Americans would have a hard time imagining life without the police or the government enforcing laws, a life where one community can just decide to invade and kill without consequence. Bol Thang would like Americans to try a bit harder to imagine how they would respond under the same circumstances.
“I raised the money to support our community, to provide food and medical supplies,” he said. “Everybody already had guns.”
YouTube
Did a refugee from Sudan living in Seattle help raise money here for a massacre there?
That seems to be what the New York Times’ Jeffrey Gettleman is saying about a man he identifies as Gai Bol Thong, a Seattle man who leads an organization known as Nuer Youth in North America, in his latest report on the increasingly deadly violent conflicts in South Sudan:
The trail of corpses begins about 300 yards from the corrugated metal gate of the United Nations compound and stretches for miles into the bush…. Eight thousand fighters just besieged this small town in the middle of a vast expanse, razing huts, burning granaries, stealing tens of thousands of cows and methodically killing hundreds, possibly thousands, of men, women and children hiding in the bush.
The attack was presaged by a fund-raising drive for the Nuer militia in the United States — a troubling sign that behind the raiders toting Kalashnikovs and singing war songs was an active back office half a world away. Gai Bol Thong, a Nuer refugee in Seattle who helped write the militia’s statement, said he had led an effort to cobble together about $45,000 from South Sudanese living abroad for the warriors’ food and medicine.
“We mean what we say,” he said in an interview. “We kill everybody. We are tired of them.” (He later scaled back and said he meant they would kill Murle warriors, not civilians.)
GlobalPost has followed up on the NYTimes report, adding:
So a refugee in Seattle admits to fund-raising for a 6,000-strong army of young men with AK-47s who go on a rampage to steal cattle and kill hundreds of their tribal rivals in a bid to wipe them out while simultaneously destabilizing one of the US’s newest allies?
Mr. Gai Bol Thong might not find himself quite so welcome in the US after this admission.
Seattle NPR affiliate KUOW radio included an interview today with Bol Thong on Weekday. Here are some other earlier, related stories:
Upper Nile Times (from January 6) : Nuer Youth White Army plans massive attack
GlobalPost South Sudan: 3,000 dead in ethnic massacre
South Sudan News Nuer White Army ends operations against Muerle Tribe
There was a flurry of stories within the last week or so about the world’s newest nation, South Sudan, a nation with a tortured past and a future full of promise, uncertainty and plenty of lhumanitarian needs.
Mercy Corps
Mercy Corps' Joy Portella at South Sudan Independence Day
Joy Portella with Mercy Corps‘ Seattle office was there in the new South Sudanese capitol city of Juba, sent by the Northwest-based humanitarian group to witness and report on the new nation’s declaration of independence.
Portella travels a lot and reported out of the new South Sudan capitol city of Juba, including doing this article for the Seattle Times. Portella says pretty much the same thing on one of her earlier blog posts for Mercy Corps, ending with this concluding paragraph:
South Sudan will soon start the hard work of building a nation from the ground up in the face of challenges such as extreme poverty and lack of access to almost everything – roads, education, medical care, electricity – the list goes on. But today was a day to put those concerns aside to celebrate and imagine the possible. After decades of war and sacrifice, the South Sudanese have certainly earned their celebration.
Chris Sheach of World Concern, also from Seattle (okay, well Shoreline) was also in Juba reporting on this historic event for organization. One post from Sheach focused on Sudan’s educational needs and mentions some of the work World Concern is doing on this front: Continue reading
