Sudan
A man discusses his grandson’s morning abduction by soldiers.
The most coveted tools of warfare in North Kivu are not grenades, or even shoulder-fired missiles. Children are the weapon of choice- too young to question orders, with hands the perfect size for Russian made AK-47 (Kalashnakov) assault rifles, they are taken from their schools and homes and forced into service, kept from leaving through fear of punishment or drug addiction. They are used as frontline fighters, porters, and even sex slaves.
Walking through the Kibumba displaced camp today, a dozen miles south of the front line, we happened across an old man carrying a blanket, tools and some food. He had fled the fighting yesterday with his 14 year old grandson. But this morning, the Congolese army surrounded them and forced the boy to join the battle against Nkunda’s rebels. The grandfather had no choice but to continue on to Goma.
The use of child soldiers in North Kivu has been prevalent since the start of the first war in 1996, but the recent round of fighting in December is leading to a new ‘catastrophic situation’ for children, according to the organization Save the Children. The 7,000 child soldiers they have demobilized in the area over the past 3 years are especially at risk, according to country director Hussein Marsal:
Children previously rescued from armed groups are at greater risk because commanders seek out battle-hardened youths, as many of them fail to reintegrate into family and community life due to lack of resources for care and schooling.
Last week in Bukavu we saw first hand how challenging it is to help these children find a new life after war. We spent an afternoon with former child soldiers at a demobilization center where two dozen boys, aged between 15 and 19, try to remember how to be teenagers again. Many came from here in North Kivu.
Children arrive at the center without their guns, feeling cast out by their commander. Counselors must first gain their trust, and then help them understand that the terrible things they saw and were forced to do were not their fault. The adults, not they, are responsible. They learn to not pull out a knife when they have an argument with another boy, and interact with women and girls with respect.
But when their 3-6 month program is finished, I wondered, what will happen to them? With luck they will be reunited with their families and be able to finish a childhood deferred. But with renewed violence, at least a few will find themselves on the battlefield in North Kivu, trying to kill an enemy they might have played cards with in Bukavu.
Learn about the campaign to end the use of child soldiers.
Want to learn more about what it is like to be a child soldier? We recommend Ishmael Beah’s book, A long Way Gone.
Posted By:
Michael Graham | December 06, 2007 |
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Burned Areas of Abu Suruj: A close up of a portion of the February, 2008 QuickBird image clearly shows multiple remains of burned houses in Abu Suruj. Courtesy of AAAS, copyright Digital Globe 2008.
The attacks on the village of Abu Suruj and its neighbors Sirba and Silea on February 8th were a return to the brutal tactics of the Sudanese government that characterized the height of violence in 2004 and 2005.
In Abu Suruj, a village of more than 18,000 people, it began early in the morning, on market day. Around 8:00AM government attack helicopters were seen buzzing overhead, along with a Russian-made Antonov aircraft. A half hour later, as if on cue, government soldiers and Janjaweed arrived in trucks and on camels and began shooting everyone in sight, burning homes and carrying loot back to their vehicles. In these three villages at least 115 people were killed and 30,000 displaced by the attacks.
Satellite photos commissioned by the American Association for the Advancement of Science vividly show the destruction and extent of the burning of homes in all three villages. See for yourself the aftermath of the attacks on Abu Suruj, Silea and Sirba.
The Sudanese government claims that they were only trying to deal with rebels and bandits in the area (in this case, the Justice and Equality Movement). They deny, as always, that civilians were targeted.
But United Nations investigators who interviewed survivors of the attacks tell a different story:
During the attack [on Abu Suruj] at least 30 persons were reportedly killed, including one woman, one mentally disabled man, ten elderly people, among them a 75-year-old blind woman who was burned alive inside her house, and three children, three, eight and sixteen years old.
The eight-year-old was a disabled girl who could not walk and therefore succumbed to the flames inside her house. United Nations report, March 20th
The report, from the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, states in no uncertain terms that the level of destruction “suggests that the damage was a deliberate and integral part of a military strategy.” It also accuses Sudanese soldiers of large scale sexual violence against girls and women during the attacks. A Sudanese spokesman blasted the report, calling it baseless, and asserted that Sudanese soldiers “have never attacked its people.”
A joint United Nations and African Union peacekeeping force is finally being rolled out in Darfur. But with the Khartoum government doing everything in its power to hamper the effort and a crippling lack of international support and equipment (the New York Times reports that some soldiers have even had to buy their own paint to turn their green helmets UN blue), many feel it is too little, too late; they worry it may not be enough to turn back the tide of violence.
Many of the newly displaced – and hundreds of thousands of people displaced in Darfur over the past 4 years of violence – are beyond the reach of the UN and humanitarian agencies; not only because of government interference, but because the rebel groups themselves hijack vehicles and harass civilians and aid workers alike. There are no angels in Darfur- both the Sudanese army and rebels like the Justice and Equality Movement are keeping the embers of war smoldering.
Posted By:
Michael Graham | May 14, 2008 |
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A drawing by student Mahamad Ahmat Haron, age 14.
“Welcome to Farchana,” reads the sign at the entrance.
I visited this remote and desolate desert camp in July 2007 to get a first-hand look at the challenges faced by Darfur refugees in Eastern Chad who have spent more than four years living in limbo.
Here, children face a life that spins between boredom and danger. They make handheld radios and action figures by adding water to the red clay dirt, hunt imaginary lizards with wooden bows and avoid local Chadians who may beat them - or worse for girls- if they venture too far from the camp to collect firewood.
They also struggle to come to terms with what they witnessed in Darfur.
One day I gave crayons and paper to a class of twenty students in one of three small schools located throughout the camp. I asked the class to draw whatever they wanted- life here, in Darfur, anything. Nearly all drew the attack on their village that brought them here. While an international border provides some distance from the place of trauma, they have no escape from memories of a childhood violated.
Their drawings, equally harsh and beautiful, describe in painful detail their lives in Darfur and the instant everything changed.
Playing a favorite game with friends outside the market each week. Working with their father in the early morning tilling the soil and planting peanuts. Helping their mother make the evening meal over a cooking fire.
The whir of helicopter rotors and the whistling of a bomb that signals the beginning of an attack. A mother frantically telling the children to run and hide in the bush outside town. The sight of an uncle shot in the back, of friends and relatives lying still in the dusty road under the hooves of Janjaweed camels.
Despite these traumatic events that forced them from their villages, the students kept asking me when they could go back home. I never had an answer for them that I quite believed. “Maybe when the peacekeepers arrive in Darfur,” I might say, or “when a peace deal is signed.” The latter is by far the more difficult prospect. And if other camps for Sudanese refugees are any indication (Kakuma camp for South Sudanese refugees in Kenya has been open for 17 years), some of these young students may one day take the place of their own teachers here in Farchana.
Visit the website of UNICEF to learn more about what children face in Sudan and Chad.
Compare these drawings with others collected by Human Rights Watch researchers in 2005 and see children’s drawings of war in Chechnya.
Posted By:
Michael Graham | May 16, 2008 |
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Interview: Julie Flint, co-author with Alex de Waal of Darfur: A Short History of a Long War, discusses some of the preliminary information coming out about the Darfur rebel attack on the Sudanese city of Omdurman.
Posted By:
Michael Graham | May 29, 2008 |
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If you listen carefully, amidst public outcry over Darfur you might hear the warnings of impending catastrophe in South Sudan.
I am here in Sudan to witness what is happening on the ground; to try to understand the impact of two decades of conflict, talk with returnees from the refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia who are just beginning to rebuild their lives and find out what efforts are being made to head off a new round of war.
South Sudan has been at war with the North for all but a decade since Sudan’s independence from the British in 1956. It is one of the least developed places on earth, with the world’s highest rate of maternal mortality. 1 out of every 50 women dies during childbirth here.
It is the rainy season in Juba, capital of South Sudan, situated on the calmer southern reaches of the White Nile. In the past few years, the rutted dirt roads of this once backwater outpost have been crammed with new returnees and shiny white Land Cruisers plastered with the logos of UN agencies and non-governmental organizations trying to help the Sudanese taste the dividends of peace.
The war between the government in Khartoum, controlled by the National Congress Party (NCP), and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA/M) in the South killed more than 2 million people and displaced 5 million over 17 years. The tactics employed by Khartoum would later be used in Darfur: arming local militias, in this case Baggara and ‘Arabized’ tribes; unleashing militiamen and regular army troops upon the villages of neighboring Dinka, Nuer and other ‘African’ tribes with the promise of cattle and loot; and massive human rights abuses, displacement and slavery.
The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed in 2005 officially ended the war and laid out a path for sharing power and oil wealth between Khartoum and the new Government of South Sudan (GOSS). But the tenuous peace it created is in danger of collapse. Khartoum, with a history of signing and then violating agreements, has failed to implement key parts of the CPA. In May, fighting between the government and southern forces destroyed the town of Abyei, capital of a highly disputed, oil-rich province, and displaced more than fifty thousand people. Military tensions are mounting and at the moment neither side seems willing to give up any ground.
The scale of displacement today in Darfur makes this attack on one town seem small. But if war in the South starts again, experts fear it could dwarf the scale of Darfur’s tragedy and bring other marginalized regions of Sudan into the fold of conflict. That would be the worst possible scenario for the people of Sudan, especially here in the South where civilians have just started to rebuild lives broken once already by a lifetime of war.
There is tension in the air of Juba, uncertainty as to what will happen over the coming weeks. A warm rain is beginning to pound on the metal roof of my hotel. When desert and savannah turn to mud, vehicles become about as useful as boulders for getting around the largest country in Africa. But I’ll need to find a way if I am going to learn what future lies in store for South Sudan.
Posted By:
Michael Graham | June 05, 2008 |
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