South Sudan Enemies Find Uneasy Refuge Together at a U.N. Base

Marc Santora, New York Times

10 July 2015

Image: People from at least three warring ethnic groups live side by side in a camp near Malakal, South Sudan.CreditTyler Hicks/The New York Times

UNMISS BASE, MALAKAL, South Sudan — The trial started at dawn.

After patrolling all night along the fetid paths that wind through this tent city crammed with about 30,000 people fleeing a civil war, an assembly of young men questioned someone suspected of supplying weapons to a rival faction.

“He was seen throwing items over the fence into the camp,” said Nehemiah Joseph, 33, one of the leaders of the patrol. “He said it was meat, but we found no meat. We fear it was weapons.”

They found neither weapons nor meat, so they let the suspect go with a stern warning and a few whacks of a rubber tire.

As South Sudan observed the fourth anniversary of its independence this week, thousands of civilians spent it crammed into this United Nationsbase, which was originally intended to lodge people helping the world’s newest nation stand on its own.

Now the base is home to a United Nations peacekeeping force, scores of humanitarian organizations and throngs of desperate civilians, many of whom might have been killed if the gates had not been opened to offer them refuge after the civil war broke out in December 2013.

 

Image: A  clinic run by Doctors Without Borders, which says resources are stretched to the breaking point. CreditTyler Hicks/The New York Times

This compound and five others around the country now accommodate about 153,000 people, even though the places were never meant to be camps or a long-term solution to the humanitarian crisis stemming from the war.

But that is exactly what they have become, taking on the character of permanent encampments, complete with schools, churches and markets. Still, it is a daily struggle to ensure the safety and health of the camp’s residents.

A recent escalation in fighting has made a challenging situation ever more complicated, especially in this camp, with civilians from the warring parties living side by side. Members of at least three of the ethnic groups involved in the conflict have ended up in this compound.

Despite being under the protection of the United Nations, the camp has been targeted by militia fighters. When rebel forces recently launched an offensive to retake the decimated city of Malakal from the government, fighters opened fire on civilians. United Nations peacekeepers shot back to keep them at bay.

“One civilian was killed, and another six I.D.P.s were wounded,” the United Nations said in a statement, using the official name for those in the camps: internally displaced persons. “Any attack on a protection-of-civilians site constitutes a direct assault against the United Nations and may constitute a war crime.”

It was not the first time the camp had been caught in a crossfire. As fighting raged outside this spring, a United Nations peacekeeper was shot in the head while sitting inside his trailer. He survived.

But many outside the camp did not. A market just beyond the base’s barbed-wire fence was razed, and countless civilians were killed or forced to flee.

The United Nations Security Council has imposed sanctions on individuals involved in the conflict, including military commanders who will be subject to a global travel ban and an assets freeze “for their contributions to a conflict that has left more than 6.5 million people in need of humanitarian assistance and forced more than 2 million from their homes.”

But even before the latest clashes, suspicions in the camp ran deep and tensions high, as the living conditions became increasingly unbearable.

Romero Garcia, 37, the medical team leader for Doctors Without Bordersin Malakal, said resources are stretched to the breaking point.

“Since the renewed fighting in mid-May, we saw an immediate influx of around 10,000 people arrive in the already overcrowded camp,” he said. “We are concerned about the deteriorating health of the population.”

As officials work to support the flood of humanity, the fighting causes logistical nightmares.

Because the camp is hundreds of miles from the capital, Juba, the violence has made traveling here by road impossible.

The United Nations controls a nearby port on the Nile River, but given the risks and the expense of bringing goods by barge, basic supplies like concrete are, as one aid official said, “equal to their weight in gold.”

At the Malakal airport, the offices used by the United Nations to coordinate transportation were ransacked and looted this spring. The X-ray machine was stripped of everything that could be sold.

Young men — mostly not in uniform, but with AK-47’s slung over their shoulders — wander along the road from the United Nations base to the airport and meander on the tarmac. Any trip to and from the base requires an armed escort of more than a dozen United Nations peacekeepers. Fighters live at the foot of the runway and often take shelter in abandoned freight containers nearby.

Since the United Nations does not control the airport, flights are often grounded because of security concerns.

When control of Malakal swings from one side to another, as it has at least nine times since the start of the war, the dynamic in the camp changes, too.

The government forces are largely Dinka, and inside the camp, Dinka civilians separate themselves from the rest of the population, gathering across a dirt road and a trench.

Members of the ethnic groups aligned with the rebel movement — the Shilluk and Nuers — sit all day and night eyeing the Dinka suspiciously from a bunker on their side.

There have been brawls, and people on all sides fear that clashes could get worse as the war continues.

“We are ready to defend ourselves,” said Choul Oywach, 52, a Nuer. “Now we fight in the traditional way, with our hands and sticks. But we will do what is needed.”

 

Image: A shop in Wau Shilluk. The village is largely inaccessible and its merchants mostly out of goods. CreditTyler Hicks/The New York Times

Mr. Joseph, who led the night patrol, is Shilluk. He accused the Dinka of stockpiling bombs and other weapons. Western officials say they do security sweeps, but they acknowledge the precarious nature of the situation.

During the war, fighters from all sides have sought refuge in the camp, Western officials said, but as long as they surrender their weapons, there is no way to keep them out.

Each of the warring parties accuses the United Nations of sheltering criminals.

Inside the camp, the horrors happening outside burn deep. An accusation made frequently by all sides is that women are raped and abused by their enemies.

The results of an investigation by the United Nations released last month said that government forces in another part of the country, Unity State, had raped women and then burned them alive in their huts.

Women here also spoke of being raped. But given the level of fear in the country and stigma attached to sexual assaults, they asked that their stories not be repeated publicly.

Even inside the camp, there are reports of abuse. Deng Chol, 23, who is Dinka, said several women who lived in another part of the base before the recent fighting had found themselves in an alarming situation when they went to collect their belongings and take them to the Dinka section.

“They were interrupted,” he said. If they did not turn over their bags, he said, they would most likely have been “abused,” he said, “like so many of our women.”

Deborah Schein, who was responsible for the base here until recently, acknowledged the challenges and said the United Nations was doing all it could under enormously difficult circumstances.

“We faced an impossible choice,” she said of the decision to open the gates to people seeking refuge, even though the base was not equipped to handle them. “We chose lives over supplies.”

Ms. Schein said people here had tried to work with leaders from all three communities to resolve differences. If it can be done here, she said, that might show what can be done on the outside.

But as supplies run low and the war outside rages on, the most pressing mission remains keeping people alive.

by

by