[Montréal, Québec, Canada 13°C] It has been just over three weeks since I returned to Montréal from ten weeks in East Africa, most of which were spent in Southern Sudan. I’ve been back long enough to discard the lag that fogs the spirit after flying between continents. Sufficient time has passed to deplete the novelty of returning home after a lengthy absence.
I recount anecdotes of my time in Southern Sudan to friends, family, journalists and am reminded of how little we know about the place, which beckons a second visit. How the media focuses on the war in Darfur, or the International Criminal Court arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir but completely ignore the immense challenges facing the southern part of the country as it adapts to times of relative peace four years after the signing of the January 9, 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which ended 21 years of civil war.
Few people I’ve spoken with realize that Sudan is divided in two: Sudan and Southern Sudan with a coalition Government of National Unity dominated by President Omar al-Bashir’s National Congress Party for the whole of Sudan, and a semi-autonomous Southern Sudan led by President Salva Kiir Mayardit’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement. Salva Kiir is also First Vice-President of Sudan under the power-sharing peace deal. Even fewer people I’ve spoken with are aware that under the mandate of the CPA, Southern Sudan is scheduled—at the end of its post-war six-year interim period—to hold a referendum in 2011 that will determine whether or not Africa’s largest country will be divided, giving independence to the South.
In the meantime, what has happened to the one million people that have been living as refugees in neighbouring countries for up to two decades, or to the four million Internally Displaced People (IDPs) who were uprooted from their homes when they fled the fighting? More than two million have already returned to their traditional homeland in the south, which was devastated by the war. How are the returnees adjusting to the tenuous peace now that they have returned to regions they no longer recognize, or for the younger ones, have never lived in?
Below are IDPs during their return to Southern Sudan in 2008 as coordinated by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Nearly all of the Southern Sudanese I had the pleasure of speaking with while visiting the south have returned to their traditional homelands only within the last two years. Many left when they were very young while some were born in exile, which required of them complete readaptation to a homeland they do not know.
Why is our media uninterested in following the story of an African region the size of France after the end of what has been described as the Twentieth Century’s longest and bloodiest civil war? Five million displaced and two mimmion dead! What is it about the initiation of peace and democracy that persuades news editors to look elsewhere for stories? This virtual blackout of information about Southern Sudan is what led me to visit. I wanted to meet the people who are making the transition to a peaceful society.
Now that I’ve returned, I have more questions than before, but they are no longer based on a total lack of information. How does a rebel army like the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) make the transition from rebel forces to official army of Southern Sudan and member of the Joint Integrated Units with its former foe, the Sudan Armed Forces? How is former soldier, Lt. General Salva Kiir Mayardit adapting to his new job as President of the Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) and First Vice President of Sudan’s interim Government of National Unity (GNU)? What are the most imposing obstacles to the peace agreement (and there are many: serious underdevelopment, food insecurity, intertribal conflicts, international pressures, border disputes, resource sharing, slow/non implementation of CPA requirements, census results, February 2010 national elections, the 2011 independence referendum, etc.)
I will attempt to address the above questions and others in future posts to this blog so I invite you to return here and comment on what your read. I am in regular contact with people I met in Southern Sudan and will be following their stories and the story of Sudan as it unfolds. I’ve just begun to review the thousands of photographs, hours of video footage, dozens of audio interviews, and the pages and pages of notes taken throughout my trip. I’ve started reading the books, reports, newspapers and documents I picked up while in Southern Sudan and have consolidated the names and contact details of people I met there. I’m reviewing websites of organizations I came across in Sudan and am adding links to the relevant ones to the sidebar on this blog. There are many news blogs that provide regularly updated news about Sudan, many of which I’ve added RSS feeds here as well.
Burningbillboard.org is my South Sudan resource gathering point. If you are interested, it can also be yours.
