Local drummer, Ajing Deng beats the drum as the dancers follows along. With him is a very young boy who is also caugh up in the action of drum beating. He is at it at a very young age, but its part of the rich tradition of the Sudanese culture.

Local drumist, Ajing Deng beats the drum as the dancers follows along. With him is a very young boy who is also caugh up in the action of drum beating. He is at it at a very young age, but its part of the rich tradition of the Sudanese culture.

International focus moved away from Sudan’s long civil war toward the regional rebellion and government’s genocidal reaction that began in Darfur around 2003. Darfur rebels became active with the objective of being included into the peace talks that resulted with the CPA deal. Unfortunately, they were excluded for reasons that are still not clear to me.

The signing of the CPA initiated a six-year interim period, during which time the central government in Khartoum and the semi-autonomous Government of Southern Sudan are to pass laws that will allow the two regions to coexist. Border issues are to be resolved, oil wealth distribution is to be made equitable, cencus and election legislation is to be passed. According to the CPA, if the two regions are still unable to coexist after the six years, then in 2011, Southern Sudan will hold a self-determination referendum to decide whether or not for independence, creating Africca’s newest independent state.

The 5th anniversary and Sudan’s first democratic, multiparty elections to be held in April 2010 are drawing more attention to the situation in all of Sudan. The myopic, but still important, focus on Darfur is being brought into the fold of the larger and more precarious situation in Southern Sudan, where much of the civil war was fought. If war returns to Southern Sudan, it will consume all of Sudan and the larger region.

One of the symptoms of the resurgent interest in maintaining the CPA in Sudan is Sudan 365, A Beat for Peace. Musicians from around the world (Sudan, UK, Australia, Japan, Brazil, Ireland, Egypt, Rwanda, Spain, Russia, USA, India, and elsewhere), take a video of themselves playing (mostly) percussian instruments that have been edited together in the video below as a single music video. Known artists like Radiohead’s Philip Selway, Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason, Snow Patrol’s Jonny Quinn, the Police’s Stewart Copeland, have participated.

If you want to add your beat to the melée, you just need to upload your peace beat. It’s time to get the drums out and call your friends!

Without context, the article is no more than another record of ‘tribal’ violence in an African country already mired by war. Without prior knowledge of the situation in Southern Sudan—and the Canadian media provides very little—the details are meaningless. Actually, Southern Sudan is in a post-war renaissance that may lead to a lasting peace, self-determination and independence; if, and only if, they can hold on to the four-year-old peace that Le Devoir describes as “already fragile.”

It’s important that news about Southern Sudan gets reported because newsworthy stories in Sudan are not just related to Darfur or to the International Criminal Court indictment of Sudan President Omar al-Bashir, which deserve media attention for the international condemnation and reduction of human rights abuses that can come from exposure. But the situation in Southern Sudan is also in need of media scrutiny to support democratization and to help maintain a fragile peace deal that ended Africa’s longest civil war between the government of Sudan and the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army.

Sudan’s second civil war since its 1956 independence from British colonialism, lasted 21 years and officially ended on January 9, 2005 with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in neighbouring Nairobi, Kenya. The CPA set up a power-sharing structure between the central government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement with the creation of a coalition Government of National Unity for all of Sudan and the Government of Southern Sudan; both with new interim constitutions. The agreement allows for the transformation of the Southern rebel forces into a regular army for semi-autonomous Southern Sudan with Joint Integrated Units of both armies in specific border areas. It prescribes oil revenue-sharing protocols and the establishment of a border between the north and south of Sudan, which will transect oil-producing areas.

An interim period of six years is established to implement the peace agreement, after which the South can hold a referendum to decide to remain within Sudan or to opt for complete independence. This is tentatively scheduled for 2011.

Approximately two million people were killed during the war and about four million were displaced from their homes to other regions of Sudan and nearly one million refugees fled to neighbouring countries. Since its independence 53 years ago, Sudan has been at peace for only 15 of those years (1972-1983: Addis Ababa Agreement, and since the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement). Despite these statistics, almost no editorial space in Canadian media is given to the current situation in Southern Sudan.

Media attention of the region was particularly abundant during the 1988 famine when more than 250,000 people starved to death. But since the signing of the peace deal, the media has focussed more on the conflict in Darfur than the tenuous peace in the South. The negotiations of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement with former southern rebels may have added to the current civil war in Darfur, whose own rebels wanted to be included in peace negotiations but were kept from it.

Sudan presently hosts the largest United Nations mission in the world (not including the UN African Union Mission in Darfur) with a mandate of “supporting the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement… [and] facilitating the voluntary return of refugees and displaced persons.”

Why is the movement of refugees and displaced people more newsworthy when they flee war and persecution than when they return to the homelands they were previously forced to flee? The story of returnees to the south is a mirror into the future for Darfur refugees whose current situation is a glimpse into the past for the Southern Sudanese still struggling with their new peacetime conditions.

According to Amnesty International, the civil war now raging in Darfur has displaced more than 2.25 million people since 2003, while IRIN reports that more than 2.24 million Southern Sudanese have returned to their homeland since 2005. Both are impressive migrations of people that require an important amount of support from the United Nations and other NGOs to help them resettle. Donor countries like Canada (via CIDA, page 16), which provides $66.8 million in humanitarian aid to Sudan, have an influence in Sudan’s future and also need journalistic scrutiny.

Those that return to their homeland in the south believe that the peace deal will endure and are eager to help rebuild the country, while many are still unwilling to return for fear of the reoccurrence of war. Those that do return, discover that—in many areas—living conditions in the war-ravaged south are more difficult than the areas where they are returning from: lack of sufficient drinking water, no schools, nor clinics and a difficult means for livelihood generation. Most arrive in their homeland after more than a decade of absence with little more than a few belongings. NGOs provide some with a tarp to set up a temporary shelter, blankets, water containers, cooking utensils and other non-food items, while the World Food Program provides food subsidies.

Being a refugee from war and a returnee to peace—both in Sudan—look all too similar and deserve equal attention. Media attention about Darfur needs to continue to help end the war there and it needs to begin about Southern Sudan to help it cling to its tenuous peace.

[translated and published in French in Le Couac)

Here is the transcript of the audio report with a few added photos:

Exactly three weeks ago, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the President of Sudan, Omar Hassan Al-Bashir, for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Darfur. Like many people in Sudan, I was glued to the television set to view the announcement. It was 4 p.m.

An anonymous blogger who worked for an international aid agency in Darfur wrote on AlertNet, that one hour after the announcement was made, his agency received a phone call. “The Government had revoked our licence and we must close all our programmes. No further explanation. First thing the next day we were told all international staff had to leave Darfur by 4 p.m.” They had to be out of the area exactly 24 hours after the ICC announcement.

According the the UN’s Organization for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 13 International Agencies were expelled:
- Action contre la faim
- Solidarité
- Save the Children (UK & US)
- Medecins Sans Frontières (NL & FR)
- CARE International
- Oxfam (GB)
- Mercy Corps
- International Rescue Committee
- Norwegian Refugee Council
- CHF International
- PADCO
- And three Sudanese relief agencies were also closed.

The International Herald Tribune reported on March 21, that armed men looted Oxfam’s Darfur Warehouse, “stealing all of its contents.” While in Malual Kon, Northern Bahr el-Ghazal State where Mercy Corps has a compound, I learned that all of their equipment from their Darfur and Khartoum operations were seized since their expulsion: computers, communication radios, everything. Since their communication system was centred in Khartoum, they have had to reorganize their communication strategy for their activities in Southern Sudan.

Internews—which is an International NGO affiliated with Mercy Corps—coordinates Nhomlaau FM in Malual Kon. It has three other community radio stations in Southern Sudan. One of these is located in  Kurmuk, Blue Nile State, which is within the North/South transitional area. The radio station there was nearly closed along with Mercy Corps, but they managed to continue broadcasting by arguing their independence of the US-based NGO.

I’ve been travelling throughout Southern Sudan for the past four weeks and was recently in Northern Bahr el-Ghazal state, which shares its northern border with Southern Darfur. According to the IRIN News Network, Northern Bahr el-Ghazal is expecting an influx of Internally Displaced People (or IDPs) from Southern Darfur as conditions are expected to deteriorate as a result of the expulsion of the 16 NGOs. Although the report suggests that the UN and the Southern Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Commission are “are preparing for potential inflows of Darfuris,”  their arrival will certainly put a strain on the area’s already scarce infrastructure.

IDPs returning to Northern Bahr el_Ghazal in 2007 (courtesy IOM)

Since 2007, there has been a coordinated transport of hundreds of thousands of IDP returnees to Northern Bahr el-Ghazal from Southern Darfur and Khartoum. These people are returning to their homeland after being displaced during Sudan’s other civil war that ended with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005. Many are returning to rural locations without access to sanitation, safe drinking water, clinics or schools.

According to the International Organization for Migration (or IOM), many villages in the area have had a rate of IDP Returnees as high as 80-90% of their pre-2007 population. 2007 is the year when organized returns of Internally displaced people began in earnest with the help of IOM and the government of Southern Sudan.

waterhole in War Faj, Northern Bahr el-Ghazal

Access to safe drinking water is already in short supply throughout the state for those already living there. The influx of Darfuris could cause serious tensions at existing water sources and could lead to localized conflict. Waterborne infectious diseases, like cholera and meningitis, could become a serious problem.

To make matters worse, the rainy season is approaching. By the end of April, road travel will be become difficult and delivery of goods will be seriously impaired. Rain is a serious matter in Northern Bahr el-Ghazal and neighbouring states. During the 2008 rainy season the state experienced serious flooding. During my time in the area, I’ve driven past remnants of nearly half a dozen temporary camps where thousands were displaced to during last year’s flooding.

Flood Map of Northern Bahr el-Ghazal and Warrap States (courtesy UNJLC, Juba)

A  March 1, 2009 report from the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, writes, “The potential movement of 1.5 million displaced Darfur residents into Southern Sudan’s Northern and Western Bahr el-Ghazal states, due to disruptions in humanitarian assistance, presents a severe threat to food security in the two states.”

During a visit to Darfur four days after the ICC arrest warrant was issued President Al-Bashir said that his decision to expel the 16 NGOs from Darfur was “irreversible.” The position of the Khartoum government has not changed since, although they have vowed to replace the international NGOs with Sudanese agencies and end the need for aid in Darfur within the year. No clear solution is in sight.

++++

An interesting article about Fallout Scenarios as a result of the expulsion of 16 NGOs from Darfur can be found here.

One such gaming developer is Copenhagen-based Serious Games Interactive, which was founded in 2006 “to revolutionise the use of computer games for purposes beyond entertainment.” They initiated a series of video games called Global Conflicts that challenges 13- to 19-year-olds to be critical and reflective citizens in a globalized world. They offer two versions of the game: one based in Palestine and the newer one in Latin America.

The Global Conflict: Palestine was released on July 5, 2007 and takes an interesting approach to gaming. The player takes on the role of a journalist within a simulated environment in contemporary Jerusalem. When I played the demo available for free download, I was assigned to write a story about checkpoints in the city. It began with me meeting my editor in a café who sends me off to research a story. In the demo version, there is only one story idea option: to write an article about the checkpoints. All the research comes directly from other characters the player/journalist meets and interviews within the Jerusalem gamescape. Another demo version of the game can be played directly online and is set in Latin America.

There is a notepad to copy direct quotations from people interviewed. You can see which characters are interactive because their names are tagged beside their characters within the game. The choice of questions to ask are limited. The player also decides which answers or comments come from those interviewed. The objective is to be as neutral as possible and to get as wide a perspective as possible so that an ‘objective’ article can be written. You even get to choose which newspaper to write for, either a Palestinian paper, an Isaeli paper or an international paper.

A second game I cam across is Food Force, an interactive game produced for the United Nations World Food Program (WFP). It can be downloaded for free from their website. The game has six missions for the player to accomplish that relates to the six stages related to the delivery of food aid in a crisis situation. The six missions are chronological to follow the logistical steps for delivering food aid from the beginning of the need of food aid until the recipients are no longer in need. They include: 1) Air Surveillance to assess the crisis, 2) Energy Pack for creating a formula for nutritious meal; 3) Air Drop to deliver emergency food aid by air; 4) Buy and Deliver of food aid from around the world; 5) The Food Run to overcome land obstacles to deliver food; 6) Future Farming to help the fictitious country feed itself over a 10-year timeline.

The game does a pretty good job at portraying the varying stages of food crisis aid from the perspective of the United Nations. The game is basic but good for elementary or secondary  school-age kids, but for those interesting in digging deeper into UN food programs, they have a ‘The Reality’ link to video clips, a photo gallery, and links to WFP programs and to the WFP website for more detailed information. Unfortunately, the game maintains a Euro- or Western-centric perspective where mostly-white people help black people get out of a food crisis on the fictitious island of Sheylan in the Indian Ocean. The only black man has an American accent that resembles the voice of a polite Eddy Murphy. The attitudes of the “Crack Squad” project managers of the WFP crisis mission in Sheylan seemed modelled after American army types that makes the game’s WFP desire to solve the food crisis more cynical in line with US foreign policy as we are used to seeing it.

The third video game can be played online. Darfur is Dying was created as a result of the Darfur Digital Activist Contest that was launched by mtvU in partnership with the International Crisis Group and the Reebok Human Rights Foundation. This type of foundation is typically set up to associate a corporate brand name like Reebok with words like ‘human rights’ in response to bad press relating to its reputation as manufacturing its shoes in factories with less than stellar working conditions, as this report from China labour Watch describes. I’ve been searching the net for documentation but their campaign is obviously working because it is difficult to find reference to this show company without its foundation getting in the way. Websites that advocate for worker rights in the clothing manufacturing sector include: Behind the Label, Maquila Solidarity Network & Sweatshop Watch, whose website is no longer online.

In the image above, a screen shot taken while the character ( a young girl from a refugee camp) runs around looking for water for the camp. In the image, she is hiding behind a rock while heavily armed Janjaweed drive past. If they catch her she is taken away and can no longer help out at the refugee camp. The player is then forced to pick another refugee to seek water.

The three games have very different esthetics and objectives but provide an interesting approach to dealing with global issues using video games.

Since the beginning of October, I’ve come to Le Cheval Blanc on Wednesday evenings to initiate a ritual meeting place among friends to establish tradition where non existed before. A recurrent gathering—without notice—to linger over a pint of locally brewed beer and discuss our respective projects and catch up on each other’s lives. Come after 17h00 and, barring lateness, I will be there. In my absence,  carry on without me.

This ‘tradition’ is important now because I’m feeling somewhat shaky these days, having left much of my former professional self behind to begin anew. Bye bye book publishing. It was nice knowing you. We shared ten great years. But without the meetings, editorial schedules and launch deadlines, I find myself with blank agenda pages and insufficient diversity on any given day. Since I closed the bed & breakfast 77 days ago, the early breakfasts, dirty laundry and evening check-ins cease to guide my days with their punctual familiarity. And now I’ve moved to another part of town. Terra incognita. A potentially dreadful place if one is captivated by fear of the unknown. A place of potential crisis if left untethered. A panic attack circling like a pack of hyenas. A pocketed paper bag in the onslaught of hyperventilation. Luckily for me I thrive on change but it sometimes takes a bit of adjustment.

I don’t fear the horizon ahead of me, of falling of the edge of the world. I enjoy facing the open ocean imagining the current taking me toward the rest of the world. These are moments when everything is possible. It’s the potential of it all that makes new projects worth pursuing. And it’s precisely this potential that leads me to Africa or more precisely to Sudan, a place devastated by post-colonial war. I read in this morning’s newspaper that just yesterday, at the National Forum on Darfur, held in Khartoum, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir called for a ceasefire in Darfur and the immediate disarmament of the Janjaweed militias 1, 2, 3, 4. Maybe the western region of Sudan will grasp the tenuous peace that continues in South Sudan, where I’m headed at the end of January or early February.

South Sudan may be one of the more remote and underdeveloped regions of the world but it is on the cusp of something new. Something great. Great because it has been at peace with the central Sudanese government since 2005, after two debilitating civil wars (1956-1972 & 1983-2005). Great because four million refugees are returning to their traditional homeland. Great because schools are being built to educate the girls and boys who have now experienced peace for the first time. Great because elections are coming in 2009 and the population is learning about democratic processes by state-sponsored, privately owned, and community media. Great because in 2011, the South can hold a referendum( as mandadted in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the northern Government of Sudan (GoS) and the southern-based Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement) that can give the South independence from the rest of Sudan. I’m not adverse to separation but I’d like to ask the South Sudanese what they want in their context.

Everyone knows that holding elections or referenda after decades of war can be volatile in the best of times, but its potential for holding onto the peace is palpable. I want to be there, as it unfolds, to witness, capture and understand this potential.

South Sudan, as a political entity in and of itself, is without tradition. Its existence is new, since the 2005 peace agreement. I am not referring to the traditions of the various community and ethnic groups, like the Dinka, Nuer, and 68 others listed by The Gurtong Peace Trust. Their respective traditions go back farther than anyone can accurately refer to. Theirs are oral histories that have been passed on through generations since the beginning of time.

The tradition I’m referring to is in the tradition of peace and co-habitation within a geographic area and political setting that did not really exist before the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The Agreement was signed on January 9, 2005, beginning a 6-year interim period and establishing South Sudan as an autonomous region within Sudan.

Now midway in this interim period, Sudan is preparing for elections. The Fifth National Population Census is underway to reveal the demographics of the country but I’m particularly interested in the South. How many people actually make up its population? A difficult questions considering about half of the four million refugees have yet to return to their ancestral lands. Some are internally displaced within Sudan, others are refugees in neighbouring countries,  while still others have taken refuge in Canada, the United States, and other western countries. How can so many people who are still on the move be accurately counted? And how accurate must the count be to consider election results fair and democratic? There hasn’t been an accurate census taken in Sudan since 1983 before the beginning of its 2nd civil war.

To give you an idea of the challenges, Southern Sudan’s land mass is huge with an area of about 640,000 square kilometres (about the size of France), with a population estimated somewhere between 7.5 and 9.7 million. According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFDA), the population is expected to increase by as much as three million in the next six years due to the natural increase in population and the return of refugees and internally displaced people. Where will they all live? What infrastructure is needed to accommodate their arrival? What will they do when they get to where they are going? Humanitarian and development aid is needed in South Sudan to provide for those who are already there, so how much more is needed to accommodate the returnees? These are questions that are rarely discussed in Western media so how else is one supposed to genuinely understand without interviewing the few that follow the case closely and talking to the people living through the tumultuous changes? Although the peace holds a huge potential to rejuvenate a wounded land and its scattered people, its erratic interpretation by those who’ve only known war—and the geopolitical wrangling by those interested in the South’s resources—can foment crisis conditions reminiscent of the recent past.

If I can share challenges and successes of the peace process in written, audio and video reports and documentary films, which few others seem to be doing, then maybe it will be a little easier (if ever so slightly) for peace to settle in and make itself comfortable. That’s another reason I want to go.

Kapuscinski writes in the aforementioned book that experience has taught him that “situations of crisis appear more dire and dangerous from a distance than they do up close.” I tend to agree. He continues in the chapter about Zanzibar, that mythical island off the coast of Kenya, about when he chartered a plane from Dar es Salaam to Zanzibar to report the previous day’s coup d’état there.  He adds, “Our imaginations hungrily and greedily absorb every tiny bit of sensational news, the slightest portent of peril, the faintest whiff of gunpowder, and instantly inflate these signs to monstrous, paralyzing proportions.” Corporate media thrive on this sensationalism but I want to get past it; closer to the truth. However, Kapuscinski doesn’t denigrate the havoc that can reign during such times. He wrote “about those moments when calm, deep waters begin to churn and bubble into general chaos [...] it is easy to perish by accident, because someone didn’t hear something fully or didn’t notice something in time. On such days, the accident is king; it becomes history’s true determinant and master.”

I’ve never been prone to accidents and I plan on keeping it that way.

I’ve been asked over and over again, “Why Sudan?!” My immediate response — and the one which flows generously from my lips is, “Why not!” But I actually have dozens of reasons for chosing Sudan: First off, It’s the country with the largest geographic area in Africa and it’s in crisis! A 21-year civil war ended with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) on January 9, 2005 between the government of The Sudan, based in country’s capital Khartoum and the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM) from the south of the country. The relative peace has persisted in the south of the country but another civil war in the western Sudananese region of Darfur rages on. The murderous attacks in Darfur started in 2003 between the Sudanese Army with its Janjaweed allies, and rebel forces: the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).

Since most attention is given to the war in Darfur (which it deserves), I though it would be interesting to learn about a part of Sudan that is in a post-conflict transition toward peace and democracy. Besides, I have a friend who is contracted by UNOPS and is based in South Sudan’s capital, Juba. And he said I can stay with him if I come. Although he may not be there when I go, he said he will help with contacts. How could I refuse an offer like that? Sudan is one of the least developed regions of the world, ranked 147th out of 177 countries in a 2007 UNDP Human Development Report. South Sudan (and the western region of Darfur) are the neglected areas of Sudan and may actually rank lower than the whole of Sudan.

Another reason to go to South Sudan, is to dive into my new identity without hesitation. Tear myself away from the complacency of North American comfort and go somewhere I know little about because mainstream media offers me little about this part of Sudan. Most of the killing is taking place elsewhere in the country, in Darfur. The same massacres that tormented the South are being repeated in Darfur. One civil war ends and another begins but the patterns remain the same. Foreign media follow the killings, express their outrage while forgetting Sudan’s past, its previous war. They ignore the future of the places they have left behind in search of front page stories, dreadful images and a higher circulation rates. Kaching.

I am interested in South Sudan’s future and I want to understand how its present will lead it there. I want to see for myself what the end of Africa’s longest civil war looks like. How quickly does the scent of peace waft across 589,745 km² to reach the 8.5 million people? What is the stench of peace to the millions of refugees now returning to the South, to villages whose ashes have long since melted into the desert? What does democracy taste like to the southerners who have an opportunity to vote for the first time in elections in 2009; and again in 2011 in a referendum for independence?

In Québec, we’ve had two referendums to decide whether or not to seperate from the rest of Canada. Both times (in 1980 and 1995) the electorate decided (in 1995 with a slight margin: 50.58% “No” to 49.42% “Yes”) that seperation was for another time. What will Sudan’s southerners decide? How will they be informed about the options and what are the logistic challenges for preparing for a referendum? Will the North government allow the South to take its land and resources behind international lines? These are questions I want to understand and questions I will investigate while on the ground in South Sudan. I arrive in Juba mid-January 2009.

For now, I have more reading to do. More contacts to make. An itinerary to determine. Interviews to set up and visas to obtain.