The Comprehensive Peace Agreement brought the war to an end on January 9, 2005 and provided for a six-year interim period, during which time the Khartoum government and the former rebels would learn to get along. This included boundary demarcation, power sharing structures, an equitable wealth distribution, along with other provisions.

If the former rebel Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement and the NCP-dominated central government could not overcome their distrust and establish power structures to adequately share Sudan’s resources, then at the end of the interim period the Southern semi-autonomous government could hold an independence referendum. And that’s exactly what the South is preparing to do.

Filmmaker, journalist and development worker, Alexandra Sicotte-Lévesque, worked for almost 3 years in Sudan, in media and development with the BBC World Service Trust and the United Nations peacekeeping mission. She is seeking support to make a film with co-producers, Yanick Létourneau (Periphéria), Alessandro Pavone. According to their KickStarter webpage, the film, The Waiting Room,

follows young people ranging from the ages of 8 to 30 whom all live in Khartoum, and are each confronted with a unique quest. Their journeys take us between North and South Sudan. For the first time a film gives a voice to Sudanese youth from different origins, Muslims and Christians. The Waiting Room is an intimate portrait of a society that remains unknown to most and misunderstood by many. It addresses contemporary issues of identity and religion which continue to shape the world we live in.

Getting funding for a documentary film is not particularly easy in Canada these days. These filmmakers are using crowd-sourcing application, KickStarter, to raise enough funds to finish shooting the film in December before the referendum date. View some of the footage they have already taken. If the preview is any indication, Director of Photography, Katerine Giguère, has already shot gorgeous images that capture the beauty of the people, letting us put aside for a moment the nastiness of the politics in the country. If they manage to get enough funding, it promises to be a film that captures an intimate element of Sudan that is not covered in the media and that can only be seen either by visiting the country of by viewing a film like the one they propose.

I fell in love with the Southern Sudanese during my seven-week visit and all I think about is returning. Considering I’ve only been to Southern Sudan and know nothing about Khartoum, I find this project particularly interesting. Realities in Sudan’s capital city are quite different from those in Juba. I’m curious to learn what displaced southerners living in Khartoum think of the referendum, its probable outcome and I wonder if they will participate at the ballot box.

I encourage everyone, who can, to support this film project because Sudan’s story is as complex as it is interesting. Unfortunately, supporters like myself who don’t own a credit card, cannot support the project using PayPal. Luckily for me though, they are based in my hometown of Montréal, so I can actually meet with them and offer my support in person.

Exhibit poster

[Montréal, Québec, Canada 17°C] Southern Sudan was a place I had not heard much about before my seven-week visit to the East African region of the continent’s largest country. It is a part of Sudan where over eight million people are now recovering from a 21-year civil war that ended six years ago after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed. The southern rebels fought Sudan’s army and its militias for a generation, trying to bring freedom to the south and end the military junta’s systematic repression of the Nilotic South. The war devastated the land and its people, leaving two million dead, four million internally displaced and one million refugees.

I arrived in Juba on February 26, 2009 during the dry season and met with temperatures that reached 45°C in the shade. I visited mine fields being cleared around the southern capital and observed mine risk education projects in villages still waiting for de-mining teams to remove the hidden danger. Farmers are still reluctent to till the land for fear of stepping on landmines that continue to kill and maim.

I flew to Aweil and visited dozens small villages in Northern Bahr el Ghazal. Here, people are returning to the homeland they ran from when they were attacked with a cruelty more recently witnessed in neighbouring Darfur. I interviewed men, women and children under their villages’ biggest trees. Here, up to 90% of the population have returned in the previous two years after living in displacement camps for ten, fifteen, even twenty years. They arrived without enough wells to supply drinking water, without sufficent schools, without clinics. They are finally on land that is theirs and want to stay, despite the hardships.

In the state of Warrap, I accompanied a vaccination program to the village of Lurcuk. Two medical assistants spent five hours giving innoculations against measles, tuberculosis, polio, diphtheria and tetanus. In all, 276 children were vaccinated.

Later, before my flight back to Montréal, I revisited the youth from Sud Academy, a school for Sudanese refugees in Nairobi, Kenya. I met them before my journey to Sudan and promised to return with images of their homeland, a place they barely remember and dream of returning. Most of them haven’t seen their parents or siblings since they ran from their villages, scrambling to escape the killing.

The photographs represent some of the people I met and who generously shared their stories.

The vernissage is Thursday, June 10 from 16h00-19h00 at Café Rico 969, rue Rachel est, Montréal. Videos I took during my visit will be shown at the vernissage.

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.

Documents obtained under the Privacy Act (.pdf 169Mb or ZIP 52Mb) and available from the website of the People’s Commission on Immigration Security Measures indicate that Mr. Abdelrazik, a Canadian citizen, was incarcerated in Sudan on the request of Canadian officials. While in prison in December 2003, he was interrogated by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). Since his release in July 2006, he has been blocked from returning home to Montréal.

Mr. Abdelrazik’s family lives in Montréal and has not seen him since he left for Sudan in 2003. Human rights activists and citizens groups have began a public campaign to repatriate Abousfian Abdelrazik. Project Fly Home, raised enough funds from at least 171 Canadian citizens to purchase a airline ticket to take Abdelrazik back to Canada. His ticket is scheduled for April 3, 2009.

UPDATE: Abousfian returned home to Montréal on Saturday June 27, 2009 around midnight after a six-year forced exile in Sudan, where he experienced torture, imprisonment without trial, and over one year trapped in the Canadian embassy. All with the involvement of Canadian officials.

- Abdelrazik pleads to clear his name: ‘I want to live like a normal Canadian — G&M July 24, 2009

- Abdelrazik describes details of interrogation in Sudan — Toronto Star July 23, 2009

- Abdelrazik ‘very glad to come back home’ — CBC June 27, 2009

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Below is a timeline taken from the ‘Project Fly Home’ campaign organizers:
1990
Mr. Absoufian Abdelrazik, flees the violence of a civil war and coup in Sudan, arrives in Canada and is granted political refugee status.

1995
Mr. Absoufian Abdelrazik becomes a Canadian citizen.

2000
After the arrest of Ahmed Ressam, the millennium bomber, Mr. Abdelrazik and other Muslims living in Montreal come under close surveillance by Canadian counter-terrorism agents. Mr. Abdelrazik says it amounts to harassment so severe that he calls the Montreal police for help. He is never charged with any crime, denies any connection with al-Qaeda and testifies for the prosecution at Mr. Ressam’s trial.

2003
MARCH 23: He arrives in Khartoum from Montréal, travelling on his Canadian passport to visit his mother.

SEPTEMBER 12: Mr. Abdelrazik is arrested and imprisoned by Sudan.

DECEMBER: Interrogated by people he identifies as “Canadians” while in prison. Mr. Abdelrazik says he was repeatedly beaten and tortured. In an affidavit this year, he admits to telling his interrogators “what they wanted to hear.”

2004
JULY: Mr. Abdelrazik is released from prison after 11 months. He was expected to fly home to Canada with a Lufthansa-Air Canada ticket paid for by his family. A Canadian diplomat was to escort him on temporary travel papers because his passport had expired.

JULY 23: The flight home is scrapped at the last minute when Air Canada and Lufthansa refuse to carry him on the grounds that he has been added to the U.S. no-fly list, even through routing doesn’t involve a U.S. stop. Mr. Abdelrazik is not told about the U.S. no- fly list but is told that the government of Canada is powerless to tell airlines to transport him. He’s required to live in a police-owned and monitored house.

JULY 29:  In DFA Case Note 123, senior consular official Odette Gaudet-Fee, says when Mr. Abdelrazik’s wife inquired about chartering a private plane, she was told that the government would not pay for this.

SEPTEMBER 29: Senior Sudan official warns Canadian diplomats that “Sudan realized however that keeping an innocent man in detention was a human-rights violation. So far, they had prevented him from having access to news media and HR organizations but this could not go on forever. He thought that protest and public attention to this story would impact adversely on both our countries. In particular, it would tarnish Canada’s reputation in Arab countries.”

OCTOBER 10: Sudan offers a private aircraft to get Abdelrzik to Canada if Canada will contribute to costs and provide escorts.

OCTOBER 31: Canada is not prepared to contribute to the cost of the flight and also not prepared to provide an escort for Mr. Abdelrazik on the flight.

NOVEMBER 24:Then-PM Paul Martin arrives in Khartoum on a Canadian military Airbus with seating for more than 150. Embassy officials thwart Mr. Abdelrazik’s efforts to meet with PM and the aircraft leaves with scores of empty seats. A senior official travelling with the prime minister meets Mr. Abdelrazik.

2005
APRIL 13: Canada’s senior diplomat in Sudan agrees to tell Mr. Abdelrazik “I can assure you that the Govt of Canada has had no involvement whatsoever in any decision to place your name on such lists.”

MAY 9: Senior Foreign Affairs diplomat warns that Mr. Abdelrazik “has reached the end of his rope, he has no money, no future, very little freedom and no hope. Should this case break wide open in the media, we may have a lot of explaining to do.”

JULY 26: Sudan Minister of Justice issues Mr. Abdelrazik a formal document exonerating him. We “did not find any evidence’” linking him to terrorism or crime or al-Qaeda.

OCTOBER 5: With a Canadian delegation scheduled to visit, Mr. Abdelrazik is arrested again and detained, without charge. Canadian consular access is denied. But an undated and heavily redacted Canadian Foreign Affairs document marked secret and carrying a CSIS stamp says he was imprisoned “at our request,” but it isn’t clear whether that was the first, second or both times.

DECEMBER 16: In a cable marked secret, diplomats warn Ottawa that “further delay in this case risks the perception of complacency on the part of the Government should this case become public, especially given our repeated observations regarding Mr. Abdelrazikis increasingly desperate frame of mind.”

2006
JULY 20: He is released from prison after 10 months as the Sudanese say they cannot hold an “innocent” man. A Canadian diplomat, in a message to Ottawa, says he “appears to be a broken man,” but Ottawa tells diplomats to tell Mr. Abdelrazik they won’t give him a passport or travel documents.

JULY 23: The United States formally designates him a terrorist “for his high-level ties to and support for the al-Qaeda.”

JULY 31: He’s added to UN Security Council terrorist no-fly blacklist by the U.S. All his personal assets are frozen. The ban, however, specifically exempts travel for return to the country of citizenship, for the fulfillment of a judicial process and for other justifications (such as for medical and religious purposes) if allowed by the U.N.

DECEMBER 16: A secret document sent from Khartoum to senior Foreign Affairs and security officials in Ottawa says, “Abousfian Abdelrazik was arrested on September 10, 2003 [word blacked out] recommendation by CSIS, for suspected involvement with terrorist elements.”

2007
MAY 15: Mr. Abdelrazik is called by the Sudanese secret police for an interrogation by a visiting FBI anti-terrorist team. He asks for Canadian consular help, but Ottawa expresslyforbids diplomats in Khartoum to escort him. After the interrogation, Canadian diplomats report to Ottawa that Mr. Abdelrazik was told that “he will never return to Canada” unless he co-operates fully.

NOVEMBER 6: In the process of examining Aboudelrazik’s request for de-listing from the U.N. list, CSIS declared that it had “no current substantial information regarding Mr. Abdelrazik”.

NOVEMBER 15: RCMP anti-terrorism branch formally tells Harper government that it has “conducted a review of its files and was unable to locate any current and substantive information that indicates Mr. Abdelrazik is involved in criminal activity.”

2008
FEBRUARY 22: Despite RCMP’s exoneration, CSIS’s most recent terrorist update summary still says Abdelrazik received training at the Khalden camp in Afghanistan in 1996 and is important Islamic Jihad activist.”

MARCH 25: Maxime Bernier, the Canadian foreign minister, visits Khartoum. His chief of staff and MP Deepak Obhrai meet with Mr. Abdelrazik, who lifts his shirt to show scars that he says were from torture and beatings while in prison.

APRIL: Sean Robertson, a senior foreign affairs official, formally writes to Mr. Abdelrazik’s lawyers assuring them that the government of Canada had already “transmitted our support for Mr. Abdelrazik’s de−listing request to the 1267 Committee,” (the Security Council resolution bearing that number that blacklists known al−Qaeda members).

APRIL 18: Sean Robinson, director of consular affairs in the Department of Foreign Affairs, confirms in writing that “we stand by the commitment” to “ensure that [Mr. Abdelrazik] has an emergency travel document to facilitate his return to Canada.”

APRIL 20: Senior Transport Canada intelligence and security officials, in a classified document say, “Senior government of Canada officials should be mindful of the potential reaction of our U.S. counterparts to Abdelrazik’s return to Canada as he is on the U.S. no-fly list.” Transport Canada documents state it was the U.S. no-fly lists that prevented Mr. Abdelrazik’s return to Canada when he was released from prison in July 2005.

APRIL 29: Mr. Abdelrazik seeks refuge in the Canadian embassy in Khartoum. Mr. Bernier grants him “temporary safe haven,” suggesting that he poses no threat to the embassy but may be at risk of re-imprisonment in Sudan.

SEPTEMBER 15: Etihad Airlines agrees to fly Mr. Abdelrazik from Khartoum to Toronto via Abu Dhabi on this date. The Canadian government fails to deliver on its promise, first made in 2004, that Mr. Abdelrazik, like all Canadian citizens, is entitled to emergency travel documents to return home.

DECEMBER 23: Passport Canada adds a new condition – a fully paid-for ticket, not just a confirmed reservation – must be presented before Mr. Abdelrazik will be issued emergency travel documents. Mr. Abdelrazik is destitute. The government says it must seize his assets and anyone who gives him any money is committing a crime.

2009
MARCH 12: One hundred and sixteen Canadians break federal law by contributing towards the purchase of a plane ticket for Mr. Abdelrazik with a departure date set for April 3. The government has untilthen to issue travel documents.

(Most of this timeline appears in a March 5, 2009 article entitled “Exiled in Khartoum: CSIS asked Sudan to arrest Canadian, files reveal” written by Globe and Mail Correspondent Paul Koring. Additional sources, Globe and Mail.)

MARCH 20: CSIS posted a request on its website asking SIRC to investigate its role in Mr. Abdelrazik’s detention in Sudan, hoping to clear itself of allegations that it had acted inappropriately.

MARCH 27: Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon says Mr. Abdelrazik must have his name removed from the 1267 UN no-fly list before the government will issue travel documents.

APRIL 3: On the day Mr. Abdelrazik is booked to fly home, Minister Cannon uses his discretionary powers under the Canadian Passport Order to bar Mr. Abdelrazik from coming home. He continues to wait in the Canadian embassy in Khartoum.

APRIL 28: One year anniversary of Mr. Abdelrazik’s “temporary safe haven” in Canadian embassy in Khartoum.

MAY 7: Court hearing begins in Ottawa where Mr. Abdelrazik is seeking a mandatory order to compel the government to bring him back “on any safe means at its disposal.” The motion is based on section 6 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which states, “Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada.”

Members from his community in Montréal considered the IRB’s decision to be discriminatory and decided to come to his aid by creating the Committee to Support Abdelkader Belaouni. They stipulated that the IRB’s decision, based on the fact that Kader did not have a family in Canada and did not have a job discriminated against him because of his blindness.

Kader says that the IRB left him in a “vicious circle” whereby he could not attain a job because he was without status in Canada and he could not get status because he was unemployed. Three months after arriving in Canada in March 2003, Kader registered with the job bank at Institut Nazareth et Louis-Braille to help him find work. “Every time they found found a job for me, I was unable to take it because I had no papers. I was not allowed to work,” he insisted. “Everyone told me that as soon as I had the papers, I should contact them because they’s like to hire me.”

As for him not having a family, Kader replies that his family here are his friends. “The guy cleaning my room right now, is my family. The girl who called earlier will bring my my supper. She is my friend. I find that I have a large circle of friends that are my family,” he says with a smile.

When asked what he does to pass the time, Kader says that four months into his stay in St-Gabriel’s Church, he decided that his time here would be time to spend learning. Sanctuary would become his music school. He has a piano teacher and several musician friends who have helped him compose original music. He already has an album and is working on his second. He also excercises on his stationary bike and the purple Pilates ball you see in the photo.

Kader says that he might make the same decision today after three years if he had to choose again whether or not to go into sanctuary. But he’s glad that he doesn’t know the future. “If I knew I would still be here three years later, I might hae been afraid to move forward,” he says, adding that destiny brings with it many things. “It’s true that I’m enclosed in this church but I’ve become a musician. I host a radio show called Radio Sanctuary.

Although he wants to leave as soon as possible, Kader says, “I am will in the church. I miss nothing. What I denounce in the injustice. Other than that, there is little else I can do. Other than be patient.”

On January 17, more than one hundred of Kader’s ‘family’ came out to denounce the Canadian government’s refusal to grant Kader refugee status on humanitarian grounds, which would allow him to rejoin his community outside the walls that have kept him confined for over three years. The demonstrators walked through the streets of Pointe Saint Charles to remind those that may have forgotten, that Kader is indeed still confined after three years. The march was postponed to one week (as the poster indicates) because a large demonstration in support of Gaza was organized on January 10th.

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The air was frigid, hovering at around -16 degrees Celcius. Not too much wind and a bright sun made the 1.5 km walk bearable as the crowd made their way north along Peel street from Dorchester Square before walking eastward along Ste-Catherine street past Complexe Desjardins turning south on St-Urbain street and a final right turn to end in front of the Canadian government building, Complexe Guy-Favreau.

I often try to figure out the quantity of people in a crowd. Yesterday, I placed myself at the corner of Metcalfe and Ste-Catherine streets as the front of the march approached and tried my best to count the passing crowd. I calculated the numbers and came up with 6200 people. So that’s my estimate.

After drinking a hot chocolate in Place-des-Arts with friends (where I took a photo of 43-day-old Sofia, probably the youngest demonstrator at the protest whose parents hoped she would be able to visit an independent Palestine before she’s old enough to vote), I returned home to look for estimates of the numbers of people in the demonstration. The numbers I found vary widely.

The CBC wrote, “about 1,000 marched in a protest organized by several large labour federations in support of the Palestinian people of Gaza.” La Presse, a French-language Montréal daily, wrote, “Montréal, ils étaient environ 2.000 à défiler dans les rues du centre-ville.” Approximately 2000 was their estimate. The Montréal Gazette wrote yesterday that their were 10,000 protesters in the demo, which was probably based on police figures of how many people they expected (as indicated in today’s Gazette article. Their estimate is now vague with, “Thousands of people marched down Ste. Catherine St. yesterday to speak with one voice: ‘Stop the madness. … We are all Palestinians’”, Where is it that I read something like, “If one among us is in chains, then we all are.” A Palestinian living in Montréal claimed that 15,000 attended the demonstration. Optimistic.

Farouk El-Baz, then director of Boston University’s Center for Remote Sensing and expert crowd counter, claims:

When crowds gather to make political statements, it matters how many people turn out. Crowd size matters to organizers, who invariably say they made their point. It matters to police departments, who insist they fielded the right number of officers. It matters to the media, who often claim they’ve reported the facts. And it matters to elected officials, who often like to act as if the whole thing never happened.

El-Baz was hired by ABC News to estimate the numbers of people who attended the 1995′s Million-Man March. Organizers, The Nation of Islam claimed the attendance was about 1.5 million. The National Park Service (NPS), which is responsible for the Mall area of Washington DC, reported 400,000 people at its highest moment. His method of counting crowds gave him an estimate of 870,000 with a margin of error of 25%, which means that the crowd would have ranged from 652,500 to 1,087,500. Both organizers and the NPS were happy with this amount.

Standing on a street corner, counting the crowd as it walks by may not be as accurate as El-Baz’s methodology, but adding up the compassion in solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza kept me focussed on my math. 6200 is somewhere in the middle: a happy median, being the only one with an applied methodology based on direct observation.

I’m approaching chapter ten in the 535-page novel and only months into the war as it completely transforms the life of the story’s protagonist: Achak. The last sentence of chapter nine reads, “I continued to run.” The seven-year-old Achak had been on the run–much of it alone–for days and nights through darkness; always escaping the horsemen, the murahaleen, the Baggara raiders. At one point, he watches from a hiding place in his village church as his best friend, Moses, is chased by a horseman bearing down on the child “now with a sword raised high over his head.” Achak could only turn away and “dig [him]self into the earth under the church… There were none of [his] people visible; all had run or were dead.”

The novel’s parallel narratives jump back and forth between Achak’s life as a child in Sudan and his time in the United States. Eggers begins the story with Achak–a recently arrived refugee in the American city of Atlanta, Georgia–opening the door to a unknown woman in search of a phone, stating that her “car broke down on the street.” This chance encounter is the beginning of a robbery of Achak’s appartment with him, or “Africa” as his assailants call him, held prisoner, bound and gagged on the living room floor.

With tape across his mouth and in fear of further reprisals, Achak addresses his robbers in imaginary confrontations, describing his past and of his assailants’ unknowing: their incomprehension of what he has gone through before his misadventure with them. Achak gains courage each time he contemplates his past and his ability to survive where others haven’t. It’s during these moments of recollection that he recounts the loss of his boyhood innocence as the civil war vaulted into his life without warning, tearing him away from all that was familiar.

The 40 minutes of fireworks continually pull me away from Achak’s eastward walk toward refuge in Ethiopia. Without having visual access to the fireworks, I remember a radio show I once produced for CKUT 90.3fm the week following the invasion of Iraq and the bombing of Bagdad. I tried to comprehend what it might be like in Montréal, if the same targets were bombarded in my own city. Just as Achak helps me imagine his war in Sudan, the blasts outside remind me of what war might be sound like here as a civilian unaware of military strategy, uncertain of the bombing campaign’s duration nor its intensity. Vulnerable to the blasts and the destruction.

The United States began bombing Bagdad with its “shock and awe” on March 21, 2003 with more than 3000 bombs, including 320, 1000-pound (450-kilogram) cruise missiles launched from Persian Gulf-based USS Kitty Hawk. How did the blasts outside my window compare with those in Bagdad that night? How much more deafeningly did the bombs fall on Bagdad? How much did the ground rumble and how much brighter were the blasts? In Montréal, we admire the explosions while in Bagdad the population feared them, hid from them, died under their rubble.

The fireworks eventually reached their crescendo finale with a pulsation of blasts and massive sonic booms. Chester hid like the dog he is deep under my desk, shivering with fear. The citizens of Bagdad must have felt like dogs five years ago when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defended the US military’s bombing campaign by saying that the intensity could not be compared with the Nazi blitzkrieg during WWII. “The weapons that are being used today have a degree of precision that no one ever dreamt of in a prior conflict,” Rumsfeld said without comparing the number of bombs dropped nor the attainment of their targets, which included military installations, radio and television stations and their towers, government buildings and official palaces, among other targets.

What if Montréal received USA’s bombs instad of Bagdad? Which buildings would be targeted? Whose lives would be ended by near misses while living next door to the targets? There are dozens of military infrastructure in downtowm Montréal. The little yellow-bricked castle of Les Fusilliers Mont-Royal on Roy street just west of rue St-Denis is immediately across the street from an elementary school in the heart of a residential neighbourhood. The Blackwatch are based in an armoury on de Bleury street near de Maisonneuve. CKUT radio on University street at des Pins; CJAD on Ste-Catherine street at the corner of Fort street; Radio Centre-Ville on St-Laurent and Fairmount; CBC tower on René-Lévesque or the TVA building on de Maisonneuve. The are all in residential neighbourhoods and all would have been targeted that night! How many of the cruise missiles would have missed their intended targets, instead slamming into people’s living rooms? How many fireballs and plumes of smoke would rise from Montréal neighbourhoods? How many corpses would be trapped under the rubble as “collatoral dammage” without any reference to the life that once inhabited them?

The fireworks seemed less entertaining to me as they once had. David Egger’s writing about Achak’s war fuelled my imagination. The fireworks added enough audio accompaniment to bring me to a place where I have no real experience: a war zone. It is easy to be indifferent or apathetic to war while comfortably reading in a spacious living room. But it is not acceptable. I am no longer able to sit it out. I need to submerge myself in the subject.

Southern Sudan seems the next logical destination for me, particularly since I have a friend working their with the United Nations. The city of Juba in southern Sudan will be my first destination to seek out an understanding of war.

I will get close to it by interviewing people like Achak Deng or soldiers from the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. By capturing footage of the recovery since the end of Sudan’s civil war three years ago. By writing about it and researching ideas in preparation of an eventual documentary film. I will share my preparation for the trip, my journey to and from Sudan, as well as the weeks I spend in the country through this blog. Expect text, audio recordings and video footage. My estimated time of departure is end of October 2008. Stay tuned!

Tourniquoi? – Widge – 01:25

In 2003, Montréal faced a housing crisis. The city had rapidly declining and extremely low vacancy rates. The average for the city was at 0.5% with the lowest rate being in Côte-des-Neiges 0.1%.

Condominium construction and rental unit conversions into condos was on the rise, leaving fewer affordable places to live. François Saillant, president of FRAPRU, a Montréal-based housing rights group, refers to the 1994 cuts in federal spending on social housing by the Liberal government left the city with a shortage of 22,500 units.

July 1 is an important date in Québec. It is the day when most yearly leases in the province expire if they are not renewed. It’s “moving day”. In 2002, 750 people in Montréal found themselves without an appartment to move to on moving day, leaving them relying on family, friends and the Red Cross to offer them temporary shelter.

The 2003 film (below), captures the initial positive mood of the camp. A 1-watt radio transmitter was set up to offer music and information to the tenters, soccer games were organized, and free food was served for supper. Claude, a homeless man who otherwise sleeps under bushes in Parc du Mont-Royal, said that his favourite part of the day was eating lunch. When asked if he was still hungry, he replied, “Yes, but I’ll leave a chance for others.”

Montréal parks, including Parc Lafontaine, are officially closed between midnight and 6:00am. After midnight, a warning is given to the one hundred activists who decided to stay after the park’s closure. Sometime before 1:00 am more than 125 police in full riot gear move in formation and violently expel those who remained. One activist argued that during a housing crisis when hundreds have yet to find an appartment, then public spaces like parks should be available to camp in. At least one person was arrested.

Tent City – Collectif Les Lucioles- 11:32