Jonglei Canal project – Protect local interests first
by Atem de Deng Atem*
September 21, 2006 — It is true that, when a country relies more heavily on the export of natural resources, it is likely to suffer from civil war and forced population displacements caused by differential rent development in economic terms. In other hand forced displacement sometimes, results from the need to build infrastructure for new industries, transportation highways, urban developments, hospitals, airports and natural resources such as oil and agricultural commodities. These raise major ethical questions because they reflect distribution of development’s benefits and losses. These building programs are needed. They improve many people’s lives, provide employment, and give people better services. But the involuntary displacements caused by the Jonglei canal in1980s, in Upper Nile and Jonglei States, in the South had been accompanied by human displacement and death.
After a French subcontractor with many bulldozers had installed a large compound known to the local people as (Poktap in Jonglei State Southern Sudan) in 1983 and moved in it employees, the people living in the area were told to move by the government who gave the message to the chiefs. They gave no reason other than that the Jonglei Canal’s “operations were going to be there so you have to go away. The cows will destroy everything”. Everyone left the area and the government’s armed forces moved in and burned down all the villages. Those who moved received no assistance with tents or compensation of any kind. The government gave only a brief time to leave, before bulldozers destroyed the villages. The people were allowed to take only their cows. When they were forced out from their homes, Southern Sudanese were prevented from returning by the burning off their crops and sorghum’s storage.
To begin with, we have to be careful and capable for any issues put forward by “political elites” or any group that wants to profit from the Jonglei canal and weigh the consequences before rushing into concession or contracts. As Minister of Irrigation of South Sudan govt, Joseph Dower went to Egypt last month and reached a deal and I quote “the agreement included extension of technical equipment, the assessment of water resources, forecast on flooding and drought as well as reviewing studies on the Jonglei canal”. It is corrects to “review”, but as we know it was a bad deal. We hope that, this review would be suspension of Jonglei canal definitely by our government in Juba and there would be no secret agreement or bribery in favor of Egypt in the 21st century. The land would not be rented to a tenant at unless there would be some absolute maximum benefit for the South. We argue that such “development” policy and planning methodologies, thinking by NIF or third party, must change. Digging would repeat similar to the1980s destructive consequence of interfering with the Sudanese natural resource all the time. From Atar to Twic East County people were displaced in the early 1980s during Cairo and Khartoum’s effort to build this Jonglei Canal through the great swampy region of Upper Nile. The purpose was to straighten the course of the White Nile and so to decrease significant water flow that occurs as the river meanders through the South and to increase water supplies for northern Sudan into Egypt. Of course no consideration was given to the environmental impact of the Jonglei Canal, and it devastation to the Southern Sudanese ecology that was critical to the indigenous populations. Unsurprisingly, one of the first military actions of note during the past civil war was the destruction in 1986 of the key equipment to have been used in building the canal.
There were grave and systematic human violations which took place within Jonglei and Upper Nile States. We never thought that we would be discussing the development of the Jonglei canal after 22 year of war. The government of Sudan has been unable or unwilling to address, “susceptible” to remedy neither through the ordinary mechanisms of the state’s legal system nor through the South; and no form of pressure from the Southern Sudan government has had any reasonable prospect of having a significant effect in stopping this contract in the first place. The official end of the Jonglei canal was 22 years ago. The digging was suspended by SPLA forces, in January 1984 after great battalions of 104 and 105 attacked paktop and CCI company or (Varkerwind) itself was bombed and destroyed in 1986 by great divisions of (Koryom mathondit) and supported by (Mour Mour) divisions through their songs that (“Selling out our land, selling out our water and sold our land out to be dug as canal that brought bombs for revolution”). Of course our land will not again be used by few or foreigners who want profits from it and that perhaps were a clear messages, canal was part of our struggle.
Therefore, as Mr. Deng Athoi Galuak and Koang Tut Jing described the situation in Jonglei, “there are many ways to manage flooding”. We have to employ our own resources and do some research to prevent flooding despite the foreign investment and free expansion of capital in our land. We need to build Dams to reduce water lower level in the South like the ones in the North Sudan and Egypt to control the floodwater. For many years now North Sudan has been flooded. An example just last month “more than 2200 families from the Amri community were displaced and some 700 houses were completely destroyed after Merowe Dam filled up” and another example in Ethiopia that killed more than 600 people in that country in August 20, 2006 in the town of Sinja according to (BBC news). The allegation that have been received by citizens in Sudan that, only South Sudan is a flooding area is untrue. Every region in East Africa needs help. There are definitely other elements behind which people of South Sudan should beware of about the Jonglei canal.
Southern Sudanese are not different from French and Egyptian, or other people who live in countries where the natural resources are the main commodity. They want the peaceful enjoyment of their natural resources. If they are to be taken away from their homes in the name of “development,” they want to have some say in it through their governors Thon Leek and Dak Duop. At a minimum they deserve fair treatment, a just process to determine the need for their displacement, and adequate compensation for their losses in1980s. But they would not think that a few scholarships, a clinic, and handouts would be an adequate compensation for having their livelihood and homes destroyed and their land subjected to dry up, and forced to live in intolerably substandard conditions exposed to life threatening epidemics for an indefinite period of time, deprived of the opportunity to return to self sustaining life from civil war.
The means by which the Sudanese govt current and past chose to protect the foreign interests are arbitrary: it would expel rural people from their land and destroy their property. Because these people lived in areas where natural resources are found, like the treatment that southern Sudanese living in oil areas Western Upper Nile in 1999 through 2000 were presumed on grounds of their ethnic origin to be opposed to the government of Sudan exploiting, will not repeats itself this time.
* Atem de Deng Atem is a Sudanese at Portland State University Oregon (USA) and former SPLA freedom fighter; he recently graduated with a double major: Business finance and Economic, and he can be reached at [email protected]