Southern Sudanese dare to hope for peace at long last
By Ulrike Koltermann
MAYIENDIT, Sudan, Jan 27, 2007 (dpa) — Despite Monday’s unexpected suspension of peace talks in Kenya, the people of southern Sudan still dare to hope the quest to end Africa’s longest-running civil war will succeed.
The trickle of refugees returning to the villages of their birth may yet become a flood, as a deal would see the return of thousands from refugee camps in neighbouring countries.
Some who have already made the trip told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa of their hopes for the future.
These days, Ezekial Leay uses the word “peace” a lot, even though he has some difficulty pronouncing it.
The missing front teeth that make his “p” sounds more like “f” sounds are a mark of tribal distinction, in the same tradition of the decorative scars that criss-cross the foreheads of other members of his community.
Three years ago, the 24-year-old fled to the Sudanese capital of Khartoum to escape the war that was ravaging the south. He returned as soon as he heard that peace was on the way.
“I’m so happy to be back here”, Ezekiel said, leaning against the grass-covered wall of his home.
The prospect of peace in the south has brought hope to the people for the first time in the history of the 21-year conflict.
Vice President Ali Osman Taha and rebel leader John Garang have in recent months engaged in peace talks in the Kenyan town of Naivasha, now postponed until the middle of February to allow Taha to make the Moslem pilgrimage of haj to Mecca.
They already had agreed that Sudan’s mostly Christian southern region can decide after a six-year interim period whether to secede from the Islamic government in Khartoum.
Also, under the peace plan, oil revenues are to be shared equally between north and south. The main sticking point has been the status of three disputed regions, although hope had been expressed by both sides that a deal could be forged.
The glimmer of peace in the region has been enough to prompt thousands of refugees like Ezekiel to return to the homeland from which they fled.
Up to four million people were displaced by the war, half a million of whom remain in refugee camps beyond the Sudanese border. International aid organisations predict a chaotic mass return to southern Sudan once a final peace deal is signed.
In Ezekiel’s village of Mayiendit, close to the White Nile, time appears to have stood still. The war has hindered every development in the village, which remains without electricity or running water. Farmers still till their soil with primitive picks.
What lessons there are are taught to the village children in the shadow of a tree, as long as they aren’t required to watch over the cattle.
The houses of the village are constructed without nails, their wooden frames bound together with woven straw and plastered with mud.
Once a month a plane from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) drops much-needed sacks of grain and lentils. Should such a sack burst open on impact, the women of the village pick up each individual grain.
John Chuol has also just arrived in Mayiendit. “I was abducted by soldiers when I was four years old and sold to a rich Arab family in Khartoum”, he said. “They treated me like a slave.”
John was forced to cook, clean and iron for the family. He was often beaten. “When they tried to force me to convert to Islam, I ran away.”
It took him three months to make the journey to Mayiendit from the capital, often on foot. “When I finally made it, my parents had killed four bullocks in my honour”, he said, laughing at the memory.
Sudan is the largest country in Africa and one of the most diverse. A majority Moslem Arab population lives in the north of the country, centred around the capital, Khartoum, encircled by desert.
The great and fertile plain of southern Sudan stretches from horizon to horizon, its people more “African” in appearance and mostly non-Moslem, traditional in terms of customs and religions, making their living from agriculture and livestock breeding.
Although the conflict since the late 1990s has chiefly raged over oil rights in southern Sudan, it has its roots in the 1983 regime’s attempts to impose Islamic sharia law upon the south.
“We cannot accept sharia law”, says Matthew Luny. The southern Sudan native had been scraping a living in Khartoum as a construction worker, earning around one dollar per week.
His shabby white robe covers a leg that ends in a stump just below the knee.
“One day I got into an argument with my boss, over a month’s wages that he owed me”, explains Matthew. “In anger, I struck him with a stick.”
Matthew was tried and sentenced by an Islamic court according to sharia law. “They gave me an injection for the pain and then cut off my left leg with a machine. Even though I was in the right, they mutilated me”.
It took him a year to beg the money he needed to return to his homeland, managing to hitch a lift most of the way with a truck driver.
The remainder of the journey took him three days. On crutches. He still bears the scars under his arms.
“I hope that peace comes soon”, Matthew says. Peace will mean progress for southern Sudan. Peace will mean the return of more people to their homeland. Peace will mean streets, schools, hospitals.
“Peace means that there will never be sharia law in the south”, says Matthew Luny, crossing his stump over his healthy right leg.