South Sudan refugees forgive all, plan to go home

By Opheera McDoom

WADI AL-BASHIR, Sudan, Jan 17 (Reuters) – Southern Sudanese in a miserable Khartoum squatter camp said on Monday they forgave the wrongs of the war that drove them there and planned to return home now a peace deal has been signed.

Sudanese girls from the south celebrate Sunday, Jan. 9, 2005, at Nyayo Stadium, Nairobi, Kenya during the signing of Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement. (Sudan Tribune).

“We are opening a fresh page in a book,” said Jaafar Moussa from the Nuba Mountains, scene of fierce fighting in the latter years of a southern civil war that lasted more than two decades.

He said the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) used to raid his people’s cattle and chased them off their land. But he said he had no hard feelings against SPLA leader John Garang, who will become Sudan’s vice president under a peace deal signed last week.

“We will go back and move on — these things don’t matter,” he said. “I will go as soon as I get enough money.” Moussa hitchhiked for three days across Sudan to reach the capital and peace when he fled the war 15 years ago.

There are more than 4 million Sudanese displaced within Sudan and more than 600,000 refugees in neighbouring countries. Some have already started going back, to the concern of aid agencies who think the infrastructure in the south cannot cope and worry about the swathes of land planted with land mines.

Regina Garang, a Dinka from the Bahr al-Ghazal region, said her father had already gone back to find his old farm and restart his business there. “When he’s set it all up, he will come and take us back,” she said.

Akot Bor Achor, a Dinka like John Garang, had praise for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir as well as Garang.

“Really they are both great because they have brought us peace, and that’s what is important,” he said. Achor has lived in a shack made of cardboard boxes and branches for 15 years.

John Albert said within three months most of the displaced living in the huge Wadi al-Bashir camp, a mix of tents, ramshackle huts and brick housing outside Khartoum, would return home.

ILLICIT ALCOHOL

“Here there’s no work, no electricity, no proper water, and the police always come and hit the people here,” he said.

The Sudanese police gave an impromptu demonstration of their methods on Monday during a raid which southerners said was aimed at the illicit trade in home-brewed alcohol, banned in Sudan since the government imposed Islamic law in 1983.

Suddenly the southerners in the market began to run and scatter, screaming and shouting. As the crowds parted, about 50 police armed with long sticks appeared, chasing them and beating the ones they caught.

“They are here for those making Mareisse and Aragi,” said Rawya Abdu, from Darfur. Both are local types of alcohol.

“Wadi al-Bashir is all southerners and they make Mareisse here,” she added.

The imposition of Islamic law on non-Muslim southerners was one of the catalysts for the SPLA rebellion. The peace deal says Khartoum will remain under Islamic sharia law, but government officials say it does not apply to non-Muslims.

“Sharia is not applied on non-Muslims,” said Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail. “It is up to even the Muslim voluntarily to implement it. We are not forcing sharia on him.”

It is a fine distinction. Laws based on sharia, like the Public Order Act, which forbids the making of alcohol, are enforced on non-Muslims, as the residents of the camps found out on Monday.

The police burst into the makeshift breweries and shops, hitting or kicking any protesters along the way.

Albert said he wanted to go home immediately. “If you brought me a taxi like this right now this minute I’d jump in and say ‘Take me home to Juba (in the south)’,” he said.