Subject: Christmas Greetings from the Sudanposted by furtive at 2:16 PM on April 26, 2006
Merry Christmas to my friends and neighbours in the land of ice and snow. I hope this email finds you doing well and enjoying the onset of winter. Life here in South Sudan goes on at a quick pace. I've been in the mission area for two months now and the days are flying by, which is a great sign.
I have an incredibly interesting job that allows considerable travel in this diverse but troubled country. I've already been to some fascinating places and met dozens of truly remarkable people. Juba, the town where I'm living, is 1,200 kilometres away from, but a continent distant from Sudan's capital, Khartoum. Juba has been aptly described as the largest village in Africa as it consists of hundreds of small neighbourhoods made up of tukuls (mud huts with straw roofs) and there is only one building that's over two stories. Anything that's not made of mud was built before 1956 and probably hasn't been painted since then. The city and its people have suffered terribly during this long and horrendous civil war, but the people here in Juba are stoically cheerful and get on with re-building their lives as best they can. People tell me Juba has a population of 250,000. You would never know it to look at the town from the ground, and a census hasn't been done here for decades. No one really knows how many live here, but one thing is certain, it's growing rapidly.
There is no place like South Sudan for people watching. Each day I see new groups of people on the streets. This morning there were small crowds of tired, dusty, barefoot herdsmen shuffling into town from the West. They were all carrying empty game bags and they had spears and arrows on their shoulders, except for a few young men at the back who had AK47s slung on their backs. Despite wearing brightly coloured bush smocks, these newcomers looked grim and determined. The locals I spoke to weren't certain where they came from, but someone suggested an inaccessible area over by the border with the Central African Republic. Each one of them was sporting an unusual set of very deep horizontal tribal scars, quite different from the usual tribal markings you see here.
In addition to the people moving in from the outlying areas, every day also brings a new flood of returning refugees. People just seem to drift in from Darfur, the Kordofan and the camps outside Khartoum. The new migration pattern is driven in part by the Peace Agreement in the South; but there is also a major increase in banditry in and around Juba and many people are coming here to find safety. For the last two nights running the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has terrorized outlying settlements. The LRA is a vicious and absolutely lunatic group from Uganda. It's made up largely of abducted child soldiers and has existed for nearly twenty years. The LRA is fighting to overthrow the Ugandan government in order to institute a new social order based upon the Ten Commandments. They have twice raided Gumba, a small village four kilometres away from here on the East bank of the Nile. They looted whatever they could find, abducted two children and killed several people. Once they got what they needed to keep themselves going, they slipped back into the night. Some suggest that it's not the LRA, but a band of unemployed soldiers who have never been paid. I'd guess that some of the lawlessness farther West can certainly be blamed on that. However, on the weekend the LRA left a pretty convincing letter written in Acholi, a Ugandan language. Their list of demands is as crazy and scattered as the organization itself.
We had some heavy tribal fighting in Yambio a little over a week ago, but the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA) moved their Dinka troops out of the town and replaced them with soldiers from the local tribes. UN observers and Bangladeshi infantry are there now and that combination has quietened things down almost as quickly as it took for the trouble to flare up. Despite having a mixture of many different tribes living here, Juba itself is reasonably quiet. Last weekend, as planned, the SPLA moved back in strength into town. Their entrance into town was the most jubilant event I've ever witnessed. Two full brigades of former guerrillas in new uniforms and sporting brand new weapons marched and drove by crammed onto civilian trucks. The crowds were ecstatic: a bull was sacrificed on the main street followed by deliriously happy surging crowds, women ululating, kids dancing, drummers pounding, horns blowing, flags waving, drunks lurching around, people cheering themselves hoarse. It was really something to witness. VE day couldn't have been more of a celebration. I've enclosed a picture of some of the SPLA in their new uniforms loaded onto a truck outside town. - Like that photo everyday I see so many different scenes that keep hammering home to me the message that "Michael, you are living in one very different corner of the world."
You would think that with two brigades of SPLA in a town that has been held by the Sudanese Army for the entire war, it would be an explosive situation; but the problems appear to be minor ones. There have been some deadly fights, but so far it's been criminal activity not organized fighting and things have happily remained under control. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have pretty much stayed in their barracks and UN sponsored "Joint Integrated Units" of SPLA/SAF military police have been patrolling and they have managed to keep a lid on things.
There is absolutely no night-life here (not much day life to speak of either for that matter) and in the last couple weeks, with the changes in the town, the market area has become seriously dangerous after dark - but to put this into context, I can say the same thing about numerous other more developed cities I've spent time in as well.
Life here is fascinating; and as much as I miss my beautiful wife and family, Africa is a rush. Everyday there is something completely different and intriguing. The place actually smells different; there is always dust in the air mixed with the ever-present tang of burning garbage and burning grass.
I live in a tent, which is fine by me. On the whole the conditions are probably at least as comfortable as what the average Canadian soldier puts up with in the field in winter. - It's quite hot here, yesterday at noon the thermometer in our camp registered 46 degrees. Think of the hottest days in Ontario in July with high humidity, then crank up a few degrees of brilliantly hot sunshine and that's South Sudan. Juba is in a transitional area, something between the savanna and the jungle. It's more savanna than jungle with a healthy sprinkling of mango trees and grasslands. The climate supports more insects than you would believe possible and as a result at night we have hundreds of harmless toads in the camp. The downside of toads is that they attract snakes, and although they are very rarely a problem, we had an Egyptian cobra three nights ago slithering into in the tent next to mine. As a result, I'm very careful when I reach for my shower thongs in the morning and I keep my tent flap tightly zipped.
The food's tolerable. It's healthy, but monotonous. We get two choices of rice and chicken, rice and curried beef or rice and lamb (a.k.a. goat) for both lunch and dinner every single day - all the other nationals in our camp think Tabasco Sauce is a Canadian dietary staple. I'm not complaining. When you see what the poor locals are eating, these things keep the UN's relatively comfortable lives in sharp perspective.
There are no identified direct threats to the UN here in Sudan - so, in real terms we're pretty safe. In fact, the SPLA and the Sudanese government army actually work alongside us. Nonetheless, there's no question, the peace here is a fragile one. The place is swimming in weapons and there are still about sixty "Other Armed Groups" - private militias, tribes, warlords and gangs who have not signed up to the peace agreement. We are trying to get them all signed up and aligned with either the SAF or the SPLA early in the New Year; but we'll have to wait and see how that plays out. The Other Armed Groups could be a problem, because if any one of them gets out of hand, they could possibly send the place up in flames again. Also, after so many years of such a brutal war neither side trusts the other, and it wouldn't take much to get the most antagonistic elements back to fighting each other again. Nonetheless, we do see gains made and we can all see progress on a daily basis. The UN presence here, and the policy, in this particular mission, of doing everything jointly - the UN, the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Sudanese People's Liberation Army doing monitoring and verification tasks together is working quite well and will probably become a new standard procedure for peacekeeping missions.
My job is totally absorbing and I'm grateful that I managed to get such a good one. I work with twelve other officers in The Joint Monitoring & Coordination Office, (JMCO) which does the groundwork for the development and coordination of overall ceasefire policy as well as hammers out with the SPLA and SAF all those military issues that can't be resolved regionally. The JMCO was wisely positioned well forward, in the heart of the most southerly state. As a result, we are right beside the most pressing issues as they happen. It means that we are well informed and we can react fairly quickly. The distance from the Force Headquarters in Khartoum is not a great problem (cynics say it's an advantage, although the military components of the headquarters that I deal with are quite reasonable and doing their best.) We couldn't have operated like this a few years ago. Now, we are connected right across the country by satellite links with mobile phones, radios and the internet. Unfortunately, the SAF and the SPLA do not have the kinds of communication capabilities we have and it makes quite a difference in their ability to react and to pass on information to their more remotely deployed troops. This is particularly true of the SPLA who are quite literally moving from being a hardscrabble guerrilla movement to a modern army and although they are trying their hardest, the problems they face are enormous.
One of the characteristics of the mission in Sudan is that from an operational viewpoint it's extremely complex. Both sides are highly factionalized and there are numerous competing interests that influence what's going on here. Tribalism, oil, religion, ethnicity, language, established power groups such as the police and intelligence services, private militias as well as the influence of border states and other neighbouring insurgencies all combine to make the simplest things complex. There are also numerous factors within the UN mission itself that complicate the situation. There are over seventy-five nations deployed here from every corner of the earth, each with different cultures, different perceptions of time, different ideas on hygiene, different views on how urgent things should be, different thinking on hierarchy, authority and dignity, different ideas as to what constitutes good manners - and not the least, radically different abilities in English, the common mission language. It all adds up to make for some interesting moments.
The JMCO, the group I work in is responsible for keeping three levels of inter-factional meetings going and so we work seven days a week. We convene a meeting each morning with both SAF and SPLA officers. It's a busy pace and we spend about twelve to thirteen hours each day working on a comprehensive range of issues such as monitoring troop movements, troop withdrawals, de-mining operations, disarming militias, demobilization of ex-soldiers, the formation of a new joint and integrated army as well as more narrowly focussed things such as child soldiers, deserters, disarming the nomads, helping Non Government Organizations and UN agencies set up programs for disabled ex combatants and setting up joint SPLA and Govt of Sudan monitoring teams. The work is totally absorbing and the days seem to connect into a long fast forward blur. There's lots to do, and as I said, it allows for plenty of travel and daily interaction with both sides. I love it. It's certainly the most interesting and rewarding professional work I've ever done.
From the internet I see that very little of what goes on down here ever makes it into the press because there are no foreign reporters anywhere for hundreds and hundreds of kilometres. It's kind of like a tree falling in the forest and no one being there to hear it. If the peace holds - and the UN and a lot of Sudanese are working as hard as they can to ensure that it does - then there is no doubt that things will eventually get a lot better. There are some signs of improvement now. I see more little road side stands popping up here and there. People sitting on the verge of dirt roads selling a few bottles of soft drinks, soap and other simple luxuries. There is also a small bus service operating now that wasn't around a few weeks ago. Small things, but they add up in the aggregate. There are plans for much larger international aid projects to start coming on stream in the next several months and things like a working electrical grid, a clean water supply and sewage lines will make a vast difference in people's lives down here. I'm sincerely looking forward to the day when the armies have stood back from one another, when the roads are open, the mines are gone and the bandits and crazy leftovers are all cleared. Then, the economy can start up again and people can begin to resume something close to normal lives.
There's really not much else to report. My days are full and things are going about as well as we could have hoped for out here out in the land of sticky sweltering eternal blistering sunshine. If one has to be far from home at Christmas, I can't honestly think of a better reason for it than doing what we're doing - and I don't regret it for a second. I wish you and your families a very Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year. I look forward to seeing you all again in May.
All the best,
L Col Michael Goodspeed
Deputy Chief of Staff
Joint Monitoring & Coordination Office, Juba
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posted by Artw at 12:43 PM on April 26, 2006