James Manuen Deng is holding his sobbing two-year-old son Garang, who is wrapped in bandages and blankets. The sick child - named after the late southern rebel leader John Garang - nearly died before being admitted to the therapeutic feeding centre in Nyamlell in Aweil North, a county in Northern Bahr el Ghazal. Deng is a member of the Dinka ethnic community in the southern Sudanese state of Northern Bahr el Ghazal, which comprises the counties of Aweil North, East, South and West. Deng fled his village during the war-induced famine that ravaged the region in 1988 and claimed approximately 70,000 lives. He returned home in March, on the run again, this time fleeing the escalating violence in the neighbouring state of South Darfur. "I decided to come because the situation was very bad in Darfur," Deng said. "Garang's twin brother had died already, and I was afraid my three other boys would die, too. We arrived in Arial Biam [12 hours’ walk from Nyamlell] without anything, and I have shame, as I am dependent on the community. They have nothing themselves, and because their food is running out, they don't share anymore." Deng initially refused to bring Garang to the therapeutic feeding centre. He was afraid that during his absence his other two sons would die from starvation. Faced with this impossible choice, he decided to let Garang die. Only after the feeding centre agreed to provide food for all three children did Deng come to Nyamlell to get treatment for Garang. Northern Bahr el Ghazal faces the same problems that are encountered across southern Sudan as it emerges from a 21-year civil war. The rural economy was destroyed during the fighting, and agricultural practices are still so rudimentary that malnutrition is chronic between May and August, the months before the next harvest, when the previous year's food has already run out. To make things worse, lack of access to clean water and the nearly total absence of primary healthcare makes children very vulnerable. Year after year, disease-induced malnutrition rates in Northern Bahr el Ghazal are among the worst in South Sudan. Aid agencies fear that the thousands of deprived Dinkas who have recently started to arrive in the area from Darfur and Khartoum will increase the pressure on the region's limited resources. "People are coming, but nobody is giving support," said Ngong Deng Gum, commissioner of Aweil North. "After the [north-south] peace agreement was signed [in January 2005], people forgot about them. They came back without anything and need help to get back on their feet." Displaced coming home Sudan's southern civil war displaced approximately 3.8 million people within the country, according to United Nations estimates. Two million of them are displaced in southern Sudan, while 1.8 million eke out a living in settlements for the internally displaced around the capital, Khartoum. Louis Hoffmann, head of the South Sudan office of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), estimates that there are between 80,000 and 90,000 displaced Dinka from Bahr el Ghazal in Darfur, "the vast majority" originating from Aweil North and East. The Sudanese government put the number as high as 300,000, but no international organisation has been able to confirm this. No large-scale return movements from Darfur to South Sudan took place immediately after the signing of the peace agreement. According to aid workers, the first groups of displaced Dinka who tested the waters in Northern Bahr el Ghazal in 2005 were "a little shocked about the local conditions" and came back to Darfur. Their opinion changed, however, following a general deterioration of security in Darfur and a series of targeted attacks on Dinka settlements from January 2006. Former residents of Beliel camp for the internally displaced near Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, reported that Janjawid - government-aligned Arab militia - had attacked the camp. According to Margaret Yamaha, field coordinator for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) for Aweil West and North, Dinka returnees from El Ferdose, Abu Matariq and El Da'ein - east of Nyala - all mentioned an increase in intimidation, attacks, killing and rape. Peter Ngong Yel, a 34-year-old Dinka man who was abducted by Arab cattle herders of the Rizzeigat community in 1984 and eventually made his way to Beliel camp, said that armed men would come at night and loot animals and other belongings of the camp residents, shooting anybody who resisted. "A Janjawid killed my niece when they tried to steal her goat," he said. "Although he was caught, he didn't even get arrested." In mid-March, according to Hoffmann, the IOM grew concerned about the rapid buildup of returning Dinka on the bank of the Kiir River, near the border between South Darfur and Northern Bahr el Ghazal. "Besides the 3,000 people IOM helped to return [from Darfur] in April, we have assisted about 4,500 spontaneous returns to get off the river," Hoffmann said. In addition, approximately 13,000 people from Khartoum had returned to the area in 2006, he estimated. "The absorption capacity in south Sudan is generally limited and we wanted to make sure that the numbers were manageable, but the pace of spontaneous returns to this region [Northern Bahr el Ghazal] has picked up. The numbers are higher than we expected," Hoffman said. Almost daily, an overloaded bus from Khartoum arrives at the banks of the Nyamlell river, with beds, chairs, bicycles and other belongings of returnees piled high on top of its roof.
James Mauen Deng with his sick child at Nyamlell therapeutic feeding centre, Northern Bahr el Ghazal. |
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