When
her family ran out of food last month, Angelina Nhokmar, a 20-year-old
mother of two, ventured outside the camp’s gates. She said she was lucky
to have made it to the market and back unharmed, because dozens of
women were raped by government soldiers in recent weeks as they made the
same journey.
“It’s not safe,” she said, tossing handfuls of sorghum into a pot of boiling water. “Our enemies are outside.”
The civil war that ripped apart South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, ended on paper months ago.
But an eruption of clashes between the country’s rival factions
in July put a chokehold on regular food distribution for the tens of
thousands of people stranded in United Nations-run displacement camps.
As families struggled to find sustenance, they endured an increase in
health care crises, ethnic tensions and sexual violence.
Nearly
30,000 people have been sheltering at United Nations sites around the
capital, Juba, since South Sudan erupted into civil war in 2013. For
more than two years, soldiers loyal to President Salva Kiir — who
belongs to the Dinka ethnic group, South Sudan’s largest — battled
troops led by Riek Machar of the Nuer ethnic group, which is believed to
be the second largest.
Tens
of thousands of people lost their lives in the war, and troops on both
sides committed human rights abuses against civilians on a devastating
scale.
Continue reading the main story
A peace deal officially ended the fighting last year. Mr. Machar, who had served as vice president before being fired in 2013, agreed to become Mr. Kiir’s deputy once again and moved back to Juba in April.
But then fighting broke out again
between the two sides on July 7, killing hundreds. Mr. Machar’s
residence was destroyed, and he fled the capital. He has refused to
return to Juba unless more international troops are deployed. Mr. Kiir
opposes this, arguing that the 12,000 United Nations peacekeeping troops
already stationed here are enough.
For
years, the displacement camps have been worlds unto themselves:
communities complete with churches, shops and schools. But they are also
plagued by overcrowding, recurring shortages of basic goods, and the
uncertainty faced by residents who have no idea when, if ever, they will
feel safe enough to leave.
So
they stay, cloistered inside barbed-wire fences guarded by United
Nations troops who have failed to keep peace in the capital or even to
prevent assaults just outside the camps’ perimeters.
Sexual
assaults in Juba surged last month, to at least 217 reported cases, the
United Nations human rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, said in a
statement on Thursday.
Members
of South Sudan’s own national army, he said, seemed to be responsible
for most of the assaults. And most of the victims, he added, were
displaced Nuer women and girls.
Many
were women living in the camps who ventured out to the markets when
food ran out. Others were fleeing the clashes and making their way to
the displacement sites for the first time.
The
civilians who came to these camps in 2013 were overwhelmingly Nuer.
Last week, thousands of them demonstrated against Mr. Kiir for
recognizing a new vice president to take Mr. Machar’s place in the
transitional government, calling it a violation of the peace deal.
Such
a gathering would be unimaginable now in central Juba. The streets of
the capital are firmly under the control of the president’s forces,
though they are still tense. Many properties have been destroyed, and
many more looted — often by men wearing army uniforms.
International
partners have also suffered, including the United Nations peacekeeping
mission, which lost two Chinese soldiers to crossfire inside the camp
last month, and the World Food Program, whose main warehouse in South
Sudan was looted from top to bottom in one of the worst such episodes
the organization has experienced in years.
It
wasn’t just the food, which totaled about 4,500 metric tons and
consisted mostly of nutritional supplements for children and pregnant or
nursing mothers, according to a spokeswoman, Challiss McDonough.
“Everything was stripped,” she said. “Technical equipment, generators, fuel stocks — every single thing was gone.”
Also
stolen were several trucks specially outfitted to deliver food across
the country, a near-impossible task for normal vehicles in the current
rainy season. That means the warehouse looting in Juba, which would have
required a herculean effort involving hundreds of people over several
days, will have ripple effects all across this desperately hungry
country.
Last
week, the World Food Program, which still has a smaller warehouse in
the vicinity of the capital, delivered a new shipment of food to the
camps. But there is not enough for everyone. People said they had been
asked to share their rations with thousands of newcomers.
This
has led to some friction, said Charles Longa, 25, a new arrival. Like
many of the most recently displaced, he is not Nuer but Equatorian, a
catchall term encompassing several ethnic groups from the country’s
diverse southern regions.
“The
people who have been living here for a long time are telling us we’d
better go home,” he said, blaming food shortages for the rising
tensions. “We Equatorians don’t want to be in here, begging. We want to
be out there, farming.”
Like
many other new arrivals, Mr. Longa and his children had not yet been
given a tent and were sheltering in a primary school in the center of
the largest displacement site. He said he feared for his safety when,
shortly after he arrived, an Equatorian was blamed for a killing just
outside the camp, spurring a brief protest outside the school.
William
Tejok Toch, a community leader in the camp, acknowledged that the
schoolyard had briefly been targeted, requiring intervention from United
Nations police officers.
“In the camps, we have our criminals,” he said. “But we manage the situation.”
Some
who fled the clashes last month crowded into schools and churches in
Juba, saying they did not want to risk the journey to the United Nations
camps.
Others said they had made the dangerous trek, but were turned away.
“If
you give shelter, you should give it to everyone,” said Azen Aziuphia,
41, who said that he, his wife and his son had been denied entry. He
accused the peacekeepers of refusing to admit Equatorians like him,
though the United Nations says it does not discriminate on the basis of
ethnicity.
The
United Nations humanitarian chief, Stephen O’Brien, acknowledged that
the sites had limited space, and that the registration of newcomers had
been slow. He added that the camps were meant to accommodate only those
who have nowhere else to go.
The
camps were caught in the crossfire during the clashes this month, and
at least 16 people died. Some families have buried their loved ones on
the edges of the camp, just beyond a coil of barbed wire. Now, the
refuge is hemmed in on two sides by rows of shallow graves topped with
makeshift crosses.
Gatleak
Jal, 32, who fled to the camp in 2013, suspects that Mr. Kiir’s troops
deliberately targeted the United Nations sites. When gunshots were fired
just beyond the walls three weeks ago, he was shot three times in the
arm as he ran toward his tent, and then two times more — once in the
abdomen, once in the leg — after he ducked into a trench for shelter.
In
a crowded medical center inside the camp, he lifted his shirt to reveal
a patchwork of bloody bandages. “They didn’t put any medicine on this,
because they ran out,” he said. “They’re only washing it with water.”
Mr.
Longa, the new arrival, grew wistful thinking about the three brothers
he had lost in three separate conflicts. One died in the war for
independence against Sudan, another in the civil war two years ago, and
one more in clashes this month, he said.
All three were members of the army, he added. But now he wonders what they were fighting for.
“We used to go to war for land, or for freedom,” he said. “But now they are confusing us, and making it about tribe.”
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