I am now in Juba, the capital of the newest country and one of the poorests in the world. It is my second visit. The first one was in July 2013. The president Silva Kaiir, a dinka, decided that day to dismiss his VP, from the etnia Nuer. This created then immediate unrest and some fighting, which caused us to be inmobilized for 48 hrs in our compound in Maban, in the North. Finally, i could fly to Juba sharing an aircraft belonging to a company who do major road repairs.
This time, I have come to supervise the management of the emergency, after the clashes between the two etnias, dinka and nuer, after the coup d'etat attempt in December. Since then, hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians have been displaced, have lost everything, and I mean, everything, many have been killed, many women raped, thousands of houses burnt, crops and cattle lost, etc Malakal, in the Blue Nile state, has literally disappeared from the map. The oposition has taken most of the North East, while the Government keep Juba, the South and the West.
The rainy season has started. Most of the country's roads are impracticable already. The North can only be reached by air. Back in July, I came to plan the rainly season well in advance. We decided then to buy trucks, Core Relief Items, buy also fuel, shelter materials, and prepositioned all by road in warehouses in the North. Now, because of the war, the plan have not been implemented and no food is available in the Blue Nile State. Hundreds of thousands are in risk of famine, many children are already in malnutrition.
What can we do?
We are implementing a series of airlifts to Maban from Juba, using Antonovs with 6.5 tons cargo capacity, to transport everything possible: generators, fuel, blankets, mosquito nets, timber, buckets, sleeping mats, kitchen sets, plastic sheets. 250 rotations are planned. 51 are done as of today, 16 May. This effort costs some 3.5 million $ and will last 63 days. In parallel, the World food Program are doing something similar for food.
In the meantime, all I hear is convoys searched for weapons, opposition leader in Unity State threatening to shut down any plane whithout the UN logo very visible....and we hire commercial aircrafts!!, curfew at 8 pm, skirmishes and shooting in and on, UNHCR having to evacuate our local Nuer colleagues from Dinka territory, and viceversa, to protect them and their families, many cars with soldiers all around Juba, soldiers shooting at air because they have not received their salaries on time, etc, etc. In the meantime, oil keeps flowing from the fields and going to Sudan for refining...Of course, this does not stop
South Sudan: very rich in oil, in minerals, in agriculture....Yet, extremely poor, needing to import everything, with only 190 kms of paved road, a country the size of France....
A final picture: I saw today, in the middle of the poorest housing and dirtiest roads I have ever seen, amongst the most absolute misery, that many girls and ladies, dressed in clean and colourful costumes, would walk along the dirty roads, with the characteristic and gracious movement of the African women, their heads up, their gaze straight....
