“What we saw were a lot of children coming in with gunshot wounds and landmine injuries” - Refugees International advocate says, noting “strong ethnic element” to military abuses
Tens of thousands of people have been displaced due to conflict in South Sudan’s troubled Jonglei state and insecurity has prevented humanitarian agencies from delivering aid.
Caelin Briggs, an advocate for South Sudan with Refugees International, spoke to Thomson Reuters Foundation about the dilemmas facing the humanitarian community.
What is the most pressing problem in Jonglei after last month’s fighting between the government and rebels?
Pibor county is about 140,000 people, and we literally have absolutely no idea what is going on. We don’t know where they are. We don’t know what the conditions are, how many are injured or wounded from the fighting. That is a really serious situation.
When there was a brief break in some of the fighting… what we saw were a lot of children coming in with gunshot wounds and landmine injuries. It was really concerning how many of the casualties coming in were very young children.
What’s different about the latest violence in Jonglei compared to earlier ethnic clashes between Murle and Lou Nuer militias?
This is a very different conflict, and this, in my view, is actually a lot more troubling.
It was two ethnic groups that were fighting one another. There wasn’t this element of the state actually attacking civilians, which is what we are seeing right now.
We are seeing a bit of a shift in how [Murle rebel leader David] Yau Yau operates, actually holding territory. Typically, Yau Yau and his forces conduct hit-and-run attacks.
Now what we have seen is when Yau Yau or Yau Yau’s affiliates attacked Boma, this town in the south of Jonglei state, they actually held the town, which is not something we have seen from them before. So I think that’s making the government a bit nervous.
What happened in Pibor last month? Witnesses said the army ransacked the town, while the army says it was a few renegade soldiers.
There’s a strong ethnic element when it comes to the SPLA (the Sudan People's Liberation Army, the South Sudanese military) abuses in Pibor town. Pibor town is ethnically Murle, which is the same ethnicity as David Yau Yau.
The SPLA battalion that is stationed in Pibor town is ethnically Lou Nuer. The two groups have historically fought each other.
Add to that a whole lot of soldiers who haven’t been paid, who are ethnically Lou Nuer, who are frustrated with the Murle population, that’s why we are seeing a lot of the abuses.
Why are humanitarian agencies not speaking out about these alleged abuses?
None of the humanitarian agencies in South Sudan are really able to speak out about the abuses they are seeing because in doing so, they would jeopardise the lives of their staff.
The organisations that have been operating in Pibor town have been quietly trying to talk about the SPLA abuses but can’t really come out in the same way to say this is what we are seeing because they then will not be allowed back in the area.
In Pibor, we are seeing very deliberate vandalism of NGO compounds as a way of keeping people from coming. It’s not just that they are taking supplies. In the MSF (Medecins Sans Frontieres) clinic, for example, they literally went in and cut the cords of the machines and dumped medicine on the floor and stamped on it to keep people out.
Isn’t the U.N. Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) able to protect civilians and humanitarian workers?
After the U.N. helicopter was shot down [by the SPLA] in December, this very strange relationship developed between the UNMISS peacekeepers and the government and the SPLA.
The government started saying in order to ensure your security - i.e., in other words to make sure we don’t shoot down your helicopters as we did in December - you should clear all movements with us.
So that’s what the peacekeepers had started doing. They started informing SPLA anytime they were going to move anywhere.
It’s an uncomfortably close relationship between peacekeepers and the government. The peacekeepers need to have a lot more independence.
Why can’t they do that?
Their mandate, in a lot of ways, seems to be inherently contradictory. On the one hand, they are supposed to be supporting the government and building up the government capacity. On the other hand, they are supposed to be protecting civilians.
Constantly, we are seeing the peacekeeping mission prioritise their relationship with the government over protecting civilians.
When the government perpetrates abuses, it puts them in a difficult position. I think there’s a lot of ambiguity in how they should be dealing with that.
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