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Founder Editor(Print): late Shyam Rai Bhatnagar (journalist & freedom fighter) International Editor : M. Victoria Editor : Ashok Bhatnagar *
A newspaper with bold, open and democratic ideas {Established : 2004}

2 फ़र॰ 2012

Cost of Freedom in South Sudan

Kayoi Maze, 42, was separated from her two daughters, ages 18 and 16. Her neighbors later informed her that the fighters had abducted them. “I don’t expect to ever see them again,” said Maze, who like hundreds of villagers returned to the city Likuangole over the weekend to receive food aid from the UN’s World Food Program. ”At least I have two daughters left.”

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In South Sudan, a wave of tribal killings tests fragile independence

LIKUANGOLE, South Sudan — Nothing is intact in this town, save the memories. Every hut was burned to the ground. The only health clinic and the only school were torched. Hundreds were killed or injured. Thousands more fled.

The United Nations and South Sudan’s government had combat forces in this town at the time of the assault late last year. But witnesses say they did nothing to stop the killings.

When the attackers reached a village nearby, they shot Nyandit Allan, 28, twice in her left leg and again in the face, then slit the throats of her two stepsons. “They were singing as they left,” said Allan, who is now recuperating in a clinic.

Six months after celebrating independence,the world’s newest nation is grappling with a virus of tribal violence. In many ways, the inevitable has happened, as ethnic and political tensions exploded after being suppressed by the promise of separation from the north, after a decades-long war against rulers in Khartoum.

The United States and its allies have spent billions to help South Sudan become a stable, pro-Western pillar in a region plagued by terrorism and militant Islam. But now the intensifying attacks have ignited tribal violence and threaten to undermine a government already facing a long list of daunting challenges.

Stopping the violence “would demand a very, very significant military operation, and the government also would have to move significant forces to make that happen,” said Hilde Johnson, the head of the U.N. mission in South Sudan.

The state of Jonglei has long been gripped by poverty, ethnic and political tensions, a massive influx of weapons and a history of cattle raiding between the Nuer and Murle tribes. Last year, the United Nations documented 208 attacks that displaced more than 90,000 people.

But the current bloodletting appears far more vicious and widespread. Once, only cattle camps were raided. Now, entire villages and towns are being razed, infrastructure destroyed.

“Our clinic is full of women and children,” said Karel Janssens, field coordinator for theaid agency Doctors Without Borders in the town of Pibor, where many of the wounded have sought refuge.

Torn apart by revenge

Since the attacks by the Lou Nuer, a subgroup, on this area in late December and early January, the Murle have risen up. They have marauded Nuer areas across Jonglei. Two weeks ago, 47 people were killed in the village of Duk Padiet. Aid agencies have launched a massive humanitarian effort to help those harmed by the raids, which the United Nations now numbers 120,000 people.

On Dec. 17, a Nuer militia known as the White Army announced that it would protect the Nuer population and their cattle from the Murle because the government was not doing enough.

The militia, which has a fundraising and media arm in the United States, said it was also seeking revenge for the massacre of 700 Nuer by Murle warriors in August, a month after South Sudan declared independence.

In a telephone interview, Gai Bol Thong, a Nuer spokesman who lives in Seattle, said his group had raised $45,000 from supporters in the United States and Canada for food and other “humanitarian” needs of the fighters

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For further reading go to

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/in-south-sudan-a-wave-of-tribal-killings/2012/01/27/gIQAtxogdQ_story.html


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