Civil wars afflict many African countries. Over 400,000 people have died in a 3-year-old civil war in Sudan, one of Africa’s largest countries. 636,000 people fled from Sudan into neighboring South Sudan, which is even more backward than Sudan.
Now, South Sudan is embroiled in a civil war of its own. Some civilian populations have been attacked both by rebels and the government. A news report explains:
Thousands of people have been fleeing the South Sudanese town of Akobo and surrounding parts of Jonglei state, where the army says it has intensified strikes on its enemies to regain control. The latest fighting has led the UN to warn of a possible return to full-blown civil war in the world’s youngest nation.
Nyawan Koang, 30, and her five children had to walk for two days to reach the dusty village of Duk. They had fled Ayod, a remote and largely pastoralist county in Jonglei state, where armed clashes had been raging between the military and their opponents who had been fortifying their presence there since the beginning of the year.
“We were [wedged] between two forces: the SPLA-IO and the government. And their bullets kill us,” she said.
Government forces are trying to retake territory from those loyal to First Vice-President Riek Machar, who has been suspended from his post after being accused of plotting to overthrow President Salva Kiir….Aligned with Machar are the Sudan People’s Liberation Army in Opposition (SPLA-IO), who have been seizing towns in Jonglei and other neighbouring states.
As they advanced, threatening Jonglei’s capital, Bor, they left devastated communities in their wake. Whole villages have been torched and civilians indiscriminately killed. The government has responded swiftly – and ferociously – deploying more troops to attack the positions of their rivals.
But civilians were also attacked – including Nyawan’s family. She lost both her parents when an air strike hit their small thatched-roof hut.
“Fire came from the sky and burned them,” she said. Nyawan and her family are among the more than 280,000 people forced from their homes by recent clashes. Thousands of them are in Duk, where aid organisations provide food, medicine and other basic essentials….Fighting between forces loyal to President Kiir and his rival-turned-deputy Machar first broke out in 2013, just two years after the euphoria of independence.
A 2018 peace deal ended the civil war that had killed nearly 400,000 people, but it has never been properly implemented and the relationship between the pair has become increasingly strained amid ethnic tensions and sporadic violence.
