Sudan Relief Effort Presses On as Peace Holds
Five months after the government of Sudan signed a peace treaty with rebels in the south, aid agencies are rushing to feed the hungry and repair the infrastructure devastated by more than two decades of civil war. Jason Beaubien gives Jennifer Ludden an update.
JENNIFER LUDDEN, host:
And now to Sudan. Despite the conflict in Darfur, a fragile peace in another part of that country is moving ahead. The Sudanese People's Liberation Army and the Sudanese government signed a peace deal earlier this year, ending more than two decades of civil war in the south. Now former rebels are attempting to set up a semi-autonomous government and aid agencies are rushing in to repair the region's devastated infrastructure. NPR's Jason Beaubien is in Rumbek, the new capital of southern Sudan, and he joins me now on a satellite phone.
Hi, Jason.
JASON BEAUBIEN reporting:
Hi, Jennifer.
LUDDEN: So what are conditions like in this new capital?
BEAUBIEN: Well, it's just a tiny little town. It was a cow town. Cattle for years have been the primary commodity here. There's no electricity, except in some of the aid compounds where people have generators. There are no paved roads, and this is an area that's about the size of Germany. This is a place where the infrastructure has been absolutely devastated. The few brick buildings that were left by the British in the '50s were completely bombed out and destroyed during the war. Almost everyone lives in thatched huts. You often see children, sometimes even adults, walking through the streets completely naked which is a sign of the level of poverty but also a sign of just how isolated this area has become. There isn't really much of a cash economy and people during the war reverted back to just tending cattle and doing simple agriculture to survive.
LUDDEN: It sounds like an enormous challenge to address all these problems. Are there former rebels creating a new government?
BEAUBIEN: They're in the process of forming that government. The peace deal was signed in January and the former rebels are now attempting to set up an administration. They've been sort of tied up in some political negotiations with the government in Khartoum in the north. They're trying to rewrite a constitution. So things have really fallen to the aid agencies to pick up the social services, health, set up schools. Things like that are all being done by outside agencies and the rebels say that they're in the process of setting up these structures and hope that by July they will have actually an administrative structure here in Rumbek.
LUDDEN: And the aid agencies are able to do what so far?
BEAUBIEN: The aid agencies actually have been here for quite some time. Like, the World Food Program was operating in southern Sudan through much of the end of the conflict. The last 10, 15 years they were air-dropping food throughout this region. They are now in the process of trying to expand airports so that they can bring in some larger planes. They're also redoing some of the main roads which were heavily mined, had no attention paid to them for two decades. There are still going to be dirt roads, but then they will be able to bring food in by truck. UNICEF is going to try a major vaccination campaign which they just weren't able to do during the 20 years of conflict. So there's certainly a huge change in what the aid agencies are able to tackle in terms of the scale of some of these projects.
LUDDEN: Millions of Sudanese left the south. They fled the war there. Are any of them returning?
BEAUBIEN: Yes, many of them are returning. Almost two million people fled north to Khartoum. Also you've got people from other parts of Sudan, people who went to Darfur when the south was the hot conflict--are now coming back from Darfur and trying to re-establish their lives in what were their original homesteads.
LUDDEN: And, of course, we should note again that this peace still did not cover the ongoing war going on the western Darfur region of Sudan.
NPR's Jason Beaubien speaking to us from Rumbek from southern Sudan. Thank you.
BEAUBIEN: Thank you.
LUDDEN: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
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