December 31, 2013 (All Africa) — The South Sudanese fought for two decades for an independent state and the peace they hoped would come with it. They inked the former two and half years ago, but lost the latter just a few days ago.
To understand the magnitude of the crisis South Sudan is immersed in, glancing over official figures is enough. Within a week of violence erupting in Juba- the capital of the newest state in the world – the number of causalities rose to 1,000 and the displaced people reached 120,000. The violence that was limited to two of the 10 states of South Sudan has now spread to five.
As the death toll increases, the number of Ethiopians who lost their lives in various areas of the country has also jumped up. The number ranges from10 to 50, depending on the source of the information. But various sources indicate that the highest number of deaths have been registered in Malakal – the second largest city in South Sudan and capital of the Upper Nile State.
Malakal, 650km north of Juba, is known for its navigable rivers. The White Nile connects Juba and Khartoum and the Sobat (Baro) River with the Gambella region of Ethiopia. Malakal’s close proximity to Ethiopia and the availability of easy road and water transportation has attracted a significant number of Ethiopians. They are engaged in various activities, ranging from business to service delivery.
Most Ethiopians are employed in non-professional jobs, like daily labour and serving customers. Some claim that the population of Ethiopians in Malakal is much higher than those in Juba, who are estimated to be between 3,000 and 5,000. Because of the fact that many reached to Malakal by illegal means, or only with travel permit papers, it makes it difficult to know the exact number of Ethiopians currently residing in the city.
At least seven Ethiopians have been killed in the fighting that broke out in Malakal on Monday and continued up until Friday evening, Fortune confirmed from various sources. Rebels loyal to the ousted South Sudanese Vice President Reik Machar (PhD) claimed control of the town on Tuesday.
Due to the heavy fighting, the city’s international airport – the only one after the capital Juba- has been closed. Hundreds of people are being treated for gunshot wounds in Malakal Hospital. Ethiopians visited the hospital on Thursday and identified two of their deceased fellow citizens. They have also seen another Ethiopian killed in front of his house.
In addition to the three, an onion seller, a hotel waiter and a known businessman in the city who owns a hotel and trucks, were shot dead, according to Ethiopians in Malakal.
“On the first day they came and took away all the money he had,” an Ethiopian in Malakal who requested anonymity told Fortune, when discussing how the businessman lost his life. “On the second day, others came and when he told them that he did not have any money, they killed him.”
Ethiopians said that his body was abandoned on the street for two days. Those brave enough to try to collect his body were forced to lie-down beside the corpse by individuals in military uniforms.
“I survived for mere luck,” Zergaw Adane, one of the Ethiopians who had attempted to retrieve the body of the businessman, told Fortune. “A person I knew in Gambella begged the soldiers in Nuer language and then we were released.”
Zergaw is not a resident of Malakal. He is among those transporters that carry commodities from Gambella town to Malakal and Juba on their boats. When Zergaw embarked on his journey three weeks ago, he planned to carry out his usual business of delivering commodities packed into three boats owned by his brother and come back.
As any other normal day, gliding on the boats on the Baro (Sobat) River took them three days to reach Malakal. After finishing their business, they got caught up in the crossfire of the ongoing South Sudan crisis. Soldiers took all of their money and left them unharmed. They then joined a group of Ethiopians who were hiding in order to save their lives.
“We were around 40 packed into one warehouse,” an Ethiopian who was sheltered with Zergaw told Fortune over the phone from Malakal, on Friday morning. “We finished all the food we had within two days.”
Zergaw and other Ethiopians survived with biscuits and any leftovers they could find in abandoned and looted shops in Malakal. The heavy gunfire and checkpoints set up by rebel soldiers made it impossible for them to move freely from one part of the city to the other, and to the United Nations (UN) camp.
The intensity of the violence forced thousands, including the governor of the Upper Nile, Simon Kun Pouch, and his ministers, to seek shelter at the compound of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). Many remain at the compound, even though government forces controlled the city on Friday afternoon.
The return of soldiers allied to President Salva Kiir helped Ethiopians to properly bury their compatriots. Three Ethiopians were buried on Friday afternoon, while three others were laid to rest on Saturday morning.
The recapture of Malakal also brought a relief for employees of the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) in South Sudan. There was an attempted bank robbery at the second South Sudan branch of the CBE, which opened in Malakal a year ago. The Bank’s move to the area aimed at tapping this business boom there, according to a banker who works at the CBE’s Juba branch.
“So far we are safe,” Bekalu Zeleke, President of CBE told Fortune late last week.
The control of Malakal is key for the two rival sides. As the capital of the Upper Nile state – one o f South Sudan’s main oil-producing areas – Malakal played a role in the power and oil politics of the country.South Sudan generates 98pc of the government’s revenue from oil, according to the Revenue Watch Institute.
When it comes oil, even Machar, who denied any involvement in the government’s claim of “coup attempt”, confirmed that his forces were the ones controlling the oilfields in the Upper Nile and Unity states. He went as far as giving a guarantee for the continuation of oil production and keeping the revenue of crude sales “in an escrow account until the conflict is over”.
“We’ll protect the oil workers, the oil companies, the oil installations and the oil can be transported and sold,” Machar told Bloomberg on Tuesday.
Despite his assurance, foreign employees left the oilfields in fear of escalating violence and oil production stopped. This was mainly seen in the oil-rich Unity state. Forces loyal to Machar controlled Bentiu, the capital of Unity State, on last Sunday, December 22.
The South Sudanese government, which claimed its forces are advancing to the town, announced that most of the oilfields are still under its control. Petroleum Minister Stephen Dhieu Dau told Bloomberg that the government has control of about 25,000 barrels of oil production a day in Unity state.
The Minister admitted that rebels have taken over parts of the Unity state oilfields, where the daily output accounts for about 5,000 barrels.South Sudan’s oilfields produced half a million barrels of crude before January 2012, the Revenue Watch Institute figures showed. After January 2012, the country’s oil production halted for more than a year, due to a disagreement with North Sudan over the pipeline fee.
The ongoing crisis of South Sudan will not affect Ethiopia- a country that imports 75pc of its benzene consumption from Sudan- according to an expert. Out of 2.5 million metric tonnes of petroleum products Ethiopia imports each year, benzene accounts for only 10pc of it, Abyaneh Awol, Petroleum Supply & Sales manager at Ethiopian Petroleum Enterprise, said.
“Nothing will affect us,” Abyaneh told Fortune. “The North Sudanese have their own crude and they export that one to us.”
The violence in Unity State will not have any influence in Ethiopia, but it has impacted the lives of Ethiopians in the area. Similar to Ethiopians in the other troubled states, those who reside in Bentiu town are seeking refuge at the UN compound. Among them, 13 Ethiopians were airlifted to Juba on Wednesday morning and sheltered at the compound of the Ethiopian Community Association in Southern Sudan (ECASS).
“We put them into a tent,” the board secretary of the ECASS told Fortune. “In addition to what the community provides, Ethiopians in Juba brought them food and clothes.”
Unlike the Unity State, which has no reports of causalities, confirmed reports that came out from Bor in Jongeli State revealed that three Ethiopians were killed. The deceased Ethiopians were among the 14,000 people sheltered inside a UN compound.
The three Ethiopians were killed while they were on their way to fetch water from a river, according to an Ethiopian who talked to refugees in Bor over the phone. Two Ethiopians that accompanied them also had gunshot wounds, he said.
After the government forces recaptured Bor town on Tuesday, December 24, the violence in the area stopped, but still around 300 Ethiopians are sheltered in the UN compound there. Ethiopians in the area requested to return to their country and pleaded the government to evacuate them. They repeatedly voiced their plea to the call in service of the Voice of America (VoA) Amharic Program.
Almost all Ethiopians Fortune talked to on the phone in South Sudans hare these appeal. They are bewildered on why the government is dragging its feet in evacuating them while other neighboring countries of South Sudan, such as Kenya and Uganda, have already airlifted their citizens.
“Our government has neglected us,” an Ethiopian in Malakal, who requested anonymity, told Fortune. “Do we have less value than Ugandans or Kenyans?”
Uganda started to evacuate its citizens right after the United States and United Kingdom. It sent its army, the Uganda Peoples Defense Forces (UPDF), to Juba in order to provide assistance for the evacuation of Ugandans. The army used its C130 transporter plane to evacuate 450 Ugandans last week, according to a local paper – Daily Monitor.
Uganda went as far as deploying its soldiers on the 200km corridor that stretches from Juba to the border town of Nimule, in order to provide a safe passage for Ugandans and Kenyans to return to their home country. The Daily Monitor reported that the East African country evacuated close to 5,000 Ugandans and Kenyans through this corridor.
The Kenyan government carried out a similar evacuation mission. Subsequent to the order of President Uhuru Kenyatta, the Kenyan Defence Forces (KDF) have evacuated hundreds of Kenyans from South Sudan. The Kenyan government also set up a crisis management centre through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to provide information for its citizens stranded in South Sudan.
In addition to the military, the government organised a charter flight with Kenyan Airways, which suspended all flights to and from Juba between December 24 and 31, to transport Kenyans. On Thursday, December 26, alone, 250 Kenyans return to Nairobi. Out of the estimated 30,000 Kenyans living and working in South Sudan, 10,000 of them have returned, according to local media reports.
Despite the outcry of many Ethiopians in South Sudan, the Ethiopian government has not yet started any evacuation from the troubled East African country. The Ethiopian Embassy in South Sudan claimed that only a few Ethiopians showed interest in evacuation.
“When we tried to evacuate Ethiopians in Juba, we only found 14 people,”Fre Tesfamichael,Ethiopia’s ambassador to South Sudan, told Fortune. “The plane was returning with empty seats.”
The Ambassador referred to the outcome of the meeting between Foreign Minister Tedros Adhanom (PhD) and a few Ethiopians in Juba on December 21. The Minister met Ethiopians on the conclusion of his main task of mediation between President Kiir and Reik Machar. On his official Facebook account, the Minister reflected a similar view with the Ambassador.
“Back to Addis and brought with us 14 Ethiopians who were selected by the Juba Ethiopian community to be evacuated – mainly women and children,” Tedros posted on Facebook. “We offered to evacuate more, but many preferred to stay.”
Nonetheless, those who attended the meeting said that the Minister briefed the participants about the joint evacuation plan of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) member countries. The Minister promised them that if things were worsening, they would be evacuated.
After the first few days of fighting,Juba remained calm. Violence persisted, however, in areas located in the five troubled states. The Ambassador claimed that his Embassy even offered evacuation to those who located outside of Juba.
“Out of the 300 registered Ethiopians in the UN camp at Bor, only 35 of them are willing to go back to their country,” Ambassador Fre said. “The rest of them prefer to wait and see whether the situation will improve.”
While collecting information about the dead, injured and displaced Ethiopians, the Ethiopian Embassy is mainly working on “protection” of its citizens and “moving them to safe places”, according to the Ambassador.
He said that their effort to move Ethiopians from the rebel controlled Bentiu to the border town of North Sudan was fruitful. The plan is designed for those who may not be interested to get back to Ethiopia. The Ethiopian government set up a shelter in the border town of Heglig and keep them there until peace return to their area. The government will provide food and other necessities to the displaced Ethiopians, according to senior government sources.
Local media reported that the UN, in collaboration with the United Nations Interim Security Force in Abyei (UNISFA), evacuated 250 Ugandan, Kenyan, Ethiopian and Somali nationals to Heglig on Friday. UNISFA, whose troops are drawn from Ethiopia, sent two helicopters for the operation.
Ambassador Fre said that after the ongoing information collection was finalised, the evacuation of Ethiopians would be started within two to three days. The Ethiopian Community Association in Southern Sudan (ECASS) has so far registered 3,000 Ethiopians in Juba. Some Ethiopians, however, are less convinced of the Ambassador’s promise.
“As usual, what the Ethiopian government says is all misleading,” an Ethiopian who has been working on information systems in Juba for the last four years, told Fortune. “There is no preparation for evacuation.”
Businessmen in Gambella went one step ahead of the government. Many of them have business interests in the youngest nation of the world and send their relatives to various parts of South Sudan.
They formed an ad-hoc committee and met in the Gambella regional administration to evacuate Ethiopians from towns nearby to the Ethiopian border. They sent two boats, each with the capacity to carry 500 people, to South Sudan.
Their target was those Ethiopians stranded in Nasir, a previous stronghold of Machar. One Ethiopian shop owner was reported dead after the clash erupted between government forces and defectors of the South Sudan army. Around 600 Ethiopians fled to the border town of Matarin the Gambella region.
The businessmen, in collaboration with the Baro Gambella Bus Owners Association, sent 11 buses and six trucks to Matar on Wednesday. The buses and trucks, which carried Ethiopian returnees and their belongings, returned to Gambella on Thursday evening.
While Ethiopian officials seem reluctant to take swift measures on evacuation, they were busy on striking a deal between the two rivals, Kiir and Machar. Using its current rotational chair position of the African Union (AU) and IGAD, Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn and Foreign Minister Tedros spearheaded the mediation of the South Sudan crisis ignited by the power struggle between the ruling party leaders.
The mediation effort mainly focused on the ceasefire and the release of prisoners. A number of politicians, who the government claimed have a link with the foiled coup, have been arrested last week. These include ousted Secretary General of the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), Pagan Amum, and Deng Alor, former Foreign Minister and Minister of Cabinet Affairs. Along with these two known critics of President Kiir nine former senior ministers, are also kept in jail.
After rounds of talks by IGAD Foreign Ministers, Hailemraim and Kenyatta, President Kiir agreed on ceasefire and promised to release eight of the 11 senior politicians. Pagan Amum, who is chosen by Machar to lead his delegation of future talks, and Deng Alor will likely remain under custody and could face criminal probing, according to a political analyst based in Juba.
Reading between the lines of the communiqué that was issued after the conclusion of IGAD Heads of State and governments Summit on Friday in Nairobi, it is obvious that the ball is now in Machar’s field. Leaders of IGAD member states have got an assurance from the South Sudanese government to immediately start “unconditional dialogue” and “cessation of hostilities.”
They, however, called for Machar and his allies to make similar commitments. They threatened that if hostilities do not cease within four days as of Friday they would consider taking “further measures.” Political pundits predict that the measures they contemplate may include “military intervention.”
Regardless of the outcome of the negotiation, embassies, consulates and representatives of countries in South Sudan have ordered their citizens to leave the country as soon as possible.
