From Sydney student life to a Sudanese struggle: a voter's journey

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/22/abyei-referendum-south-sudan

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Australian nursing student Julia Williams had heard the stories about her birthplace in Abyei but could never fully imagine the harsh realities of the war-ravaged disputed border region that straddles South Sudan and Sudan.

But this month, against her mother’s wishes and after a decade living in Sydney, the 23-year-old took the four-day journey back to Abyei to vote in its controversial referendum to join South Sudan.

“In Sydney we never thought there were places like this. I’ve heard a lot but now I’m seeing it,” she said in Agok, a town about 50km south of Abyei that, due to an almost impassable muddy road, can take a day to drive to.

“I am Australian but my blood is from here. No matter where I go. People will ask me what is my background and I have to say it is Abyei.”

Abyei town is now derelict, with gutted buildings, bullet-marked concrete walls and weeds overgrowing what few structures survived Sudanese mortar and tank attacks in May 2008 and then in May 2011.

More than 120,000 people fled and remain scattered throughout the country, across the world.

The Dinka Ngok people of Abyei have lived through decades of conflict and suffered targeted attacks, cattle raids and their children being abducted for slavery in the north.

“All we want is a home to live and rest in. We want peace. Even though I know it is not safe for me, at the end of the day, it’s my place,” Williams said, leaving for Abyei town.

Tensions remain high in the resource-rich oilfield region, as thousands defiantly return to carry out a vote on a yet unspecified date, in a dispute that goes back to British colonial rule in 1905.

But despite the African Union last year promoting October 2013 as the date for a referendum, the international community has again shied away from a repeatedly broken promise for Abyei self-determination.

There are fears Abyei’s unilateral vote, which is certain to back joining South Sudan, will spark violence from Sudan. This could reignite Africa’s longest-running civil war, which cost 2 million lives until peace was struck in 2005, and subsequently led to South Sudan’s independence in July 2011.

The Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir, is due in South Sudan on Tuesday for talks with South Sudan's president, Salva Kiir, that are expected to focus on Abyei.

Williams knows the vote will enrage Sudan but is happily adapting to a new life with no running water or electricity, let alone Wi-Fi for her favourite pursuit, Facebook.

“They [her family] were asking me … can you run? Can you stay for days in the bush not eating or drinking? Some people just die and you have to leave them on the road and continue running, you can’t help the person that got shot. Can you do that? I told them, I am not sure, I can’t run for long but if I have to, I will try.”

This perilous journey was even more emotional considering her uncle, Abyei’s paramount chief, Kuol Deng Kuol, was killed in May this year when Messiriya militia ambushed the UN convoy he was travelling in.

“I am really sad about what happened. I went to the family, they’re still in a bad situation when you ask them about their dad. He was a man of peace. All of my uncles were killed, most of my mum’s cousins were killed,” she said.

And with this it is one of the many times the young girl breaks down crying. Her cousin Angelina Nyanjth, 28, who has also recently returned from Sydney, comforts Williams with a tissue and arm around the shoulder.

For Nyanjth too it has been an emotional journey. During an interview with the Guardian she breaks off mid-sentence to be reunited with her mother for the first time since spending 13 years in Australia.

“Mum is frail now,” she said, wiping away tears. “She has lost weight, she worries.”

“They are suffering here. There is no food, no shelter, violence – Sydney is very different and I work hard to send money back to help.”

According to representatives of the peace initiative Kush, trauma levels are high in Abyei.

“The environment on the ground is harrowing,” Kush's recent report states. “When the results of the referendum are enacted, containing violent opposition will most likely be a problem.”

A 5,000-strong United Nations peacekeeping force is deployed to quell tensions between the Dinka Ngok and the Messiriya, nomadic Arab farmers who every year bring their cattle from Sudan to Abyei for grazing.

But the killing of Kuol has caused irreparable differences between the two groups and it is not clear whether Messiriya will return next month with their cattle when the dry season begins.

Numerous Dinka Ngok who the Guardian spoke to said Messiriya were no longer welcome in Abyei.

Anguik Majith, who lived in Brisbane between 2002 and 2010, is in Abyei helping coordinate the repatriation of Dinka Ngok who wish to return home to support the move to join South Sudan.

“Abyei is about resources,” he said. “Bashir wants our land, our oil, our water. He can’t lose power. He does not want to lose more to South Sudan. The people of Abyei suffer because of him.”

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