“The rebels attacked in the middle of the night. It was terrifying. People were being killed around us. My house and belongings were burned. We just got out and ran without bringing anything with us. There was no time. The people with things on their backs were being shot for what they were carrying,” said Monika Yar, of Bor, in South Sudan.
Bor is a ghost town still, three months after fighting turned the streets of this market town by the Nile into a fierce battleground between government soldiers and rebel groups. The town changed hands four times in just a few weeks during the course of which the town’s population of 350,000 either fled the town or was slaughtered.
Razed to the ground
The recent violence has reduced Bor to blackened ruins. Roughly a quarter of the structures here have been razed to the ground. Those remaining have been looted, smashed up and defamed with rebel graffiti. Refuse litters Bor’s deserted streets. Wild dogs scavenge for food among the charred remains of houses. The wind whips up a mixture of dust and ash. Vultures circle the midday sky.
Government troops now hold the city with a visible military presence, perhaps because fighting is still reported to be going on further north in Jonglei state. Such reports are yet to be confirmed. In Bor, the soldiers’ focus is security; rebuilding is a task left to the inhabitants themselves, and until recently, there were none. But that is changing. Life is slowly returning to Bor as trust grows that it is safe to do so. After months living in the open air, people want to go home.
“I was hiding on an island in the river, but we had no shelter, and there was not enough food to eat. We were living under a tree, my baby and I, and the wind and rain was terrible. It was very uncomfortable. My baby got sick, so I realized I should come home,” says Amuou Atem, 28, whose husband was killed in the violence. She says she is returning because the government troops have control of the town, and that makes her feel safe. However, she is returning to nothing.
“My house has been destroyed, I really have nothing. I only hope that an NGO will help me get started. I really need a plastic sheet, because the rains are coming,” says the single mother, tears in her eyes.
As people return, some traders are tentatively setting up shop. One restaurant is open, and a few kiosks line the edge of the former market, now a mangle of cast iron and rubble.
Aid supplies looted
ACT Alliance members and local partners - both church-based and others - are among the first humanitarian agencies to restart work here. The Lutheran World Federation was the first non-UN humanitarian organisation to return to Bor in late January.
They found their offices had been looted and their emergency aid store emptied and burned down. Norwegian Church Aid and DanChurchAid followed soon after, and today they work together to meet the most basic needs not only of the returning population, but also of those who are still hiding in the bush, and of internally displaced people (IDP) who are coming to Bor to escape fighting that people say is still going on some 150km north of here.
“There was a lot of fighting. It started at night, it was very frightening, and we just left the house and ran. We didn’t bring anything – there was no time. I brought my child and that’s all. I was afraid that we would be killed, they were killing everybody, women and old people as well,” says Yar Gatluak,18, from Duk county, around 150km to the north of Bor.
Non-food items, water
While the World Food Programme distributes food aid, the LWF, DCA, and NCA are now distributing kits of much-needed non-food items to returnees and IDP families like Yar Gatlauk’s. These kits provide everything a family needs to build their own simple shelter, prepare and cook food and sleep at night. So far 12,000 people have been reached. And a further 3000 kits for 18,000 people are on the way.
NCA's water engineers from local organisation SUFEM are repairing 43 damaged boreholes to ensure the population has access to clean drinking water in the war-torn town. With large numbers of people living outdoors and most basic infrastructure, including sanitation facilities, damaged in the fighting, a supply of clean safe drinking water is essential if the spread of disease is to be prevented among the returning population, many of whom have been living in the bush with no access to even the most basic of services for the last few months.
DCA’s humanitarian mine action teams are also in Bor and surrounding areas, educating returning IDPs in what to do if they find unexploded ordnance in their fields or communities, as well as beginning to work in the identification and removal of dangerous military artefacts from civilian areas.
More than 700,000 civilians have been displaced in the country since fighting broke out in mid-December, making this crisis one of the largest humanitarian challenges facing the world today. ACT members are responding throughout the country with emergency aid and longer-term assistance in order to help prevent this crisis escalating into and beyond the approaching rainy season.