Children of Bentiu Haitham Owit | Al Jazeera Correspondent - South Sudan
History has it that there is always a spark that ignites any conflict or war. You can fire the first shot, but you can never know how it ends. The costs of war are catastrophic: human lives and destruction. It takes years to heal the wounds, but decades to remedy the economic ramifications. The newly-born South Sudan was not an exception. No sooner had it recovered from the the fight for independence than the fighters went back into the jungle to once again engage in battle. This time, they went to war against their former comrades; those with whom they had fought side-by-side for more than 21 years. Such is the lust for power.
The violence that started in December 2013 soon spread all over the country, turning into tribal and ethnic battles. It dragged on for five bloody years, claiming the lives of thousands and displacing millions, as per UN reports. And since Al Jazeera’s mission is to tell the human story and hear the voices of those unheard, our crew ventured out into South Sudan’s jungle. We braved rough conditions to cover the people’s daily tragedies. The magnitude of the damage and destruction was immense.
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