Children of Bentiu
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.
Thousands of families had lost their homes and were forced to live in displacement camps, with few services and minimum security by the UN mission. However, the infighting dragged on; and the killing did not stop. Starvation was the headline. Residents in displacement camps queued up in long lines under the scorching sun for hours to get their hands on the scant relief aid. Children ran towards us asking for help in a heartbreaking scene. Others took shelter in shacks they made of hay, tree branches and mud.
A total of five displacement camps were set up within the so-called UN protection of civilian sites across four cities: Juba, Bor, Malakal and Bentiu. These camps were home to more than 180,000 people, all of whom had fled the war. The Bentiu Camp alone housed more than 111,000 displaced persons; and therefore the aid delivered by relief agencies was not sufficient. The food rations handed out every month were to be shared by more than one family. Some families were made up of eight members.
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