As the leader of a non-profit group working in South Sudan, my main job these days is to gather and disseminate both broad facts and the personal impact of an insane duel between two maniacal leaders that is spreading around the globe.
An example of “personal impact” came this week when grief stuck thick in the throat of co-worker, Klero, as he told me:
“We lost my 5-year-old grandson. All the spilt blood and no clean water or solid nutrition has caused a cholera outbreak here in our capitol. We have no medicine, and my little grandson grew too weak from the diarrhea to hold on. He’s dead.”
I’ve just returned from a beautiful weekend with my 5-year-old granddaughter and the weight of the stark contrast in my life and Klero’s pulled me to my knees and wet my face with tears that I admit feel pointless … yet they come unbidden and unbridled.
And the impact grows deeper still. As I write, I hold in my hands two documents of war.
(AP Photo/Abd Raouf)
One may or may not be an actual government-sanctioned order, at least on paper. However, it certainly is verifiable by government-sanctioned military actions on the ground.
One of the war documents is on Government of South Sudan (GOSS) letterhead and the other is on letterhead from the Embassy of the Republic of South Sudan in South Africa. These documents insist on aerial bombings and any means of force it takes to bring, “dead or alive,” Riek Machar, the recently fired vice president of South Sudan, and anyone who is believed to aid or assist his cause to “answer for the charges” brought against them.
According to these war letters, some of those believed to aid and assist Machar’s cause are white mercenaries, including a soldier who killed indigenous Africans during apartheid in South Africa and a white woman who has spent time in South Sudan. Both are believed to hold U.S. passports and may be working under the guise of relief work through an aid agency. One of the documents gives specific instructions to “scrutinize” all white people.
The facts these two documents uncover is devastating news to millions of people. That reality spans throughout the seemingly never-ending cycle of dogs of war from war-to-war, country-to-country, continent-to-continent, and people-to-people.
At the same time, the other document I hold specifically states that the government of South Sudan is employing the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a militia group that enslaves child soldiers, to find and kill Machar before he flees to DR/Congo.
The LRA is a militia group used by the radical Islamic regime of Sudan as mercenaries to rape, mutilate, and kill indigenous South Sudanese during the six decade war between Sudan and South Sudan. That war ended with the birth of the world’s newest nation just five short years ago, with South Sudan’s secession from Sudan. The words of one soldier bragging about personally raping 53 women summarizes the attitude of both the sacked vice president Machar and current president Kiir of South Sudan, “We did whatever we wanted.”
Hard as it is to believe, this is our reality, the reality in which innocent children live, and the reality in which our very humanity calls upon us to find a way to help them. All of us who spend our lives saving children on the frontlines are, at times, scrutinized as mercenaries, dogs of war, and the enemy, even as we give up our free lives to live out peaceful ways in warzones. Our humanity compels us to maintain inner peace in the midst of great turmoil, and continue the work of peace for the sake of the children.
Just before I sat to write this report, I shared the news of the death of Klero’s 5-year-old grandson with Eugenio, another one of our co-workers. Eugenio is a big man in all ways—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Yet, I watched his whole being wilt before me as if it was his personal loss.
He said, “Imagine. If a great man with the vast medical history that Klero has had for more than 20 years could not save his own flesh and blood, what must it be like for the small man in the village?”
That sums up my job, and yours too—to imagine deep in the heart of the fibers of our very being what this unprecedented war must be like for the “small” man, woman, child in the village. This is the reality all we humans are called into. The call of humanity is to share in one another’s burdens, specifically as Americans who stand for freedom, justice, and liberty for all. We are, after all, all members of the human race, sharing in some divine gift of life.
Imagining, like Eugenio dares to do, might cost us something but I find myself wondering “What will it cost us, our children, and grandchildren if we stand by and do nothing while such evil continues to spread from war to war, continent to continent, country to country, and people to people?”
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