A Poisonous Thorn in Our Hearts by Copnall James;

Author:Copnall, James;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: C. Hurst and Company (Publishers) Limited
Published: 2014-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

INTER-ETHNIC FIGHTING

In the last hour of darkness the killers arrived, swarming into Pieri village from the east. Kuol Bol, a tall young man with a shaven head, was asleep in his hut. The first gunshots jolted him awake. Even in the murky pre-dawn light, he knew the attackers were the Murle. Kuol’s people, the Lou Nuer, were involved in a seemingly endless cycle of revenge attacks with the Murle in this neglected part of Jonglei state. As the shooting grew louder, Kuol knew he had to act fast to save his family. He sprinted to find his young nephews. Too late: two were already dead. Grabbing the third, he raced out of the village, through a scene from hell: burning huts, some with their owners trapped inside, illuminated his way; assault rifles, and the heart-wrenching screams of those too slow to escape, provided the soundtrack.

In one devastating day, 18 August 2011, as many as 600 Lou Nuer were killed in Pieri and other villages nearby. Women, children and the elderly were slaughtered. Babies were hacked with machetes, to save bullets. As well as those killed, 200 children were abducted, and an estimated 25,000 cattle were stolen.110 Thousands of Lou Nuer fled. Without their cows, they would depend on handouts and local kindness for the foreseeable future. Several days after the attack, I saw one man queuing up for a blanket and some food wearing a white t-shirt with a happy slogan on the back: ‘Celebrating the Birth of the New Nation. 9th July 2011’. South Sudan had been independent for just over a month. The attack on Pieri was a brutal reminder that hoisting a new flag would not be a magical cure for all South Sudan’s problems. ‘They killed my family’, Kuol said. ‘I want revenge. I will do what I will do.’

Four months later the Lou Nuer took that revenge. As many as 8,000 young men calling themselves the White Army descended on the Murle homeland around the town of Pibor.111 The White Army cut a bloody swathe through more than twenty Murle settlements. A UN report said at least 623 Murle were killed, and eyewitness accounts quoted by the UN suggested a further 294 people should be added to this gruesome tally.112 The Pibor county commissioner, Joshua Konyi, a Murle, said the real death toll was more than 3,000, though this seemed exaggerated.113

Nyandit was one of those who survived—just. She was shot in the leg, and another bullet grazed her cheek, causing it to swell and giving her face a lopsided look. Her world was similarly unbalanced. Ten members of her family had been killed, and her only child, a three-year-old boy, was abducted in front of her eyes. ‘It is very painful. All my family are dead now,’ she said, in a flat voice, from her hospital bed. ‘My son has been taken. I am all alone now.’ But she expressed no surprise. This was life as she knew it. As a young girl she had been shot, in an earlier raid.

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