Tag Archives: cannibalism South Sudan

Is Violence Necessary for the Protection of Environment?

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Six million antelope swarm across an area the size of Illinois,in Sough Sudan, a mass movement of mammals…African Parks, the Johannesburg-based conservation group that manages natural areas on behalf of South Sudan’s government, allowed The Wall Street Journal access to the 58,000-square-mile wilderness on the eastern bank of the White Nile….Although scientists and, of course, locals have known about the migration for years, only recently have researchers understood its staggering dimensions. In 2023, African Parks conducted an aerial survey revealing the movement included some 5.1 million white-eared kob, which generally move in a U shape in and around Boma National Park, sometimes crossing into Ethiopia’s Gambella National Park…

The interethnic violence that plagues South Sudan has, to a degree, helped protect the animal migration…South Sudanese rebels fought for decades to break away from Sudan. The South, mostly animist and Christian, finally won independence from the largely Muslim North in 2011, but quickly descended into civil war along ethnic lines. The war ended in 2020, but fighting in 2025 suggests stability remains a distant hope.

Among the region’s ethnic groups, the heavily armed Murle people in and around Boma National Park are known for stealing cattle and children from the Dinka and Anuak. Fighting is a way of life for Murle men, who divide themselves into age sets. Younger men gain status by taking on the men above them, with sticks and AK-47s, sometimes with lethal effect. Their torsos sometimes bear decorative scars resembling assault rifles…The Murle are so intimidating that other ethnic groups keep their distance to the extent possible. That has created a sort of no-man’s-land both in the parks and the places in between. “You’ve got this massive space that has allowed the migration to flourish,” says John Vogel, manager of Badingilo park.

With war, however, have come guns, and the temptation to poach is strong. Increasingly, hunters armed with military-grade weapons have been mowing down entire herds of antelope and just taking what they can carry to market on motorcycles. In a single month this year, African Parks counted 14,000 antelope carcasses passing through the town of Bor, where each animal sells for about $50, a vast amount to a poor rural family…

Excerpt from Michael M. Phillips, Researchers Track World’s Biggest Animal Migration, WSJ, Sept. 6, 2025

Darfur Forever: when a country is not a country

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Iran unsuccessfully pressed Sudan to let it build a permanent naval base on the African country’s Red Sea coast, something that would have allowed Tehran to monitor maritime traffic to and from the Suez Canal and Israel, according to a senior Sudanese intelligence official. Iran has supplied Sudan’s military with explosive drones to use in its fight with a rebel warlord and offered to provide a helicopter-carrying warship if Sudan had granted permission for the base…

Sudan had close ties with Iran and its Palestinian ally Hamas under longtime strongman Omar al-Bashir. After Bashir’s ouster in a 2019 coup, the leader of the country’s military junta, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, initiated a rapprochement with the U.S. in an effort to end international sanctions. He also moved to normalize relations with Israel. Iran’s request to build a base highlights how regional powers are seeking to take advantage of Sudan’s 10-month-old civil war to gain a foothold in the country, a strategic crossroads between the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa with a 400-mile Red Sea coastline.  Sudan’s military has been fighting the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Burhan’s former second-in-command, Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, since mid-April 2023. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises The Biden administration has accused both the Sudanese military and the RSF of committing war crimes. The U.S. alleges the RSF also has committed crimes against humanity, including murder, rape and ethnic cleansing in the Darfur region in western Sudan.  U.N. officials have criticized Sudan for aerial bombing of civilian neighborhoods and depriving Sudanese civilians of desperately needed humanitarian aid. U.N. agencies have also accused the RSF of atrocities, including ethnically motivated attacks in Darfur…

The Wall Street Journal reported in October 2023 that Egypt has supplied drones to the Sudanese military and trained Sudanese troops in how to use them. The United Arab Emirates, meanwhile, has been sending weapons to the RSF, the Journal reported in August 2023…Dubai is the biggest importer of Sudanese gold and in 2022 a U.A.E.-based consortium signed a $6 billion deal to build a new port facility on Sudan’s Red Sea coast.

Excerpts from Nicholas Bariyo, Iran Tried to Persuade Sudan to Allow Naval Base on Its Red Sea Coast, WSJ, Mar. 3, 2024

Oil Spills of Sudan, Humanity for Africa, and East African Court of Justice

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The East African Court of Justice delivered in June 2020 a temporary injunction order to the country’s Minister for Justice, the Greater Pioneer Operating Company (GPOC), and the Dar Petroleum Operating Company. The Court approved the application by Hope for Humanity Africa (H4HA), a non-governmental organization (NGO), which sought to highlight the environmental damage caused by oil spills… The NGO contends that: “Over 47,249 of the local population in Upper Nile State and 60,000 in Unity State are at risk of being exposed to the oil pollution this is because the local population depends on the wild foods for survival, the contaminated swamps, streams and rivers waters for cooking, drinking, washing, bathing and fishing.”…

The H4HA is looking for an injunction to stop multiple companies from exporting oil from the region, including CNPC of China, Petronas of Malaysia, and Oil & Natural Gas Corp. of India (ONGC) 

Excerpts South Sudan Suspended by African Union, Barred From Exporting Oil by East African Court, https://www.youngbhartiya.com, June 24, 2020

South Sudan: a nightmare alive

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Mass killings, rape, torture, abductions and forced cannibalism have led to an increase in mental illness in South Sudan, with patients routinely housed in prisons due to an “almost total” absence of mental health care,.  There are only two practicing psychiatrists for South Sudan’s 11 million people, Amnesty International said in a report released on July 5, 2016 ahead of the country’s fifth anniversary of independence on July 9.

“My mind is not good,” the report quoted one man, Phillip, as saying as he described being forced to eat the flesh of dead men rounded up and shot in a security forces building in the capital, Juba, when conflict broke out in December 2013.  “They found me, tied my arms behind my back and forced me at gunpoint to drink blood and eat flesh … At night when I sleep, those who were killed come back in my nightmares.”

More than 10,000 people have been killed and two million displaced since fighting erupted between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar.

Clashes have continued even though warring factions signed a peace deal in August 2015, with 200,000 people still sheltering in United Nations military bases across the country.

Lual, another man quoted in the report, said he felt suicidal after security officers forced him to disembowel corpses in detention in Juba in 2014.”Whenever they would kill people, we would be taken to dissect the stomachs of those who were killed, so they could be thrown into the river and wouldn’t float,” he was quoted as saying.

Excerpts from Cannibalism, rape and death: trauma as South Sudan turns five, Reuters, July 5, 2016