The Road North Toward the Border

By: John Jefferson

The Road North Toward the Border  

Crowded in the front cab of a Land Cruiser pickup and bouncing along a deeply rutted dirt road in 105 degree heat isn’t exactly most people’s idea of a good time unless of course you have planned, prayed and plotted for a few months in hopes of being in just that situation.  It also beats being in the back of said vehicle with a couple of drums of fuel, a ton of luggage and supplies, and a host of well-armed soldiers with live rounds of ammunition. 

After having faced a high level of scrutiny from the local authorities, unscrupulous merchants who raised prices hourly, the threat of a deluge of rain, reluctant truck owners that inflated their rates once they heard where we wanted to go, and a host of other obstacles, it was actually a great relief to be finally on the road and heading toward the destination the End Nuba Genocide team had so often been told was impossible to reach.  A sense of destiny took hold over the doubt, dissonance, and fear so prevalent during the planning stages back in the States.  

Though rough, the road proved to be in relatively good shape and we made excellent time as we drove north looking for the last city before we headed toward the border.  The weather was hot and the air was dry, but soon the sun would be going down and the trip would resume under the cover of darkness.  We bumped along into the night without incident, though I thought to myself how easy it would be to get ambushed driving along a road of deeply rutted dried mud encased by walls of dense brush and tall spiny trees on either side?  Our driver, Ahmad, seemed to know just when the bumpy road would turn into a launch pad and slow down enough to make it seem like we hit an obnoxious speed bump as opposed to launching the guys riding in the bed like projectiles into the black night, or sending the heads of us in the cab careening into the roof of the truck.  

At one point we came to a sudden halt, and the soldiers jumped out quickly to the sound of rustling in the bush.  After a few tense moments with the occasional shout, I saw a donkey come into focus surrounded by three soldiers who were going through the contents it was carrying.  There was no owner in sight.  My first instinct was to feel sorry for the mystery owner.  His milk, small amount of food, and probably most precious possession (or valuable at least) was now in the hands of these men; the same ones I was trusting my life to in a way.  How were they handling this situation?  Were they being soldiers of fortune or guardians of the realm?  As I pondered this and the incident faded behind us in the cloud of dust made by our Land Cruiser, Ahmad explained through the interpreter that the man with the donkey was probably an “Arab” herder, or more accurately a Baggara. 

The backstory is that in South Kordofan, as in other parts of Sudan, the Northern government has used these semi-nomadic herders to disrupt or end the lives of the indigenous Africans or Nubans.  They are armed and dangerous in many cases, and used by the government for raiding villages, capturing children for the slave trade, destroying crops, and displacing Christian, Animist, and nominal Muslim farmers and herders with loyal, Islamized Sudanese without a strong tie to the land or its resources.   At the inception of the war in 2012, these Baggara, along with the militias and Antonovs (bombers) ran wild over this part of the Nubas chasing the people off their land and killing many civilians.  Women were also assaulted and rule of law was nonexistent. (Though they were citizens of Sudan, the fact that the rebels came from the area disqualified native Nubans from even the most basic human rights apparently)  It was out of this state of anarchy that the rebellion and the reoccupation of the land by the SPLA-North was birthed.  In this context, it became a little clearer to me why the soldiers handled the situation the way they did.  Likewise, my naïve first response to the situation and misguided sympathies for the owner of the donkey are emblematic of how Westerners can be manipulated by the media and partial information when it comes to places with rich and complex histories like South Kordofan and Sudan in general.  It taught me a good lesson in prejudging situations, one which I hoped I would not have to learn over and over again as the journey continued.