I just returned from a harrowing humanitarian mission to the Nuba Mountains in Sudan. Since June 2011 a war has raged between the Government of Sudan (GoS) and rebels, the Sudanese People's Liberation Army-North--the latter insisting that the Nuba be treated with justice and equality.
Countless Nuba children have been killed by jagged pieces of shrapnel hurtling through the air, others from a loss of blood from severed limbs. Still others due to stepping on landmines planted by GoS troops.
And some--like the young boy whose life I recently tried to save--foolishly, and yet understandably, after all he was a boy doing what boys do, threw rocks at what turned out to be unexploded ordnance, thus causing the bomb to explode and nearly rip off his right leg and gouge a wound deep into his abdomen.
The boy, 12 years old, had walked under a hot sun with the temperature inching toward 109 degrees Fahrenheit seven or eight miles to an orchard where he and his older sister searched for mangoes to supplement their family's meager food stores. Coming across a metal canister, the boy asked his sister what to do with it; while she wisely advised him to leave it alone, he, first, picked it up and tossed it away from the tree they were about to climb; and then, as his sister proceeded to collect mangoes, he began tossing rocks at the canister.
Upon exploding, it nearly, and literally, ripped him apart.
Racing over rutted, dirt roads to the only hospital (Mother of Mercy) with the only surgeon (an American, Tom Catena) in the Nuba Mountains, my driver and I attempted to keep the boy comfortable and alive. But it was not to be. He perished in the back of our truck in the arms of an aunt less than 15 minutes before we pulled up to the entrance of the hospital.
During the autopsy "Dr. Tom" performed, it was clear just how destructive such ordnance can be: a compound fracture--the bone had burst through the boy's skin; jagged pieces of bone commingled with a mash of blood-soaked skin, tissue, and muscle; and a chest wound so large and deep, a fist could easily fit.
The point? First, innocent civilians who have absolutely nothing to do with the rebels or the war have been, and continue to be, victims of the ever-increasing aerial attacks that have plagued the Nuba Mountains for four long, miserable years.
Second, neither the international community nor individual nations, including the United States, have done anything other than gab about the ongoing killing and maiming of civilians. While at Mother of Mercy, I saw at least three individuals minus an arm or leg as a result of having it amputated due to grievous injury from the shrapnel of the bombs dropped by Antonov bombers and Sukhoi 24 fighter jets.
Third--and this is directly related to the young boy who was killed and his search for food to help his family in this period of ever-increasing hunger due to the GoS' bombing of farms--the GoS has purposely blocked international humanitarian aid from reaching Nuba civilians. As a result, not a few have starved to death, with even more suffering everything from hunger to severe malnutrition.
Yes, the world today is a horrifically complicated place with a nightmarish number of violent conflicts across the globe, where tens of millions are in critical need of aid and assistance: Iraq, Syria, the Republic of South Sudan, the Central African Republic, the Gaza Strip, and on and on. And in many of those places--including Syria, Iraq, the Gaza Strip, and the Republic of South Sudan--great attention has been and is being focused on the needs of the refugees and "internally displaced people" (IDPs). But that is not the case in the Nuba Mountains. Why?
That is a question that people across the globe must demand that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and the Security Council permanent members (the U.S., Great Britain, France, Russia, and China) answer honestly and in detail. It must also be posed to President Barack Obama and his mouthpiece for human rights, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power. When neither held their current positions, both were outspoken about the lack of concern by the George W. Bush administration vis-à-vis the needs of the people of Sudan. Why the silence now?
The image of that young boy, bloodied and in pain but alive, and then his stony eyes following his death, haunt me--and will haunt me--to the day I die. His young, vibrant life should have never ended the way it did, and it is not only the Government of Sudan that deserves shame for his untimely demise.
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Samuel Totten, author of Genocide by Attrition: Nuba Mountains, Sudan, just returned from a research trip deep in the Nuba Mountains. Due to an injury he was medevaced to Nairobi, where he spent five days in a hospital. He can be reached at samstertotten@gmail.com.
Editorial on 05/21/2015