'We feel forgotten'
2006-01-07 10:16
Lankien - A year after the truce ending the 21-year civil war in southern Sudan, refugees are returning but villagers living in places unnamed on any map - without roads, electricity, schools or clinics - say they still feel forgotten, and fear war will return if peace does not also mean prosperity.
Guns are the most modern innovation in sight. A lucky few have wheel-driven pumps to draw water.
Centuries of hatred have built up between north and south Sudan since Arab Muslims invaded Africa's Nubian kingdoms in the mid-600s in search of slaves and converts among its Coptic Christians.
The Nubians repulsed them, but ancient animosities over land and water were compounded by the discovery of oil in south Sudan, triggering a rebellion in 1983 by mainly Christian and animist southerners.
North Sudan has electricity
Guerrillas won control of much of the south but the Arab government in Khartoum, the capital, established garrison towns around the country's three major oil fields.
North Sudan has electricity, piped water, paved roads, schools and high-rise buildings constructed with new oil wealth - estimated to account for 70% of the country's income.
Medical worker Francis Gatluak, 48, says that, for now, "people are prepared to wait and see if the peace agreement can help us sit together and negotiate whether we can share what we have, whether we can live and work together.
"If not, we separate. And I would say the majority is on the side of separation."
He doubted southerners would wait six years for a referendum on independence.
The referendum is provided for under the January 9, 2005 peace agreement that founded a national unity government and promises autonomy, religious freedom and an equal share of oil wealth to the south.
Government accused of genocide
But one year on, southerners accuse the Khartoum government of giving only a fraction of what was promised in oil revenues.
Relative peace has not stopped gun battles between rival clans over cattle, pasture and water.
David Reayh Malmal of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army has charged the Khartoum government of arming militias and rival clans.
Sudan's government denies it has unleashed surrogate militias to terrorise southerners.
The government is also accused of spurring a genocide in order to quell a rebellion in the western Darfur province, where at least 180 000 people have died and 1.5 million have been displaced.
More than half a million refugees are expected to return to the province this year.
- AP