NGOs striving to rid Sudan of millions of mines
Jebel Kujur, a rocky outcrop on the outskirts of Juba, is fast being swallowed up by mushrooming slums and returnees, leaving deminers with a challenge they face across south Sudan.
The mountain overlooking the region’s capital was once a prized vantage point in the civil war pitting the Sudanese armed forces against southern rebels and is still littered with unexploded ordinance (UXO).
As tens of thousands of returning exiles build and farm on previously unused land and workers chisel away at mountains to sell crushed stone, a reminder of the future nation’s past risks blowing up in their faces at any moment.
"This mountain can be called a commercial area — most people here work in stone-crushing — and also increasingly a residential area… It is at the heart of Juba’s development," said Akech Athieu, a veteran deminer.
Migrants from Kenya and Uganda, as well as the poorest among the stream of south Sudanese exiles drawn back home by the prospect of statehood, spend days eking out a living by pushing boulders down the slopes and crushing the stone.
"Sometimes they hit munitions, but when you’re hungry, you don’t know the risks," said Athieu, a technical field manager with the Mine Advisory Group (MAG), one of several NGOs striving to rid Sudan of millions of mines.
Minefields in South Sudan
Crouched behind a rock for protection, he shouts orders at his men, who use a pulling rope to safely retrieve an unexploded 122-mm armor-piercing shell fired during the 1992-1994 battle for Jebel Kujur, one of the bloodiest episodes of Sudan’s two-decade north-south war.
Later that day, 83 devices were destroyed in a controlled explosion at a demolition site about an hour’s drive from Juba.
According to the U.N. Mine Action Office in Sudan, there are almost 600 confirmed minefields in southern Sudan, covering an area of around 250 square kilometers.
Landmines and UXO are known to have killed 23 people and wounded 53 in 2010, the highest recorded annual casualty figure, but many accidents go unreported.
While painstaking demining projects are ongoing in largely secured minefields in other parts of the country, MAG teams in Jebel Kujur are scrambling to keep up with urban expansion and the influx of returnees.
Amid the piles of crushed stone amassed by the quarry workers, red and white tape markings dot the low flanks of Jebel Kujur to signal unexploded devices.
Due to the nature of the site, liaising with the locals is a key part of the group’s action.
MAG teams have to warn the community when suspicious devices are found or removed. Many of these devices are spotted by local residents in the first place. So the more returnees settle in the area, the more UXO is found.
"We rely so much on the community. We have recognized the Jebel is quite a dangerous area at the moment, that’s something that has come to our attention over the last few months," said MAG’s Sudan director Ruairi McDermott.
MAG teams seek out the most exposed people wherever they are to spread awareness of the danger lying beneath their feet.
Avoiding dangerous areas
Under a giant mango tree, a cosmopolitan group of bricklayers from Sudan and neighboring countries gathered for a learning session on how to recognize various UXO, how to avoid dangerous areas and items, and what to do next.
"Most of these people are not aware. Most of them are from other states and have returned recently," said Paulino Malangi, a community liaison team leader.
Abdulatif Sandi, a Ugandan immigrant, has been working on Jebel Kujur for three years.
"When I first came to work here in 2007, we found a lot of munitions in this place. Sometimes there were accidents," he said.
"Then they (MAG) came and told us to put markings. They gave us sheets and textbooks so that we could recognize the objects. Here, the community is very careful now," Sandi said.
Accidents still occur however. A woman was badly wounded recently when the heat of the fire she lit under cooking stove detonated a buried device.
More than 150,000 southerners who had fled the war have already returned to their homeland, mainly from northern Sudan, but few are able to reclaim their native land, driving huge numbers towards the capital for work opportunities.
They look for quarrying jobs or set up rudimentary huts on previously unsettled land on the edge of the growing city, forming a glistening rim of tin roofs around one side of the mountain.
"People will keep coming here… And they will come here to crush stones for 20 years to come," said Athieu.
A mine-free environment is also crucial to road construction, which is seen as the key that will unlock economic potential and improve living conditions in a country whose tarmac network just passed the 100-kilometre (60-mile).
The same goes for agriculture and many of the future nation’s sectors.
"I think mine action is the first priority in the development of south Sudan and the peace of south Sudan," Athieu said.