VZCZCXRO7734
RR RUEHROV
DE RUEHKH #0395/01 0460939
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 150939Z FEB 06
FM AMEMBASSY KHARTOUM
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 1481
INFO RUCNIAD/IGAD COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 KHARTOUM 000395 
 
SIPDIS 
 
NSC WASHDC 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PHUM SOCI PREF PGOV EAID SU
SUBJECT:  Southern Sudan:  The Dinka Bor Come Home 
 
¶1.  Summary:  Regional Refugee Coordinator Sam Healy and 
CG Juba accompanied a UNHCR delegation to Bor, Jonglei 
State, on February 13 for a first-hand look at the return 
of the second group vulnerable Dinka Bor transported from 
Juba to Bor on a Nile barge.   Conversations with local 
officials and UN staff revealed several difficulties with 
the program, including reluctance by some returnees to 
continue from past way stations due to lack of transport 
for their goods and for want of agricultural inputs. 
UNHCR has taken immediate steps to alleviate this 
problem, including securing funding to provide trucks to 
continue the transport of returnees home.  End Summary. 
 
---------- 
Background 
---------- 
 
¶2.  A UNHCR team led by David Kapya, the Geneva-based 
Deputy Director for Sudan and Chad Special Operations, 
invited RefCoord and CG Juba to fly to Bor to witness the 
final stages of the return of Dinka Bor herders from 
Western Equatoria to their home in Jonglei State.  This 
population was displaced progressively from the beginning 
of the war in 1983.  SAF and GOS-supported militia 
attacks on the Bor area, from which John Garang 
originated, terminated with the infamous Bor massacre of 
1991, in which 2,000 Dinka civilians died.  Much of Bor 
was torched during the raids.  Thousands of Dinka Bor 
subsequently fled the region, settling in Bahr El Ghazal 
and Equatoria or moving north to Khartoum. 
 
¶3.  Frictions between the displaced Dinka Bor and local 
tribes, especially the Zande agriculturists of Western 
Equatoria, have long been a flashpoint.  To alleviate 
this conflict, arrangements for the return of Dinka Bor 
in Western Equatoria were in the works for three years. 
Following signature of the CPA, the plan was set in 
motion in 2005.  Thirty-four Bor cattle camps totaling 
between 15,000-17,000 persons moved east/northeast toward 
Bor under SLPA military escort, to avoid cattle raiding 
and clashes with other groups along the route.  The 
cattle camps crossed the Nile at the Juba Bridge starting 
in late 2005 and proceeded North to Bor.  However, some 
4,000 vulnerable persons - the elderly, the young, the 
infirm - were deemed too weak to continue the trek and 
were taken under UN care in Juba until the International 
Organization for Migration (IOM) could arrange for river 
transportation to Bor, where the vulnerable population 
could rejoin families in their villages of origin. 
 
--------------------------------------------- --------- 
Situation on the Ground:  Water, Sanitation, Education 
--------------------------------------------- --------- 
 
¶4.  The arrival of returnees has had a palpable effect on 
the area.  South of the Bor airstrip, entire villages are 
springing up as returnees seek to settle in before the 
rains began.  The visiting delegation met first with 
members of the Sudan Reconstruction and Relief Committee 
(SRRC) led by Deputy Director Panchol Jung Kuo.  He said 
that the Dinka Bor are returning to a difficult 
situation, with shortages of clean water, poor 
sanitation, and no education available in many outlying 
areas.  Jonglei state has a population of about one 
million from six different tribes; projected returnees 
throughout the state number an estimated 700,000.  The 
economy is exclusively agricultural, so it is imperative 
to settle newcomers into the payams (rural townships) and 
on the land before the agricultural season commences. 
 
¶5.  The SRRC members presented various statistics.  There 
are only 48 primary schools and a single secondary school 
in South Bor.  Bor town has nine primary sections and one 
co-located Arabic and English secondary school.  In rural 
areas, instruction is in English; in town, in Arabic. 
 
------------------------------- 
The High Cost of Demining Roads 
------------------------------- 
 
¶6.  Kuo said that the main road north along the Nile had 
been cleared of mines as far north as Duk Padiet, and 
southward to Juba.  The road from Lokichoggio through 
Kapoeta is also clear, creating a wishbone shaped 
corridor south.  GTZ-funded demining operations are 
working to link the town with the counties, but many of 
these roads remained impassable.  He said that both sides 
had mined the roads at various times, but claimed that 
only the SPLA had been willing to provide information on 
the quantity and types of mines it had planted.  He 
continued that some roads are now overgrown, and 
 
KHARTOUM 00000395  002 OF 002 
 
 
resources dedicated to demining are insufficient to cover 
clearance of saplings and vegetation as well.  An 
accompanying UN security official interjected that the 
cost of finding and clearing a single mine on a normal is 
about one thousand dollars.  Often, it is more economical 
to open a new road rather than clear an overgrown and 
heavily mined road. 
 
--------------------------------------------- ----------- 
Barges Create IDP Bottlenecks, Many Resist Onward Travel 
--------------------------------------------- ----------- 
 
¶7.  The SRRC members expressed concerns that the way 
station along the Nile where the first barge of returnees 
disembarked has become a bottleneck.  A number of the 
returnees has settled in, creating a de facto IDP camp 
along the riverbank.  Anne Encontre, the UNHCR 
representative in Juba, agreed that this is an 
unanticipated problem.  UN expectations had been that the 
returnees would spontaneously move back to their places 
of origin.  Many had not, complaining that they were 
unable to transport their possessions back to their 
villages.  A second UNHCR official said that the UN hoped 
to lease trucks to expedite the return.  An SRRC official 
stressed that non-food items are also desperately needed, 
especially agricultural implements.  Encontre cautioned 
that while UNHCR had been first on the ground, other UN 
agencies such as FAO would be responsible for such 
distributions at the village level. 
 
-------------------- 
Second Barge Arrives 
-------------------- 
 
¶8.  The visiting delegation arrived at the riverside way 
station just as the second barge arrived, carrying four 
hundred passengers and an Australian television crew. 
The atmosphere was festive and emotional as elderly 
passengers disembarked to see their homeland for the 
first time in two decades, and children for the very 
first time ever.  A visit to the nearby way station 
revealed that in had indeed become a choke point, with 
the first arrivals occupying temporary structures needed 
to house the newcomers.  The makeshift IDP camp had 
neither the sanitary facilities nor sufficient 
infrastructure to house any significant number of people 
for any length of time. 
 
----------------------------- 
Don't Bring Your Guns to Town 
----------------------------- 
 
¶9.  Although there was a visible SPLA military presence 
in Bor town, virtually none of the soldiers was armed. 
This phenomenon, relatively rare to South Sudan, resulted 
from an incident in early January where an argument 
between a northerner and a southerner ended in the 
shooting of the latter, and generalized gunfire 
throughout Bor as SPLA troops shot it out with any armed 
northerners unlucky enough to be in town.  Five deaths 
occurred and the UN temporarily pulled out, leading the 
local SPLA commander to forbid anyone from carrying a 
firearm in town. 
 
------------------------------- 
A Felicitous and Rapid Response 
------------------------------- 
 
¶10.  Over dinner back in Juba, Kapya said that his call 
to Geneva had resulted in the rapid release of USD 
100,000 from the emergency fund, and that he anticipated 
that trucks could begin transporting returnees and their 
goods back to their villages before the weekend.  Kapya 
calculated that, due to ongoing spontaneous returns from 
those still in Juba, that six more barges - one per week 
- should complete the return of the vulnerable Dinka Bor 
by the end of March, and produce a happy ending to this 
one small chapter in the social and physical 
reconstruction of Southern Sudan. 
 
STEINFELD