Cattle replaced by fish as South Sudan reels from two years of devastating floods
It is often said that water is a blessing in South Sudan but the people who live in this impoverished nation have been given good reason to reconsider an unquestionable truth.
Two years of unprecedented flooding has changed the way the country looks, with thousands of kilometres of rich agricultural land now lying under water.
In the counties which surround the town of Bor, in Jonglei state, some 200,000 people have been forced to seek higher ground after an island formed on their land.
Huge areas of rich agricultural land are now under water
In communities where residents raised cattle and grew cereals like sorghum, fish now dart through the water and large water lilies have spread themselves on the surface.
The entire ecosystem, in an area of some 1,300 square kilometres, has changed beyond recognition.
The neatly constructed roofs of numerous towns and villages are visible above the water line but there is no sign – or sound – of life from within. The highways and byways have been washed away.
We hitched a lift to Bor on a helicopter with the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), which is now supporting 2.6 million people in South Sudan with emergency food aid.
But there is no way to move beyond Bor and into the floodlands in a conventional vehicle.
Instead, the WFP uses amphibious craft called “sherps”, and Sky News was given a couple of seats in the back of one of these contraptions on a mission to save an ageing dyke.
The floodwaters overwhelming the counties of Jonglei state stem from two separate sources.
Children wade through floodwaters after the Nile broke the dykes in Pibor last year
Much of the water has flowed from Lake Victoria – at the head of the Nile river system – some 800 kilometres to the north.
Unprecedented rainfall has been flowing into the lake since summer 2019.
The Ugandans, who control the dam at the top of the Nile, have been releasing water to prevent what is known as “backflow” from destroying communities on the lake itself.
As a result, the White Nile has burst its banks to devastating effect in South Sudan.
The second source is found in last year’s rainy season – which never actually stopped in South Sudan.
The UN uses special vehicles to get around
Now, this year’s monsoon is scheduled to start. The cumulative effect of both events has resulted in fundamental environmental change.
The UN is trying to restore an aging dyke in the vicinity of Bor.
It would allow tens of thousands of people to return to the land, but the earthworks have been destroyed in more than 40 places by the flooding.
Local people want to get back to farming
We watched small groups of men lug 80kg bags of sand and mud into position in just one of these sizable gaps.
There are 1,500 working on the dyke and all are men who used to farm in the area. Now they live in displacement camps in surrounding towns and villages and everyone here dreams of returning to the land.
“We need to protect our territory – this is our territory and the water is beyond our control,” said a young man called Mangol Guy Peter.
“God has taken but he will also provide.”
But the state minister for housing in Jonglei, Elijah Mabior Bol, is less certain about God’s role. He suspects his nation will bear the brunt of decisions made by human beings in far flung places.
The state minister for housing in Jonglei state thinks global warming is to blame
“It is when you have given up of thinking, scientifically, that’s why you say it is God,” he said.
“But to us, we say it is global warning. I remember in 1966 and 1967 we used to walk here from Bor on foot and now it is different territory. I can’t believe it – I can’t believe this was the soil we used to walk on when in elementary school in the 60s. It has totally changed.”
The people who grew cereals and raised animals in this region have gone. Those who remain must fish or grind flowers of water lilies into small amounts of cereal.
It is a difficult new world and they are trying to adapt.
World
Taliban reports sharp rise in death toll following earthquake in eastern Afghanistan, as aid agencies issue warning
The number of people killed following a deadly earthquake in eastern Afghanistan has risen sharply to 2,205, according to the Taliban government.
The increase, from more than 1,400 deaths reported on Tuesday, coincides with rescuers being hampered by harsh weather and rugged terrain, while aid agencies warned of dwindling resources.
The 6.0 magnitude quake struck several provinces in a mountainous and remote area of the country near the Pakistan border, at around 11.47pm (8.17pm UK time) on Sunday.
Afghanistan’s deadliest earthquake in years levelled villages, destroying thousands of homes, and trapping people under rubble. At least 3,640 people have been injured.
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Afghans search for survivors after earthquake
The majority of casualties have been in Kunar, where many live in steep river valleys separated by high mountains.
Taliban spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat said rescue and search efforts were continuing: “Tents have been set up for people, and the delivery of first aid and emergency supplies is ongoing.”
More than 6,700 homes have been destroyed, authorities have said.
But while officials have deployed helicopters and airdropped army commandos to help survivors, the rough terrain is hindering relief efforts.
Tough terrain is hindering relief efforts. Pic: Reuters
Aid workers have reported walking for hours to reach villages cut off by landslides and rockfall.
Afghanistan was already struggling with the impact of climate change, particularly drought, a weak economy and the return of some two million Afghans from neighbouring countries.
Sunday’s earthquake is the third to devastate the country since the Taliban seized power in 2021.
Livestock are left to shelter inside a damaged house. Pic: Reuters
On Wednesday, the defence ministry said the Afghan air force moved more than 1,900 people in 155 flights over two days, and delivered 10,000kg of supplies across the region.
The UK has pledged £1m in emergency funding to be split between humanitarian agencies instead of the Taliban government, which the UK does not recognise.
Injured Afghans have been evacuated to a hospital in Jalalabad. Pic: AP
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Humanitarian needs are “vast and growing rapidly”, said the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent
Societies.
“Up to 84,000 people are directly and indirectly affected, with thousands displaced,” it added.
In some of the worst-affected villages in Kunar province, two in three people had been killed or injured, while 98% of buildings were either destroyed or damaged by the tremors, according to an assessment by British-based charity Islamic Relief Worldwide.
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The Norwegian Refugee Council said it had fewer than 450 staff in Afghanistan, no emergency stock and an urgent need for funds.
“We have only $100,000 (£74,500) available to support emergency response efforts. This leaves an immediate funding gap of $1.9 million (£1.42m),” said Maisam Shafiey, from the humanitarian organisation.
China put on a show of military strength and diplomatic pulling power in Beijing this week that should worry us all.
At the heart of it was one all-powerful man.
Xi Jinping is emerging as the emperor of a rising China bent on reshaping the world in its image.
He wears the garb of his communist forebears, but he is much more than just another heir to Chairman Mao.
Xi increasingly has more in common with China’s imperial past.
He has disposed of rivals and term-limit rules, making him potentially ruler for life.
Xi believes it is China’s destiny to return to its rightful place as the centre of the world. A new world order dominated by China is approaching he believes, hastened by the Trump administration’s willingness to dismantle the current Pax Americana and western disarray over Ukraine.
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The Chinese weapons that will worry America
China has a right to assert itself more robustly on the world stage, of course, but it’s the manner of that assertion and the risks of collision with the West that should give cause for concern.
Xi has ruthlessly crushed dissent at home with quasi genocidal repression in Xinjiang, a cultural holocaust in Tibet and brutal suppression of human rights in Hong Kong.
Next in his sights is Taiwan. It is claimed by the Chinese communists as part of their One China project.
That opens up one fault line between Xi’s rising China and Western nations.
China’s more and more open support of Putin’s war in Ukraine is of course another.
Western impotence and failure to bring enough pressure on Russia to end the conflict has allowed it to metastasize into a much bigger one.
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The three autocrat amigos in Beijing on Wednesday. Pic: Reuters
On one side in the East, authoritarian governments lining up to support Russia. And on the other, democratic countries supporting Ukraine.
This week’s jamboree of autocrats in Beijing seems to have tipped things more in their favour. Good news for regimes using Orwellian surveillance, censorship, and repression to control their people and keep a grip on power.
Bad news for the rest of us who prefer a future organised around democracy, freedom, and the rule of law.
Dictators rejoice. Democrats beware.
World
‘At night we don’t sleep’: How a West Bank family are facing harassment by young Israeli settlers
The further we go, the rougher the terrain becomes, jolting the car as we drive along a mountain track strewn with rocks.
And then we round a corner and there is a sleeping dog, a circle of chairs and two women smiling and beckoning us to follow them.
This is Fatima and her mother-in-law, Fadda. They live in a makeshift camp perched on a rocky ledge.
Fatima (left) and Fadda say they are afraid their homes could be set alight
Behind their tent is a cave, in which there are chickens and a bed. In front of it is the path where we now stand, and then a precipice that looks down upon a ravine.
They invite us into a tent to talk. Sweet tea is brought out, and so is the story of how their home was demolished, their car stolen, their peace destroyed and why they now have to hide their flock of sheep.
But before all that, Fatima takes us out and points at a ridge behind their camp.
We can see a small black structure, just visible against the dark rock. “That is where they are,” she says. “The settlers come down from there.”
The family say settlers are constantly coming to their camp home to harass them
Every day, people come down to her home. Unwelcome visitors.
“We’d be baking bread, and they would come, lay out their mattresses and just sit there. When we told them to leave, they’d return with more settlers and an armed soldier.”
And the soldier, always, would be on the side of the settlers.
“At night we don’t sleep,” says Fadda, smiling through the pain.
“We stay awake waiting for the settlers. Four or five of them come in their cars each night, sometimes on motorcycles, right up to our doorstep to terrify the children.
“We sit through the night, afraid they’ll set fire to our homes and belongings, trying to force us to flee with our kids.”
We see videos, shared widely on social media, of Fadda confronting a young settler who has come to menace the family.
Fadda confronted a young settler in a video shared on social media
He stands right in front of her, staring her straight in the eyes, trying to push her forward. Fadda responds by standing her ground, smiling gently at him.
“This happens every single day,” says Fatima. “If we didn’t stand up for ourselves, we would have left long ago. The problem is, they’re children.
“They send the kids down on purpose to provoke us, to push us off our land. That’s why we’ve had to build this resilience.”
Fadda says the settlers come ‘right up to our doorstep to terrify the children’
Their tale of suffering is desperate. They tell me the family used to live in a house, which was demolished by the Israel military.
An hour later we drive past its remains – a huge pile of twisted metal and rubble. Their car has been taken so they have to walk to distant shops under the baking sun.
Mobile phones have been stolen along with computers and animals. Their flock of sheep is now kept in another place, hidden from sight.
‘This is our land’
“The situation has become really bad,” says Fatima. “Not just for us, but for the whole West Bank.”
And yet the family is determined to stay. “This is our land,” say both women, almost in unison. The brutal truth is also that they have nowhere else to go.
The West Bank is dotted with Israeli settlements, from top to bottom, some large and long-established, with thousands of residents and a sprawling infrastructure; some small and very new, with just a few caravans parked on a hilltop.
All of them are based on the idea of extending the reach of the Israeli state by placing its people all over the West Bank, or at least turning a blind eye to them moving there.
The fact that these settlements are, by widespread consent, illegal under international law has not stopped them from proliferating. Quite the opposite.
Not only are they growing in number and size, but the Israeli government is lending them ever more support and legitimacy.
Read more:
Inside the conflict forcing Palestinians from their homes
West Bank: The city locked down by armed troops
Bezalel Smotrich wants Israel to annex more than 82% of the West Bank. Pic: Reuters
Now, the far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has declared that it’s time for Israel to annex more than 82% of the West Bank.
His logic can be summed up like this: we’re not safe with neighbours like this, and according to the Bible, it should be our land anyway.
Not everyone will agree, and perhaps most outside Israel will strongly disagree, but Smotrich is, as always, unapologetic and unabashed.
“Beyond our Biblical, historical and moral right to the entire land of Israel, the political and security role of sovereignty is to ensure that a Palestinian Arab terror state is never established in our land,” he said.
“Enemies should be fought, not provided with comfortable lives.”
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
The West Bank has, for decades, been a crucible for ever-growing mistrust and dislike. It has seen waves of terrible violence and chronic divisions.
There is no sign of things improving, but plenty of suggestions that they are getting worse.
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