(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Halle Jørn Hanssen. On life loose. With Norwegian People's Aid in South Sudan. Skyline publishing house, 2015
In 2008, an American company received a long-term lease of six million acres of South Sudanese forest, inland and outfield. This corresponds to 60 000 Norwegian small farms on 100 acres each. The contract secured Americans the right – in 49 years – to grow plants that can be used for biodiesel production, to extract all other natural resources that may exist in the area, and to sell carbon credits [CO2 emission permits] on the world market. A better example of the dissolution of the South Sudanese state can hardly be found. Now the leaders are selling the basis of life to their own people.
The example is taken from Halle Jørn Hanssens book On life loose. With Norwegian People's Aid in South Sudan which launches this month. And unfortunately, it is not unique: Only in the years 2007 – 2010, 25 million acres of land were sold or leased to foreign companies. Did any locals ask about their opinion?
This is how Hanssen sums up the South Sudanese state after four years of independence: Oil production has stopped almost entirely, authorities are no longer allowed to borrow money abroad after borrowing billions of pledges in future natural resource extraction, the central bank is printing banknotes that are becoming more and more worthless, the country is technically bankrupt and the political system very oppressive.
Time witness. How did it get there? Were not the 39 years of civil war, in two rounds, one war of liberation? Few, if any, have better conditions than Halle Jørn Hanssen to answer that question. As Norwegian People's Aid's foreign chief and then secretary general in the years 1992 – 2001, he had overall responsibility for the aid program in South Sudan, but he was in the picture right from the start in 1986. And he has followed African politics since the early 60 century, first as a student, later as NRK correspondent, NUPI employee and Head of Information at NORAD.
The author's background is important because Halle Jørn Hanssen's book is above all a report from a time witness. Both his background knowledge and analysis are solid, but it is his meeting with the main characters in the drama that is unique. Hanssen knows these personally: He has had them at home for dinner, he has taken them to the cabin. And he knows South Sudan very well after many visits to the country over more than 30 years.
The civil war in South Sudan was to become a crossroads for many of us who grew up with the white man's guilt and had to navigate very different images of Africa – from the colon
the images of the lords and missionaries, of the aid workers and liberation movements.
I no longer knew if the relief was for the sake of war victims or organizations.
The war should also be the one that caused Norwegian aid organizations to lose their innocence and end up, not only on their part in a conflict, but also in their throats, and it should teach us once and for all that it does not necessarily get better when The UN moves into a war zone – it could be worse.
Took a party. Is it possible to run emergency aid in a civil war without taking part? No, said Norwegian People's Aid, with its political ballast and experience of the Spanish Civil War. Yes, meant other Norwegian aid organizations.
Up to 1986, South Sudan was the target of the largest development program in Norwegian aid history, run by Norwegian Church Aid (KN). All over the country you could see the traces of the Norwegian aid organization. As it was called: South Sudan was the KN, and the KN was South Sudan. Right until Easter 1986, when soldiers from the rebel army SPLA abducted CN staff Arne Olav Øyhus and held him captive for seven weeks. This resulted in the KN evacuating its entire staff from the country.
The same year, Norwegian People's Aid's legendary Egil Hagen began a collaboration with the SPLA and started aid missions into the war zone. This was not well received in the KN. Things did not get any better when the UN started the massive relief program Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) three years later. Norwegian Church Aid joined forces with a dozen other aid organizations under the OLS umbrella, while Norwegian People's Aid chose to stand outside. And not only that: Egil Hagen also marked himself as a fierce critic of OLS. Thus, the ice front between the two Norwegian aid organizations was a fact.
In large parts of South Sudan, people eventually took it for granted that food is something that falls from the sky in white sacks.
Shortly thereafter, rumors were issued that Norwegian People's Aid had smuggled weapons into SPLA. The rumor was spread, albeit underhand, by several OLS organizations, including the KN. No one ever had any evidence, but the rumor was to follow Norwegian People's Aid throughout the 1990 number, most recently in a sub-language NRK / Brennpunkt program from 1999, duly discussed in the book.
Press failure. Halle Jørn Hanssen writes that the Norwegian press early in the 1990 century lost interest in the South Sudanese civil war. It both votes and doesn't. The word "exhaustion" would be more comprehensive.
I myself wrote this in Dagbladet Magasinet in 1999:
"The pictures from twelve years of traveling in a forgotten war rage against me as I see the bags of corn being thrown out, and I decide to give up. The bags hit the ground 100 meters down, the aircraft settles over, circles and opens the cargo hatch for a new release. I can see the landscape clearly below us: lush green fields, just here and there dotted by white sacks of American corn. Flight of food across a land of abounding crops, the happy frenzy anywhere else, but just not here, not in the South Sudanese civil war. Here it is natural to drop food over areas where there is more than enough to eat, just as natural as not dropping food over areas where people are starving. ”
It would take another six years of South Sudanese travel before I finally managed to throw in the towel. International aid to South Sudan had become a billion-dollar industry, a battle for contracts and deliveries. The country swallowed $ 8 million a day, the same thing swallowed the war, and I no longer knew what came first, the war or the relief; I no longer knew whether the parties remembered what they were fighting about; I no longer knew whether the relief was for the sake of war victims or organizations. Moreover, it became more and more clear that the SPLA was also on the path both politically and morally. No African liberation movement has made the transition to civil society – not even the South Sudanese.
Dilemma. Is there something missing On life loose. With Norwegian People's Aid in South Sudan?
I wish Halle Jørn Hanssen had gone deeper into the dilemma that immediately arises when a relief organization takes part in a civil war: Where does the border between relief and war aid go? Sending food and medicine into a war zone is a relief, of course. But to pay a satellite phone for the rebel army commander? And to equip the rebel army with a modern truck fleet to carry the emergency aid in, trucks that can be used for the carriage of weapons next?
I also wish that Halle Jørn Hanssen had spent more time on the important question related to emergency aid: How long? "Everyone" knows that relief is harmful in the long run – in large parts of South Sudan, people eventually took it for granted that food is something that falls from the sky in white bags. After Norwegian People's Aid in its South Sudan program initiated cooperation with the US Department of Aid USAID, turnover tripled from one day to another, and Norwegian People's Aid grew to become the largest civilian employer in the country. What was going on in the internal debate about the relationship between short-term and long-term relief measures?
On life loose. With Norwegian People's Aid in South Sudan is a book many will enjoy: everyone who has somehow entered the South Sudanese civil war, everyone who wants to know more about how international relief works and not least about the game in the scenes, and everyone who is interested in Norwegian peace work "Out there," in "the other reality."
The South Sudanese civil war has many layers, from Africans to Arabs and Christians to Muslims, to tribe against tribe. Right now we are down to tribe, mostly laid in ruins by pill rotten leaders, and the question of Norwegian People's Aid must necessarily be: Was it worth it?
Gunnar Kopperud is a writer and journalist who covered the South Sudanese civil war in 18 years for, among other things, Dagbladet
gkopperud@hotmail.com
