I took this photograph during Operation Thunderbolt’s (OTB) offensive (9 March – late April 1997) in the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983 to 2005) in the town of Yei. I was in the area working on a report.
The SPLA (Sudan People’s Liberation Army) leadership in the area had decided to show me Yei’s old British garrison and the POWs they kept there. Some of the “Arab” prisoners were not looking to be in good shape. As I walked through the square, I spoke with the odd prisoner here and there, asking who they were and where they were from.
The government troops were made up of Arabs from the north as well as many other African tribal people from the south.
A small group of boy prisoners, both African and Arab, sat in the dirt together. One Arab boy, a 14-year-old, told me he and the other boys from his class were taken from school and thrown into the army; that’s how he ended up where he did.
There were a few men from Zaire (the country today known as the Democratic Republic of Congo, a.k.a the DRC) who were also POWs. They served in the Sudan government’s National Islamic Forces (NIF) as paid foreign soldiers, i.e., mercenaries of sorts.
Days later, I met a Zairian woman with a small child who asked the local aid worker doctor and me for help and food. She couldn’t communicate with anyone in the area because no one understood her; she spoke only French and her tribal language. Her husband was a POW in the garrison. I helped interpret as best I could for the doctor, and the doctor provided a little help.
©2017 Royce de Melo
I stopped to talk to this particular prisoner because he stood out; he had a certain glow about him. I asked him in Arabic where he was from. He calmly replied in English that he was from the Nuba Mountains. I was a little surprised because Nuba is somewhat isolated, and many Nuba mountain people were fighting the government as part of the SPLA.
For some reason, my reaction was to blurt out to him, and in front of the SPLA entourage with me, “Ah! Colonel Yousif.”
Col. Yousif Kuwa was the famous SPLA Commander and Nuba Leader at the time.
Sitting in the dirt with a blank expression, this POW looked up at me and said, “He’s my cousin.”
I was even more surprised and curious, “He’s your cousin…?! Colonel Yousif is your cousin?!”
“He’s from my mother’s family.”
“Well… What are you doing here? Why are you with the government army?”
“I joined for a job… For money.”
“A job…? For money..? That’s the reason?”
He nodded.
That was eye-opening. I wished him luck and walked away to continue seeing the other prisoners. I thought it was sad that he joined the NIF in a war for a cause he might not even believe in, out of desperation, to make a tiny bit of money. And look where he ended up. Of course, the irony is that he is a relative of this famous rebel commander fighting the NIF. Such is the nature of many civil wars.
I don’t know what happened to this POW. I don’t know what happened to all those POWs. I do know that there was a general lack of food and medicine for everyone in the area at that time, for civilians and military alike. I reckon the SPLA’s supply priorities would have been to their own first and not for these POWs. As I said, some weren’t in good shape.
The photograph of this NIF Nuba POW now hangs on my wall.
—RdM
(This story was original posted on LinkedIn July 14, 2017, ‘A photo of an NIF POW, one of 900 government soldiers held as POWs by the SPLA in Yei Town’s old garrison, 1997 (Operation Thunderbolt),’ and has been edited for this posting.)
.
