Bentiu - nearly

I'm writing this from Bentiu, capital of Unity state, or I would be if someone didn't keep dropping bombs on it.  The UN and the NGOs are evacuating most of their staff today so my trip will have to wait till Tuesday next week, when we'll try again.

Observers of events in these parts over the last 50 years will know that these guys don't need an excuse to fight, but this time they have one.  The black South and the arab North are going at it again for control of the Heglig oil field, and its all-crucial Central Processing Facility.  All oil from South Sudan goes through the north as that's where the only pipeline goes, and two months ago the South took its ball home and turned off the pumps as it was convinced the north was siphoning it off along the way.  Holding the CPF would be a good way to do a similar siphoning trick as all the oil from north and south goes through it.

Seeing as 98% of South Sudan's revenue is from oil, its sulking raises two major questions.  How will it now feed its people, and where the hell did the other 2% come from?  The first question is moot as South Sudan has never bothered to feed its people, preferring to splash out on heavy artillery.  As for the second question, my visa must have contributed a hefty portion, as it's $100 just to set foot in the country.  I imagine that import duty on ministerial Hummers has been significant too.  Of course, technically they can't charge you for importing things because they haven't got around to writing any laws yet but that's another story.

Weapons

There are rather a lot of weapons in South Sudan; this is what you get when you host a war for the best part of fifty years.  If anyone wants an AK47, I can get you one for the going rate of $13.  The government has been carrying out disarmaments recently.  This is an invitation for everyone to bury all but one of their guns in the bush, and hand over the one that's left, on the basis that no one could possibly have more than one.  This assumption has led to unfortunate incidents where people have been beaten up by soldiers for not handing over a gun, when they didn't have one in the first place.  Last week in the town of Bor the army even disarmed the police, who are supposed to be armed, and had to re-arm them after a hasty phone call.

There are lots of land mines and UXOs (unexploded ordnance) on the Jebel, the rather pretty hill on the outskirts of Juba that people climb when they can't think of anything better to do with their sunday.  This is not because mines were planted there during the war.  In fact, a couple of years ago the government gathered all the mines and UXO they could find around Juba and put it in a pile on the Jebel.  They then tossed on a lot of sticks of dynamite, hoping that a controlled explosion would be the result.  What actually happened was that several tons of explosives were blown into the air, and rained down all over the mountain.  A de-miner actually lost a leg, not because he trod on a mine but because a mine fell from the sky onto his leg.  It didn't even explode.  Anyway, hikers on the Jebel would be well advised to take a companion and follow in their footsteps a few paces behind, ready to turn back in case the companion suddenly travels a long way in a vertical direction.