Background: Jaach

Late last night I met with Brad Phillips, director and founder of Persecution Project Foundation (PPF). As we talked for the first time face to face I was put at ease for the first time since the trip began of what we were about to do. Brad described how we would fly from Nairobi the following morning to a town in northern Kenya called Lokichoggio (Loki) and from there we had chartered an Antanov 24 that would fly us in to Darfur. We would be landing at a place called Jaach.

Technically, Jaach is not a town. There is no police station, no established government structure; they don’t even have a road or running water. Jaach is an IDP camp – that means it is a place in the desert where no one wanted to live. (When we arrived into Jaach, I began to realize why until 3 years ago this area had been deserted nothingness, but more on that later.) Located a few kilometers from the river Bahr al Arab, Jaach is literally no-man’s-land. No one is really sure if it is Southern Darfur or South Sudan, or both. Either way, until water-wells were built in Jaach 3 years ago no one could survive there long enough to debate the issue. As villages in the northern parts of Darfur have been attacked and homes burned, survivors would flee into the bush. (Image is a satellite photo of a burned village not too far from Jaach.) Living in the bush there is no guarantee of food or running water, so many people die walking to a new, safe place to sleep. Roaming Janjaweed, hostile tribes, wild animals, starvation and death are constant companions of these displaced Darfurians. Jaach grew as people from Northern Darfur sought refuge in a place where they would not be attacked, far enough away from the roving Janjaweed and hostile tribes.

Brad Phillips and PPF have been involved in Sudan since the 1990s. Friends with the late Sudanese leader John Garange, Brad has been involved in supplying aid and water to South Sudan since the time of their civil war with Northern Sudan and it was through those connections in Sudan that he was introduced to the Jaach refugees five years ago. Since then, Brad has spent much of his time and resources providing food and clean water for the hundreds of thousands of people that have congregated in Jaach.

Historical note: Sudan has been engulfed in civil warfare since granted independence from Great Britain in 1953. Divided by two warring ethno-religious groups – the Muslim Arabs in the North and the Christian/Anamist Dinkas in the South – have struggled to maintain a balance of power since that time. Although a cease-fire was established in 2005 called the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the conflict still goes on. Most recently, this conflict has spread to include all of Darfur, and this is the place that has seen the most violent and horrific examples of violence in Sudan’s history.

When Brad was first introduce to the area he described the gruesome experience of sleeping at night surrounded by the noises of people as they died from lack of water. By the hundreds he said, every night you could only hear coughing, screaming, crying and death. To go from a place where death was the reality to a thriving town has been a radical transformation in only five years, and it has occurred because of the 12 water wells (bore-holes) that have been built since 2005. It is amazing to recount how 12 water wells - each costing about $30,000 – could literally save hundreds of thousands of peoples lives. Today about 65,000 people live in Jaach, it is a thriving community with the promise of a government outpost in the near future!