Soldier sees South Sudan struggle, secede
3 min readRutted, pothole-laden, and oft snow covered they may be, but you don’t have it bad with your roads, Moose Jaw.
Capt. Mark Pelley (seated, in sunglasses) sits among a meeting of local government, military, and police officials during his deployment as part of the United Nations Mission in the Sudan. Pelley said when meetings were conducted, up to 200 villagers…
In South Sudan, they do, and if you’re travelling there, you’d best have a trusty towrope.
When he wasn’t driving across bridges where quick fixes do not exactly inspire confidence, Capt. Mark Pelley was often travelling in United Nations vehicles down one of the four roads in the Western Bahr El-Ghazal province of the newest nation on Earth, South Sudan.
Calling them roads though, is generous. When dry, they kick up dust and flies are omnipresent; when wet, they turn to mud and are barely possible. The only upside, because there is only ever one road in and out of a place and the rest is essentially jungle, is that you cannot get lost.
“The average speed is 15-20 kilometres per hour, if that, so to go 100 km you’re looking at a 10 hour drive,” explained Pelley, who returned to Moose Jaw two weeks ago after spending nearly six months as a military observer in the UN’s Mission in the Sudan (UNMIS).
The roads are essential for travel though. In one case, many villages are cut off because a road becomes inaccessible at a point because it has not yet been “de-mined” of all the land mines placed along it during the region’s decades of bloody civil war.
Pelley, 40, has been employed at 15 Wing Moose Jaw for over three years. In February, he left his wife and four young children to serve in the UN mission, which has been active in the country since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement ending a two-decade long civil war in 2005.
While stationed in the southwest province south of the Darfur region, Pelley witnessed the day of independence for South Sudan on July 9. Earlier this year, 98.83 per cent of South Sudanese persons voted to secede from the northern half and form their own nation.
UNMIS ended on July 9 with independence. Two new missions are now in place, the United Nations Mission in the Republic of South Sudan and the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei.
For more on this story, read Tuesday’s Times-Herald.
Soldier sees South Sudan struggle, secede
Moose Jaw Times-Herald
In South Sudan, they do, and if you’re travelling there, you’d best have a trusty towrope. When he wasn’t driving across bridges where quick fixes do not exactly inspire confidence, Capt. Mark Pelley was often travelling in United Nations vehicles down …
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