War is a Nightmare: Let’s Start the Healing Process in South Sudan
By Kon Joseph Leek, Juba, South Sudan
May 17, 2016 (SSB) — War is hell! Burn in a misdirected American napalm attack on the pagoda in which she had sought refuge, 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc flees in terror near the town of Trang Bang, South Vietnam. Over half of the body was charred by third-degree burns from the jellied-gasoline inferno; her two little brothers were instantly incinerated and a third brother also suffered excruciating burns
Nick Ut, the photographer who took Pulitzer price-winning picture of Kim, rushed the girl to a hospital and many have saved her life. But it has not been an easy life. Kim spent over a year in the hospital recovering from her immediate wounds, and she still has massive scars over most of her upper body. Most of her oil and sweat glands were also burned away, she continued to be assailed by migraine headaches, diabetes, breathing difficulty, and chronic pain associated with her trauma.
In 1996, 24 years after the scaring napalm attack, Ms. Kim came to lay a wreath at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. (Where she could be seen drying a tear as taps is played in memory of those who died in the Vietnam War). She came seeking reconciliation, not recrimination, and hugged American veterans. “I have suffered a lot [of] physical and emotional pain. Sometimes I could not breathe. But God saved my life and gave me faith and hope”, she told audience to several standing ovations.
This was a war ordeal which faced one Kim of Vietnam, this plus others occurred somewhere in the world, South Sudan is never an exceptional, its citizens have undergone similar ordeals during the war with the North and other wars we fought with ourselves ranging from 1991 Bor invasion and 2013 shameless war which succumbed due to power struggle within the SPLM.
The Vietnamese Veterans just like Rwandese had (could have) their memories of the wars in order to give themselves a chance for forgiveness, in Rwanda, it is remembered every year. It has never been done in our country. Healing process is a long lasting process which heals the wounds at hearts. It involves talking about those killed, words from the wounded, displaying of the remains like skulls, and also talking about the wars.
Healing goes concurrently with trial of the culprits as part of warnings to those who are still hanging around to cause further havocs like what we are undergoing these days along the Nile to Bor, Bor’s road, Nimule Road, kidnapping and killing of innocent school children in Shirkhat last month, attack along Nimule road, killing of people along Yei-Morobo road and many others, all these killings are taking a shape of target killing and people are pretending to have not noticed, all the culprits should be brought to book and tried as part of the healing
There are those who are wounded like Kim, amputated and those killed and no one is going to talk about them or took their pictures to tell the world and this is another reason it is good to heal and all of us should be part of it, it is good for us. We cannot be able to change the history but we should try to do the good things for the present and for the future in order to promote peace
War is hell, we bewail its existence and consequences while we regularly battle with exhilaration. Those who have fought and seen war often speak of its tragedy. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry a lot for more blood, more vengeance, and more desolation. ‘I have hate war as only the soldier who has lived it can, as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, and its stupidity’. Gen. Dwight David Eisenhower agreed with his historical comrades in arms
This is going to be the immediate task of the TGoNU to get the criminals killing the people along the roads and bring them to book. The TGoNU should have to also start the healing process under its commission that has to cover the whole country.
The writer is an independent commentator on contemporary South Sudan. He can be reached on; j.konleek@gmail.com
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