South Sudan: The Nation of the Traumatized (Part 2)
South Sudanese Intellectuals and the Trauma
By Thiik Mou Giir, Melbourne, Australia
July 30, 2016 (SSB) —- The vast majority of South Sudanese intellectuals, especially those in Diaspora, have become part of the problem, a problem that is not helping our people to break the cycle of trauma – wars, perpetual wars. Partially, through their writings, our people in South Sudan and Diaspora have been experiencing trauma directly and indirectly.
The intellectuals have been inciting violence and when violence occurs, people: adults, children, and even fetuses in the wombs get affected. Those who are directly affected will have to live with trauma for the rest of their lives and that trauma will be passed on to their children and their children’s children.
The married men will treat their wives in ways that are influenced with trauma. As the result, those women, possibly with their own trauma, will have to put up with traumatically influenced treatment they will receive from their husbands.
What kind of upbringing will they give to their children? It is obvious that the couple’s trauma will be transmitted into their children. How will this impact the future of our home country?
There will be high rate of crime and even wars, thereby destabilizing some regions or even the entire South Sudan. The successive governments will pay heavily. As the result, the successive South Sudanese economies will be weakened.
People who live in regions where the populations are least traumatized will wonder and ask, “What kind of people are, for example, Nuer and Jieng people? Why do they behave aggressively like this? Why are they hard to get along with? They are apparently bad people,” they would conclude.
The illiterate people could be forgiven for not knowing the answers to these questions and for making such a conclusion, but the majority of intellectuals will not, for they are the ones inciting violence that cause trauma though they knew the answers.
Fight, Flight, in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
In Diaspora, the so called-Internet warriors, who are hardly becoming likeable role models to young men and young women, are bombarding everyone with war-junk messages. Imagine this scenario. A Jieng young man decides that he wants to know more about the affairs of South Sudan. He turns on the computer to read writings posted on S. Sudanese websites, forums, blogs and so on. He reads, a message after a message, from SPLM-IG and SPLM-IO supporters.
They are almost negative in nature. He tries to ignore the hate messages he seems to have been absorbing, and continued to read on hoping that his unquenchable thirst to know his people in a brighter light will be satisfied. In no time he realized that he is caught in Internet generated crossfire. He gets confused, not knowing exactly whether the target is Jieng, Jieng Council of Elders, SPLM-IO or SPLM-IG.
After a few days, he feels hooked into reading more and more of these kind of writings. He decides to fight. He launches attacking messages, taking the side where most of his Jieng members are actively defending. Suppose the receiving end of his messages are his friends, members of other tribes, who are also curious to learn about their people, what will they think of him? They will be surprised; however, they will certainly go through the same mental process through out the coming months and years.
They could all end up being Internet warriors, a force to perpetuate hatred and to encourage wars in our homeland. If this is the way we want to shape the future of our children, we are actively destroying it here in Diaspora and in South Sudan. We are not destroying ours only; we are destroying our children’s future as well.
If these young men and young women decide to take the option of flight, then the community will still be weakened. Young people may rebel against the authority of the elders. Before the young people decide to rebel against the elders, the gap between the elders and the young people will continue to widen.
While they would keep their non-tribal network of friends, they will not be interested to have any thing to do with their parents and their community elders. Is this young people’s wise decision?
First, they will feel, sooner or later, that they are rootless. It will be tragic for them as they live in Diaspora, a place where, from time to time, they face the harshness of racism. As they are facing racism, they should have a strong and solid community from which they could have had social, emotional, and material support.
In schools our South Sudanese young people think that they have friends; they think that the country will always treat them and their non-South Sudanese friends on equal terms. This assumption of theirs seemed to be good enough for them until the day they graduate. Once they graduate, from that day on, everything will change.
Their non-South Sudanese friends will get jobs long before they will do. This is when they will have identity crisis. This is when they will wish they had strong and solid South Sudanese community. But all they will see is a community divided on tribal lines because of wars that are being fought thousands and thousand of miles away.
Unfortunately, all they will see is a community that is neither strong nor solid. Where will they turn now? It is likely that these young men and young women will commit acts that will land them nowhere but in jails. What are the so-called intellectuals doing?
They are busy inciting violence in South Sudan. We are traumatized and know not what we are doing!
Traumatized, Part Two, B: Intellectuals, Manipulating Our People in South Sudan, will be the next topic. This will be published next week. You can reach the author via his email: Thiik Giir <thiik_giir@hotmail.com>
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