By William Davison
April 8 (Bloomberg) — Lucia John Awang has no illusions
about returning soon to her home in South Sudan.
A pregnant mother of nine, she’s one of about 80,000 South
Sudanese who’ve fled a four-month civil war in the world’s
newest nation to camps inside neighboring Ethiopia. Awang, 40,
left a United Nations compound where thousands of people were
sheltering from the fighting in Malakal, capital of Upper Nile
state, in February when rebel forces overran the area. She had
to walk for at least 10 days to find refuge.
“This has been a long journey. I imagine the war will take
time,” Awang said April 2 as she sat boiling water outside a
white tent provided by the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR. She’s
living with her family and 23,000 other refugees in Kule camp in
Ethiopia’s Gambella region. “Deaths are huge now,” she said of
Malakal. “There are no houses. There are bodies in the town.”
The violence in South Sudan started after soldiers clashed
at a barracks in the capital, Juba, in December and President
Salva Kiir accused his former deputy, Riek Machar, and other
officials of plotting a coup. Machar denies the charge.
Thousands have been killed in the conflict that has largely
pitted Kiir’s Dinka people against the Nuer group that Machar
belongs to.
About 860,000 have fled their homes inside South Sudan,
close to 10 percent of the population, according to the UN,
while another 254,000 have gone to neighboring countries
including Uganda, Kenya and Sudan. China National Petroleum
Corp., India’s Oil & Natural Gas Corp. and Petroliam Nasional
Bhd., the main producers of South Sudan’s oil, evacuated
employees because of the fighting.

Eating Leaves

About 1,600 refugees are arriving each day in Ethiopia, the
head of UNHCR, Antonio Guterres, said in an April 2 interview at
the Pagak border crossing between Ethiopia and South Sudan.
“I had no food, only leaves from trees,” Nyanget Bol, 35,
said while breastfeeding her baby. She lost a child, a  four-
year-old daughter, during the 10-day walk to the border while
five others survived.
About 40 percent of children under the age of five who
arrive in Ethiopia suffer from “acute malnutrition,” said
Challiss McDonough, a spokeswoman for the UN World Food
Programme.
“Some of them have been like that for years,” Guterres
said. “It’s a combination of extreme poverty with a war that’s
driven people to flee.”

Rebel Checkpoints

Inside South Sudan, WFP is using planes, boats and trucks
to reach remote areas. It has 25,000 metric tons of food ready
in Gambella to truck down the asphalt highway that runs to Pagak
and turns into dirt as it enters South Sudan.
Due to flooding and crop failure, Southern Sudanese in
Upper Nile, Jonglei and Unity states were the most likely to
face starvation even before the conflict began, McDonough said.
With the recent arrivals, Ethiopia is hosting more than
157,000 refugees from South Sudan, according to UNHCR. About
70,000 were in the country before, having fled violence during
the war for secession from Sudan before independence in 2011
or seeking refugee from recent ethnic violence between Nuer and
Murle ethnic groups in Jonglei state.
Obstacles such as rebel checkpoints led to transport costs
increasing by 25 percent in the past month, while the looting of
WFP supplies in the regional capitals of Malakal, Bentiu and Bor
resulted in the loss of 4,600 tons, enough to feed 275,000
people for a month, she said.

Road Access

Three-fifths of South Sudan is inaccessible by road during
a three-month rainy season that begins in July. The UN has
received $315 million of the $1.27 billion it said it needs by
June in a February appeal to deal with the crisis.
The refugees at Kule include former regional government and
medical workers who are unable to support their families after
they lost their jobs.
Bol Deng, 35, used to work in a hospital in Guel Guk in
Upper Nile state before soldiers destroyed the facility.
Now Deng, who has a wife and four children, is looking
after 15-year-old Gatlok Yangok and his two sisters because
their mother was killed two months ago during fighting in
Malakal.
Yangok said his 20-year-old brother is a rebel, and his
father is missing.
“I don’t know whether he’s dead or alive,” he said.