African Union's war with Al Shabaab intensifies

Somali Islamist group Al Shabaab has returned to Mogadishu where it has displayed the bodies of dozens of African Union and government soldiers in a show of strength. On Thursday they laid out bodies in military uniforms they said were Burundian soldiers with the AU force whom they had killed in an area they hold outside the capital. At least 70 bodies were laid out, though the Burundian army will admit to only 6 dead and 18 injured. (Photo: Feisal Omar / Reuters)

The attack on Burundian soldiers was not unexpected. Along with Kenyans and Ugandans, they make up the bulk of the AU force in Somalia. In July, al-Shabaab bombed bars and a stadium in Kampala, the Ugandan capital as thousands were watching the World Cup final. Over 70 people were killed in the attacks which came after repeated warnings to Uganda and Burundi for providing troops to the AU force in Somalia. The suitably named Al Shabaab spokesman Ali Mohamoud Rage said they were sending a message to every country that is willing to send troops to Somalia they will face attacks on their territory. “Burundi will face similar attacks soon, if they don’t withdraw,” Rage said.

Burundi itself has not yet been hit but Mogadishu continues to bear the brunt of the struggle. On Tuesday a suicide bomber blew up a car full of explosives near the foreign ministry. Four people were killed, including the bomber in an attack deliberately aimed to coincide with a visit from the Kenyan foreign and defence ministers.

Al Shabaab is particularly hostile to Kenya. Kenyan jets struck Al Shabaab positions in the border region a day after the suicide attack. They are targeting rebels they blame for abductions, including that of a French woman Marie Dedieu, 66, who was captured from her wheelchair at a beach resort in Kenya and who in captivity in Somalia. The air attacks are intended to soften the area up for an attack by Kenyan ground troops guided by pro-government Somali forces.

Meanwhile a new battlefield is emerging 70kms south of the capital with Kenyan forces. The fighting is at the coastal town of Kismayo, an Islamist stronghold. Kenyan military planners have targeted Kismayo and two nearby secondary ports to cut off the export earnings and taxes al Shabaab use to finance their war. Kenyan ground forces are attacking from the north and their navy from the south, leaving thousands of Somali refugees fleeing the area due to aerial bombardment. Somali traders prefer to use Kismayo because of its import duties –$1000 cheaper than Mogadishu – making it still profitable to enter goods at Kismayo and drive to Mogadishu.

Al Shabaab is Arabic for “the boys” but there is nothing lad-like about these Islamist hardliners who continue to make life a misery for the citizens of Somalia. Less than 40 percent of Somalis are literate, more than one in ten children dies before turning five, and a person born in Somalia today cannot assume with any confidence they will live to 50.

Al Shabaab emerged from the break-up of the Islamic Courts Union who were de facto rulers of Somalia from the mid 1990s to 2006 when Ethiopia-led forces invaded from the west. Ethiopia toppled the ICU but hardliners formed Al Shabaab which proved more difficult to dislodge. In 2009, By February 2009, they controlled most of southern Somalia where they imposed sharia law. They contributed to the famine in the region by banning international aid agencies, including the UN World Food Program. Despite only having a few thousand fighters they have been able to expand due to the lack of a central government and co-operation from clan warlords.

Al Shabaab’s continued support relies on hatred of invaders. A March 2010 report said US support of the transitional government was “proving ineffective and costly”. The Government was is unable to improve security, deliver basic services, or move toward an agreement with Somalia's clans and opposition groups to provide a stronger basis for governance. The report recommends a strategy of "constructive disengagement." This calls for the US to accept an Islamist authority in Somalia—including al-Shabaab - as long as it does not impede international humanitarian activities and refrains from both regional aggression and support for international jihad. While the report has merit, it seems naive to think Al-Shabaab will abandon its most fundamental philosophy.

The Horn of scarcity: Anatomy of an official famine

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has a very dry definition of a famine. More than a third of children must be suffering from acute malnutrition. Two adults or four children must be dying of hunger each day for every group of 10,000 people and the population must have access to well below 2,100 kilocalories of food per day. On 20 July, the UN decided two regions of southern Somalia met those criteria, the lower Shabelle and Bakool regions. A prolonged La Nina has led to one of the driest October-December rainy seasons ever, the second consecutive such poor season and very poor livestock production has also contributed to the crop failure which led to the drought which has led to the famine.

A new UN regional overview said the famine is likely to spread to the rest of the region. The region is suffering severe food insecurity due to drought and high food prices and there are significant refugees on the move from Somalia. The trigger for the move of tens of thousands is directly attributable to the drought but also the 20 year conflict in southern Somalia which has hindered access for humanitarian agencies.

Now those agencies are struggling to cope with the influx of Somali refugees in Ethiopia and Kenya. Malnutrition and mortality rates are alarmingly high in many parts of the region. The OCHA estimates 12.4 million people are in need of help in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. One quarter of Somalia’s 7.5 million are displaced with 3.7 million needing assistance. A further 4.8 million in Ethiopia and 3.7 million in Kenya also need help.

Feeding over 12 million people is not easy in war torn Horn of Africa but that is the task UN food agency WFP has set itself. Large parts of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda are suffering in a drought that is likely to continue to next year and with several conflicts in the region, the WFP they barely reached 40 per cent, leaving six million malnourished people who are slowly starving to death. Airlifts have started to Mogadishu and the south at the heart of the famine, with support also arriving in the camps in the border towns of Kenya and Ethiopia.

Dadaab in Kenya is getting 1,300 new arrivals every day while Dollo Ado in Ethiopia has taken in 54,000 this year with half the children malnourished. CARE operates three refugee camps in Dadaab which are home to almost 400,000 refugees, mostly from Somalia. Thos arriving suffering from malnutrition and medical problems are referred to supplementary and therapeutic feeding programs and stabilisation units in camp hospitals. Families are provided with two weeks' worth of food rations and other essentials including tents, kitchen sets, firewood and fuel-efficient stoves while awaiting registration and access to general food distributions.

The situation will worse before it gets better. The current food security emergency across the region is expected to persist at least for the coming three to four months with the number of people in need of urgent aid increasing by as much as a quarter. The crisis in southern Somalia is expected to continue to worsen through 2011, with the entire south slipping into famine. This deterioration is likely given the very high levels of both severe acute malnutrition and under-five mortality in combination with expected worsening pastoral conditions, a continued increase in local cereal prices, and a below-average crop harvest.

Australian foreign minister Kevin Rudd has just returned from the region and he said the international community has a double challenge. Firstly to ensure UN agencies have enough funding to deal with the crisis before it becomes a catastrophe; and secondly to give UN humanitarian agencies enough flexibility to make sure people get to the aid despite the war zone.

In the medium term, OCHA says interventions to rebuild and support livelihoods will be critical. “Securing long-term food and nutrition security in the Horn of Africa requires focussing on a range of issues affecting the region, including conflict, preservation of humanitarian space, nutrition, disaster risk reduction, health and education services, and climate change adaptation,” the OCHA said. “Building resilience in the agricultural sector will be essential to avoid recurrent food security crises in this region.”

Andrew Mwenda and Impunity: The hazards of East African journalism

Renowned economist William Easterly has spoken out this week in support of independent Ugandan journalist Andrew Mwenda. In his excellent new blog Aid Watch, Easterly called Mwenda courageous and said he (Mwenda) was finally getting well-deserved recognition. Easterly said the editor of Uganda’s The Independent was a frequent critic of the corruption and poor results of African aid agencies. He also made a broader point about the quality of African media. “A free press is an important way in which we hold our governments accountable in rich democratic countries,” said Easterly. “Why shouldn’t Africans have the right to freedom of the press as well?”

Easterly’s call is valid, though there is a strong and robust press in East Africa. Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (known by their French initials RSF) has called Uganda’s press “pluralist and serious.” Certainly, Mwenda has proven a serious thorn in the side of his own government. The Independent focuses on uncovering official corruption and human rights abuses in Uganda. Since he established the bi-monthly magazine in December 2007, he has faced 20 criminal charges, including sedition, libel, and annoying the person of the president.

He and his staff have been arrested or detained more than a dozen times. In the most extreme event in March 2008, Ugandan military intelligence service raided his offices and threatened to shoot him. Mwenda braved out that threat and later told Parade, “The government can jail me or even kill me, but it cannot jail or kill the values and ideas for which we stand.”

But other journalists in the region have paid the highest price for those values and ideas. Last week police found the body of Kenyan journalist Francis Kainda Nyaruri in woods near Lake Victoria. He was tortured and then decapitated. Police say they are still looking for a motive but perhaps they know more than they are letting on. RSF said Nyaruri was recently threatened by police officers. Nyaruri had written a series of articles for a local weekly newspaper that exposed financial scams and other malpractice by the local police department.

The manner of his death bore similarities to that of New Zealand photographer Trent Keegan. Keegan was found dead in a trench in Nairobi with injuries to the back of the head. Police initially claimed he was killed in a robbery. However suspicions were raised when it was revealed that his laptop was stolen but his wallet containing US$60 was not. Keegan was investigating a land dispute in northern Tanzania between local Masai and a US based safari company at the time of his death. He had told colleagues he was concerned for his safety after the safari company had questioned him about his investigation.

Despite these incidents, Kenya is haven of safety compared to Somalia. Somalia is the deadliest country in Africa for journalists (only Iraq is more dangerous worldwide). This morning Roy Greenslade reported that Said Tahliil Ahmed was the latest Somali journalist to be shot dead. Ahmed was the director of HornAfrik, a radio and television station in Mogadishu, and his Islamist attackers killed him for reporting on the Somali presidential election (which is being held in neighbouring Djibouti for security reasons.) Ahmed is the second Somali journalist to die this year after Hassan Mayow Hassan was gunned down on New Year’s Day. Hassan was covering the conflict between the transitional federal government policy and insurgents in the region.

RSF have charted the grim death toll of Somali journalists. In 2008, eight were killed, four injured, some 50 journalists in exile, 53 arrested and others were force to hide at home after abandoning their work in fear. The press freedom body says the journalists were not only victims of political violence, but also “favourite targets for the transitional authorities, who see them as inconvenient witnesses of the chaos which they are unable to control.” Unfortunately, very little is done to protect them. As RSF said in their continental review in 2006: “In Africa, impunity is not a matter of bad luck, it is the general rule.”

Uganda bears the brunt of Kenyan crisis

Uganda is losing over a million dollars a day in revenues and exports as a result of the post-election violence in Kenya. The Uganda government and its farmers and traders are suffering as the landlocked country is unable to get its products out. Uganda is heavily reliant on the Kenyan port of Mombasa for the import of fuel and heavy goods, such as machinery, cars and generators, and also for the export of coffee, tea and tobacco.

In the fortnight since the violence began Ugandan government revenues have dropped by 78 per cent in the three border points with Kenya. Exporters too are feeling the pinch. "We have not been able to deliver our goods to the port since December 27 because of the violence", says David Barry of Kyagulanyi Coffee. "It is definitely a big loss for us, also in terms of fines and penalties for late delivery." Ugandan hopes of an early end to the Kenyan impasse following the collapse of efforts by Ghanaian president and AU mediator John Kufuor to secure a deal between President Mwai Kibaki and his opposition rival Raila Odinga.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni may now be regretting his early endorsement of a Kibaki victory. There have been allegations that the Ugandan government may have had a hand in securing the contested win. One week after the election on 2 January Museveni, in his capacity as current chairman of the East African Community, offered congratulations to Kibaki on his re-election. Other than Uganda, only Somalia, Kuwait and Swaziland have so far recognised the election result. Museveni was criticised internally for this move on the basis that his message could provoke attacks on Ugandans and Ugandan interests in Kenya. Others say he was “forced” to recognise the result to facilitate the movement of Ugandan goods in and out of the country.

If that was Museveni's plan, it has not proved successful. The only traffic coming into Uganda at the moment is a human one. According to the UN over 6,000 Kenyans have fled to eastern Uganda to flee the violence. They are finding shelter in school buildings, hospitals and in open places and UN agencies, government and the Uganda Red Cross are providing them food and other relief items. Over 500 have been registered at Bukwo and Kapchorwa districts. The Ugandan Red Cross has assessed another 3,500 refugees camped at the border towns of at Malaba, Busia and Lwakahkah. Red Cross official Alice Uwase Anukur said sanitation was the major challenge at the camps. "The only pit latrine at St. Jude Malaba Primary School is filled up," she said. She also said there was an urgent need for sanitary towels.

The general population is also suffering. Uganda continues to face shortages, and fuel prices have more than doubled since last week. In the longer term Uganda is hoping to reduce its dependency on road and rail for importing fuel products from Kenya by building an oil pipeline. The project will initially involve a $110 million 340-kilometer pipeline from Eldoret in western Kenya to the Uganda capital Kampala. The pipeline would subsequently be extended to Kigali and Bujumbura, the capitals of Rwanda and Burundi, respectively. Fuel supplies to all three countries have been erratic since the violence started.

But matters are unlikely to improve in the short term with Kenyan opposition forces planning further rounds of protest next week. The impact on the surrounding region is potentially devastating with the agricultural economies of Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi all “throttled” by the violence. A quarter of the gross domestic product of Uganda and Rwanda and a third of Burundi's pass through Kenya. None of them have found a suitable alternative to the bottleneck port of Mombasa. According to Robert Shaw, a businessman and economic analyst, "If Kenya has got a cold, these countries get pneumonia.”

Kenyan violence affects aid programs

Up to 100,000 people are facing starvation in western Kenya due to election-related violence. While the leaders continue to be in stalemate in Nairobi, the World Food Program (WFP) has warned that 100,000 people in the Northern Rift Valley are in “critical need of food”. This part of Kenya has seen some of the worst violence including the burning of the church in Eldoret that killed 35 people seeking refuge. Trucks carrying WFP food remain stranded have been prevented for days from entering western Kenya because of insecurity. The violence is also affecting shipment of WFP food to Uganda, southern Sudan, Somalia and the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Vigilantes have set up checkpoints and transporters in Mombasa refuse to move trucks out of the port without escorts. Fuel shortages have meant that UN humanitarian flights to Somalia carrying aid workers and cargo such as medicine have also been cancelled. Meanwhile in western Kenya the UN estimates 180,000 people have been displaced by the unrest which has officially killed 360 people so far. The violence flared up after the disputed election result which saw incumbent president Mwai Kibaki re-elected at the expense of opposition leader Raila Odinga.

Raila's party has demanded fresh presidential elections but may accept a coalition arrangement. "This is about a democracy and justice," said Anyang Nyongo, secretary-general of Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement. "We shall continue to defend and promote the right of Kenyans so that the democratic process should be fulfilled.” Kibaki has now said he will accept calls for a rerun of a disputed election but only if a court orders it. Kenya’s High Court could annul the vote as illegal, which would force a new vote. South African bishop Desmond Tutu held talks with both men last week and said they were both “open to the possibilities of negotiations."

For that to happen, however, the violence needs to stop. There are signs things are slowly coming back to normal. The overnight death toll on Friday was fewer than 10, compared with the more than 300 people killed in a few days earlier this week. The security ring around Nairobi was relaxed overnight allowing free movement of commuter buses, private vehicles and pedestrians for the first time since Sunday. Hundreds of Odinga’s supporters attempted to protest in the capital yesterday but were forced to disperse by paramilitary police using tear gas.

Many media accounts have focussed on the ethnic dimension in the violence. Kibeki and his hardcore supporters belong to the Kikuyu group while Odinga draws his support from the Luo group. The majority of the victims so far are Kikuyus who make up 22 per cent of the population and are Kenya’s largest ethnic group. However the Foreign Policy Watch blog warns that this aspect should not be exaggerated. They point out that Kikuyus and Luos (as well as other groups) cooperated in the National Rainbow Coalition that brought Kibaki to power in the first place. It places stronger blame on the endemic corruption at the heart of Kenyan society.

When Kibaki was elected in 2002, there were great hopes that Kenya had turned the corner and that he would be the man to reform the nation. But they proved to be false hopes. The opposition to Kibaki this time was especially intense among the poor jobless youths who had voted overwhelmingly for change. In their view, a ruling clique that had stolen billions of dollars in a period of five years had stolen the elections. According to Horace Campbell, this verdict was obscured by ethnic alienation and the constant refrain “that the crisis and killings emanated from deep 'tribal' hostilities.” Campbell argues this won’t change until there is a break from “looting, extra judicial killings, rape and violation of women, and general low respect for African lives.”

The poor state of Kenya’s prison system is symptomatic of wider ranging social, political, judicial and economic stagnation in the country. Prisoners are subject to dehumanising conditions and the remand system can leave the accused waiting for years for a trial. At Kamiti maximum security prison space is so tight that if one prisoner turns while sleeping, all must turn. Prison officer David Mwania said the situation was common in all Kenya jails. Mwania said the problems were due to lack of funds to provide for basic essentials for inmates. “Simply, the system cannot cope anymore,” he said.

Kenya media blackout greets disputed election result

The Kenyan government has ordered a broadcast media blackout in the wake of the riots that greeted the disputed election win of President Mwai Kibaki. The security ministry ordered the blackout “in the interest of public safety and tranquillity”. Journalists were also warned to stop broadcasting “inciting or alarming material” as supporters of defeated candidate Raila Odinga took to the streets in protest at the result. Plumes of smoke rose over the Kibari area of Nairobi, a stronghold of Odinga support for the opposition, where pitched battles occurred between rioters and police on Saturday.

Kibaki was controversially re-elected in Kenya’s fourth election since pluralism was introduced in 1992. Kibaki was sworn in less than an hour after the electoral commission declared he had defeated Odinga by a quarter of a million votes. The official commission result was that Kibaki won with 4,584,721 votes against Odinga's 4,352,993 votes. Odinga had led Kibaki in pre-election opinion polls and in early poll tallies released to the media. Odinga walked out of the press conference during which the results were announced, and claimed that Kibaki was stealing victory.

In his acceptance speech yesterday Kibaki said he was “humbled and grateful” to be offered a second five-year term of office. He acknowledged the closeness of the contest and said now should be a time for “healing and reconciliation among all Kenyans”. He pledged to serve for everyone and called for tolerance, peace and harmony. “I will shortly form a clean hands Government that represents the face of Kenya,” he said. “The new PNU Government will incorporate the affiliate parties as well as other friendly parties”.

However not everyone agrees with Kibaki that the elections were free and fair. British foreign minister David Miliband said he had real concerns about reported irregularities and promised to discuss the matter with international partners. He quoted EU observers who said they had not succeeded in establishing the credibility of the tallying process to the satisfaction of all parties and candidates. Miliband stopped short of declaring the result invalid. “Britain looked forward to working with a legitimately elected government of Kenya,” he said. But, he added ambiguously, “its outcome had to be seen by Kenyans to be fair.”

Despite 30,000 monitors on the ground, chief EU observer Alexander Graf Lambsdorff expressed regret that they had not able to address “irregularities”. Lambsdorff said presidential tallies announced in polling stations on the election were inflated by the time they were released by the electoral commission in Nairobi. “'Because of this and other observed irregularities, some doubt remains as to the accuracy of the result of the presidential election as announced today,” he said.

The 76 year old Kibaki has been in power since 2002 and is only Kenya’s third president since in the 43 years since independence. Jomo Kenyatta led the nation out of colonialism in 1964 and he ruled until his death in 1978. His vice-president Daniel arap Moi took the reins for the next 24 years. Initially popular, Moi won two elections in 1992 and 1997 but he was eventually viewed as a despot. Towards the end of his reign, allegations of electoral fraud and corruption took their toll. Moi was implicated in the Goldenberg scandal which saw Kenya lose $600 million in “fictitious” mineral exports in the 1990s.

Moi was forced to step down in 2002 as the constitution barred him from contesting a third election. In the election, Moi supported Jomo Kenyatta’s son Uhuru but he was defeated 2:1 by Kibaki. EU and UN observers declared the election free and fair. Like Moi, Mwai Kibaki had also served as vice president but he fell out of favour with Moi in 1988 and unsuccessfully contested the 1990s elections against him. He formed a rainbow alliance of opposition parties to combat the entrenched power of the Kenyan African National Union (KANU) party founded by Kenyatta and Moi.

Moi’s legacy to Kibaki was a nation racked by corruption. According to Human Rights Watch, Kenya’s system of governance is based on highly centralised and personalised executive power. The average Kenyan was poorer in 2002 than two decades earlier. Kibaki claimed his goal was reconciliation and rebuilding of the economy. The Kenyan economy grew strongly during his five year tenure. However his 2005 attempt to redraw the constitution to give stronger powers to the presidency was rejected by a plebiscite.

His opponent, the 62 year old Raila Odinga (pictured right) was a former cabinet colleague of Kibaki (pictured left). During the campaign he argued that few Kenyans have reaped the benefits of the country's economic successes. After unilaterally declaring he was the winner on Saturday, Odinga now claims he was robbed of victory. Police have warned Odinga that he faces arrest if he goes ahead with a protest tomorrow against the result. Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement planned to meet in Nairobi to present “the People's President” to the nation. The Police Commissioner has declared the meeting illegal “in view of the prevailing security situation” and cautioned that anyone who attends “will face the full force of the law.” It appears unlikely Odinga’s angry supporters will heed the warning.

Southern Sudan, Dia, and George Forbes

On Mayday, six men were charged of murder in Southern Sudan. They were three Sudanese: Joseph Dut, Isaac Chol, and Matur Maher and three Kenyans: Bernard Alumasa Mheri, James Munyao Mbithi and George Forbes. The last man, Forbes, also has Australian nationality. The men work for a Kenyan construction company in the southern Sudan town of Rumbek. They were charged over the killing of Ukrainian Mykola Serebrenikov, who worked as a flight engineer for another firm.

The Ukrainian man was found hanged from a towel rack at the Kenyan construction company's property. Several locals had chased him to the site and he was allowed in. Two independent post-mortem reports (one done in Kenya) concluded that Serebrenikov’s death was suicide. But the judge believed otherwise and said it was murder. His judgement was based on the testimony of Awan Gol, the deputy state governor, who said he had seen the body of the Ukrainian and he was suspicious about the towel rack from which he was found hanging. "It was not a high place where he could hang himself, his knees were on the ground, and his hands on the ground," he said.

The judge remanded the six men to appear in court on 7 May in Rumbek. The city of Rumbek does not belong to Sudan itself but rather Southern Sudan, officially a “semi-autonomous southern region” but unofficially the second city of a new country. Then Kenya launched a protest about the detention of its citizens despite an autopsy report done in Nairobi showing it was suicide. The Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) spokesman Major General Kuol Deim Kuol dismissed the Kenya autopsy and refuted their claims that SPLA soldiers are harassing Kenyan nationals working and doing business in Southern Sudan. He claimed that three Kenyans killed 15km inside Southern Sudan were in fact “Kenyans bandits”.

Meanwhile the Australian media jumped on the case of the third suspect George Forbes. Forbes was born in Kenya but migrated to Australia 20 years ago. He lived in Sydney and Brisbane before travelling to Sudan. On 26 April, the Sydney Morning Herald quoted a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesman who gave the facts of the case. “An Australian man has faced a Sudan court charged with murder and failing to prevent suicide.” Australia had no-one inside Southern Sudan and was relying on British contacts inside the country to see if they could make contact with Forbes.


The Fairfax press described Forbes as 45 and an employee of Trax International Construction. It mentioned five other arrests. Serebrenikov, the Ukrainian engineer, was found hanged in a bathroom at Trax's compound. If found guilty of murder, the six men could all be sentenced to death.

When the case came to trial on 7 May, the judge heard the evidence and said he would give his verdict on 18 May. There are three possible outcomes. They are: death by hanging, life imprisonment, or the payment of dia to the victim's family. Dia is bloody money that is institutionalised in the Sudanese law that Southern Sudan has inherited. One of Forbes’ relatives in Rumbek for the trial was directed by the judge to conduct talks with Serebrenikov's family about financial compensation. Under Sudanese customary law, dia is paid in the form of cattle, at the rate of 31 cows for one human life. The judge said they should find out what Serebrenikov’s family want. But that might not be easy to do. Rumbek is a long way from Kiev. The judge challenged the men to produce a member of the Ukrainian's man’s family in court which they were unable to do.

Meanwhile, the Australian ambassador to Egypt, Robert Bowker came to Rumbek to attend the trial. A former Associate Professor in the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, the Middle East and Central Asia at the Australian National University, Bowker is probably aware that the trial may not be foremost in Rumbek’s priorities.

The town was initially chosen to be the new country’s capital but was overtaken by Juba. With a population of less than 100,000, Rumbek's facilities remain poor. The city was destroyed by two decades of civil war with Khartoum’s central Government that left 1.5 million dead. Here, people live in traditional thatched huts and hardly anyone has electricity or running water. But there is a sense of optimism as the city tries to pick up the pieces of peacetime.

The trial of the six men rumbles on.