“I left Malakal because there were no more people to take care of. Many had been killed; the rest had fled. Malakal had become a ghost town with no sign of life” said Sr. Elena Balatti, a Comboni Missionary whoworked as the Director of radio Saut-al-Mahabbain Malakal
“When the war first broke in December 2013, we were five in our community.Our superior suggested ‘we were free to leave the mission if we so wished.’ Two of my colleagues left leaving the three of us. I just couldn’t leave. I felt like part of the community, and I empathized with the weak and vulnerable; I just wanted to do what I can to assist,” she said.
Writing on her diary on the eve of Christmas she said, “The national army split within Malakal town and the forces loyal to Riek Machar, former Vice President, managed to overrun the remnant loyal to the Government. At 6 a.m. the noise of sustained gunfire broke the silence of the morning. At 6 p.m. ululations of exultation and shootings in the air made us to understand that the rebels were in control. On Christmas day looting of the main markets ensued unabated until the evening of the 26th December 2013.
Why Malakal? Why has it been the epicenter of the conflict?
Malakal is a key city in an oil-producing region in the country’s northeast, so whoever controls Malakal controls South Sudan’s wealth.
The conflict between the rebels and forces loyal to the government has devastated the city.
“The corpses of the rebels were left unburied where they had fallen for days, until the International Red Cross collected those within the town. Common graves were dug with an earth moving machine and people were dumped in unceremoniously. The bodies of the rebels in the outskirts were left to the vultures and the dogs,” she said.
The signing of an agreement for the ‘cessation of hostilities’ in Addis Ababa notwithstanding, the conflict between the rebels and the government forces continued to affect ordinary people, where killing and looting became the order of the day.
The rebels did not seem to care or respect even the most sacred places where ordinary innocent civilians had gone to seek refuge. The cathedral was not spared and so was the nuns’ residence. They took everything of value and destroyed anything they deemed valueless.
“On 18th February at around 6:45 a.m. the parish priest of the cathedral phoned to inform me that he was leaving with another priest and the Bishop Emeritus, Msgr. Vincent Mojwok,” Sr. Ballati remembered.
“What are you going to do,” the bishop asked. “We are going to stay on as there were still people sheltering inside the compound,” Sr. Balatti. The two priests and the bishop emeritus did not make it by the car, they had to escape on foot; through a swamp where the two priests had to help the bishop emeritus wade through the murky water to cross over to safety.
Eventually Sr. Balatti and her companions left Malakal which had become a ghost town without people, without domestic animals. Vultures and dogs were feeding on corpses littering the streets. Groups of rebel soldiers were the only ones moving around.
“The last images I had from Malakal while heading to the UNMISS aircraft bound to Juba were the corpse of a woman who appeared to have been gang raped and the smoke of the villages set on fire on the Western bank of the Nile.