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Harbingers of hope
By He Na (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-11-05 08:46
As the plane landed in Wau, in Southwest Sudan, a shudder ran down Zhang Yong's spine - charred wreckages of cars and planes lay among crumbling walls pocked with bullet holes and children rummaged through garbage dumps in search of food. The commander of China's first and third peacekeeping contingents to Sudan in 2006 and 2007 made a pledge to himself. "'I must do something', I thought. The place was crying for peace," Zhang says. But it was no easy task. Sudan, the largest country in Africa and the Arab World, is mired in conflicts between the government and anti-government forces and tribal clashes, and was subject to incessant bombing. Despite the dangers, Zhang and his soldiers spent 513 days in the country as part of the UN's peacekeeping missions. It was in 2005, when the southern and northern parts of Sudan finally came to an agreement ending 21 years of civil war that the UN decided to deploy peacekeeping troops to help Sudan through the unstable transition period. China accepted the UN's request to join the peacekeeping mission in Sudan and the Jinan Military Area Command got tasked with the assignment, says Shen Yang, director of the Peacekeeping Office in Jinan Command. Although five batches of Chinese troops had joined the UN's overseas peacekeeping missions at that time, it was the first time that the Jinan Command was involved. Zhang Yong, deputy director of logistics 9th subsection, spent almost a whole year in training and preparing the troops. Finally, on May 16, 2006, the first batch of 435 Chinese soldiers, including an engineering unit, a transportation unit and a medical unit, left Jinan, capital of East China's Shandong province. Their main tasks in Wau included beefing up the infrastructure, ensuring water and electricity supplies, and improving the transportation and medical services. When Zhang and his soldiers arrived in Wau, capital of the West Bahr al Ghazal state on the western bank of the Jur River, the site assigned to the Chinese forces was choked with weeds and littered with boulders. Packs of wild dogs roamed the area, haunted by snakes and scorpions. Zhang and his team spent the first 40 days building the barracks under a baking sun, and sleeping in the bush. "The main threats were poisonous snakes and scorpions, which often hid in the quilts," says Zhao Jie, a nurse, adding that every night, Zhang inspected the soldiers' quilts before going to sleep. Wau has two seasons - a dry season that runs from December to April, followed by a rainy season. During the dry season, daytime temperatures can exceed 50 C. Chinese soldiers soon began to look as tanned as the locals. Many suffered from malaria, including Zhang. "He came down with malaria on the ninth day after we arrived. But he just popped ills and kept working at the construction site," Zhao says. Lieutenant General Jasbir Singh Lidder, commander of the UN Mission in Sudan, says the completion of the barracks was nothing short of a miracle and proved the competence of the Chinese troops. However, there were many more challenging tasks ahead. Water is scarce in Wau and the soldiers had to be up early every morning to fetch water from a river located far away, passing areas controlled by different tribes. "Safety was my priority, for we were in charge of most of the transportation and maintenance assignments in the UN's mission in Sudan," Zhang says. The country is littered with countless unexploded bombs that pose a great danger to both civilians and peacekeeping forces. Sometimes, it took the soldiers up to 7 hours to cover 100 km, says Wang Shaoxun, deputy director of the transportation unit. What made the situation even worse is that Wau is a town inhabited by several different groups such as the Fertits, Dinkas, and Luos. Tribal conflicts, shootings and bombings were frequent occurrences. Besides helping with the UN assignments, Chinese peacekeepers also assisted the locals in various other ways. While transporting tents to a school in Awei, a city 160 km from Wau, the transportation unit was caught in gunfight between the police and anti-government forces. Zhang got off the truck to negotiate with the two sides. He finally won the trust of both sides, enabling the troops to pass through safely. For eight hours, the fully armed soldiers marched in the heat, passing 17 sentries and two tribal areas. "After this life and death trip, when they finally handed the 60 tents to Awei students, all of them were moved to tears," Wang says. Hearing that Wau's only girls' middle school stood in a heap of mud and bushes, Zhang and his soldiers spent an afternoon cleaning it up. They also passed on study materials to the students at their own expense, says Zhen Yugai, political commissar of the medical unit. When Zhang noticed that many locals seemed to suffer from eye diseases, the Chinese medial unit offered free eye operations for poor locals. "After seeing a local nurse giving a patient an injection without the use of an antiseptic, Zhang asked the medial unit to train local medical workers regularly," Zhen says. (China Daily 11/05/2009 page20) |
