* Hundreds of thousands stranded after Sudan, South Sudan
split
* Southerners stuck without travel papers, routes blocked
* Northern traders want to stay in South, but worried
By Ulf Laessing and Yara Bayoumy
KHARTOUM/JUBA, April 29 (Reuters) – Sultan Kwaje’s problems
started when his country disappeared from under him.
He was born in the southern part of Sudan but has lived in
the north for more than three decades. When South Sudan broke
away as an independent country from Sudan in July, Kwaje was
left on the northern side of the border, a foreigner.
The Sudanese government, he said, fired him from his job in
the civil service.
Tens of thousands of South Sudanese in the north lost their
jobs after the split. About 500,000 are now technically illegal
because they lack official residency papers.
“I just want to leave,” said Kwaje who lives in Wad
al-Bashir camp, one of several slums on the outskirts of Sudan’s
capital Khartoum. “I am still owed all my severance rights but I
just want to leave now. Life is bad. We don’t have jobs, no
food, don’t get medical treatment.”
As border fighting between Sudan and South Sudan has
threatened to turn into all-out war over the past three weeks,
much of the attention has focused on the countries’ unresolved
disputes over oil revenues.
But the crisis has also shone a light on the plight of the
of hundreds of thousands of people who found themselves on the
wrong side of the border at independence and are now treated as
foreigners.
In Juba, the capital of South Sudan, thousands of Sudanese
citizens also face a new government that has declared them
expatriates, though it has not yet imposed any new rules for
residency papers.
Plans for two deals that would grant each other’s citizens
residency and free movement stalled when Khartoum called off a
summit in protest at border fighting.
Sudan’s government initially gave southerners until April 8
to get the right papers or leave. But South Sudan has struggled
to set up a functioning embassy in Khartoum to issue passports
or identity cards.
“I am still waiting for my travel permit from the embassy,”
said Moussa Majok, another South Sudanese living in the camp.
“I went there to register but I still haven’t got the
papers,” he said, drawing nods from others. “They don’t care
about us,” he said, referring to the southern government.
RELIGIOUS TENSIONS
About 400,000 South Sudanese, who initially came to the
north fleeing poverty and conflict, have returned home since
October 2010. Many more are packing up to make the long journey
south in Wad al-Bashir camp, where thousands live in makeshift
homes made of wood, mud bricks or corrugated iron.
Bags, bed frames, chairs and other furniture were piled high
next to a green mosque on a large square last week, waiting to
be loaded onto trucks.
Worries over religious tensions are also fuelling the
exodus.
Most South Sudanese are Christian or follow traditional
beliefs, while Sudan is mostly Muslim. Last weekend, hundreds of
Muslims stormed a Khartoum church complex used by South
Sudanese, ransacking buildings and burning bibles.
Even when they get the required travel papers, southerners
are stuck because fighting has blocked most roads near the
border, according to the International Organisation for
Migration (IOM), which helps people return home.
The barge route down the Nile is also blocked. Sudan halted
river traffic in March, accusing Juba of using boats to
transport weapons to rebels in the north.
Both governments also suspended direct flights between the
two countries. Tickets via Kenya or Ethiopia cost up to four
times what Sudanese carriers charged last year.
SUDANESE STAYING IN JUBA
In a bustling market in Juba last week, Sudanese traders
swapped stories in front of stalls selling mobile phones and
sun-baked vegetables.
So far, northerners living in the south say they have not
faced the same level of official or social ostracism as
southerners in Khartoum. Many northerners in Juba want to stay
put.
But beneath the buzz in the market, there was an
undercurrent of apprehension.
“We are scared that one of these days they’ll ask us for
identification papers,” said 23-year-old Zulfid, sitting behind
a glass window selling Chinese-made mobile phones.
Zulfid, went to school in Khartoum but struggled to set up a
business in the Sudanese capital. “The government confiscates
your goods. There’s bribery.”
He had an easier time in the South.
“In Juba, taxes are less, the dollar is cheaper. Life and
business is much better than in the North,” he said,
MUTUAL RESPECT
Saeed Zakariya, a bubbly 25-year-old who sells mobile phone
accessories in Juba, got a hint of the legal challenges that may
lie ahead if Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and South
Sudanese President Salva Kiir fail to find a solution to the
citizenship issue.
“I tried to book a ticket to fly to Malakal (another city)
in South Sudan), but my papers were not accepted,” Zakariya
said. He gave up and stayed in the southern capital.
All the traders that Reuters spoke to said they had faced no
mistreatment or ill-will from South Sudanese.
“We are not afraid of being made to go back to the north.
Their difference is political, not on the ground. Not a single
person has asked me where I’m from,” said Mohamed Suleiman, who
came to Juba in 2009 when he could not find a job in his
Sudanese hometown in Sennar state.
Yaber, a 54-year-old man living in Juba since 1979, agreed.
“We are very happy. We’re the same people, the same family,”
he said. His son, Diyaaeldine was born in the south and the
family has no intention of leaving.
Smoking a cigarette in a stall filled with rows of rubber
slippers, Yaber, who refused to give his full name, said he was
not worried about his future in Juba.
“We share the same life, there is respect,” Yaber said.
(Writing by Ulf Laessing and Yara Bayoumy; Editing by Simon
Robinson and Andrew Heavens)
