mattsiller.com Blog

As most are already aware, I have departed Darfur and left Sudan permanently. I left on December 5th, 2007, 735 days after I first arrived. My feelings about leaving were mixed for a number of reasons. Two years of my life were spent supporting the peacekeeping efforts in Darfur. Most of the days went fast. Surviving it did require a good amount of patience, a strong routine, and a sense of humor.

There is a long way to go to bringing peace to the region of Darfur and into Sudan. The reasons being too many to count, I will just say the complexity of the mess here is overwhelming. For me, two years of working in the country was a plenty (at least without a long break . I’ve mentioned before that the chaos in these places can be contagious, which I’m trying hard, several months out, to put into perspective.

It is the people of Darfur and of Sudan who will ultimately resolve this conflict, not the international community. I believe it will take a new, robust leadership within Sudan to force this change. Otherwise, I suppose exhaustion will be the only other catalyst. Sure the international community will be key to reintegrating and redeveloping the region, but they cannot stop the war.

Rebel parties need to unite under a common cause. A peace agreement needs to be implemented. The UN and their peacekeepers need to be mobilized in mass to enforce the agreement. Infrastructure needs to improve (roads, schools, etc). A strong agricultural campaign needs to blossom (pun intended), and so on. Conditions need to layer so that people feel secure enough to restart a life, a livelihood, a family, and they can ease off the food programs that provide these things for them right now. An environment needs to be created for which farmers and herders can see that an AK-47 is not a necessary means to an end. All easier said than done, I realize.

Anyway, I enjoyed my time there. It was an experience. It’s the people who generally make the place, and I really enjoyed making friends from all over, as well as getting an insight into the people and culture of Sudan.

My next move (after a short stunt in France) is to study International Economic Development in a graduate program during the Fall, so I’m taking these experiences with me to further learn about the factors needed to create stable countries capable of sustainable development and sound investment.

In the meantime, check out my latest blog, An American In Montpellier. Thanks to you for reading this blog and providing such positive feedback, a motivator to me in more than one way.

On vacation in South East Asia.  Will write with some travel stories shortly.  My work in Darfur is still going strong, to conclude in November.  Have a few thoughts on that as well.  Stay tuned. 

The longer I work out here, the shorter my patience gets.The more relaxed and laissez faire the society seems to be, the tighter the restrictions that are placed on our lifestyle. While we are expanding the project exponentially, our living and working quarters have been constricted with impregnable fences erected as added security. I used to look out through our razor wire fences as the crowded IDP buses whizzed by the cow-herds walking to feed by the women carrying firewood on their heads. I used to like to say to myself, “Now this is Darfur”, as I reflected upon the pulse of the road. Now we have a giant wall of sand. It has (un)ceremoniously symbolized the blanket which numbs all imagination, adventure, and uniquity which initially compels one to come to such a place.

So, in order to cope I’ve tried to get out more when I can. I’ve been speaking with various US folks here, Foreign Service Officers, my future profession of choice. I’ve had some interesting conversations with the concept how the government these days is really trying to combine development into the core of their foreign policy in emerging countries. I’ve further learned about the various entities that have their hand in a place like Darfur; from the governments, military, and intelligence agencies to the humanitarian side of aid and NGO’s.

One interesting thing I picked up recently was the difference between Foreign Service and intelligence agencies. The primary difference when handling information is how they gather and report it. As a political officer, the Foreign Service employee will open gather information and interpret it, reporting their analysis to policy makers in Washington. An intelligence gatherer has an assignment to gain certain information on a particular topic and report that information back to Washington in raw format, without any analysis or interpretation. It could be said that the art form to the Foreign Service officer is the interpretation of the information while the art form for the intelligence agent is the method in which he is able to obtain the information.

We’ve also learned to kill the time and fight the constriction with pranks. I suppose pranks are supposed to die out when you get older, but when push comes to shove and life become a mellow routine, you do what you gotta do. In true Siller fashion, I may have taken a recent one a little too far.

Several months ago a friend of mine and I tried to find a goat and put it into a sleeping quarters of a fellow colleague. This proved a bit more of a challenge, considering security limitations in night time wandering – oh and theft. We realized quickly in this environment it wasn’t that smart of an idea so it was nixed for a more tangible one. After a poker game one evening we sand-bagged one of the other player’s rooms. This simply means taking lots and lots of sandbags and barricading his door closed. It worked well and to good results, as he had to wake up to potty in the middle of the night and was forced to go in a bottle (fortunate for him, an empty was available.)

I suppose mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery, because this prank was mimicked for several weeks afterward in various forms, among them upon me, where several conspirators with master keys and access to local labor had a wall of sandbags professionally stacked inside my room. When I opened the door, I was briefly surprised by the immediate obstruction.

These carried on for weeks with other various forms of silliness, Ceram wrapping tents shut, strategically placing rubber life-like snakes in inopportune locations, and the like.

No big deal and no harm done. So we continue. Recently, we had a little dinner and party to commemorate three years in Darfur (not going to comment on that) and coincidentally we had a new government representative arrive to oversee our contract. He’s basically the person who reports back to our client that we are doing a good job. We schmooze him and make him one of us and get him involved in our operation. So on his first day in theater I accidentally made sure he became involved real quick.

Since he was new, I didn’t realize he was a VIP, so to speak, and was not to be touched. While he was talking with two other of our employees who happen to be knee deep pranksters, my buddy and I snuck up and doused them all with water balloons, nicely soaking our new ally.

Mature I know, but he probably felt good that the comradery out here is tight enough to include him in the shenanigans so soon. That’s what I tell myself anyway.

So we trudge forward, voluntarily I realize. Cause when life provides lemons…

So for the infrequent visitors it has been some time since my last post.  Thanks to the patient folk.  I promise over the next few months to work at least one post a week toward entertaining you with the nuisances of our Darfur livelihood.

For those who I didn’t get an opportunity to visit over my extended break in the US, I have decided to stick it out a bit longer…pushing the two year mark.  I still scratch my head and frown my brow at the thought of staying until November, especially when I re-read previous posts that show little if any enthusiasm about continuing.

But I made the choice to continue for a number of reasons and will stick by it.  One of them centers around the idea that I have the improbable notion of attempting to turn this blog into some sort of readable book, but of course all I envision at this point is the NY Times Best Seller header on the cover, cameo appearances on daytime talk shows, and a constant stream of residual income, not the actual inner workings of the blood, sweat, and tears that it will take to spin a unique plotline and a sellable story in order to achieve this grandiose scheme.

Either way, there is still a lot for me to accomplish out here so I stuck with it.  Judging by the plane ride back, I’m not so sure it was a good idea.  My flight from DC to Frankfurt was struck by lightening.  I had just closed my eyes and a giant flash reopened them abruptly, accompanied several minutes later by the pilot coming on air, stating in his strong german accent, “No worries, yes that bright flash you just experienced was the plane getting struck by lightening. We don’t think the electricals were damaged but we will find out when we try to lower the landing gear in a couple of hours.”

I envisioned him coming back on stating, “Has anyone seen ‘Memphis Belle’; We will need your assistance in the lower hull self-cranking down the wheels for each wing.  Anyone successful will be offered a free upgrade or single segment voucher for their next Lufthansa experience.”

As if that wasn’t bad enough, I dozed back off to sleep and the plane’s engines seemed to get eerily quiet.  I then imagined in my dreamy state feeling us dropping in altitude and the pilot coming on saying, “Yes, our electricals were fried and all engines have failed.  We’re at 12,000 feet and can coast toward mother earth for another 10 minutes, but if we can not restart the engines, let’s go ahead an assume the crash landing positions.  You all listened to the safety presentation, right?”

Of course my dreams started getting more carried away.  I was hoping it was the several glasses of wine because I envisioned at the final moments the pilot counting down from 30 toward our death, only for the engines to be resurrected at the point of no return (with the pilot giving a big German Howard Dean ‘Yeeaahhh’ as we dusted the tree-tops and happily made our gasped accent back upwards…to safety).

Stopping the dream at that point wouldn’t have done justice to my buzzed imagination.  I later realized once I analyzed this dream that I have been living in Darfur too long because just as we saved ourselves from imminent death over Germany’s Black Forest, the plane swerved hard left to avoid a rebel’s anti-aircraft missile, which I caught a glimpse of right outside my window streaming upwards in its onmious red and orange trail as it narrowly missed our wing.

In leiu of this dreamt attack, I believe standard protocol of the pilot would be to take precautionary sharp upward left and right avoidance movements with the aircraft, like a climber would in traversing a mountain, in order to quickly climb into safer altitudes.  My pilot, in my infinite imaginary wisdom, decided flying was unsafe and emergency landed in a nearby field.

Once the plane landed (the landing gear did end up working) and was brought to a bumpy halt,  I remember the rebels quickly approaching the plane and coming onboard to look for, in particular, Anti-Israeli individuals for immediate execution.  I opened an eye and saw two men quickly shot by the insurgents as they recognized their enemies.  I closed my eyes and played possum as they walked down the isles in their quest for redemption.  When they came near me they stopped and I could smell their sweat and opened an eye to see a pair of two black ominous eyes staring in return.  It was at this moment I realized there was a Palestinian seated behind me who at the start of the flight was wearing the traditional patterned black and white scarf.  To my horror, in our impromptu and rocky landing the scarf had flown forward over the seat and into my lap.  I looked down at the realization that I was end’s meat. How would one explain themselves in this situation?

I thought, yes I am in quite the conundrum.  So I did what any rational person would do in that scenario of a dream, I confidently said “I think you’re mistaken, this scarf isn’t mine.  It is the guy’s behind me.  See him, right there.  Yes, that’s your target.”  I remember thinking, “Am I really kidding myself? Is this going to work?”  and then, “Wow, if I don’t get killed by these guys, then the guy behind me is going to do it for them if he makes it out alive.” 

He didn’t make it out alive, and as they passed by in their fierce and bloody determination, I snuck off the plane and into the adjacent forest, along the way hiding behind wreckage of other planes they had successfully shot down.

I later thought…hmmnn not a good foreboding about my last tenure in Darfur.  Anyway…such is life and one’s own imagination.  If, in these final months, I get to experience any of the fun I dreamt on the plane ride, then it will make for some quality posts.  Stay tuned.

Sorry about the extremely long and overdue postings.  Quick reason is that I took a brief break from Sudan and am back in the states until mid June.  I will return and plan to stay in Darfur through the fall.  There are more postings to come.  Thanks for being patient. 

I recently read the AMIS monthly newsletter. Now I haven’t read too many military newsletters before so I don’t have a solid basis of comparison, but one would think it would be an official voice of the mission, providing basic situational overview and points of interest for its troops, staff, and community. This one did provide some of these characteristics in its articles, like the status of UN support to the mission and various goodwill photos. There were several health articles to remind the troops, like the importance of a good breakfast, which I understood the relevance, and also an article about a particular heart disease, which I didn’t really catch the significance with the audience being mostly healthy soldiers.

But this newsletter also had an element which I found minorly troublesome. The article which really brought a puzzled smile discussed the ultimate solution to bringing peace to Darfur. Yes the AU has found an answer to the utterly hopeless problems of Darfur, and they are proudly encouraging all personnel and supporting cast to participate.

The solution: Love. Yes Love.

It’s all laid out in an article titled, “Love – The Only Way Forward For the Return of Peace in Darfur”. Let me just recap some of the highlights:

Since the creation of man, love has been the greatest of all weapons for peace existence even in the animal kingdom. Without love, peace existence in any environment is in jeopardy.

But the question now is, has the peace been achieved in Darfur? The answer in simple “no”, because the derivative of peace which is love has not been put into consideration. As an accelerator towards achieving peace, the Government of Sudan, her citizens, friends and well wishers should embrace love as a means towards achieving peace in this region. Once love is in existence in any environment, things like ethnic discrimination, marginalization, agitation, murder, rape, fear, and hatred will be totally eradicated from Darfur, paving the way for peace.

If animals of the same species embrace love as a means of living in peace why not humans beings, who are created to be more sensible than animals?

Granted, the article suggests the best tangible way to spread love is through spiritual leader’s involvement in the process. But I would think the actions say otherwise. Several months ago I attended a party the current Force Commander had at his residence. In his welcoming speech, I distinctly remember him say, “You are always welcome at my house, especially the ladies”. I also heard him say, “The two things which make good troops, happy troops are booze and women. I will not deny my men these two while here in Sudan.” (Despite the fact that both are illegal) One would instantly tell by the little residence that popped up outside of the main camp, where you could routinely see local women standing outside while plain-clothed soldiers meandered in and out on timed intervals.

So maybe there’s a hidden meaning in this article, an inside joke. I would hope the leadership in the AU didn’t condone this type of leftist flower peace talk as a practical means towards a real solution. It sure doesn’t sound very military to me. Or maybe there’s a sickly undertone as an end all solution – Love here equals AIDS.

Either way, it’s a reflection of African Solutions to African Problems, the AU’s motto. I just shake my head.

I’ve found that I’m becoming numb out here. I don’t know, maybe it’s the bleakness beige of the environment, maybe it’s the continual routine, most likely it’s the fact that I’m pushing a year and a half in the desert.

I go for runs in the afternoon and salute soldiers and rebels alike along my jog. When I stop at the “neighborhood store”, I shrug off the begging children’s relentless plea – “sadik, give me one hundred dinars” (50cents), throwing them a quick “Allah Caream” – God will Provide, or “Amshu Madressa”, Go to School.

In the evenings I’ve battled through books, some interesting, some time killers, and through movies and pirated TV series. I’m happy that I still appreciate music’s ability to alter my moods. I’ve picked up weekly Thursday night poker games, with successful results, this time with fresh faces, stern in their resolve, but unseasoned to the desert play.

Life in this place has become constant, a slow and relentless evolution, minor changes, like the reshaping of a sand dune from the afternoon breeze, with no significant differences.

Nothing here seems to surprise me anymore. The great diversity of our presence alongside the locals has become a norm, and we work together battling the days’ challenges with typical resolve, doing the best we can. We keep a firm battle cry to improve a little each day, but accept the fact that some days all we do is work backwards.

People on my contract and the Westerners in Sudan have been through their rotations, and I’m continually seeing fresh faces that are quietly absorbing their new assignments. The radio, once a form of entertainment, is now bleak background noise. Those individuals which I knew so well, largely bordering the short lived thin line, creating a lively buzz as they went, have mostly now gone.

I would say this project is in the middle of a transitional phase. The AU has grand plans to double the size of the mission with the help of the UN, but is so financially insecure they are three months behind in their troop’s pay.

My official last day is May 7^th. I have six weeks left and at this point, my anticipation, a profound motivator in my world, lies outside of Sudan. I still have a lot to accomplish before departure and that keeps me going during the day, but in the evenings my mind wanders to greener pastures.

I think that such is the life of a contract. Its early stages are accompanied with excitement from the relentless challenge of creating something meaningful and professional. It’s compounded with the complexity and uncertainty of the environment. Over time, results and control are achieved and the project plateaus. I’ve worked on this project in DC and here for an accumulative three years and I’m at that plateau now, ready for a new challenge.

I’ve been in Sudan almost 16 months and I can’t believe I didn’t recognize one defining feature of all Sudanese men until now. They all have facial hair. I finally asked our locals, all who sport some form of mustache, what’s that about? I was told a mustache is a sign of toughness. Sudanese without mustaches are not manly; they are not men. (Dare I say a cheaper version of a sportscar!) Let’s take a few examples:

Sudan President Bashir

SLA Rebel Leader Minni Minnawi

Janjaweed Militia

GOS Military Rep

Nyala Police Commander

Nyala Wadi (Mayor)

GOS Military commander

Sudanese Foreign Minister

GOS Soldier

JEM Rebel Rep

SLA Rep

GOS Colonel

Zalinje Military Commander

Everyone has a mustache. (If you can believe it, where did this social norm originate from? British Colonization – that makes me smirk, the statement that it makes, knowing it’s just another side effect, minor as it is.)

Yesterday one of our local staff had his village burned down by the Janjaweed right outside of town. We took a collection for his family. Yesterday one of the GOS military Antonov aircraft filled up to the brim with bombs wanted to take off to head out on a run and they didn’t have enough fuel. The African Union stood by watching. The GOS came over and demanded that the AU give them fuel to take off. The AU rightfully refused, knowing the obvious intention of the mission. The GOS in consequence cut off all of our access to the airport. It took all day in negotiations to allow the AU flights to commence. “Facilitation fees” were demanded by the GOS, verbally, not in writing, mind you. That portion is still in negotiations.

Just more examples of what’s taking place on a regular basis. Countries are continually trying to put pressure on Sudan to act, freezing bank accounts, sanctions, naming individuals up for war crimes at the ICC, all to no avail. Maybe it would be a stronger statement if they forced all the leaders to shave their mustaches.

That would be the day for Sudan, accepting this ultimatum as a statement by showing some humility, shaving away a tainted reflection of both aged and recent history, and smoothly moving forward with a fresh look and healthier agenda!

One of the interesting things about working in Africa is understanding how the common folks live and to what effect outside intervention has had on this continent. When I walk through the markets and see a mix of 16th to 21st century livelihood, or when I work with the locals who seem to embody uneducated simplicity and resistance of change, I cant help but wonder if outside exposure is positive or negative to the people whose cultures have had permanence century after century.

At some of our sites, when we first put up lights, locals were crowded around the camps at night, staring at the brightness, in awe and trying to figure out what was this new illuminating creation. Many were never exposed to electricity.

When we put water taps in our camps, we had to teach many of our local staff exactly how to turn them on and off. They’ve always carted water from a hand-pumped well on donkey-pulled water barrels, washing in bowls and drinking by scooping from the bowl.

At our camps, we provide silverware (forks, knives, spoons) to the African troops to eat. Many of them still only use a spoon to scoop the food. In their home countries and villages, they’ve never learned to eat with a fork and knife.

Across the continent of Africa, people have been doing things the same way for so many years, generations, and centuries, living life the same simple and proven way from time on end. It’s what they know and it works.

The Sudanese culture is a yes culture. If you ask a question to a local, you’ll never hear a ‘No’ in response. If they don’t understand you, a nod or term of agreement will still come out of their mouth because saying ‘No, I don’t understand’ is considered demeaning and disgraceful to the individual. The motto here seems to be, ‘Live simply, live proud, and don’t question things’ as that’s a vulnerability and sign of imperfection.

So learning, changing, and adapting by questioning the problems they face rarely occurs. Teaching new methods just doesn’t happen. It’s very frustrating when you compare it to the western mindset and makes conducting business very difficult. I think this mindset is similar in most countries on this continent.

Since outside intervention has graced Africa, from Dutch to British to American to Chinese and on over the last couple of centuries, a new way of life has been pushed on these societies. Forever they have known and lived in one way and this new exposure has dramatically affected the continent. The question to ask, Is this exposure right for these people? Are we really acting in their best interests? (Or even better, Do we even care if we can achieve results in our favor?)

I think there’s an innate desire in all developed people to try to help or teach the lesser developed and lesser educated societies into adapting your own ways and means. You’ve been successful, why can’t they with a little assistance? Maybe it’s also a parental desire to help that drives us. But is our view best for these folks? Is it what they want?

The tribes which have survived for centuries have done something right. It may not be developed in the concept that we as westerners think. But they’ve survived, and lived life to a degree which they find content and constant.

And so in a perfect world, Africa would live peacefully, off the land and in basic market commerce. If a man needs a knife, he goes to the market and the blacksmith beats him a knife with a hammer. If it needs sharpening, he goes back and the blacksmith sharpens it. Now on the markets you find cheaper Chinese knives that are ultimately dwindling the local blacksmith’s trade.

This happens in commerce, and in America it was successful, like Darwin, in that the fittest survived. But it was created in a market place where the mindset was known from day one. America is the place of opportunity and if you go, get ready to compete.

Here, the unchanging, uncommercial mindset is centuries etched in stone. But outside commerce has been introduced, along with money, technological advances, weapons, and on and on. What has resulted? A struggle to survive but without the basic willingness to adapt, change, and improve that’s held by Westerners.

And so greed and corruption by the few overwhelms the masses. Warlords and warfare are a result. Uneducated are manipulated and soon what were once basic tribal conflicts are now mass annihilations. One thing’s for certain, the warlords make their keep off exploiting the local struggle of accepting the introduction of new Western methods vs older tribal lifestyle that’s been solidified from generation to generation. Wars in similar fashion have occurred within almost every nation on this continent.

The terrible irony is that we can’t back out because our standards won’t accept the modern day poverty and warfare that plagues this continent. But our intervention directly affects the warlords. They’re tasting too much power and making too much money off the industry that we’ve created, the peacekeeping, aid giving, and commercial imbalance that now drives their markets. Their power is created by this exploitation, resulting in local wars that quickly become dependant on our support.

So are the modern day struggles of Africa a direct result of developed nations’ imperialistic foreign policies toward this continent over the last century? I have to say to a large extent, yes.

Sure there would still be tribal fighting and conflicts if these lands never saw the white man. But I can’t imagine it would reach the scale we’ve seen in the last 30 years, not to mention the resulting poverty from the wars and dependence on outside food and aid.

Africa has been tagged as a resource-filled continent, geographically strategic (in some senses) and full of money making industries. It would be impossible to ‘take it back’ or to back out entirely, but sometimes I think about the difference it would make over time if we did. Can people who have lived in the same mindset for centuries revert back to their proven ways once they’ve been exposed to a more developed society? I don’t think it’s in human nature to do so. But it’s a shame that it will take years, probably generations to cultivate this place into the civil society outsiders hold true. Because of the simple and unfaltering manner that many Africans have passed down forever, the struggles will continue during the long and painful evolution from the African tribal way of life to the modern world.