Some humanitarian catastrophes — Congo, Somalia, Sudan — linger because the killing unfolds without witnesses. So Ryan, a 30-year-old from Florida, has made the perilous decision to bear witness to atrocities in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, secretly staying behind when other foreigners were evacuated.
I met Ryan a few years ago in Sudan, and even then he was a compelling figure who spoke the local languages of Otoro and Sudanese Arabic. An evangelical Christian deeply motivated by his faith, Ryan moved to the Nuba Mountains in 2003 and worked for Samaritan’s Purse, an aid group led by the Rev. Franklin Graham.
Early this year, Ryan married a local woman, Jazira, a health worker — and 6,000 joyous Nubans celebrated at the wedding, along with Ryan’s parents, who flew in from Florida.
It was clear that war was brewing in the Nuba Mountains. The region had sided with South Sudan in the country’s long civil war, but now South Sudan was separating while the Nuba Mountains would remain in the north. The people — mostly Muslim but with a large Christian minority — supported a local rebel army left over from the civil war.
In June, fighting erupted. The Sudanese government moved in to destroy the rebel army and depopulate areas that supported it. Aid organizations pulled out their workers. Ryan decided that he could not flee, so when Samaritan’s Purse ordered him to evacuate, he resigned and stayed behind.
“A lot of people tried to convince me to leave,” Ryan remembers. “But this is where my wife is from, this is where I’ve lived for eight years. It’s hard to get on a plane and say, ‘Bye, I hope to see you when this ends.’ ”
Ryan organized a network of 15 people to gather information and take photos and videos, documenting atrocities. He used a solar-powered laptop and a satellite phone to transmit them to the West, typically to the Enough Project, a Washington-based anti-genocide organization. He also supplied eyewitness interviews that helped the Enough Project and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative find evidence of atrocities, including eight mass graves, on satellite images. And he helped journalists understand what was going on.
“He’s irreplaceable,” said Jonathan Hutson of the Enough Project. “There’s no substitute for someone on the ground.”
Ryan tried to keep his presence in the region a secret, at least from the Sudanese government, for fear that it might seek to eliminate a witness. Once, a bombing seemed to target his hut, but he heard the plane approaching and ran out in his skivvies and took cover; the bombs missed, and he was unhurt.
After the first few weeks, the killings on the ground abated. But the government has continued the bombings.
“It’s terrifying when they bomb,” Ryan told me. “You don’t feel safe at any time of day or night.”
The bombs typically miss and have killed fewer than 200 people, he says, but they prevent people from farming their fields. Several hundred thousand people have been driven from their homes in the surrounding state of South Kordofan, Ryan says, and a famine may be looming.
“It’s not a good time to have kids,” Ryan quoted Jazira as telling him. “If we have kids, they’ll just starve.”
Frustrated by the lack of attention for the Nubans’ plight, Ryan decided to return to the United States this month and tell his story. He couldn’t get a visa for Jazira in time — obtaining an American visa for a spouse is a long and complex process — so she is in a refugee camp for 15,000 Nubans in South Sudan, struggling to address health needs there. Meanwhile, in Washington, Ryan has testified before Congress and met with White House officials.
Soon, he’ll go back, rejoining Jazira and sneaking back with her into the Nuba Mountains. It’ll be more dangerous than ever now that he has gone public, but he is determined to give voice to the voiceless — and Nubans will do everything to protect him.
In a world where leaders often pretend not to notice mass atrocities, for fear that they might be called upon to do something, I find Ryan an inspiration. His eyewitness accounts make it more difficult for the world to neglect a humanitarian crisis in the Nuba Mountains — even if he does need to brush up on his tech skills.
I asked Ryan if he planned to use Twitter.
“Twitter?” he asked. “I’ve been in the bush for nine years, so I don’t know how to use it.” But he’s planning to learn.
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