A Unique Refugee Phenomena

I recently learned of, what the website Refugees International calls a "unique phenomena in the refugee world, ... the lost boys of Sudan." To sum up their story, since 1983 the Sudan has been embroiled in an extremely bloody civil war in which all people in the country are in danger. There are no noncombatants in this war; civilians of all ages are routinely killed. In the late 1980's, a group of boys started literally circulating around the southern Sudan in an attempt to avoid being forced into military service. Any boys who were abducted by the guerrilla forces were sure to be forced into service. If they did not comply with their abductors, they faced being killed or being forced into some non-military form of servitude. Most of these boys had already lost family members in the fighting; many of them had lost both parents. Few if any of the boys in these drifting bands had any possessions other than the rags they wore. They lived in the bush, doing everything they possibly could to hide from the troops. The number of boys who eventually made their way from the Sudan to refugee camps in Ethiopia totalled 17,000. There, they were forced back into the Sudan where they again went on a long trek, this time to Kenya. About 10,000 managed to reach internationally-run refugee camps in Kenya. Along the way to Kenya, they lost many boys to the guerrilla troops, to disease, to starvation, to bombings and land mines and even to the lions who forage in that region of Africa.

Today, the "lost boys" are being placed in homes all around the world, including the United States. Now, many of the boys, some of them in their 20's, are facing a much different obstacle. They are trying to adjust to a new culture while at the same time trying to deal with their own quickly fading culture, which went the way of their families and their homeland. This compelling story of flight possesses a number of interesting angles from a men's activist point of view. What's very interesting is to read the recommendations made by the organization "Refugees International" on their website; this may be the only place where I have ever seen any organization recommend that a group of people be given asylum due, in part, to their being "male." Their website which contains a story about and recommendations for the "lost boys" can be found at www.refintl.org/bulletins/su_090998_01.htm. A wealth of other articles on the "lost boys" can be found by going into the Google search engine and searching under "lost boys of Sudan." One final note, it's interesting that when feminists are confronted with the fact that women are exempt from the military draft they often reply with some feminists tripe along the lines of, "Well men start the wars," or something about men being inherently aggressive and actually relishing the thought of going to war. Perhaps the reason the media has kept this story of 17,000 males who refuse to fight so hush-hush is because it flies in the face of such thinking.

Bill Kuhl
bridgewater6729@msn.com