By SAUNDRA AMRHEIN, Times Staff Writer
Published April 3, 2005
Hell to pay
Five years ago, a teenager fled Sudan to escape being drafted into its brutal civil war. Mogtaba Mokhtar saved himself. But could he save the family he left behind?
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The Lost Boys
Savaged by war in East Africa, the young refugees had lost families, friends, their childhoods. Now a group of them had arrived in Florida. Could they find the American dream? (September 16, 2001)
[Times photo: Brendan Fitterer[
On, off, on, off. The lamp in the living room of the Holiday apartment shared by Jacob But, 23, center, and Abraham Achiek, 25, right, is a novelty that needs to be explained by Peter Deng, 22, left. Enter photo gallery
Sudan has suffered two major conflicts. One is the battle in the western region of Darfur, where the United Nations and human rights groups accuse the government of arming and supporting militiamen, called the Janjaweed, to crush a rebellion. The Bush administration and Congress have said the widespread deaths there - reported to be more than 180,000 - amounted to genocide.
The story of Mogtaba Mokhtar, 23, is connected to Sudan's other conflict, its civil war, which raged almost as long as he has been alive.
But on Jan. 9, the Islamist government of Sudan signed a peace accord with the Christian rebel group in the south. The two-decade civil war, which pitted the Islamic government against rebels based in the mostly animist and Christian south, left 2-million people dead. Under the accord, which was backed by the Bush administration, the south will have a six-year period of self-rule, then vote on whether to remain part of Sudan.
The devastation in the south forced about 26,000 Sudanese boys to flee their villages and walk as many as 1,000 miles on foot to a refugee camp in Kenya. Only about 10,000 to 12,000 survived. In the late 1990s, the U.S. government agreed to relocate 4,000 of the young men, dubbed the Lost Boys. Dozens were brought to Pasco County.
But Mogtaba was not among them. He was from the north, and had he not fled his country, he may have been a government soldier storming villages in the south.
Though the plight of the Lost Boys has become the subject of numerous newspaper stories, at least one book, plays and a comic book series, little has been written about people like Mogtaba. He was a would-be northern soldier, with dreams of higher education, who chose to flee. Mogtaba's battle became one of survival and reuniting his family at all costs.
-- Sources: New York Times, Washington Post and wire services.
