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The United Nations says South Sudan’s four-year-old civil war has left half of the nation’s population — 6 million people — in need of humanitarian aid. The conflict began when South Sudan’s army split between factions loyal to President Salva Kiir and former Vice President Riek Machar. The two men mobilized their respective tribes, the Dinka and the Nuer. The war has caused what is now one of the world’s worst refugee crises.

SIMONA FOLTYN: Civil war is emptying huge swaths of South Sudan. The violence has uprooted four million people, including two million who’ve fled to neighboring countries. In the last year, more than a million South Sudanese have poured into northern Uganda alone, crossing makeshift bridges like this one to flee fighting, hunger, and brutal attacks on civilians.

SEME LUPAI, REFUGEE: They started fighting very, very severely. So that made us to escape with our properties to this side.

SIMONA FOLTYN: When Seme Lupai’s family went to one of the refugee camps, initially, he stayed behind to look after the family’s most precious commodity — their cattle. He hid for a year to escape the violence. The refugees carry whatever they can salvage — mattresses, pots, clothes, notebooks — remnants of once peaceful lives turned upside down. At checkpoints, Ugandan soldiers search their belongings for weapons, before the refugees proceed to reception centers. After entering Uganda, the refugees sign in at small waystations. For many, it’s the first night spent in safety after walking for days to escape fighting. Levi Arike fled with his wife and four children.

LEVI ARIKE, REFUGEE: When the gunshots started, we laid under a tree with the whole family, because there was nowhere else to hide. We waited for the fighting to stop, and then we got up and started walking to Uganda.

SIMONA FOLTYN: Uganda now shoulders most of the burden of Africa’s biggest refugee crisis, managing a constellation of camps which require food, water, healthcare, and policing. At Imvepi Camp, now home to more than 120,000 South Sudanese, new arrivals receive vaccinations, hot meals, and basic items such as soap and plastic tarps to build a house. The government also gives each refugee family a small plot of land, about a twentieth of an acre, where they can build a tent shelter and grow crops to eat or sell. But the land often proves too rocky for farming.

SIMONA FOLTYN, IMVEPI REFUGEE CAMP, NORTHERN UGANDA: After completing the registration process, the new arrivals will receive their plot, to start a new life as refugees in Uganda. While they are safe here, there are many challenges ahead, not least processing the trauma of what they experienced back home.

This woman, who we’ll call “Agnes,” agreed to tell us about her harrowing experience. She says four government soldiers from President Salva Kiir’s Dinka tribe stopped her as she was fleeing South Sudan and raped her right in front of her family.

AGNES (translated to English): When they started raping me, they told me not to raise alarm, otherwise they would shoot me. Still when I’m sleeping, I’m dreaming of the Dinka, that they are coming to rape me again.

SIMONA FOLTYN: How often do you have those dreams?

AGNES: Daily, every time I lie down, those dreams come.

SIMONA FOLTYN: A recent Human Rights Watch report on South Sudan found “…a clear pattern of government forces unlawfully targeting civilians for killings, rapes, torture…and destruction of property..” The victims are from ethnic groups suspected to support the rebels.

AGNES: They are doing it, because they know very well that those soldiers are our brothers. So they do it to punish them..

SIMONA FOLTYN: Although the rebels, known as the Sudan People’s Liberation Army In Opposition, purport to protect local communities, there are also reports of their fighters assaulting civilians near the Ugandan border. Josephine Yanya told us she didn’t feel safe in the presence of either side’s soldiers. Her family and neighbors fled their village after government soldiers killed her uncle.

They hid in the mountains only to find themselves under attack again, this time by opposition fighters from the Nuer tribe loyal to former vice president Riek Machar. Yanya says ethnic Nuer soldiers from the SPLA-IO rebel group raped a member of her group and stole her father’s’ cattle.

JOSEPHINE YANYA (translated to English): Before we were thinking that the rebels would protect us, but if they are lacking food, they just come and take things by force.

SIMONA FOLTYN: With nowhere left to hide, Yanya fled to Uganda with her son.
But instead of finding a place to rebuild their lives, they are in limbo. And aid groups don’t have enough food to distribute.

JOSEPHINE YANYA (translated to English):We are getting small food rations. I know it won’t be enough even for one month.

SIMONA FOLTYN: According to the United Nations, the international community has given less than a-third of the $1.4 billion dollars needed for the refugee response in South Sudan’s neighboring countries. These refugees foresee more hardship and have no idea when they might return home.

JOSEPHINE YANYA (translated to English): I’m always praying for peace in South Sudan, and until then, I’ll just stay here.

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HARI SREENIVASAN: The desire of the Kurds along Iraq’s northern border to govern themselves is receiving more resistance from Iraq’s central government. Iraqi army forces are demanding Kurdish troops withdraw from oil fields and military bases around Kirkuk, a city in the Kurdistan region that voted for independence last month. Kirkuk also has 10% of Iraq’s known oil reserves. Washington Post’s Loveday Morris is in Baghdad covering this standoff joins me now via Skype. First of all the significance of this. Why is it so important?

LOVEDAY MORRIS: There’s been a longtime conflict between Baghdad and Kurdistan over these disputed territories. Most significant of which is Kirkuk because of the oil reserves. But the referendum last month has really sharpened these disputes because you have Baghdad opposing independence and so it feels like they have to restate its territorial claims these areas. So that’s why we’re seeing a lot of tension right now.

HARI SREENIVASAN: And just to give people a little bit of a brief timeline – Iraqi forces control this area for a while and then in June ISIS took over the area and now it’s kind of back in Kurdish hands?

LOVEDAY MORRIS: Right. So in June 2014 Iraq lost control of a lot of the areas and we have this huge collapse in the face of an ISIS offensive. Over 100,000 soldiers fled and Kurdish forces moved in some of these areas – some of them maybe took from ISIS and others just moved into into the vacuum. And so Iraqi forces have been in these areas since June 2014. And that’s their main demand that they return to the areas.

HARI SREENIVASAN: What’s the likelihood that this standoff right now turns violent? Into some sort of a civil war?

LOVEDAY MORRIS:: I think at this point both sides don’t want violence. Al-Abadi, the prime minister, is really trying to defuse the situation by saying there’s going to be no military attack. But at the same time there is this buildup of forces so that I think they are trying to, in a way, intimidate the Kurds to withdraw from some areas but they don’t want to see a fight per say. But in this really tense situation there can be a small spark and things can turn violent quite easily.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Thank you.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: Longstanding rivalries were re-ignited in Iraq today between vital American allies.

Iraqi military forces and militia moved to push Kurdish forces out of the disputed city of Kirkuk in the country’s north.

Lisa Desjardins begins our coverage.

MAN (through interpreter): The commander in chief of the armed forces, Dr. Haider al-Abadi, gave orders to protect the people of Kirkuk and to impose security in the city.

LISA DESJARDINS: After months of simmering tensions, Iraqi federal troops moved to retake the disputed city of Kirkuk from Kurdish forces.

The effort launched before dawn. By midday, Iraqi soldiers, along with state-backed militias, quickly took control of several massive oil fields north of the city. Iraqis also captured Kirkuk’s military airport and various government buildings. They lowered what had been a symbolic Kurdish flag at the governor’s compound.

Journalist Rebecca Collard in Irbil was in Kirkuk this morning.

REBECCA COLLARD, Journalist: You could hear some clashes, some gunfire in the distance, but for the most part, the city seemed more or less abandoned. Now, the Iraqi army, by the end of today, was essentially in control of the whole city and many of the outskirts of Kirkuk.

LISA DESJARDINS: The spokesman for an Iraqi Shiite militia said they achieved all their goals with little resistance.

AHMED AL-ASSADI,  Spokesman for al-Hashed al-Shaabi (through translator): As the troops approached the area, they were confronted by some rebels, who tried to hinder the progress of the advancing units. Our troops returned fire and silenced its source.

LISA DESJARDINS: This comes three weeks after the Kurds held a nonbinding independence referendum that included the disputed province of Kirkuk.

More than 90 percent of the Kurdish region’s residents voted to split from Iraq. The Iraqi federal government, Turkey, Iran and the U.S. all rejected the independence drive.

The multiethnic region of Kirkuk lies just outside of the autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq’s north. Called the country’s oil capital, Kirkuk produces around 500,000 barrels a day.

In 2014, amid the ISIS onslaught across Northern Iraq, the Kurds took control of Kirkuk, as the Iraqi military fled the city. In the three years since, the Kurds, led by their president, Massoud Barzani, sought to cement their hold, despite tensions with the central government.

Today, Kurdish officials accused Iraq of carrying out a major multipronged attack.

MAJ. GEN. AYOUB YUSUF SAID, Peshmerga Commander (through interpreter): I don’t know what is happening exactly, because we have been in this fight since 4:00 in the morning. We have suffered casualties, including martyrs, and now we have withdrawn to this position. Some of the other Kurdish forces have pulled out. They didn’t fire a single shot.

LISA DESJARDINS: While Kurdish forces withdrew from posts south of the city, some residents vowed to die fighting. Thousands of others fled north.

REBECCA COLLARD: For the last few years, the Iraqi forces, these primarily Shia militia, the Hashed Shaabi, and the Kurdish forces have been focused on fighting ISIS. Now that fight is coming to an end, and what the fear is that now these internal division in Iraq are going to become more apparent and possibly more violent.

LISA DESJARDINS: These clashes pit one substantially American-armed military force against another. Both the Kurdish forces and Iraqi government troops are part of the coalition fighting ISIS. The U.S. sought to downplay the fighting, labeling the exchange of gunfire a misunderstanding.

And, in the Rose Garden, President Trump tried to stay neutral.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We don’t like the fact that they’re clashing. We’re not taking sides. But we don’t like the fact that they’re clashing.

LISA DESJARDINS: For the PBS NewsHour, I’m Lisa Desjardins.

JUDY WOODRUFF: For more, I’m joined now by Emma Sky. She served as an adviser to General David Petraeus while he was commander of U.S. forces in Iraq from 2007 to 2010, and by Feisal Istrabadi. He’s a former Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations and he helped write Iraq’s interim constitution.

Welcome to both of you.

Let me start with you, Emma Sky.

This has happened so quickly. What exactly has the Iraqi government done?

EMMA SKY, Yale University: The Iraqi government has deployed its forces back up north into Kirkuk.

And since 2003, the Kurds have made it clear that they want to include Kirkuk within their territory in order to proceed with gaining independence, which has always been their goal. But Kirkuk is important to Iraq itself, and no Iraqi prime minister can afford to lose Kirkuk.

So you can see this reaction that has taken place following the referendum on independence, which happened September the 25th, and also included the disputed territories and the city of Kirkuk.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Feisal Istrabadi, what can you add to why the Iraqi government is so set on taking over the city?

FEISAL ISTRABADI, Former Deputy UN Ambassador, Iraq: Well, a couple of reasons.

First, as Emma just said, it is a part of the disputed territories, which are legally and constitutionally under the jurisdiction of the federal government in Baghdad. The KRG expanded into these disputed territories at the time when ISIL was expanding its territory, and then began to take steps to unilaterally declare that these areas were now incorporated into the Kurdistan region, including when it held the referendum that Emma talked about.

It included holding the referendum in these disputed territories. Now, so long as Iraq — so long as we’re talking about a single country, it matters a little less who controls Kirkuk, but once the referendum was held, this gave rise then to the second reason for Baghdad choosing to act now.

As Emma said, Kirkuk is an important oil-producing zone in Iraq. And it is vital for the economic viability of an independent Kurdish state and an important part of the economic viability of the Iraqi state. So there was never going to be a scenario, I think, in which Baghdad would allow a unilateral exercise of control by Kurds to occur over Kirkuk, so long as independence is on the table.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Emma Sky, we heard President Trump say today the U.S. is not taking sides in this.

Is that accurate, that the U.S. isn’t taking sides? What is the U.S. role here?

EMMA SKY: Well, the U.S. has stipulated over and over again that its policy is to support a united Iraq.

So you can see the U.S. has given support to Iraqi security forces, but also to the Kurdish Peshmerga, to fight against ISIS. The U.S. policy for the last few years has really been focused on ISIS and not on the day after ISIS.

But what we’re witnessing at the moment is that different groups are already moving to the day after, which is the power struggle for control of different territories in Iraq.

And Barzani believed that during the fight against ISIS, he became stronger because he got weapons directly from the international community. And, as Feisal said, he was able to extend his control over the disputed territories.

He’s also facing domestic problems within Kurdistan. There are tensions between the different Kurdish groups, and some believe that Barzani has overstayed his term as president.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Which reminds us just how complicated this is, Feisal Istrabadi.

What does the Iraqi central government want here? They’re not going to get rid of the Kurds. What is it that they want?

FEISAL ISTRABADI: Oh, well, I mean, the Kurds of course are a vital part of Iraq. They’re a vital part of the political process, and they have been represented in Baghdad. The president of Iraq is a Kurd and has been since 2005.

I think what needs to occur and I hope what the government of Iraq wants is a negotiated settlement, in which no party dictates terms to the other, but a negotiated settlement.

Look, Irbil has some legitimate agreements with respect to Baghdad. Baghdad has some legitimate agreements with respect to Irbil. I think we need a mediator perhaps or somebody to convene a roundtable — the United States is who I’m thinking of, of course — to address some of those issues.

Most of the issues are, from the Irbil side, economic issues of payments, and from Baghdad’s side, transparency of how much oil Irbil is producing and exporting, which Irbil has never accounted for to Baghdad.

I think if those issues are resolved, perhaps hopefully some of these other issues can at least be delayed for another day. But at the end of the day, neither government — neither the regional government nor the federal government in Baghdad can really tolerate dictation of terms to it by the other side. My hope is that a negotiated settlement obtains.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Emma Sky, where do you see this going from here? Do you see the peace that different sides have worked to hard to create in Iraq unraveling as a result of this?

EMMA SKY: I think there is an opportunity for a deal, and I think the sort of deal that could be negotiated is one that looks at a special status for the city of Kirkuk and negotiated terms for Kurdistan’s separate, whether that be towards confederation or towards independence.

But there needs to be negotiation. There needs to be a look at where should the border between Iraqi Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq actually be, and that requires mediation district by district through those territories.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, we know there are other players who are playing an important role here in Iran and Turkey, and this is all very much playing out as we watch, watch it happen in Iraq.

Emma Sky, Feisal Istrabadi, thank you very much.

FEISAL ISTRABADI: Thank you.

EMMA SKY: Thank you.

The post Why a power struggle has broken out over Kirkuk appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

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HARI SREENIVASAN: But first: The de facto capital of the Islamic State, Raqqa, in Syria fell yesterday to U.S.-backed forces.

However, the largest city the militants once held was Mosul in Iraq. They were ousted from it in July after a brutal 10-month-long fight that killed thousands.

Now a new major task: finding and destroying the ISIS mines, booby-traps and bombs that litter the city.

Special correspondent Marcia Biggs reports from Iraq.

MARCIA BIGGS, Special Correspondent: It was once a center of learning for over 6,000 students of technology, agriculture, and medicine.

Today, Mosul Technical Institute’s classrooms are burnt to the ground, laboratories reduced to rubble, and books charred and shredded. It’s one of the city’s five universities ravaged by the Islamic State and the battle to oust it.

Now that the battle is over, a new danger looms, the trail of land mines and booby-traps left by ISIS.

So this is the wire, and this is where it was buried.

CHRISTIAN, Team Leader, Janus Global Operations: Yes, they would cut the asphalt, and then they lay the wire in and put the main charge here.

MARCIA BIGGS: We spent the day with Christian, a team leader from Janus Global, a security and risk management firm hired by the U.S. government to sweep and clear major areas of unexploded ordnance and mines.

He’s not allowed to show his face or use his last name, for security reasons.

CHRISTIAN: There’s actually two more on that road before we get to the target building that have to be excavated and/or rendered safe.

MARCIA BIGGS: So, the first building you have to clear, you have got to get rid of the IEDs on the road to that building?

CHRISTIAN: Yes.

MARCIA BIGGS: It’s a long process.

CHRISTIAN: It is, but that’s what makes it interesting.

MARCIA BIGGS: The United States has sunk $30 million this year into clearing former ISIS territories all over Northern Iraq. Under this program, Janus has already cleared 727 buildings, removing 3,000 IEDs, which they say ISIS was producing on assembly lines at an industrial scale.

But State Department officials and experts say the number of unexploded ordnance in Mosul itself is unprecedented.

What’s your first line of attack, in terms of trying to clear Mosul?

CHRISTIAN: Our priority is more the community, rather than the individual, you know, infrastructure. You have got schools, power, sewer, water, so that the area can accept people back into it. And then, once this stabilization phase is over, we can move into the individual homes, so that they can be safer.

MARCIA BIGGS: Clearing Mosul is a process that they say could take years, even decades. So Janus is training local Iraqis to do the job, sending them out as a front-line search team, then investigating and removing any suspicious items themselves.

CHRISTIAN: We’re not going to be here the whole time, so when we — it’s our time to leave, they will have the capacity built from us, and the mentoring we have done, so that they can do it on their own.

MARCIA BIGGS: How are they doing?

CHRISTIAN: They’re — a lot of them are very apt to learn. They’re quick. They’re smart.

MARCIA BIGGS: Fawzi al Nabdi is the team leader for the Iraqi local partner. He’s cleared mines all over Iraq for the last six years.

CHRISTIAN: What you got?

FAWZI AL NABDI, Team Leader, Al Fahad Company (through interpreter): We are ready for this, because it’s my job and I love it. The Americans are here to complete our work and to help us. They have greater experience than we do. If we find any mines, we have to stop and they will investigate it and make a plan to remove it.

MARCIA BIGGS: But he says Mosul is the biggest project he has ever seen, and we’re told it could take at least a month to just get the campus cleared of mines. Only then can they start cleaning it up, so that students can resume classes, this itself a huge task.

ISIS fighters closed the university back in 2014, and used it as a military base. As coalition forces pounded ISIS targets, this seat of higher learning became a battleground.

Ghassan Alubaidy is the institute’s dean.

GHASSAN ALUBAIDY, Dean, Mosul Technical Institute (through interpreter): ISIS used our university to manufacture mines and bombs. For this reason, it was the target of airstrikes in the beginning. They struck the institute nine times, and they struck our workshops, too. Now we can’t use them.

MARCIA BIGGS: The former commander of coalition forces in Iraq, Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, recently listed 81 locations where bombs were dropped, but had not yet exploded.

Facilities used to make weapons were often on the list of high-value targets for the coalition. So now those places are twice as likely to contain dangerous items.

So, this was once a workshop for electrical engineering students. You can still see the lab tables here. It was hit by an airstrike in 2015. Afterwards, members of the university staff found bomb-making instructions among the rubble. This was likely an ISIS bomb-making factory, and judging by the crater, a high-value target.

Despite the damage, Dean Alubaidy says he will hold classes this fall in alternate buildings, until the campus is ready. He’s expecting registration to be in the thousands, students who lost three years of education during the fighting and don’t want to lose another one.

GHASSAN ALUBAIDY (through interpreter): On our Facebook pages, we found a great number of students posting that they were full of encouragement to come back. For us, it was unbelievable. We couldn’t imagine it, to see how many students wanted to start again, how they were dreaming of the first day of classes, when they could sit in front of teachers again and start to live their lives again.

MARCIA BIGGS: Next door, Mosul University has already started classes. Students even volunteered to help in the cleanup.

But across the river, West Mosul was the site of ISIS’ last stand and bore the brunt of the battle. It’s densely packed Old City, with its flattened buildings, is a challenge for mine-sweeping.

FAWZI AL-NABDI (through interpreter): Most of the homes here were full of mines. And just here in front of us, a man with two kids came back to his home, and when he opened the door, the bomb killed him and his kids.

MARCIA BIGGS: Ahmed Younes fled back in early July with only the clothes on his back. Residents have been virtually banned from returning to his neighborhood on the outskirts of the Old City, but Ahmed said he got special permission, in order to retrieve some personal items.

AHMED YOUNES, Local Resident (through interpreter): We came on our own. We got permission to come, but they are not responsible if anything happens to us.

MARCIA BIGGS: Right now, there is no plan to begin clearing the Old City or even to determine how many mines there are. It is still out of bounds to anyone but the Iraqi security forces.

So the Janus team is focusing on progress in the rest of the city, building by building, bomb by bomb.

CHRISTIAN: Whoever made this device had a set goal. And to allow him to win, people get hurt. So you kind of compete against him to be better than him to take it out before it can do any harm.

MARCIA BIGGS: So, you feel like you’re winning the battle against ISIS?

CHRISTIAN: Yes, one IED at a time.

MARCIA BIGGS: For the PBS NewsHour, I’m Marcia Biggs in Mosul, Iraq.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Tune in later.

Frontline’s latest film, “Mosul,” was on the ground filming the fight as it unfolded street by street and house by house. That’s tonight on PBS.

The post The battle for Mosul is over, but this hidden ISIS danger could lurk for years appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

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Sir Keir Starmer's beleaguered former chief of staff will no longer take up the position of “envoy to the nations and regions.”

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The post RPG Cast – Episode 620: “I Just Got Barbecued in a Grave Pit” appeared first on RPGamer.

Kelley puts a price on a good nap. Josh complains about Pokémon (someone has to). And Chris's true Dark Souls adventure begins with his dryer.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 621: “My Elden Ring Fever Dreams” appeared first on RPGamer.

Johnathan Stringer tries to sate your Saturn lust with a Satiator. Kelley Ryan was a naysayer, then she took a chaos to the knee. And Chris Privitere tries to calculate his age in internet memes.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 623: “Great Value Gundams” appeared first on RPGamer.

Anna gets her tentacle on, but doesn't notice any performance issues. Chris learns what a wheelbarrow is while putting his sink on the ceiling. And Kelley covers Vahn with cats and steals the unexpected Dragon Age: Inquisition!

The post RPG Cast – Episode 634: “That Bea Arthur Wig Gives Me a +5 to Int” appeared first on RPGamer.

Kelley runs to Benny Hill theme music. Chris is imprisoned in the dimension of PS Plus madness. And Josh gets a new harness.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 638: “F for Josh’s Inventory” appeared first on RPGamer.

Chris takes his horse in for an oil change. Kelley droplifts bootleg amiibos at Target. Josh fantasizes about Nopon Tom Cruise.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 641: “It’s a Vestigial Wheel” appeared first on RPGamer.

Kelley carries her Vita with her, but then realizes she can't play the games in public. Josh practices his dramatic Yakuza shirt ripping skills. And Chris uses an AI to generate a new Soul Hackers map.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 646: “You Have to Butter Your Sphinx” appeared first on RPGamer.

Kelley is creeped out by grown men in diapers. Josh can't name a kaiju that isn't Godzilla or Mothra. And Chris gets an Elden Pacifier since he's never happy.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 647: “Stellar Eve for When You Don’t Feel Fresh” appeared first on RPGamer.

In this week's show, we discover Drakthyr are OP, but Chris is not. Anna Marie is on the fun patrol, and she's handing out citations. And Kelley is hungry for ham sandwiches thanks to Pokémon.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 659: “Don’t Give Adol a Ship” appeared first on RPGamer.