Having survived the destruction in southern Sudan, I don't want my country to be strangled by another 20 years of war in Darfurç

The Guardian.

I am a war child. A survivor plagued by memories. When I close my eyes, the faces look back at me. I see my mother who was killed and my aunt who was raped in front of me. Their faces are etched in my soul and will be for ever. When they open their eyes, children in Darfur see the same. The rape, the killing, the running for cover is happening right now in Darfur.

As a survivor of the war in South Sudan, I feel I should use my story to highlight Sudan's smoldering war in Darfur. My childhood was blighted by violence. At seven, I was forced to flee from my home. At eight, I was a soldier with an AK47 in one of Africa's most brutal wars. Today the suffering my family went through is being replayed in Darfur and it pains me to the core that this brutality is not history.

Violence in Darfur is cataclysmic. It displaces an average of 1,000 people each day. Almost 200,000 people have fled from their homes this year, adding to the swelling ranks of Darfur's sprawling camps, where over two million seek refuge. The humanitarian aid that keeps these people alive is under increasing threat. Aid workers say that there have been more hijackings of aid vehicles in the first half of 2008 than the whole of 2007.

Patrolling this misery is the joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force (Unamid). Fashioned in the workshop of the UN security council a year ago this week, the force was meant to bring security to the people of Darfur. But a year since this decision was made - and over six months since the force was deployed on the ground - little has changed for the people of Darfur. As the Darfur Consortium, a coalition of 50 African NGOs, says in a report issued today, Unamid is at risk of becoming the world's latest broken promise on Darfur.