In Doro, a refugee camp in South Sudan that is home to more than 50,000 people, a martial arts training program is helping young people cope with the trauma of war to regain strength and agency.
From the Summer 2024 issue of Dazed. The latest issue is available to buy. here.
On a muggy spring day, 23-year-old Sudanese refugee Esmail talks to me about life in Doro refugee camp in South Sudan. Esmail is a celebrity in Doro. He is one of the founders of the martial arts program that serves as the foundation for more than 250 young people in the camp. “I started the program back home, with my friends from school, because we wanted to learn how to defend ourselves if fighting started,” he explains.
The call for self-defense is not hypothetical. Since fighting broke out between the Sudanese army and emergency aid forces on April 15, 2023, Sudan has been caught in what could be described as a “total war” with no regard for the welfare of civilians. Fighting has forced 8.6 million people to flee their homes, thousands have been killed in ethnic violence and shelling, and rape as a weapon of war is rampant. As the army plunders humanitarian supplies and food, Sudan has also earned the nickname “the world's largest hunger crisis.” The latest data shows that famine is not a question of if, but when. In a worst-case scenario, 40% of Sudan's inhabitants could face hunger this year.
Amid all this death and destruction, Sudanese civilians are fleeing to neighboring countries, often joined by what humanitarian organizations call “returnees” — refugees who found refuge in Sudan, once the trading capital of East Africa, now finding themselves fleeing from the fire into the frying pan.
The Doro refugee camp in northeastern South Sudan is one example.
The road to Doro is well-trodden. This informal refugee settlement celebrates the same birthday as the Republic of South Sudan, which formally gained independence from Sudan in December 2011 after years of conflict. While South Sudan celebrated its autonomy, fighting over post-separation plans continued, leaving around 100,000 people displaced in Doro. But 13 years of humanitarian governance have not given the camp any permanence.
Just 14 miles from the border with Sudan, Doro still looks more like a transitional center than a de facto home for thousands of displaced Sudanese and South Sudanese. Sandbags and corrugated iron (humanitarian jargon: CGI) litter the camp, covered with plastic sheeting to shore up the crumbling structure. The camp's residents all have different experiences, but they share a lack of options. Many have been living here since 2011, and are likely to remain there for years to come.
Esmail came to Doro in 2012, fleeing fighting in his hometown of Kurmuk in southeastern Sudan. He's 23 years old and intelligent in both his words. As we speak, he's wearing a vest with a US flag emblazoned across his chest, two beaded chains around his neck, and a skull-shaped ring. He's quick to offer his insights on the camp's issues and what the young people need.
Esmail's Vision Doro's youth are somewhere between a call for respect for themselves and their community and the imperative to protect themselves. His words would not have been out of place in a Huey Newton speech. He exudes dignity. He arrives with the other young residents of the camp, waiting for him to take his seat before them.
“There is no difference between boys and girls, only newcomers and non-newcomers” – Esmail, Programme Leader
Esmail brings in one of the program's participants, a 20-year-old girl named Sandy. She wears a pale pink headband and cross-shaped earrings. As Esmail speaks, she looks down at her hands, as if shyly, or perhaps submitting to his authority. But when she and Esmail give me a demonstration, her expression changes. They start with their hands at their sides, then clasp them above their heads, then spring into action in a movement I can barely describe, thrusting their fists forward and assuming a warrior stance. A tiger-shaped gemstone embedded in one of Esmail's rings glows. Then they bring their hands back to their sides and bow.
“I feel much stronger and happier since I started this program,” Sandy says, “especially when you're teaching young girls.” It's a remarkable achievement. Doro's material situation is tough, and his future prospects even tougher. The phrase “shitty life syndrome,” used to describe the poor mental health of Americans and Britons living through years of austerity, doesn't come close to describing the reality of these camps. I recall Dr. Samah Jabr, chair of the mental health department at the Palestinian Ministry of Health, coining the term “chronic post-traumatic stress disorder” to talk about Palestinian mental health. There is no stability, no “post” trauma that can overcome harm. Scholars call this aspect of the refugee experience “liminality,” others would probably describe it as an “in-between state.”
Esmail seemed to have intuitively hit upon a solution that would allow us to identify people by their strengths and not by their vulnerability profiles in the face of very real dangers. Life in the camps is characterized by infantilization. Humanitarian actors decide what food to distribute, what clothing to provide, and what professions to train refugees in. Humanitarian actors, at least in theory, are engaged in charity, but they are not accountable to anyone. In humanitarian governance, there are no citizens who can vote out the rulers or protest their actions. There are only beneficiaries, and they are thought of as passive beneficiaries rather than contributing to the people around them.
Esmail's martial arts program serves as an antidote. As Esmail explained to me, martial arts principles are centered around self-control, flexibility and peace of mind. He seems to be metaphorically relating to the prerequisites for maintaining sanity in the camp, but I assume he is referring to the exercises and movements themselves. Esmail starts the session with breathing exercises, and in addition to exercises to increase mobility, he shows drills that have the dual purpose of building strength and teaching participants to control their own strength. In his sessions, there is no distinction between boys and girls. “Girls are shy at first, but they get stronger as they become less of a newbie,” he says. “There is no difference between boys and girls, there are only newbies and non-newbies.”
Frantz Fanon, the political radical and psychiatrist, supposedly saw these sessions as a form of “collective catharsis,” describing them as “an outlet through which accumulated forces in the form of aggression can be released.” Fanon himself rejected calls for pacifism on the grounds that aversion to violence is only beneficial to the perpetrators. There is a similar logic to Esmail’s program: the uncontrollable and unjustifiable violence to which young people have been subjected is channeled into targeted, disciplinary power. This is a refreshing change amid the idealistic buzzwords of “community stabilization” and “peacebuilding” promoted by humanitarians; it bears little relation to the harsh and often violent realities these young people will face.
With each cohort that Esmail teaches, a new generation of teachers is born. As satisfaction becomes defined by the health of the community, it creates an echo of what Fanon called “herd mentality.” Sandy tells me that his dream is to bring his new skills back to Sudan. Esmail's dream is perhaps more local: he wants to bring his martial arts program from the camp to the surrounding area. “Plus, I love volleyball,” he says. “I thought, well, now that I've learned these moves, why not try another one?”
