Couple honoured for saving Canadian lives during 2013 crisis in South Sudan

When Nicholas and Jennifer Coghlan were honoured with a Meritorious Service Cross Friday at Rideau Hall, it was for a job “performed in an outstandingly professional manner,” one that “sets an example for others to follow” and “brings honour to Canada.”

But for the 300 or so Canadians citizens who escaped the chaos and violence of South Sudan’s civil war, what it really means is the Coghlans probably saved their lives.

In December 2013, Nicholas Coghlan was Canada’s top diplomat in South Sudan, a country so new that Canada didn’t even have a full embassy there. Jennifer, his wife, was a civilian working with a Japanese development agency, but who had years of experience with Nicholas on his overseas postings. When the fighting started, the Coghlans worked frantically for 10 days to help Canadians — many of them minority Nuer people — flee the savage ethnic attacks from their rivals, the majority Dinkas.

“It’s important to remember that I was being paid to do this job. Jen wasn’t at all. It’s nice that she’s being recognized, too,” Nicholas said.

“I told HQ, I can’t do this on my own. They told her she had to (leave the country) so we had to be a little economical with the truth … say that there were no seats on planes, because she needed to be there,” he said.

“The Canadians who had just arrived had never been in South Sudan before.,” Jennifer said. “They didn’t know how things worked, so I was probably the best person for the job.”

Optimism was high in 2011 when South Sudan was granted its independence. But the new country soon divided along ethnic lines when factions once united against a common enemy — Sudan — began to fight for power in the new country. There was already shooting in the streets when Nicholas was summoned to a “surreal” meeting with South Sudan’s foreign minister.

“The briefing was repeatedly interrupted just because of the noise from the gunfire. Tank rounds going off. And the minister was saying, ‘Do not worry. Everything is perfectly normal. Those 20,000 people at the airport? It’s always busy at Christmas. We wish them happy holidays.”

But all was not normal. As he drove home, Coghlan passed a dead body in the street, a Nuer who had been stopped and shot in the head by rampaging Dinkas.

Officially, just a handful of Canadians lived in South Sudan. In reality, there were hundreds who had left Sudan during years of violence, then returned after independence, hoping to contribute to the new country. Most had never bothered to register with the embassy office. But they weren’t welcomed home. Being mostly Nuer didn’t help. “They were told, ‘Where were you? I was in the bush for 20 years while you were living the high life in Canada.”

Evacuees, including about 30 Canadians, crowd aboard a Royal Air Force C-17 transport plane for a flight out of Juba, South Sudan in 2013. Photo RAF/British Embassy, Juba Picasa

‘The sketchy statistics on the number of Canadians of Sudanese origin made for plenty of surprises when it became time to try to get them back to Canada.

“They were coming out of the woodwork,” Coghlan recalled.

The Coghlans and a handful of staff began checking documents, checking with Canadian Foreign Affairs officers working overnight in Ottawa because of the time difference. Each day, they would drive to the airport in Juba, the capital, to sort through the thousands of people gathered there.

“We’d park our vehicle. To be honest it was a bit like a football tailgate party. The embassies would park their vehicles and put their flag up. the Canadians would come to us. I was constantly negotiating with the friendly countries — do you have any seats on aircraft? Or they would come to us and say ‘We’ve got some Canadians. Can you check their documents?

“Within two days you had 20,000 camped out at the UN compound at the airport and another 20,000 in town who did not dare come out to the fence. And there was a 6 p.m. curfew. At 6, the military would start shooting.”

The Nuers were terrified of the dominant Dinkas, who could easily distinguish them by the telltale ritual scarring on their foreheads. Nuers would beg to borrow Nicholas’s baseball cap so they could pull it down over their forehead.

“Some we had to literally hold their hands to get them out of the airport,” he said. “We’d be taking them out by the arm and the soldiers would come and I’d have to push them away and say ‘No. no no. Diplomatic. Diplomatic.” 

By Christmas, the situation had calmed and demands on the embassy staff declined. The Coghlans left for Khartoum, Sudan a few days later.

Estimates of the death toll range from more than 50,000 to the hundreds of thousands.

The Coghlans did return to South Sudan, this time with Nicholas as full ambassador at the new embassy in Juba. He retired last July.

Their home address is Ottawa — “Actually, it’s just a box at the UPS store on Bank Street” — but they now live on their 27-foot sailboat, Bosun Bird^[1]. They’ve sailed the South Atlantic to Patagonia, the Pacific to Tahiti and are currently sailing from Alaska back to their home port on Vancouver Island.

Heavily armed fighters roamed the streets of Juba, South Sudan during an outbreak of ethnic violence in 2013. Photo: Nick Coghlan Picasa

“Living on the boat is a completely different set of problems and stresses,” he said. “It’s not just sipping gin and tonic. It’s all under your own control. If you get into trouble it’s because you screwed up or you weren’t prepared.”

Plagued by conflict and famine, the road ahead for peace and stability South Sudan is a long one. Coghlan praised the “small successes” of UN and other development agencies. His first experience in the region was in 2000 on an aircraft dropping aid to refugees on the run from the Sudanese army. He did the same last year, 16 years later, dropping food to starving people on the run, this time, from their own country’s military.

“It was probably the children of the same people we’d helped before,” he said. “But it has to be done.”

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References

1. ^{^} Bosun Bird (www.bosunbird.com)
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