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Rumbek (South Sudan) (AFP) - The children living on a patch of dirt at a United Nations base in Rumbek, capital of South Sudan's Lakes state, sit quietly making mud figurines carrying huge guns, shielded from stone-throwers by a ring of trucks.

Many like Mary Nyataba, from neighbouring Unity state and a member of the Nuer tribe, are too scared to leave the UN base as a political crisis between rival leaders turns increasingly tribal -- and is separating families.

"Since December, I haven't heard about them," said Nyataba of her two children. She cannot reach her husband or parents in a village she knows was attacked and razed.

Of around 100 people sheltering in Lakes state -- which has a handful of Nuer -- about half of them were just passing through on their way to the capital Juba.

But a power struggle there between South Sudan's President Salva Kiir, who comes from the largest Dinka ethnic group, and his former deputy Riek Machar, a Nuer, stopped them in their tracks.

Kiir's attempts to disarm the Nuer in the presidential guard sparked gun battles that shot through the security forces nationwide, provoking large-scale defections and the formation of a rebel army that was joined by tribal militia.

Now, over 70,000 people -- largely from the Dinka and Nuer tribes -- are hiding separately in UN bases, fearful of neighbours and former colleagues.

[1]

Children playing in the dirt, make clay models of soldiers brandishing rifles, at the United Nations …

Policeman David Kuich says that when Kiir branded Machar a coup plotter on December 15, his mainly Dinka colleagues suddenly turned on him.

"They said: 'You're all rebels. What happened in Juba was a military coup plotted by Riek Machar and you're all supporting him'," he said.

"During the course of the argument they started shooting at us," and four officers were killed, he recalled.

- 'Worse things could happen' -

Kuich and 22 others escaped to the forest, where they hid until a Dinka commissioner came to the rescue. He brought nine officers and all the Nuer women and children stuck in the army barracks to a police station for their own safety.

But after several days, men came to attack again, after two Dinka were hijacked and shot on a nearby road.

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Women and children rest in the shade of UN military trucks, at the United Nations Mission in South S …

Samuel Lam, an economics student at Rumbek university, says that armed men started threatening anyone who was Nuer.

"They told us that they would deal with us anytime if the violence continued."

After women were also threatened, with one "tied up in the market for hours to a chair", and interrogated first by civilians then by the police, Lam and others decided that "there was no choice but to come to the UN".

When stones started sailing into the UN camp in the second week, Lam knew his plans for going home were dangerous.

"We are fearing the local community. This is a sign," he said. "If you go outside, more or worse things could happen."

So far, Lakes state has been largely quiet. But in three neighbouring states and further north, government and rebel forces are locked in a cycle of revenge attacks.

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Inmates play football in the courtyard of the prison facility in Rumbek, Lakes state, South Sudan, o …

This has sent tens of thousands running to the bush or swamps around the River Nile to hide on islands, while some 200,000 have fled the fledgling country altogether.

Kuich says there is no escaping the tribalism that has seeped into South Sudan, a country born from decades of war with Sudan less than three years ago, whose leaders are now tearing it apart.

"I don't have hope for the future unless there's another government," he said. "People still suspect you, based on your ethnicity. It's a real threat now."

- Life behind razor wire -

Philip Kot, a plucky 69-year-old and Lakes coordinator for the state-run Relief and Rehabiliation Commission, said the current fighting was worse than the civil war with Sudan that killed around two million people.

"What has happened is more regretful than before. People have turned a political crisis into ethnic fighting like never before," he said.

"It has affected the poor people that have nothing to do with politics, and they are dying."

With youth being co-opted into joining government forces with promises of guns or war spoils, or tempted into tribal militias by what Kot calls the "witchcraft" of local legends, peace seems elusive.

"After all this, how do you sit down and make people see that this was a political crisis?" asked Lakes security advisor Santo Domic.

For 24-year-old Nyakuma Wuor, the cries of "Free at last" that rang out on July 9, 2011, when South Sudan's flag was first raised over the newly-independent nation, now ring hollow.

"Before I was at home, comfortable, and free to go where I want," she said.

Now caged in by razor wire and trucks for her own safety, she can't get home to try to find out what has happened to her six-year-old son and her husband.

"You feel isolated... and sometimes sick from unhappiness," she said.

Wuor had "a very big plan" to send her children to school. The first generation who everyone expected to lift a battle-scarred land out of poverty are instead refugees in their own country, playing out their trauma with sinister mud men.

"Now with this crisis, I have no plans," she said.

Source http://news.yahoo.com/neighbour-against-neighbour-grim-reality-sudans-conflict-064357955.html