Farmers Risk Lashes as War Decimates South Sudan Breadbasket
- Civilians remaining in fertile Equatoria fear soldiers, rebels
- African nation seen facing its worst-ever hunger this year
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Each time Patrick Okello goes to tend his crops, he has to tell the soldiers or face 50 lashes with a whip when he returns.
They’re “always watching and very suspicious,” said the 43-year-old who grows cassava and corn on the outskirts of Pajok, his hometown in South Sudan’s Greater Equatoria region. This vast and now sparsely populated southern territory has become a major theater in the four-year civil war, with government forces accused of killing villagers, burning their homes and stealing food as they pursue rebels. The army denies the charges.