Qualla: Aweil, South Sudan

Aweil, South Sudan: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ajuse, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 21 December 1989, an Aviation Sans Frontieres aircraft carrying two Medecins Sans Frontieres workers and a World Food Programme technician was shot down over Aweil. The three Frenchmen on board - Yvon Feliot flying, Jean-Paul Bescond the doctor, Laurent Fernet the logistician - died alongside a Ugandan technician named Frazer Ariyamba. Their only error was flying relief supplies into a starving town during a war. MSF has not forgotten them. Aweil has not forgotten much. This is a place whose memory stretches backwards through civil war, famine, nineteenth-century slave raids, and still further, to when the confluence of the Lol and Pongo rivers was simply home.

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Image: Ajuse | CC BY-SA 4.0

Aweil, South Sudan: The Slave Century and the War Century

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kai Breker, CC BY-SA 3.0. Aweil was affected by the slave trade in the nineteenth century. That sentence, pulled from a brief Wikipedia entry, compresses decades of violence. Slave raiders from the north - Arab-identified groups backed by Ottoman, then Egyptian, then Mahdist authorities - rode south into ...

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Image: Kai Breker | CC BY-SA 3.0

Aweil, South Sudan: Where Two Rivers Meet

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The town sits in the flat northwest of South Sudan, on the A43 highway, about 100 kilometres south of the international border with the Republic of Sudan. The disputed Abyei region lies to the east. The topography is flat and prone to flooding, but Aweil itself rests at 425 metre...

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Image: Public domain

Aweil, South Sudan: A Railway Line Rebuilt

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gorthiem, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Khartoum-Aweil-Wau railway was laid down in 1961. For decades it lay disused, damaged by fighting and neglected by the governments at both ends of the line. In 2010, the section from Aweil to Wau - and Aweil's station itself - was restored to use. The airstrip northwest of to...

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Image: Gorthiem | CC BY-SA 4.0

Aweil, South Sudan: Unity in Diversity

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kai Breker, CC BY-SA 3.0. In April 2023, Northern Bahr el Ghazal's Ministry of Culture held a peace celebration in Aweil under the theme Unity in Diversity, supported by UNMISS. In August 2024, national culture day was celebrated at the Dr. John Garang Mausoleum - the memorial to the SPLA leader who died ...

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Image: Kai Breker | CC BY-SA 3.0

Aweil, South Sudan: The Tropic of Saharan Rain

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kai Breker, CC BY-SA 3.0. Aweil sits in a tropical savanna climate, usually dry in winter and often dry in summer too, despite being in the tropics. The annual high averages just over thirty degrees Celsius; the annual low sits at twenty-three. Annual precipitation comes in at about 95 millimetres spread ...

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Image: Kai Breker | CC BY-SA 3.0