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Sudan: The Military Had Always Been the Problem

2021-11-05T03:25:00.043-07:00

Photo: today.ng

Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok's civilian government had militarily been dissolved and himself arrested. The Sudanese Military continues to do what it had done best for decades: toppling the civilian governments and always claiming to rescue the country from tumbling over into chaos and other national security concerns that, if not addressed using the power of the gun, would set the country on the path to disorder, failure and possible disintegration. This hypocrisy is outdated; but it has managed to confuse many people who, in dire situations and as a last resort, call on the same army they abhor to take over. Such was the case before the military took advantage of the situation in Khartoum recently.

But the Sudanese masses are now privy to the army's every malicious move. The military was believed to be behind many subterranean coup attempts against the government, the latest of which has so far become successful. The success of the coup put an end to the 11-member joint Civilian-Military power sharing government, the Sovereignty Council, led by Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok. The action takes the regularity of military coups in Sudan to another level. When Bashir was ousted in 2018, available studies show that Sudan had had about 15 military coup attempts, five of which were successful. Now the list goes on.

The Civilian-Military leadership led by Prime Minister Hamdok, to many observers of the Sudanese politics, was an unholy alliance that was not meant to last for long due to historical animosities between the Sudanese military and the civilian governments. The animosity had led many to believe what had really happened was that the military carried out a subtle counter-revolution against the civilian protesters in 2018. The civilians, fed up with military government's malpractices since their 30 years of misrule in which they successfully glided the country into a break up while continuing to starve them, rose up in the name of the shortage of bread. President Bashir had no option but to order the ruthless paramilitary, the Rapid Support Force, which he had used against the people of Darfur and Kordufan mercilessly, to solve the threatening street protests across the country. But the problem failed to go away. The civilians were resolute in their demands and actions irrespective of several deaths they suffered in the process. The army, fearing that it was being outdone by the civilians whose future government might send most of them to the dock, turned around and joined the civilians, delivering what could be described as a coup-de-grace against President Bashir, their commander in Chief. They claimed, to the cheers of the protesters, to not wanting to shoot at their parents and siblings on the streets. They then worked their way up to being partakers in the government. The only group they sacrificed and arrested was President Bashir and his immediate circle.

The choreography of power grabbing by the military had gone on one too many in Sudan despite the institution having emerged as the only body that had worried the Sudanese people, set back the building of national identity and cohesiveness, destroyed lives and livelihood and property, and above all, caused a deep social gap among the various Sudanese nationalities and the country as a whole. In overthrowing Hamdok's civilian government, the military had read the mood from around the world which seems to cuddle the civilian government in the Sudan. As the world begins to open up to Sudan, normalising relations and fostering closer engagement, the military establishment has sensed a threat. They know, as could not be accurately dismissed or considered, that Prime Minister Hamdok might be used internationally to crack down on those wanted for crimes against humanity in the Sudan's long, violent and costly wars. No doubt if The Hague Tribunal focuses deeply on Sudan, most Military Generals of the Sudan Armed Forces would have serious genocidal questions to answer in Darfur and in Kordufan. Their success now in bringing down this civilian-led government is a way of fighting back. They know that as the case against President Bashir, who has already been arrested and facing numerous charges, has come to include the crime of overthrowing the civilian government in 1989, that Hamdok and his civil partners, backed by the international community (both state and non-state actors), might go after them. Stopping them before they act became of necessity.

Truly, the Sudanese people have much to condemn the military for: they know that had the National Salvation Front, later the National Congress Party, not forced their way to power in 1989, Sudan would have achieved peace with the rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, and there would have been no drawn out war of attrition, which cost many families their sons and daughters in their primes. They know that the actions of the military neither prevented the division of the country nor are they solving economic crises facing the country on daily basis. It suffices to say that without the historical negative Sudanese military interferences in politics, the division of the country into Sudan and South Sudan would not have happened ten years ago. The hope had always been that had the various civilian governments that had been stifled by the military given the chances they needed, the country would have found a solid uniting foundation and solutions to the multiple problems that impacted it. But the complex Sudanese theocratic politics never allowed anything like that to take hold. Various Sudanese military sciolists have had a history of bypassing what united the Sudanese peoples and had always done the exact opposite.

With the battle now pitting the defenseless protesters against the army with tanks and fleets of pickup vehicles, which are manned by cut-throat national security operatives with people-disappearing capabilities, one thing is clear from the Sudanese people who have nowhere to go: there will be no backing down no matter how much force is being used against them. They know that the kind of the country they want had already been defined by those in the now South Sudan who left when their call for a meaningful Sudanisation fell on deaf ears, especially on the ears of the Sudanese military. That call was very correct then as it is now, and it has become the yardstick for measuring one's Sudaneseness. It doesn't matter then who gets the power using what means in Khartoum. If the call for power-sharing in any government, wealth sharing in national development and achievement of rights for oneself is not heeded, no amount of military interference will be tolerated. The Sudanese have come of age, and are here to qualify the epigram that the, 'Sudan will never be the same again.'

Chad After Idriss Deby: Giving Power to the People is the Best Option

2021-05-10T08:48:00.003-07:00

Pint.2021. Field Marshal Idriss Deby

The killing of Idriss Deby by the rebels of the Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT) and the installation of his son, Mahamat Idriss Deby - also known as General Kaka - by the military against the constitution will not end Chad’s endemic political tragedy. Only the civilian government can bring stability to the country. Chad’s political tragedy since independence had been power: who should hold power and how to replace them. It had always led to the cycle of violence against both the civilians and the leaders, the latest of which was the killing of President Deby in the northern region of Tibesti.

The violent death of Idriss Deby was not the only moment in history in which Chadians had witnessed the brutal killing of the country’s president. The first was the 1975 assassination of the independence president, Francois Tombalbaye, who was secretly killed and buried in a remote town in the region where President Deby would later meet his fate. These two tragedies meant that Chad had not been peaceful in 60 years since independence. Political volatilities and pervasive rebellions had played major negative impacts on the country’s political, cultural, economic, educational, health, and infrastructural developments.

Oftentimes, hostile neighbors in the names of the Sudan and Libya had caused or fuelled Chad’s tragedies. With the help of the former colonial power, France, President Idriss Deby had himself warded off many close calls with some of Chad’s unswerving rebels emanating from these countries. The history of Chad since the killing of Tombalbaye had been a history beset in bloodshed, deviation from the aspirations of the people, and disappointment.

Above all, Chad is a country at the frontline given that climate change remains a threat to all countries on the planet. It needs enduring peace and stability to be able to focus on responding to the constantly and relentlessly expanding Sahara Desert, which threatens the entire Sahel region from the Red Sea to the Atlantic coast with bareness, rising temperatures, lack of water, and depopulation.

This begs the question: can Chad accept the death of Idriss Deby with equanimity and rechart the path towards a genuine political settlement? Nothing is impossible and a few suggestions can be advanced in that regard.

Key among these suggestions is cooperation among the leaders. The military, rebels, and civilian leaders can work together to save the people from endless political tragedies by allowing stewardship of the people-centered government to take effect. If this happens, decades of bloodshed, hopelessness, and many other concomitant effects of war would be halted. The generals in the army and in rebellions must understand that a military solution to the country’s internal political problems is not a viable option but could only lead to more misery and disappointments.

Secondly, working together requires sitting together to resolve problems. The call now is specifically on the military leadership to heed the voices of the people and pursue peace: firstly; either the transitional authority headed by General Kaka relinquishes power to the civilians to organize the elections, or shares power with the civilian authorities to organize a transition to civilian government; secondly, respond positively to the rebels and peacefully negotiate a comprehensive solution to governance problem in the country. Does Chad need help to carry out such commitments? Of course, regional and international bodies and governments have to come to the aid of Chad.

To begin with, through regional cooperation and international assistance, Chad can be turned into a peaceful oasis in the dunes. As mentioned earlier, it must commence with the neighbors that oftentimes interfered in her internal political dynamics. The community of peace-loving nations must bring pressure to bear on Chad’s neighbors and urge them to commit to good neighborliness that encompasses security cooperation agreements. Such agreements will ensure that proxy wars are not entertained.

Additionally, the same security cooperation should apply to the countries of the Great Lake Chad Basin: Nigeria, Cameroon, and Niger. Their attention should not only focus on the unfortunate Islamists’ activities of Boko Haram - which Chad is helping in the fight - but also on maintaining security cooperation for better stabilization of the middle Africa region.

Thirdly, the economic community of West African States (ECOWAS), which had been a regional pacifier and peace enforcer, must not tire to turn attention to Lake Chad Region. The bloc’s support in West Africa ensured that Charles Taylor was made accountable for war atrocities in Liberia, leading to his arrest; conviction, and detention in HM prison Frankland, UK. Such bold steps are needed to ensure that politically struggling nations like Chad find lasting peace and stability.

Fourthly, the continental body, the African Union, should maintain pressure on the military authorities in Chad to allow civilian government to be formed. Thirty years of military rule under former president Idriss Deby have not accorded Chad any semblance of peace but continuous wars. If deploying a neutral force between the warring factions and the regime in N’djamena will force all to the negotiations for a binding agreement, then it would be a worthy call for the African Union to undertake.

Finally, the former colonial power, France, should take the responsibility of waging peace in Chad. If France desires peace at home and seeks the assistance of Chad in fighting the Islamists/Jihadists in the Sahel, as Chad had dependably been doing, then France must not appear to be soft on the rebels and military rulers but to side with the people so that the democratic governance is realized. Anything short will always be read along the lines of the endorsement of the status quo. Most of Chad’s rebel leaders such as Mahamat Mahdi Ali of FACT (former deposed President Hissène Habré’s kinsman) and Mahamat Nouri of The Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD) are cozied in Paris. They can comply with peace initiatives if pressured by the host. If this happens, peace will ring in Chad, and if it does, genuine democratic governance will endure – and there would be no reason in the future why a democratically elected president would rush to the frontline a day after winning the elections only to die in battle.

Nine-day Revolution: the Meteoric Rise and Fall of Kerbino Wol and the 7th October Revolution

2020-06-22T06:54:00.012-07:00

Photo credit: Wol's FP

Revolutions generally aim to restructure society either partially or completely. Whether they would be short-lived or go on for a longer period depend entirely on their composing doctrines and on the reception by the general public upon which the revolutionary benefits befall. Revolutions, in the actual sense of the word, seek to force a change through. Few revolutions in history could be said to have been peaceful. Many were bloody and had left behind trails of historic destructions of both property and human lives. Revolutions, some argue, are all-around giant monsters that feed on the targeted victims but would suck in the initiators if not carefully managed. This is precisely what happened with The 7^th October Revolution.

On the 15^th June 2020, news flooded in that on Sunday 14^th June 2020, the leader of The 7^th October Movement, Kerbino Wol Agok, was killed in action by government forces in Ayen Mayar village, in Amongpiny. The area of the alleged battle is in Eastern Lakes State, central South Sudan. The battle rendezvous is somehow controversial as those conversant with the area point out that Amongpiny and Ayen Mayar are two separate villages, several miles apart.

Kerbino’s death came nine days after his famous Voice of America’s South Sudan in Focus interview with John Tanza, in which he announced his intentions to oppose the government through armed insurrection. Despite conflicting reports on the nature of his killing, it was evidential he and many of his men were killed in their maiden and final week of military operations. Thus, the time it had taken the creepy joint operation between South Sudan Peoples Defence Forces’ (SSPDFs) and the local Agar Gelweng to eliminate Kerbino Wol and his newly assembled force will go down in the history of South Sudan as the speediest time in which an armed insurrection had been located, vanquished and terminated. Two other incidences occurred before but were handled differently. The first was George Athor who launched his rebellion following irregularities in the gubernatorial elections in Jonglei in 2010. His eleven months insurgency ended with his killing in February 2011 in a confusing scenario. Before his killing, the government entered into peace talks with him. He was killed while on a mission to explore ways to end the war with the government. He was posthumously framed in a way that fit the narrative: that he was on a recruitment mission in Equatoria where he was intercepted by government forces. The story was nightmarish to be believed. The second, whose mentioning here serves as a control to Athor and Kerbino, was the capture of Major General Stephen Buoy Rolnyang. Buoy was arrested in May 2018 after defying orders to report to Juba. His action of moving his forces to Mayom was deemed a rebellion. He was charged with treason but was later pardoned.

Many critics who hail from the Dinka Community have, to this point, reluctantly accepted the much-touted argument that it is dangerous to be a rebel if a Dinka. It's an argument too hard to dispute for one crucial observation, visible in the government's response to disgruntled members of the opposition hailing from the community. The cases of Athor and Kerbino are good examples. Paul Malong was another; he only avoided danger by accepting to return to Juba from Yirol. Had he proceeded against the advice offered to him in Yirol, Rumbek East would be counting two. What does this story portray? The story portrays to the rest of the citizenry what's left unsaid. It also paves the way for interpretation that the government's military razzmatazz doubly serves as a warning and as an announcement to certain citizens to either stick to the fold by default or be treated as castaways. The consequences are dire.

The mysterious Kerbino

The name Kerbino was not on the revolutionary radar in South Sudan. It could not be located on the list of known grandmasters in the art of rebellion and militia. He never held a ministerial post, never been a general in the army, and had not self-appointed a commander in the country’s ever-teaming militias. Like a meteor that splashes across the sky, he appeared and disappeared leaving behind questions to be explored. Some learned about him after his death, leading to mixed reactions and confusion at a time when the country continues to face issues of peace implementation. Kerbino was mysterious. Unlike other warlords who would pull huge security dilemmas, create impossible scenarios, kill with impunity, and trade their dangerous selves for government positions, all without harm, he was a minor in the field of mischief. Taking to the bush when all the known strong warlords were in town scheming for political domains, amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, made him a sitting duck.

Worst still, his rebellion was cantankerously formed; it was high on emotions and bitterness. The 7^th October Revolution did not adequately scan their terrain of operation. They did not weigh the tenacious might of South Sudan Peoples Defence Forces and the securitization abilities of intelligence agencies that protect the seat of power. Due to this lack of the existing military realities and foresight of what they were dealing with, the revolutionists were located on the same day they went on air and were tracked successfully to the last day of their destruction. If there was something that the 7^th October Revolution misjudged, it was the reluctance by South Sudanese masses to enthusiastically take up arms as it used to be during the wars of liberation of 1955 and 1983 with the Sudanese governments. The revolution could not be embraced enthusiastically. South Sudan is a changed country. It is not that euphoric anymore. Little binds people together. The nationalism that used to hold everyone together had sunk to ethnic or tribal sub-nationalism. A few nationalists that there are, have come to associate any military struggle to individualism. Also, there seems to be general awareness sweeping across the country, an awareness that perceives any wars post-2011 as wars of individual interests. A politically conscious South Sudanese will tell that the ruthlessness with which the country self-inflicted since 2013 far outshone gallantry demonstrated in all previous wars of liberation. It was total madness, a death dance of ego rather than of substance. Nobody really wants to see the repeat for a simple seat distribution in Juba. Citizens now know that the slow pace of public infrastructural development, low investment in the health sector, abject poverty in the rural areas, and annual endemic starvation, which is habitual during rainy seasons, are indications that violence had played a prolonged destructive role. How could Kerbino Wol miss that glaring reality? Some may point to frustration, irritability, and the sense of humiliation he felt after coming out of prison.

Kerbino the Jesh el-Amer

Kerbino was a lost boy. Prior to his invisible name of the lost boy assigned to him in the West, he was part of the Red Army of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army. He was not lost. He was known but then, like his colleagues, vanished intentionally and dramatically. A young man born in 1982, at a time when Anyanya Two roamed the rural areas of Sudan, Kerbino falls within what in the West is the Generation Y or the group fondly known as the Millennial Generation, or Millennials in short. This is the dot-com generation born between 1981 and 1996 into the world of the Internet, multimedia, and presently, social media. Now, adults, the Millennials are nerdy young men and women with tight shirts and pants and confidently chatting away on phones and boasting about their social media followers.

Unlike in the West, children born in this space of time in the then Sudan had little education and technology due to the adverse nature of the surrounding in which they entered the world. They were born into the war, grew up surrounded by dangers, and always fleeing from something, real or apparent. Oftentimes, they are the danger themselves. Many of them had quit fear and adopted resilience and adaptability. Like Kerbino who joined the liberation struggle at the age of twelve, they refused to be the subjects in flight but on assault. Kerbino bravely walked to Dima, Ethiopia, where he must have trained as a revolutionary child soldier. He later went to the United States where he built himself educationally and professionally and returned to South Sudan to complete what he started: build a prosperous nation through hard work. Like all South Sudanese in the diaspora, the yearning to return home and to make the country a better place through one’s personal involvement remains a preoccupation and a craze. Since independence, multitudes with disparate capabilities and intentions streamed home. Some tried to revive their old rural lifestyle but were overwhelmed; others got caught in the roughness of the political situation and escaped back to the diaspora. A great majority toured the country, got dissatisfied with the overall progress, and left to contemplate their next trip.

Kerbino the Entrepreneur and Prisoner

After returning home, Kerbino established a multimillion-dollar security business and philanthropy. He employed many young people and influenced many others to work harder. He enjoyed the country of his dream until he was awakened through arrest in April 2018 by the security forces and kept in Juba’s infamous Blue House for months without charges. In prison, they protested. He was alleged to have led the riot on the 7^th of October 2018. This day would later form the name of his revolution. It was after the riot when the government was heard in his arbitrary detention for the first time. In jail with him was Peter Biar Ajak, an academic who was summarily arrested at the airport in July 2018 and held without charges in the same premises with Kerbino Wol. Holding people without charges is nothing new. During the war, SPLA soldiers used to joke that, ‘we arrest the person before committing the crime, then they commit one.' Kerbino was handed a ten-year sentence for a crime in jail; the charges were terrorism, sabotage, and treason. He was later pardoned by the president in a general amnesty and released into the world in which his bank accounts were frozen and assets and business unaccounted for. He hit the road a confused and bitter man.

Kerbino the Revolutionary

Kerbino announced the formation of the 7th October Movement on June 5, 2020, seeking to bring about change in the country. He died trying. The death of Kerbino Wol Agok, like the death of late Commandant, Kerubino Kwanyin Bol on the 9^th of September 1999, occurred in the open and in the most horrifying circumstance. Unlike Kwanyin Bol, Wol Agok died in the hands of the free, the South Sudan People’s Defence Force of the independent Republic of South Sudan. Unlike Commander Kerubino Kwanyin Bol whose death could be attributed to the connivance of the long-time enemy in Khartoum, Kerbino Wol had all the privileges, mercies, humanity, and nationality that should have saved his life. His 7^th October Revolution, which sounded like a students' uprising, was just a budding movement of the distraught and the restless youth, protesting for a right. If the government was keen on keeping him alive, Kerbino would have lived. Barely two weeks into the rebellion, and without having launched any attacks, one wonders what the rush to ending his life was for? No one would be convinced that all avenues for negotiations were exhausted on Wol and his movement. No deadlocks were necessary for a two-week rebellion. A lot was not done before humanity was turned off. Kerbino was young, ambitious, and talented. The country stands to benefit from people of his caliber and would have benefited from him had he been coolly tamed and brought back to the fold. He was not that dangerous.

Hurdles in the Formation of the Transitional Government of National Unity in South Sudan

2020-02-17T21:40:00.032-08:00

South Sudan is gearing up to the climax of the Revitalized Agreement on the Restoration of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (R-ARCSS). The climax is supposed to occasion the formation of the Revitalized Transitional Government of National Unity (R-TGONU). But this looks to be in limbo despite the dramatic hopes that peace, in its real form, lands on Saturday, 22 February 2020.

The past plays the future in the R-ARCSS

The R-ARCSS and The Agreement on the Restoration of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (ARCSS) are one and the same. It was the failure of ARCSS that brought about its revitalization. In echo to the political climate during the August 2015 signing of the ARCSS, political wobbling has resurfaced in earnest among the antagonists. President Kiir and his government are desperate to accommodate Dr. Riek Machar and the SPLM/A-IO group but the latter has no hurry. Dr. Riek Machar wants all the stipulations in the agreement to be implemented accordingly. Thus the formation of the government on 22 February 2020 will likely be blighted with problems of exclusion (by the government in Juba) or pull out (from the rebel opposition).

Up to this point, the path to an all-out peace is nothing less than a thorny case and Dr. Riek Machar is clearly not making it any easier. It was clear in his timely rejection of the Final Resolution of the Meeting of the Presidency on the Number of States and Boundaries issued on February 14, 2020. The resolution was rushed in favor of his movement and was grounded on a good gesture to give peace a chance. He should have jumped to that gesture promptly. However, he quickly issued his rejection on February 15, 2020, chastising the government on the statuses of the three administrative areas of Ruweng, Pibor, and Abyei. Perhaps, he was calling to mind the unfortunate past experiences.

Five years ago in August 2015, president Kiir reluctantly signed the ARCSS at the last minute and attached several pages of his own demands, and forwarded it to the mediators. It was a clear signal that he had little trust in the agreement. It could be argued that such action contributed to the later collapse of the agreement. Riek is still aware of that as well as the nasty security corollaries that ensued. If he was not petrified this time around, then he was rather more cautious not to take the same dangerous political highway. He probably did not want things to repeat themselves unpleasantly. No more confusing and dangerous 'annexes' or 'appendices' as it was in the beginning in 2015 agreement; which led to the 2016 J-1 shoot-out and heightened in an uncalled for 40-day escape marathon to the Democratic Republic of Congo; is now when President Kiir is again toying with the number of states and grooming too many VPs to counter his weight; and ever shall be conflict without end.

The ARCSS syndrome

The ARCSS lives in the R-ARCSS. Like ARCSS, it is proving even more problematic to implement. Since it was signed in September 2018, it has been pushed from side to side with all parties unable to reign in their differences. The formation of the TGONU was expected in May 2019 but, to no one’s astonishment, was deferred due to disagreements over security arrangements and territorial issues emanating from the government's creation of the new states. It had been the rebel opposition that contentiously argued against all actions and compromises made by the government. The government on its part has not been true to peace protocols as it kept changing goal posts whenever implementation drew near. The six-month additional time given did not help, forcing IGAD mediators in November 2019 to add yet another 100 days or three months up to February 22, 2020. The IGAD threatened consequences if the deadline was missed. Since IGAD is toothless but still feared, the approach of the deadline has emboldened the rebels who pressed harder for their demands. They hope to benefit in the fray if any punishment is handed down, thinking they have nothing to lose. The whole point of dragging the feet has come to center heavily on the number of states and the three administrative areas.

The Three Administrative Areas

Apart from Ruweng, the other administrative areas have been part of every agreement in South Sudan. Abyei is the baggage from the partial failure of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Greater Pibor Administrative Area was part of the 2016 government in which the SPLM/A-IO was a key ally. If anything is new, it is Ruweng, and it had been threatening and her rhetorical monologue had been loud enough for all to hear. But it is unreasonable to blame the people of this region for being too sensitive and skeptical when all they see and smell around them is death. History is still too raw for the Ngok people on this eternal frontline to be asked to forget. The atrocities of Malakal in which even the unborn children were pulled out from their dead mothers’ wombs and macheted still traumatize people in the area and countrywide. If the Ngok people of Ruweng believe governing themselves as an Administrative Area offers them a break from the cycle of atrocities, then the presidency could make good on this arrangement by surveying the land and establish permanent boundaries with their neighbors or work on the past problematic maps of colonial Sudan and Anglo-Egyptian Sudan to bring about a permanent solution to this area.

Pibor, as stated earlier, is a case older than the SPLM/A-IO. The Cobra Militias of Pibor under David Yau Yau share a discontent with the Late George Athor's Movement, both of which emerged from the gubernatorial election shambles in Jonglei state in 2010. The Pibor armed group was there when Dr. Riek Machar was a vice president. Peace with David Yau Yau was reached before that with the SPLA-IO. Throwing this in as part of the problem means that the SPLM/A-IO expects wide-ranging conflicts to flare up in the country.

With Abyei, the SPLM/A-IO must come out clearly as a national political player and states its position rather than lumping it within the meaningless Anglo-Egyptian boundaries and districts that served no good to South Sudan but isolated the region from the rest of the world. The clash of modernity and ruralism in every South Sudanese today is a result of the Closed District Ordinance. As much as arguments in its favor point to the temporary stoppage of the slave trade, its adverse impacts far outweigh what was purportedly being controlled. Failure to resolve the Sudanese problem in Abyei is the responsibility of all South Sudan political stakeholders. Leaders must remain true to the course of the people.

The 32 States then and now

The government’s decision to redividing the country into 28 states and later 32 states at the time was reactionary in nature. It did not want to be stuck in the past because the rebels, during the negotiations, were calling for more states and especially the 21 colonial districts; a call that would reintroduce memories of the time of the Anglo-Egyptian proxy rule. Many have come to believe that Dr. Riek wanted to win the favor of the UK, the former colonial power that is part of the Troika countries supporting the peace process in the country. The government also realized that the August 2015 ARCSS was inclined on awarding oil-producing areas to the rebels in the Upper Nile Region, thus ethnicizing the country’s natural endowments and making the region even more contested. It thought it right to correct the misconception since some international and regional powers were erroneously keen to associate the rebels with the oil. It also perceived that the ARCSS, signed in August 2015, attempted to split the country into two strong domains, one controlled by the government and the other by the armed opposition.

The division was, therefore, partly to place the resources where they belong and to dissuade those who might be thinking that the government was just sitting on an empty eggshell. The reaction was immediate and bloody. As the weight of the decree reverberated across the country, it began to be understood in the rebel corners and among the anti-ethnic hegemony in the country post-independence that the action, by its very design and execution, placed all major oil wells within the Dinka territories and further annexed a few patches of land here and there, particularly the Nuer lands and those of the Shilluk Kingdom. As much as the division of the country into 32 states was good for enabling people to locally develop their immediate areas, the circumstances in which it was introduced have created new geographies of ethnic enclaves where land wars were, in the process, set to become real and eternal.

Fear of Elders

It was in the division that many believed emerged the powerful Jieng Council of Elders (JCE). This assemblage of tribal sages, many of who were, and still are, seasoned politicians from the days of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan until now, have members hailing from all tribes and territories of the Dinka. They stand accused of having influenced the government in redrawing the borders and continuously providing a leaning rod to the government in dire political and military situations. Minus the elders, the opposition believes it can outwit the government to win the population to its side. The JCE has since become a catchphrase for anyone who has a bone to pick with the government. Others go as far as castigating whoever is working with the government and delivering services to the people. Seeing the government fall has become a preoccupation of some desperate tribal cliques and hateful individuals who did not benefit in peacetime, never benefited in the bloody chaos, and have no heart left for the country except welcoming a recolonization in dubious forms, hoping a mysterious master will have a lofty handout.

Beneficiaries of 32 States

No one can predict that the return to 10 states, plus, 3 administrative areas will not have its own casualties. The level of political confusion has grown wild in the country. It is plausible to state here that in trying to speed up the formation of the government, meant to consolidate peace or bring about it in the first place, not every citizen will be euphoric. Given that some happy and joyful people of yesterday have been denied states and local administrations today and without proper consultation and heavy hearts, returned to old places for peace to descend upon them, makes it clear that peace will have enemies from its recipients. Collapsing the government by reducing it from the operational 32 states to ten or thirteen – if we add the three administrative areas thus created - would not be a simple return of the tidal waves. The Juba government will now have more on its plates to deal with. That includes numerous public officials who have been made redundant or have lost their jobs in the big calculation for peace, many citizens trying to come to terms with the sudden dispossession of their new states, lands, and territories, and bitter others who have lost friends and dear ones in the commitment to make the new states operational to deliver services. Some of these dissolving states have already put up new public infrastructure in the shortest time possible and were happily making them fully functional to their respective people. These are the groups that will eye both the government and the SPLM/A-IO with fully rolled-out eyeballs.

In all this, it appears Dr. Riek and his SPLM-IO wield enormous power to enable things to move or stall them. Since the war began in 2013, no major developmental plans have been initiated in the country simply because people have to deal with the war first. The government and its machinery seemed to enjoy this deflection from public scrutiny and have relaxed the commitment on many important projects such as building a lasting road network. The pre-occupation of the government had always been how to stop the war first. Any criticisms or meaningful analyses of the situation in the country have often been pointed in the direction of the war.

The SPLM/A concept of peace through development has become a thing of the past. Dr. Riek has got what he never used to get during the bygone days: waiting for him. The SPLM/A mainstream has no history of waiting for people walking on the sidetracks. Dr. Riek knows this. When the ‘theatrical coup’ of 1991 occurred, the remaining SPLM/A took a giant leap of faith and initiated many projects and redoubled war efforts such that by the time he came back to the fold in 2002, he had no idea where to start. The SPLM/A was a real, undeclared four-by-four vehicle without reverse gears. It was completely divergent from the one in sight today. William Nyuon Bany confirmed this when he returned to the movement after his stint in the bush within a bush. He was said to have put it that the SPLM/A seemed weak when one was inside but an impenetrable strength and a progressive movement when one viewed it from the outside.

Riek and the Dragon Behind him

Why had Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon become a bone that cannot be swallowed nor expectorated? It leaves many to say now that if Riek Machar and the SPLM/A-IO were a genuinely registered political party, devoid of the threats of use of arms and bloodshed that often ensue, South Sudan would have announced her democratic strength in her unyielding opposition. But, to all South Sudanese both at home and in the diaspora who have been yearning for peace and the resultant progress that follows, Dr. Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon is undeniably holding everyone hostage. People have been reduced to begging him to come home. It is a slap in the face to all by the man who was essentially chased away and nearly lost his feet while running. He was humiliated but has now returned the slap of humiliation slowly and painfully with the determination of a stalking Panthera. To his political opponents and to all citizens of South Sudan, it is a damning warning. South Sudanese are not always tolerant of any individualistic leader. They have disowned many leaders who exhibited such characters. But Riek Machar Teny keeps coming back more powerful than each time he left. No one knows exactly the dragon in the shadow of the man. That’s what scares the government, the people, and President Kiir in particular.

Wildfires and Unrelenting Winds in Aweil

2019-07-14T01:07:00.083-07:00

In most African villages, far from the reaches of local and global media and research, climate change has no name. But people know about the natural order of things. They have done so for centuries. They know about the seasons of the year and could detect, with immediate certainty, when anything out of the ordinary disturbs the serenity and benevolence of nature. With bare bodies, people can tell if it is too hot or cold in the present time in comparison to the times of yore.

If being omnipresently aware of the natural surrounding and sudden variations that happen in it constitutes climate change, then the climate has not been so unmerciful in the years gone by but now. People now know that when natural disasters – those that have never occurred – do occur, they have to find the right answers and the correct modes of response. They ask rhetorically hard questions and begin to seek some tangible answers in this regard.

In the South Sudanese constituency of Korok, an event that surprised the locals happened recently. A little bush fire in an open sudd area – known locally as 'The Toc' – was swallowed up by massive wind turbulence and spun around for hours before it was launched into a speedy conflagration, consuming people, houses, trees, livestock, crops, and anything that could catch fire in its wake. When it all subsided, over fifty people lay dead, incinerated beyond recognition. Many more sustained third-degree burns. The situation was a nightmare. Its eerie menace fed into the local traditions, mores, and mythologies, trying to explain away the horror that had befallen people for the first time.

People began to ask: what is it? Why have fires like these happened? How comes fires could leap over hundreds of meters of open grounds to set ablaze far places with unimaginable fierceness? What has changed in our routine seasons of the year that winds and fires have become so ferocious and unpredictable?....and many more questions are still being asked. The answers are still to be communicated to these communities.

This, to the doubting Thomases in the climate change argument, shows that the conditions of the atmosphere are not the way they used to be. Even unschooled villagers have come to understand it.

To remember the victims of the combined ruthlessness of winds and fires in Korok, here is the lamentation in Dinka about the once known natural area that has now turned into a deadly monster, spitting hot and blowing faster than usual:

Kɔrɔk Acï Dëp

Karaŋda acï nyopwei

Ye Karaŋ Abɛɛl

Aye Karaŋ Aŋeŋ?

Aye ŋɔ̈ɔ̈i amääth

Alɛ̈ ke Kɔrɔŋdaan tööŋë

E wɛ̈t yic apɛidït

Ekëya

Ɣok aŋuɔt ɣothiëc

Yeŋö gɔp baai wei

Yeŋö nyop ye wei?

Ŋön ye yɔɔɔɔɔt

Ku wiiiiu

Gɔl Majöŋdaan Ayät

Ɣet Wunlaŋ?

Kɔrɔŋ ce reedic

Ka raan loi awanwan!

Yen kuc raan la rwanyrwany piiny!

Ku abak

Acë guöp la ŋäpëŋäp!

Yeŋö loi yeen?

Ye giir, ye mac?

Aye lueel alɛ̈ ke Wärajak

Yen abï giir ku mac.

Kujal kuc

Yeŋö ku e tonydaan thɛɛr

Ŋïc piu ruël

Ku giir yakthok?

Yeŋö cë rot waar ye ruöönë?

Cë wärdaandïït ë jiɛɛk

Yenhom wɛ̈l ɣook

Bï ya wär ë dot?

Tuɔnyda yeŋö?

Yeŋö pɛ̈l yïn këdhie

Yïnic pät ë piu ku rɛc?

Ca nhom määr Puurkulël?

Ku kuc mac liääp kek yom?

Ka cïn kë kwany ka gup!

Käla wiuëwiu

Käla wutëwut

Käla lökëlök!

Ka tuc kuapuɔl

Cë wut lil Wärdït

Maɣoo! Maɣeey!

Tiëŋkë tol nhom!

Tonydaan dïït Wärajak

War yïnhom tony thɛɛr.

Ɣok acï gup la däŋëdäŋ

Cɔl ɣook aben puöth liɛr

Ku kuëthku

Buk waak bɛn kiit

Ɣo nɔ̈ɔ̈k nhïïm...

"Tonydaan Wärajak

Ka cuk päl

...Raan aba yiik amook

Tuɔnyda waa...x 2"

Show Us Your IDs: Ethnic Patriotism And The Killing of Simon Dhieu In Yei River County

2016-04-21T08:33:00.009-07:00

Photo credit: Online Africa

@oafrica

Dec 25, 2014

Ethnically targeted killing is heightening in South Sudan. The constellation of killings out of tribal detestation, ordinarily executed following effective identification to establish the correct ethnic origin of the person(s) to be killed, has, to this juncture reached its zenith.

A few days ago, presumably April 13, 2016, Simon Dhieu and his co-worker of the Danish Demining Group (DDG), based in Yei, were gunned down by a group of unidentified Dinka haters on the outskirt of town. They were on their usual routine – which involves locating and destroying mines and other unexploded ordnances – exploring suspected areas to be demined. Their killers, who stopped the commercial vehicle they were traveling by to the demining site, made no secret of what they were looking for. After forcing them out of the vehicle, they asked about their ethnic origins. The specific identification process employed by these determined killers included asking if there were MTNs or Dinkas among the occupants of the vehicle, numbering about eight people per the narratives of those who witnessed the scene.

Sensing the gravity of the situation, the demining workers grew numb, unable to speak for fear of being caught lying, which might have led to further catastrophic consequences; or as a ploy to hide the identities of their colleagues that the assailants demanded to know. Either of the two, the ploy did not work. The assailants asked for identity documents at gunpoint and were subsequently produced under intense nervousness. Satisfied with their search and identification that Simon Dhieu and his friend were Dinka people (the other who said his mother was a Kakwa from the area was spared), they separated them from the group, undressed them, tied their hands behind their backs, faced them away from the rest, took aims and in an unembellished bestial ferocity, shot them all in the back. The two young men, intelligent and dedicated nation builders who, on daily occasions, risked their lives demining their new country from mines and other unexploded ordnance left behind by two decades of civil war - especially Yei River County – contorted and collapsed in front of their colleagues. The mother earth, unpreparedly, received their lifeless bodies pushed down on it by the curvature of space. On the ground, they lay never to get up again. Their colleagues looked on completely petrified, outraged but powerless.

Dinka The MTNs

The killers were out looking for the MTNs, a euphemism for the Dinka people. MTN is a South African-based Mobile Telephone Network operating in many countries around the world, including South Sudan. But to understand its contextual use in this ethnic-based targeted killing, one has to understand the Hutu paramilitary génocidaires of 1994 - The Interahamwe Militias - that likened Tutsi ethnic group members to cockroaches and set about to exterminate them; Omar el Bashir, the Sudanese president’s likening of South Sudanese to insects (hasharat) that should just be sprayed dead. More broadly, think of any other time someone likens another person to a monkey, a dog, or a pig – wishing to do unto them the treatment such animals would receive. The perpetrators always used these euphemisms to deny themselves any feelings of sympathy or remorse. It is a human way of turning off humanity and revealing the devil within in its full disgracefulness. But in this case, a simple analogy is that MTN coverage seems to be everywhere, just as Dinka majority in South Sudan could be found anywhere in the country, hence, the MTNs.

The killing of Simon Dhieu and his Dinka co-worker is one count among many: between Juba and Yei, people have been pulled out of vehicles and killed; between Juba and Mundri West and East, vehicles heading North of the country have been ransacked and travelers killed mercilessly; out of Rumbek to any direction, extrajudicial killings have been meted out on tribal identities. Even in Juba itself, people say it would be stupid to walk in the streets at night without checking your back. Suburbs have become lethal tribal areas with people from particular regions of South Sudan settling exclusive from others.

Lethal Tribal Identity

At the moment of their death, and in the realms of the spirits – if there exists a metaphysical ability enabling the dead to extend earthly tragedies into conclusive discussions in the worlds beyond the physical – Simon and his colleague would still, be questioning their abrupt and tragic human-engendered demise. No doubt, even those alive and who have heard or witnessed the killing are probing for answers as well.

There is a need to fill-in the gap left by the deaths of these two young nation builders with answers. They had no time to ask their killers. Their killers were filled with rage. Simon and his friend were, in turn, filled with fear and questions. They died before working out anything for resolution or understanding. The only message that brutally departed with them was the question and confirmation of their Dinka originality. In South Sudan, a nation that must assert itself among the nations of the world, telling the truth should be part of nation-building. But, in telling the truth about who they were, Simon Dhieu and his Dinka colleague stumbled on a mystery: having been born Dinka was a deadly natural reality that kills at once upon pronunciation or realization. That was why they were killed. They might want to know why it was lethal to be found or born a Dinka? Would they have survived had their killers known that in the Dinka blood runs a shared DNA strains linking them with Kakwa, Acholi, Shilluk, Anyuak, Nuer, Taposta, Luo, Atuot, Aliap, Didinga, etc? Would they have been spared if they had a chance to remind their killers that, despite being the Dinka they so much hated, they both shared the history of marginalization and, now, independent South Sudan?

The Nation Built on Tribal Allegiances

To suggest that South Sudan is a nation built on the glaring reality of ethnic patriotism, one cannot be accused of overstating the network of the South Sudanese society’s identity crisis. We have seen this in government where communities rally behind politicians hailing from their areas; we see it in the South Sudanese army, paramilitaries, and militias where people we have blood relations are the ones we support and stand by irrespective of inabilities and misleading, often destructive dreams; we know this when we speak and argue with pervasive national character and suggesting revolutionary changes while discreetly, wishing that these changes be done by somebody closer to home; we see it in the employment sector, where entire tribes dominate key structures of subsistence; in the airport and immigration where rules only apply to tribes other than mind; in service delivery queues where if the officials delivering services are of my blood relation, tribe, region, or any other category that fits, we must be esteemed queue-jumpers. If ethnic groups favor themselves over everything, then the end of everything will always be an ethnic clash - clashing over resources, government positions, national projects, administrative areas, and all that the country throws at her citizens. South Sudanese must rise and meet the challenges of true nationalism. It is not right to speak with national rhetoric while practicing ethnic patriotism. Nations of the world that are now considered prosperous, peaceful, and strong did one thing: they shunned ethnic allegiances and accepted to be one and the subjects of a nation.

It is in shunning ethnic loyalties that the deaths, like that of Simon Dhieu and his colleagues would be brought to an end. If it starts effectively at the national level, other gruesome deaths related to ethnic loyalties would surely be curtailed.

Siad Barre’s Style: ‘Rebooting’ South Sudan

2015-08-25T08:36:00.005-07:00

Pint. Tripoli 1978. Siad Barre & Mu'ammar Al-Qadhdhāfī

It (food) must be put back into the pot so that we serve it. No visitor serves food; if you don’t put it back into the pot, we will tip it over.

(By Akut Kuei - A group of young Dinka traditional singers. They sang about Arabs’ exclusive use of national resources in Sudan at the expense of long time indigenes)

The Intergovernmental Authority on Development, IGAD, plus the Troika (USA, England, and Norway) and China have brought the negotiations for peace in South Sudan to what seems to be a successful ending. The South Sudanese government and the rebels convened in Addis Ababa on the 17^th August 2015 to sign the final peace accord. It had taken almost twenty months of fruitless deliberations. The government and rebels, all along, showed little remorse for the suffering that war had wrecked on the people. Even as peace draws nigh, it was how it first started, the savage way it had been fought, and the peacemaking process that dragged on in attempts to ending it that presented many concerns in its dynamics.

South Sudan is the youngest country in the world, but looking at her messes as well as the ambitions of her leaders, one could surely be persuaded that political climate, as the nation moves further into the future, would not be an all-time easy. The reason for the uncertainty is visible in the post-independence war of 2013. Post-independence war in this country has highlighted that cruelest things, such as events that cause the loss of life, easily spiral into abysmal ending whilst life-preserving undertakings, such as peacemaking and forging of strong national attitude, assume highly visceral hatred that it becomes impossible to balance the books of normality. In other words, what appears normal to the leaders of this new nation is not a march towards prosperity but a ‘rebooting’ of the country to its prewar and wartime eras. All this is aimed at bringing the country down if aspired political and existential space for ascending to the top job in the land is not guaranteed. Meaning, ambitions for top leadership and patriotism, the two values that should go concurrently, are far apart. Patriotism itself has no place.

Compromised Peace Proposal

The recent peace negotiations tell us more of what occupies the minds of South Sudanese leaders; the very reason it is important to compare the situation with that of the failed state of Somalia and the way her independence leader, Siad Barre, behaved towards the end of his rule in the 1990s. We begin at the recently debunked climax of the peace process in Addis Ababa. We may ask, why was it so hard to quickly agree when destruction stares everyone in the face in the country? Why was there a rush to gloss over issues that might entrench war longer than were the expectations? These questions have simple answers: leaders were worried about their own positions. The rush was meant to run away from more problems, especially on the side of the rebels who suffered a deep breakup. The government, on the other hand, was not ready to push on with the war unnecessarily because the economy was shrinking badly. Continuation of war might lead to multiple rebellions, which would be hard to quell. It was a distressing situation, similar to the Middle East’s nuclear talks, which prompted Christopher M. Jones to title his 2010 book on the subject as “Rushing Ahead to Armageddon.” Rather than pacifying with confidence, that would be meaningful in the healing process, the warlords of South Sudan have rushed to uncertainty with peace. Peace was signed with bitterness. That was not a good sign. Wars might be consequences of rushed decisions, fired up by emotions and hatred among the populace and substantiated by inexperience, ineptitude, and callous over-ambitiousness among the bearers and would-be bearers of power, but procurement of peace is expected to walk the path of peace because it is meant to result in justice and responsibility.

The Signing Game

Despite the rushing, however, the day of reckoning saw no unanimity in the agreement. Better put, there was half peace, the one signed by the armed opposition and the stakeholders, clustered as the Group-10, but rejected outright by the government on the pretext of abrupt and surreptitious new and unclear texts that needed time for proper deconstruction and selling to the public. President Kiir simply used the word “consultation” and only initialed the document and declined to append his signature and requested more time. He was expected to sign in fifteen days from the previous deadline set by the IGAD-Plus mediators.

So, there was no complete peace signed in Addis Ababa on the final day. Instead, there was some kind of a multilateral show orchestrated by IGAD and Partners to ensure the war had ended. IGAD -Plus have worked very hard to see South Sudan returns to peace and quietude, but had inadvertently got locked in the tangram of controversy, not by choice, but by intention as ‘powerful third parties.’ That alone caused some bitterness and fears. Armed opposition sat back and felt that IGAD-Plus was their backer and a power broker, ready to launch military actions against the government in Juba or lobby for sanctions that might cripple Juba and gives them the advantage. The government and supporters felt betrayed by complacent mediations. What was clear in all this was that: peace was coming home more imposed and forced than voluntarily agreed upon by the rivals.

Globally, treading the path of pacifying two groups had never been easy for any peacemaker. Peace writers such as David Johnson contend that “imposing the peace suppresses the conflict but does not resolve underlying grievances and does not establish positive long-term relationships among the disputants.” If the South Sudanese situation turns out to work differently under peace imposition, many people would be relieved. But the character of the disputants means that physical retribution remains a big worry.

Many months of negotiations since the outbreak of war have seen many peace drafts that would, in normal circumstances, qualify for bipartite ratification and acceptance gone by without concrete pacification. The international community that supported the peace process got weary, the death toll from war surpassed surprises and eroded sympathies, the yearning for peace among the population heightened, mediators got frustrated and only the competing leaders maintained their unyielding and dogged demands for the right share of power. Severally, neither the government nor the armed opposition (and the stakeholders) budged from their tabled positions particularly on issues related to power and security arrangements. In attempting to cut the power cake according to needs, the mediators have many times almost ran the risk of reproducing 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that divided Sudan in 2011. It had quite often been reflected in the power-sharing and security provisions.

Jumping from Draft to Draft

The first of the latest draft proposal granted armed opposition 53% of power in the three states of the former Upper Nile Region. This, together with demilitarization of Juba, the national capital, to the radius of “twenty five kilometers “within ninety days of signing the agreement” and placing the security of the city in the hands of foreign forces that would come from a combined deployment of the “Transitional Third-Party Security Unit” (TTPSU), which included the UN forces (already present in the country in huge numbers) and a contribution of further supplementary contingents from IGAD member states, the AU, and the UNMISS enraged the government and many of its supporters. The text of the first draft of the three documents summarized the status of the national capital as the “Special Arrangement Area (SAA).”  TTPSU seemed to be acting as the police force in the city during the transitional period since the role of the police is never stated anywhere in the entire proposal.

The proposal was a hot pie for the government to sell and was expecting a high turnout against it. Public demonstrations were held across the country to reject it. This was a clear contradiction to the position presumed by IGAD mediators and partners who seemed to think that any agreement to end the hostilities would be readily accepted by the general public without resentment. Based on the public outcry following the first draft, it was possible to note that citizens of South Sudan read the proposed agreement twofold: the end of one war and the beginning of another, which was being made conducive by ambiguity in the agreement. Interpretations of the draft from the protesters across the country showed that the first draft was clearly rejected. It also highlighted the need for a just peace: a peace that sets no preconditions for cyclical suffering. There was also panic grounded on the assumption that recently gained sovereignty from colonial Sudan was being replaced by another, this time, a massive international and regional coalition backed by multinational companies and businesses that see South Sudan as a resource mining field to be exploited. Nothing gave this thought more credence than the clause which made the national capital a ‘Special Arrangement Area’ during thirty months of the transitional period. Many leaders in the armed opposition and Former Detainees have been quoted as randomly pleading the UN to take over the country if they failed to dislodge the government. The chief mediator, Seyoum Mesfin, recently confirmed the fears.

Following the first draft, however, the government wrote to IGAD member states and the mediators, pushing for more changes. It led to the second version, the Kampala version, which convinced Juba that it had won the favor of many IGAD’s heads of states who all agreed on the government’s suggestions and made changes to the draft. As president Kiir went to Addis Ababa, despite his initial refusal to show up, he was aware of a new favorite deal. It turned out that the new deal was re-made even newer than he thought. The third and final version of the deal appeared on the final day in front of him for immediate signing. This time, there was no time to push for changes. This version removed authoritative control of armed opposition in the three states of the former Upper Nile Region, reducing its power influence from 53% to 40% and gave the government 46% of power control. Juba remained to be demilitarized, only the change of terminologies was made. Armed opposition moved on to get 15% power influence in all other states of the country. That further extended opposition power tentacles to the new influencing level. Stakeholders in the name of Former Detainees were also given a reasonable percentage. The result caused a commotion on the government side. Being in charge of the country with so many other political groups, civil society organizations, and interest groups, there was a need to make consultations and bring everyone on board. President Kiir believed he was signing himself out of power. His reservations matched the calculations of the opposition's resentment to his demands: we all get the power or we all lose it.

The mediators felt that there was no more room to consult and tried to force the deal through. The international pressure that followed mirrored Siad Barre’s Somalia toward the end of his rule. The warring parties became entrenched. Observing from the rear, one would see that South Sudanese leaders can and have the powers to turn the country into whatever state they desire. They know they fought and brought the country to independence and desperately want to be part of it as long as they are alive. To be edged out by an equal partner in the liberation of the country is not an easy option to accept as long as South Sudan is what it is today. Every liberator in South Sudan believes that without his/her participation, there would be no country. Since many of the top leaders were comrades-in-arms, they believe that none of them has the authority to push the other – for the sake of peace or not – out of the country. If one still has the military power, a thought they all possess without regrets, the best way is to cause trouble for all so that one is recognized and maintained. In case of failure to use past military background to acquire political power, going Barre becomes the apparent way out. This can best be viewed as a self-destructive strategy and here is how:

Cornered by Africa Watch, Human Rights Watch and inter-clan rebellions, all aiming and pushing him (the independence leader) to cede power to the people whom he was accused of being their contemptible totalitarian, Siad Barre knew he was not going to stand his ground. He remembered how he alone maintained the cohesiveness of the greater Somali community and state; he recalled how he single-handedly shaped education by introducing the Somali language in Latin scripts. He also remembered discouraging clan significance in civil society and in governance affairs, hence, success in forging a strong nationalism for his people.

In a mood of desperation to the people he then thought were ungrateful to his cohesive leadership and deliverance from the yoke of colonization, he somberly, audibly said for the last time:

“When I came to Mogadishu,” he thundered on, “there was one road built by the Italians. If you try to force me to stand down, I will leave the city as I found it. I came to power with a gun; only the gun can make me go.”

Mohamed Diriye Abdullahi quoted him in his book, Culture, and customs of Somalia (2001), p. 41. Barre was ousted soon after and fled to Kenya (the country that secretly blamed Somalia in the events leading to The Shifta War of 1963-1967 in which ethnic Somalis from Kenya aspired to join Somalia), then to Nigeria where he died of a heart attack. No question, the Somalia he left behind was Somalia he prophetically told he would bequeath on his people.

Today, the situation in Somalia is everybody’s concern. The federal government of Somalia (Dowladda Federaalka Soomaaliya) in Mogadishu is powerless and is constantly guarded, guided, and protected by forces of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), a force that is largely and technically fighting for Ethiopia for Somalia’s alleged historic support of the insurgency in Ogaden Region where ethnic Somalis of Ogaden Clan (Barre’s mother is from Ogaden Clan) have formed the Ogaden National Liberation Front and sought to unite with the motherland Somalia. AMISOM is drawn from countries that once criticized Barre’s leadership.

The territorial integrity of Somalia today is shambolic. Somali waters today are fished and used as dumping ground for toxic wastes from multinational companies of the countries that formed regional and the International Community that were his staunch critics. Security in Somalia following the emergence of militias such as Al-Shabab makes everybody twinge with embarrassment. Foreign drones with lethal weapons fly the skies without entry permissions, kill with impunity unmindful of human rights violations, and leave without departure orders to do so. Also, unannounced encroachment on Somali waters by foreign fishing vessels has depleted the local fishing grounds, leaving fishermen with no survival means and turning them towards piracy. All in all, a simple request for leadership change has set Somalia up for international and local meddling.

Could South Sudan go the Somali way?

Many citizens are concerned that this might happen if leaders do not take patriotism seriously over simple leadership ambitions. The young intelligentsia must not fall prey to tribal affiliations but wake up with serious national agenda and focus their energies on restorative justice in order to bring South Sudan back on course as a country for all. However, coupled with the behavior of the international community, backed by regional groupings that have interests to cater for by venturing into the green Savannah of South Sudan, and informed by the aggressive nature of the Nilotic of this country, logic tells that it is possible to bring down this country to her knees. Sad, but a reality.

What was wrong with the peace deal in South Sudan?

IGAD'S error, first and foremost, was the ambiguous push to force the deal through. It was a serious discontinuity in the rules of effective, genuine, neutral, and honest processes of negotiations or conciliation in which disputants are expected to reach a compromise in the atmosphere of concessions. If shuttle diplomacy had not been shelved to oblivion, then it would have been an efficient tool used by IGAD-PLUS to avail and discuss the compromised peace deal to its desired ending. Herding the parties into the signing ceremony without fully securing positions of acceptance or rejection on the document was futile at best. For both parties to be completely trusting in the deal and in the process of mediation, both parties must have signed at the same time having all agreed to the text in its conclusive form. Allowing one side to sign while the other refused was a weakness that mediators should not have permitted to happen because of the tendency to burst neutrality and instead, inculcates mistrust. The agreement was muscular, ignorant, rushed, and overtaken by impending pride of having won over the warring sides. It was a recipe for reneging on the modalities of implementation.

The Way Forward

Finally, South Sudan is not home to IGAD and Partners, but for South Sudanese. The buck stops with the South Sudanese themselves and their leaders. Therefore, the government and the rebels must know that South Sudan needs patriotism, not destruction, or surrendering it away because of bitterness and frustrations. The nation must repossess itself and not prove to the world that as much as her refugees depend much on international aid and humanitarian assistance, managing her national affairs is also subject to international assistance. A country that ignores its leadership's worth should not even call itself sovereign.

I conclude with the words of Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, an eloquent former Sudanese ambassador to the UN, Chief Negotiator for G77+ China at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2009, Copenhagen:

“Our government has chosen to give away our national sovereignty and territory, as demonstrated by Mile-14 and the presence of foreign troops and military advisers to maintain in power a regime as politically and morally bankrupt as never witnessed in the region.”

Lumumba had since joined the rebellion against the government in Juba. He spoke these words on his maiden day in the bush. I guess we know what he was saying, it was ‘rebooting,’ more or less.

What Would it Take to Rebel in RSS?

2015-07-30T04:41:00.002-07:00

Rebelling in South Sudan is as simple as saying the word itself. In this simplicity, attached to an action that has disastrous consequences, in the long run, I suppose if a Junubi (South Sudanese) key personality avails in front of you an itinerary, stating that he would pay a visit to his very important government official in the morning for some money, then go buy groceries and returns home in the afternoon to his family with the shopping or money in cash, or rebel that same afternoon if he fails to secure the order of the above itinerary, you would better believe him. Explanations about grievances leading to rebellion are usually unreal when stated, but the decisions to implement them are dead-serious.

In that respect, it is, therefore, important to ask the question, what would it take to rebel in South Sudan? Given the fairness of the question, the questioner would be keen to hear a long list of political grievances that, if achieved, might lead to a stronger foundation of the republic so desired. However, many politicians, warlords, and key personalities of our time do not frame all grievances on firm nationalistic and patriotic attitudes and conviction, but on a simplistic itinerary. We will find out shortly the kind of grievances that would be topping their lists. However, if the same question is put to commoners, the citizens, those for whom services are aimed, the answer would be different.

The ordinary South Sudanese at the grassroots are likely to give pragmatic answers as to why they would want to pick up weapons against the country they call home. Their answers would include, among other things, basic necessities to life itself: food, water, health facilities, schools for kids, roads; and necessary training so that they could work their lands for maximum production. Virtually, nobody can say that he or she has a life if basic necessities are deficient and/or non-existent.

Put the same question to the intellectuals of the land, or rather, listen in to their grievances and you will find that some issues of rebellion will confound you when their intentions have been made a reality. A recent defection of Brigadier, Gatwic Puoc, of the 11th Infantry Division, and Agel Machar, former National Youth Leader, attracted a very important press conference for the SPLM-IO in Nairobi. The conference was convened at the Methodist Guest House. Among the opposition speakers were Agel himself, Gatwic Puoc and Mabior Garang Mabior. From among the three, I chose to listen to Mabior first following their order of seniority in the coldness of the bush as rebels.

Mabior had his position clarified many times. He maintains that the people's movement had been hijacked, momentum reduced, vision deferred and aspirations dashed. It is a solid position that he shares with many others who are dissatisfied by the inaction of the government on matters of corruption and slow pace in service delivery to the people - the beneficiaries of independence. The only problem with his position lies in the terms of reference. You may ask what has the 'movement' got to do with an independent country of South Sudan, or why would inexactitudes of the 'movement,'- initially headed by his father - which automatically self-transformed into a political party after independence, be corrected through rewinding to its former military glory as supposed by the second 'movement' in which he is part of? But the young Cuban trained (communist? socialist? socialist-communist? whatever he may call himself) has spoken plainly. He is wrestling with ideology and he ought to do so. He has seen it clearly in Castros’ Cuba how an ideology must be nurtured by all means, with the rider of 'the horse of ideology' maintaining persistent resistance to dismounting orders whether the horse gallops through the mists or fire till a destination is reached - whatever the destination. Mabior Garang de Mabior is an interesting pawn to pay attention to in this raging South Sudanese conflict as well as in the projection of the remaking of a nation (from an opposition point of view). For once, it would be difficult to differentiate him from Salva Kiir, the man his dad baptized with guerrilla ideologies. It was his dad, Dr. Garang, who told Kiir Mayardit boldly that 'a thorn is removed using another thorn' when Kiir cautioned that peace had come to Sudan but there were still some thorns that required careful tread in the South Sudanese ever-narrow paths in the shrubs. Today, with Kiir using the thorns he feared to solve his thorn troubles, and Mabior, using another third thorn category to solve the troubled thorn blessed by the Legendary Dr. Garang, you got to get your head spinning a bit in this forbidding 'de-thorning' exercise of liberation. In the press conference, Mabior was not the first or the second speaker but a character to think about.

The first speaker was, Brigadier Gatwic Puoc, who helped narrowed down his list of grievances to his lack of promotion and insulting promotions of junior officers to the positions above him in the hierarchy. At this point, it will be interesting to know who is elder between Gatwic Puoc and Simon Kun Puoc, his brother and governor of the Upper Nile State. But that is aside. A rebel brother and government agent brother will always be connected by the stream of common blood flow in their veins. What is important to underline is that the Chief of Administration and Logistics and former big belly Intelligence Officer in the Government of National Unity, GoNU, has taken up arms against his country for lack of promotion. He is not the first or the last South Sudanese to be radical about these bureaucratic by-passes in promotions. Major Kerubino Kwanyin Bol, the man who shot the first bullet in the rebellion that led to the SPLA/M in 1983 would too call such bypasses in promotion as 'disrespect and insubordination!' Many say Kerubino would be out of control at that point. From the positions stated, there is no doubt that Gatwic Puoc commands experience. As a former teacher and an administrator, he knows how to get through the system to be promoted than anyone had he chose to do so. His rather reluctant statement rings some bells in the head and you can start to count one from here.

Then came Agel Machar, former National Youth Leader of the republic, a fast-spoken young man, and possessing a sense of intelligence that you can easily admire. He thought quickly, spoke quickly, and blinked quickly. His new boss, Dr. Riek, blinks similarly under pressure. He poured out his rather ingenuously crammed national ailments which he spoke less and less while in office until he reached the point of taking up arms. His defection, he said, was to 'offset the balance' in the narrative that Warrap, his native State and that of the president, was controlling the country and was, therefore, better off with the status quo in the country. You can take the count down to two at this point.

Like anyone who wanted to save time, you can conclude vaguely that the cheapest thing you must not bet an RSS revolutionary intellectual, a politician, or a key personality, is whether or not, he or she would rebel over anything petty and beneath the basic necessities of life. Strictly adhering to this gives an insight that you have cracked the code!

After all, at the height of Nasir Faction, battled by the stresses and strains, it took Professor Bari Wanji – a fiery man at that – a few seconds to storm out of the meeting and out of the Nasir Faction altogether following a bitter quarrel with Dr. Lam Akol whom he accused of taking his camera and failed to return it. Who knows, but that camera was frankly not a basic necessity, but a necessary ingredient for rebellion.

Juba’s Political Machinations: Peace By All Means

2015-02-20T10:25:00.002-08:00

Events in South Sudan are revisiting the early and mid-1990s, the periods when rebelliously callous militias shuttled between Khartoum and the bush unable to zero in on what they wanted. It was the period that saw many unpatriotic southerners trained their minds on the benefits of intransigence and insensitive retraction from the popular discourse of liberation. Throughout those times, many rebel groups that self-ostracized due to detesting of the Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M Mainstream) for one reason another, fell prey to Khartoum’s political machinations in the most daring manner. When allegiances were thus remapped, the enemy of yesterday became today’s comrade. The reasons many groups defected from the SPLA/M mainstream then were not celebrated for long when they reached Khartoum because of cold reception and displays of certain kinds of triumph by the former enemy. Could such scenarios replay themselves in Juba as now demonstrated by the ongoing detrimental internal rebellion in SPLA/M - In Opposition rebels?

There should be no surprises in the SPLA/M - In Opposition’s rebellion bursting into smithereens of factions following the defection of a key spokesperson and Brigadier-General, Lul Ruai Koang, to join the government in Juba. For once, the path of a cracking rebellion was paved right in Juba in December 2013 when violence surged. When the government arrested most of the politicians - now Group of 10 (G-10) - who were very influential and numerically key to Dr. Riek’s aspiration to win the chairmanship of the SPLM, the gamble was on in the minds of those skimming for clues to predict what would become of a rebellion that was taking off in the most unexpected way in South Sudan. Critical voices have stated at the beginning of the war that if the coup-implicated political detainees were released and failed to join Dr. Riek’s camp, it would be the end of organized formality in the rebellion. That line of thinking was not far from the truth. The fact that Juba is well-tuned into the game of winning over some rebels is not untrue as well. It is widely known in South Sudan that militias and their leaders have always come back to where they started given that they often ended up suffering from irreparable internal fighting.

Juba might be playing a significant role in wooing some rebel generals to abandon rebellion through availing and displaying advantageous political drawings. Whatever game Juba plays, they are playing it well, just as Khartoum used to do. The same thing that made Khartoum so powerful that it pulled almost every rebel in the South to play by her rules is going to make Juba powerful against her own rebels. Apparently, it had always involved a regime sitting on national resources of the country and wielding that power to punish the disenfranchised people who rebelled. This alien nationalistic chess board game was actually the kind of leadership that the citizens of South Sudan wanted their leaders to pursue all along against external aggressors for the benefits of the country - not looking inwards to punish citizens whose differing political arguments and demands could be resolved without a fight.

For certain, no one expected that the country’ leadership, particularly the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, would take eyes off Khartoum’s rhetoric purporting to dismember it eternally following Heglig’s border contest. The spirit of nationalism was in the air and the Mandella of the nation was needed in multitudes. Leaders were expected to rise above their differences and upwards to the podium of patriotism for which they fought since their youth. Nobody knew that leaders only ‘wanted jobs’ just as they used to charge the Anya Nya One fighters when that movement accepted peace in 1972. Many thought that through many years of struggle and strife, South Sudanese leaders were better armed with modern political sanities and machinations to combat poverty, illiteracy, hunger, disease and meditate on how to haul their nation out of the dimness of history of underdevelopment to the limelight of modernity through holistic development. There were many expectations for the country.

But suddenly, the country turned so violently inwards - to the laughter of her enemies. It was a bitter pill to swallow. It was a great shock to the commoners who eventually had to drag their feet into fraternal battles hoping for a quicker end to fighting since war's ‘senseless nature’ after independence was recognized by all and sundry. War, then, became so real and as it assumed its name, its impacts reverberated across the country. In South Sudan, emotional mourners began to gather. In diaspora: USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, continental Europe, the rest of Africa, everywhere and anywhere a sizeable South Sudanese population is found, wailing rang out. The maladies proved to be beyond leadership contests.

To date, nobody boasts about war anymore but counting the heavy losses it so far generated. Not even the euphoric "regime change" is mentioned with threatening frequency in peace talks; not even the figure of the dead is recited as it used to be; not political accusations are traded for fear that peace may never come. If anything of significance is talked about as a prerequisite for peace, it is the position of power in an old guards’ hierarchy that was once seen as ineffective. Peace in itself has become a foreign intervention prevention mechanism. If it is not achieved, politicians often thought, foreign powers may chip in with heavy-handedness. One may ask, who are these foreign powers coming to discipline a broken country if peace is not achieved? Are they coming after the citizens who are already dying or the leaders who are still questionably being pampered with positions in a yet-to-be-instituted Transitional Government of National Unity? In peace talks, it is noticeable that peace is wanted swiftly. This leaves us with an important question: If the rush for peace is this immense, what was the problem in the first place? With soul-searching questions like these, even selective memory serves no good. You wonder whether the problem that brought war was only in the minds of the leaders or in the system they created? Was it the new order that was needed or the old order that should have been built on for peace to reign and lasted? No doubt, South Sudan needs peace. It had never enjoyed any political order to extend a borrowing hand to. It must and must've built a better political order for her citizens.

What about the constant rebellion that was always never punished but forever rewarded? Would it stop this time? In answer to the last question, no it wouldn't stop if what is desired is not granted. Violence would continue. That was the courageous utterance from the Brigadier General, Lul Ruai Koang, who just formed his own parallel revolutionary movement to the one led by Dr. Riek Machar Teny-Dhurgon – South Sudan Revolutionary Movement/Army (SSRM/A). He announced it in a press release attended largely by members of the South Sudanese embassy in Nairobi on February 18, 2015. It could be understood as an achievement of nominal political machinations by Juba and a blow to Dr. Riek and his camp since Lul represented the White Army.

The power of being behind the White Army was easily discernible from his cool answer to Garang John of South Sudan TV. Simply put, according to the interview, General Lul Ruai Koang’s frontline was still Juba, the city whose power he stood protected. That was very innocent on his part. To the SPLA/M in opposition, General Lul Ruai Koang was just a sell-out. Rather than shuttling between the bush and Khartoum, Juba has taken over the role of Khartoum with her own troops of ‘Dr. Ali Al Hags' of peace combing the streets of Nairobi and Kampala looking for heartbroken and pocket empty warlords. However, given that no judicial mechanisms are in place to punish rebels involved in the killings of thousands of people when they come back, Juba will be bringing them back with nothing to offer to peace but old places of power to be occupied by the old guards who went to the bush to steam out and returned.

It is now unto Dr. Riek Machar to play his cards well and jump on board with the G-10 and disserting generals like Lul to pre-empt peace. He is well equipped with history and temerity to know that this is one way to cross the river before torrent from upstream catches up with you. Like some of the Anya Nya forces that heard about 1972 Addis Ababa Peace Agreement over the radio, the numerous South Sudanese militias that only saw CPA on TV or heard about it over the radio (before rushing in for integration with the South Sudanese army), it is the right time to put the cart before the horse. What is wrong with that?

Me Against My Brother: The Defection of General Dau Aturjong Nyuol

2014-06-04T06:42:00.010-07:00

Photo: Radio Tamazuj
President Kiir had of late made two appointments that would ensconce rebellion in the state of Northern Bahr El Ghazal in the form of pitting rivalries against each other. Of the significant appointment is that of the army’s chief, General Paul Malong Awan, who was uplifted from a gubernatorial position as a civilian governor to the army top stratum. Malong’s appointment and that of the caretaker governor of NBG State closed all doors on Dau, leaving him with only one way out: that of rebellion.

Dau Aturjong became the latest South Sudanese Military General to break ranks with Juba and joined Riek Machar in circumstances that swerved from claims of personal security, marginalization of his community and their Northern Bahr el Ghazal State, intense political rivalry to superimposed nationalistic dream of bringing about good governance in the country. The news of the rebellion of this well-respected General, much known for a high level of a technicality in tactical guerrilla warfare than his wealth; the latter which he never had but dreams of – just like future-hopeful citizenry – was made in a hotel in Nairobi, Kenya, and carried to a resounding propagation by Paris-based Sudan Tribune, which published a full version of the press release; SBS Dinka radio in Australia, which later interviewed the General in his language of comfort; and many other local and international media.

Like every all other rebels from within and without of Juba who made their discontent apparent since president Kiir took office in 2010 in circumstances sympathetic to colonial break away from Sudan, General Dau, singing to the tune of others before him, has a keen interest in removing President Kiir from power in the country. He accused him of scandalous stewardship of the nation to catastrophe. Well, the nation is already in the abyss. The question to ponder upon is how to get out of it, something that every leader in South Sudan who calls for arms insurrections finds difficult to undo because of inherent fears of retributions and other complications that arise from combatants and acquired allies with own political interests. For now, General Dau has his finger on the trigger and has no time to droop down attending to the political opportunistic networks that weave around every step he makes.

Why did Dau really rebel? It is the question that South Sudanese who think that Aweil and Kiir are inseparable and one and the same, would want to know? Many people want to know why Aweil, a place that contributed a river full of blood in the most unsurpassed and bizarre conditions during the war of liberation with Sudan, fails to decelerate in the war of political opportunism emanating from Juba. As difficult as the questions are, so are the answers, and I think General Dau can provide some hints. Dau was the area commander of the SPLA forces in Northern Bahr el Ghazal in the 1990s, a position he swapped so often with Paul Malong, sometimes in the most uncanny lobby with the General Headquarters where Malong always won the army politics of appeasement and deployment.

Although Dau was popular for better provision of solid protection of the area against Marahaleen counter-insurgency units, mobilizing local resources to buy uniforms for the battalions in his command in the periods when SPLA soldiers at the extreme peripheries of war in Aweil were completely rugged and indistinguishable from the poverty-stricken civilians they protected and introducing the now famous ‘Toyota war’ among the Darfur rebels by purchasing numerous Toyota ute cars and transforming them into military fighting vehicles, Dau could not hold on to his position in Aweil. He found himself transferred to the vicinity of Wau and replaced in Aweil by Paul Malong Awan. Since both men are undoubtedly battle-groomed for battle madness that often resulted in successes, civilians in Aweil have always struck an understanding with Dau who remained a bad student of snobbishness, much to their liking. That is where he always picks an ax to grind with ‘King Paul Malong,’ as adorned by a few of his toadies with interests.

The bitter differences between Malong and Dau are national in character. President Kiir knows about them and with him on Malong's side, there is no better ally for Dau. When Dau was interviewed by SBS Dinka Radio from Australia, he said that it was the late John Garang that knew his mind and how he rationalized situations. No wonder President Kiir saw a 'Garang's boy' in him and played one-sided favoritism in the fraternal battles of fame. During the 2010 elections, the SPLM, too, under new masters who were busy setting up traps for themselves by setting them up for the future enemies of the party, disapproved of Dau’s nomination as a front runner for gubernatorial position in Aweil. Dau went on to contest the elections as an independent candidate with no assurance of support from the core. To him, he won the majority votes only to receive swapped ballots, followed by a humiliating condemnation and accusation of rebelling. For the second time, Malong ruled the state and kept Dau at bay in Juba. The hope, to everyone who watched Dau from afar, was that he would circumvent Malong in Aweil and finds some consolation in what the country would offer him at the national level. It never came to pass. What came to pass, instead, was that an enemy, ‘The King,’ was given the ‘knife’ at his expense. Adding to his frustrations was an occasional presence of security personnel wolfing around his house in Juba, sometimes firing a few aimless shots at it. For a man near a hostile core of politics, stakes could not be any higher for making up his mind. If anything, popular understanding about notorious army leaders is that they do not like to be fired at in awkward positions. Their bravery has an underlying fear. They do not like to be humiliated and do not like to be attacked either. In a meeting held under a tree in Mapuordit, Yirol, in early 2001, and which was attended by Marial Nuor, a not-to-mess-around-with SPLA Commander, a disgruntled soldier appeared from nowhere and cocked his gun so loud that everyone was taken by surprise in the meeting. I did not know what he had in mind. But the first person to stand up shouting at the soldier and ordered him disarmed was Marial himself. Continuing along this line, we come to know about Major Kerubino Kwuanyin Bol. The man is reactive and preemptive. He is always battle-ready for the enemy that he alone sees. Ask the late Karubino Kwanyin Bol why he moved around every place with a pistol just like the Palestinian Yasser Arafat and he would tell you that nothing was certain. In the case of the temporary retired General Dau who is left without orders to give but a security report to make when fired on, the situation became less peaceful in Juba than in the bush: the only door that remained open for him.

Had President Kiir wanted Dau to stay, he would have pushed him to Aweil as the Caretaker Governor. But that would anger the president's darling in his army chief. He needed Malong because he believes he has a rebellion to deal with. Already, a Caretaker Governor in Aweil in the person of Kuel Aguer Kuel closes all avenues for a rebellious rethink from Dr. Dhiew Mathok Diing Wol. The two, Dhieu and Kuel, have truck-loads of colonial baggage they brought with them from Khartoum. The only difference is that they have unwillingly exchanged positions proportional to their past.

For the people of Aweil, it was the dilemma that forced Dau out of Juba. The question is not why he rebelled but who has he joined, and at what time did he do it. That is where he misjudged Aweilians and where his right answers started with a wrong formula.

From Kuol Manyang and George Athor, Malong Awan and Dan Aturjong, Taban Deng Gai and Angelina Teny, Riek Machar and Kiir Mayardit and others, the SPLM knows how to create rebels. With Dau in the list, they might have created General Terrible.

Malong Awan and Marial Nuor

2014-04-24T07:35:00.008-07:00

Gen. Paul Malong in Military Uniform. Photo: Anthony Chimir

President Kiir has made another shake-up, this time in the military. The army’s chief of general staff, James Hoth Mai, and the head of military intelligence, Major General Mac Paul Kuol, were relieved and respectively replaced by Gen. Paul Malong Awan (former governor of Northern Bahr el Ghazal) and Gen. Marial Nuor Jok, who previously served in a different capacity as Major General of the Police force.

The appearance of these military men at the war front in South Sudan, per the unending presidential decrees, has frozen the marrows for some people. To some, they will be the dreaded exterminators or genocideurs; to others, they come to instill discipline as well as manage army operations with less frustration in areas where skirmishes are still ongoing with the rebels. Yet, those who are not satisfied with blood-spill are looking and unearthing the geographies of births of these men, geographies that were unquestionable throughout their careers as army commanders. This is a note of proof to those who see the war in South Sudan as being driven by ethnic undertone because the appointment of leaders is not evaluated on their capabilities, experiences, or qualifications, but where people come from in terms of ethnic origin.

Treading fairly, the two generals are not the monsters that people should fear, at least in my view. On this note, and in situations where the mind stands conditioned to terror and fear, I love reading from the book by Wafa Sultan: A God Who Hates: The Courageous Woman Who Inflamed the Muslim World Speaks Out Against the Evils of Islam. Wafa cautions that the object of our fear can be huge or minutiae depending on our mental abstracted constructions. A prominent American tele-evangelist, Joel Osteen, preaches too that fear blows out of proportional circumstances that are otherwise manageable. Like Wafa, he denounces giving in to fear for in doing so, we are imploring the greatest power in the universe to make the subject matter of our fears come to pass.

In Malong and Marial Nuor, I think people have the 'ogres' they know little about. One might be wrong. However, if the witticism of 'highly decorated military general,' often used by ethnic followers of these generals, has any meaning in the history of the SPLA/M, then the two newly appointed leaders as Chief of Staff and Military Intelligence, respectively, have never passed with distinctions in the army's popularization of titles in South Sudan.

To assume, therefore, that they will be likely bloodier than the rebel general who captured Bentiu and shocked the world with grisly bodies of massacred civilians in cold blood; or the leader of the youth who attacked the UN Compound in Bor killing several unarmed people; or the dreaded Peter Gadet Yak, the man whose opportunism is solidified in blood-letting, is to christen them into bad boys; a stance they would humanely opt-out of in their new leadership assignments. It will be wise not to sing death into the ears of these appointed leaders before reading their true books of deeds unless the flow of blood 'opiumises' the spirits for those who do so.

If anyone has traveled in the zones of operations of the two army strongmen, Marial and Malong, one would agree to the fact that even David Yau Yau (who recently signed peace with the government and winning a special administrative consideration for his people in the troubled state of Jonglei) and Ismael Konyi (a notorious Sudanese government counter-insurgency militia leader of the 1990s) was more brutish than the two were. Now is the time for history to record their deeds one by one.

Finally, as the violence had become a commitment of killing each other in order to become one strong country, and not to split up into nations of ethnic identities, the game of innocence must therefore end. Both the rebels and the government must not freeze themselves in the corners of 'playing the good diplomat,' as expected of the government and 'becoming aggressive in order to be pleased,' as always hoped by the rebels. If the objective in the overall differences in the war is to make a prosperous and peaceful country, then it is time for each party to own up to the atrocities so that a solution for ending the killing in the country is found.

The Dang And The Spear: Spiritual Warfare Over Leadership In South Sudan

2014-02-05T09:33:00.007-08:00

Lomoyat: Addis. Church leaders, Yau Yau and GOSS

There are unrecorded sacred and manipulative spiritual games in the military and political lives in South Sudan. They happen between the churches and the shrines. They are games of supernaturalism, mingled with high capacity military and revolutionary experiences, and backed up with intellectualism befitting modern rationality. They are games where the gods are supplicated for luck, but when they (gods) renege on wishes and prayers, things get managed humanly violently. It leaves people awestruck whether education and military experience by some South Sudanese leaders mean anything in these mixed worlds of mindsets. Like it or not, leaders' tuning to spirituality influences how some affairs are managed in the country.

Over the past few months, politics in South Sudan has shifted from temporal to spiritual. But it was not only in the last few months that midnight calls to local super-visionaries were put on display by the leaders, and perhaps, the army. The practice had been around among South Sudanese societies where leaders venture out of profanity to spirituality, especially when events of unfavorable twists become uncontrollable through human force.

In the case of the military, especially during the long war, some SPLA soldiers at the front lines went spiritual with intentions to survive attacks and military advances toward the enemy. Some prayed and others sought local spiritual help. There were SPLA soldiers who bragged of their purchased powers from local medicine men, spear-masters, and seers. The powers they got were thought to render bullets powerless in the events of shootouts. No force made it explicit than the famous Mobile Task Force (MTF). This amalgam was a tactical response special unit called upon when the swiftest firepower was needed on a particular front. It was said to have been made up of soldiers with impenetrable bodies - kind of bullet-proofed skins. Army rumours had it that in the events of launching attacks on enemy positions; if a Mobile Task Force soldier was not bullet-proofed enough, as was thought by his colleagues, he was tasked with the duties of preparing meals while the seemingly impenetrable ones did the fighting. The story could be wildly wrong, but MTF's victorious notoriety on the battlefields around Juba in the 1990s accorded them respect and some kind of immortality.

Among the Sudan People's Liberation Army commanding officers, going spiritual was common too. Some commanders were rumoured to be possessing extraordinary powers that made them successful on the battlefields. There was a high-level rumour circulating that the baton carried by the SPLM/A Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C), Dr. John Garang, was magically powerful and would tell which food was poisoned and which one was safe for the leader to feast on. The current president of South Sudan, Salva Kiir, was also rumoured to possess certain powers that would make him escape any attack deemed to kill everyone. In the early 1990s when he got involved in a plane crash in Western Kenya and walked away unscathed, the rumour nearly got logged in certainty. These are just some of the spiritual games that South Sudanese play when things are very hard and complicated.

Outside South Sudan, no one seems to be aware or cares to recognize the mystical African traditional unbroken beliefs in deities and spirituality among the leaders, and how such beliefs play important roles in both national and ethnic political sentience. It is now time to begin to envisage the impacts of these beliefs in national politics.

A simple glance at the current political leaders shows nothing different from what distressed soldiers used to do at the war fronts: going spiritual. In the continuing crisis, which began in late 2013, invisible games led the way between President Kiir and former vice president, Riek Machar. It began with the presumed prophetic zenith of Ngundeng, where it was prophesied that a left-handed man from the Nuer people would rule a country somewhere on the Nile. Ngundeng, as a Nuer prophet, was recorded in history, but his prophecies were seen as leaning toward folklores and were erratically subject to ahistorical oral tradition in which meanings and interpretations depend on successive generations' tastes and needs. In the traditional African oral histories, each generation is left to give meaning to some oral prophecies as the situations suit them.

Factually, Ngundeng's prophecies are not taken for granted by Dr. Riek Machar and his community. He is believed by his community as the leader foretold by Ngundeng Bong to be that futuristic leader. Other antedate prophets, or spiritual couriers such as Wurnyang, the former White Army's leading prophet of 1991 Bor massacre, and Dak Kueth, White Army's current leader responsible in part for the Armageddon of the same area, had continued to influence Dr. Riek Machar along that line to respond to his divine vocation: that a Nuer man must rule the country and he was the one. Machar's calls for President Kiir to step down confirmed his answer to the prophetic call.

The trouble is that it is hard to know which country Ngundeng foretold. In the history of the area in The Nile Valley where South Sudan emerged, countries appeared, disappeared, and reappeared with different names. In Turkiyah Sudan, the Nuer people knew of their local Nuerland as their country. The British later arrived and changed the field of view. Then came South Sudanese independence and the name of the country in which Ngundeng’s prophecy would be fulfilled became harder to plot. From Nuer country to present-day South Sudan, many countries have evolved. Present South Sudan was part of the Sudan where the fulfillment of Ngundeng prophecies would have made more sense. I am convinced of Nuer's geographical expansion in the area after Ngundeng brought his prophecy of conquest to finality. Any other claims that go beyond that period are mere political-spiritual distortions for political gains. But that is South Sudanese history of political divinities anyway. It matches perfectly with other proclaimed prophecies where a date is never stated on the actual occurrences of events.

When Dr. Riek Machar left Juba as a warrior in mid-December 2013, spiritual games began to take centerstage but were only known to some South Sudanese. Riek left Juba with the dang in his hand. The Dang was the magical stick once carried and, with disputations, used positively by prophet Ngundeng against the British. It was later taken away by the same British when the prophet's son commandeered powers after the death of his father. He is said to have displayed uncooperative manners towards the British authorities and had tried to use the dang to defeat them but failed. They killed him and took the dang away, purposely to stop the craze that people attached to the harmless weapon. One wonders why the British decided to return it to South Sudan in 2010? It arrived back home, nevertheless, and Riek Machar took it into his custody. With dang around, political-spiritual matters reached a crescendo in Juba and elsewhere in the country. Riek is said to have stuck to the ownership of the stick with a deep interest in what it might give him.

On the government spiritual front, president Kiir never took the combined forces of his political arch-rivals and their prophets lightly. He must have looked around for help which eventually came from afar on the African continent in the form of the prophet with an already failed prophecy.

Somewhere in West Africa, specifically in Nigeria, Prophet TB Joshua (looked down upon at home because of his low-level education in a country with more than 72 strong universities), announced that he saw a leader in East African country being captured. He stated that if the evil was not curtailed through prayerful intercessions, thousands of lives would be lost. His prophecy did not talk of thousands that would still be lost even if the doom that would befall the head of state was averted. As prophecies continue to become unbelievably wrong these days, no one paid attention to TB Joshua's prophecy until after the events of December 2013 in Juba. President Kiir, upon learning of it, wasted no time but wrote a thankful letter and sent a delegation to TB Joshua in Nigeria with the promise that when all is finished, he would attend, in person, the Assembly of God, presided upon by TB Joshua himself. He further requested that the prophet prayed for reconciliation in South Sudan. Joshua responded with more powerful prayers, but thousands went on to die and thousands more were displaced.

But all was not resolved. Riek Machar's Dang continued to haunt president Kiir, who later got a backing of the Spear masters in his home state of Warrap to counteract the dang with the spear. That appeared to have ended the game of the gods.

From the firmament of the sky, it looks like the spiritual scores have been settled. The locus of war has now descended down from up in the heavens where it all started. It is currently on the ground, on the battlefield, where the powers of the gods must merge with those of human leaders who are, in the end, the utmost beneficiaries of the apocalypses.

Dr. Riek Machar has officially named his rebellion as a resistance movement and subsequently sidelined the controversial detainees as part of his rebellion. This sways the calculus on the negotiations table. What appeared as the SPLM party's internal problems, needing internal solutions, has assumed a configuration that would make power-sharing arrangements a bitter possibility.

Mediators in Addis Ababa will have to solve the SPLM party's problems and then turn to the rebellion whose demands would be far from the party's internal reforms. The rebellion is already feeling the pressure in regards to the question of political detainees - cum - coup plotters arrested by the government in Juba. Should the detainees become a political force, making eventual concessions with the government on reforms, the rebel group will need all of them, as one or separate bodies, to create a space. That means only one thing: the rebels are coming back to town with their armed militias, and that is another recipe for a potential renewed fighting in the capital, Juba.

Solving this spiritual-political dilemma will be hard. But the right steps must be taken. IGAD and international mediators must consider involving civil society in the peace process and more so, the church. It would also do well if a conducive atmosphere for national reconciliation precedes mandatory elections, after which the country must be structurally redesigned for what should last, not what the prophets of gods are dictating.

‘Madina’ Bor In Bor

2014-01-18T23:41:00.006-08:00

"What you see troubling people here, is your fault..."

(General Malual Ayom speaking in Dinka to advancing troops on Bor).

R-L: Gen: Malual is forth. Photo. Deng-Athoi Galuak

Talking about Bor can be tremendously challenging at times to a non-Dinka outsider because the word has a tendency to ping pong from being a name of the city of Bor proper (Popular informally as Mading Bor), to a descriptor of the Dinka section inhabiting the swathe of the Nile on the East Bank in Jonglei State. It is not even enough to stop here, but continuing on with etymology would mean making too many historical mistakes. Here, we are roughly talking of the city of Bor, Madina Bor, and perhaps Bor, the area, and the people.

From the colonial Sudan, unto independent Sudan – and South Sudan - the city of Bor had received umpteenth spotlights, both domestic and international for all reasons with good ones tipping the scale. But in the last thirty years, it had been the cataclysm that befell this serene city and her people that struggled to overshadow the best of it. The period, 2013-2014, is a case period of tragedy; the latest of these tragedies being the destruction of the city and inhumane killings by the rebels set loose by Juba’s inefficiencies of governance and democratic misguidance.

In less than a month, Bor has changed hands four times between the rebels fighting the government, and the national army, the SPLA, which is defending ‘the country’ and the ‘constitution’ yet to be rectified. Division 8 General Peter Gadet Yak, based in Bor, defected with three brigades, per the narrative of the South Sudanese army, and stormed the city on the 17^th and 18^th of December, 2013, killing about a thousand civilians, wounding many more, and displacing all that remained mainly to Awerial County in the neighboring Lakes State on the West Bank of the Nile. Other vulnerable civilians unable to make a prompt escape tolerated the terrifying ordeal of sheltering in the city’s compound of United Nations Mission In South Sudan (UNMISS). The South Sudanese army later drove Peter Gadet out of the city. A week later, the White Army mainly from Lou Nuer and Gaweer marched on the city once more, this time, on a counter-offensive with a prophetic mission of nonstop walk to Juba, the nation’s capital. Like in 1991, some villages on their way got burnt down and the people were killed indiscriminately. The march worried the nation and the world.

Residents of Juba were undeniably terror-stricken by the news of close to 25000 armed men eyeing their city of dwelling. The pressure was felt for real by those who live in the city and foreign others who knew that a violent elemental fall of Juba since its founding might unleash walking pilgrims from other armed and dissatisfied groups, hence, setting the stage for Africa’s Yugoslavia, with neighbors absorbing the shock waves of war. Rumors of war at the city’s gates were exacerbated by the newly embraced technology in the forms of mobile phones and the internet. International Media played its part to the dismay of the authorities who were themselves not impervious from trepidation. Mohamed Adow of Al Jazeera English Channel, who suggested that a reliable source told of a column of the White Army that slipped through the heavily militarized Juba-Bor road and was advancing on the capital was quickly sent packing to lessen the airing of unjustified fear. On the internet, the newly emerging nationalism disintegrated into ethnic chest-beating.

Further afield, responsibility then turned to frustration. The neutrality of president Museveni of Uganda was phenomenally compromised. As a member of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) that hurriedly descended on South Sudan for the purposes of peace, Uganda’s South Sudan matched that of the Democratic Republic of The Congo, with the responsibility to protect (R2P) winning over the concealed evacuation of stranded nationals. What began as a peaceful mission became a mission to hunt for the vainglorious rebels or in defense of the indefensible abstractions. A warrior of Museveni’s character in a war zone is indisputably not an excellent peacemaker. With South Sudan’s geographical cauldron able to gulp down Uganda at least three times, President Museveni is well-versed that ‘going after’ Joseph Konyi is less wearisome than going after Riek Machar whose 25000 White Army’s firepower on one front almost doubles the firepower that propelled the Lion of the Ruwenzori Range into rebellious reign in Uganda, back in 1986.

Bor fell again to the national army on January 18, 2014, after almost a month of battling the ‘mobilized civilians,’ as the army spokesman, Colonel Philip Aguer, would like to assume. Actually, the city was found empty when the national army moved in after surviving heavy losses in ambushes on the way aboard Ute cars, barges, and tanks as a conventional army – a strange position opposed to the good old days of not being a sitting duck on the road.

Just like the natives of this historically significant and embattled city would want to know, a perturbing question is: ‘why always Bor?’ The simple answer, among many, is that Bor is a victim of peace in a region that is otherwise peace wary. It is unwise to assume therefore that the people in this area are not doing enough to protect themselves when for generations they have done all they could to train, lead, fought and accommodated others for a national entity that would safeguard all South Sudanese. Note that Abel Alier and Joseph Lagu, first post-Addis Ababa Regional Government leaders of Southern Sudan went to Church Missionary Society School at Malek in Bor.

“...People have gone for business and abandoned the army, we have to lead the fight into Bor and the rest would follow us...,”

General Malual Ayom continued his speech to an ululating battalion of the sons of the soil. He was clearly subdued by the loss of his colleagues, General Abraham Jongroor and Ajak Yen, Gadet’s first victims of rebellion (quote inaccurate…meaning retained). The fly-in-fly-out generals in the battle of Bor are to be warned that General Malual’s bravery must not be tried in the field, only at home. This was the same General Malual who was featured on the BBC video in an ambush, self-stripped of any weapons and walking with head held high amidst the showers of bullets and disorderly dashing soldiers. The question of why Bor can pick up another answer: because Bor thinks there is a nation, but alas! General Malual needs to take 'fault' blame somewhere else.

So, when the city of Bor speaks of resilience to bounce back in the face of Gadet's atrocities to all, including those who shot the first bullets of liberation in this city (Kerubino Kuanyin and William Nyuon were also Gadet's victims), they simply mean business.

Are Jailed South Sudanese Politicians In Juba Part of the Arms-Bearing Rebels?

2014-01-15T07:10:00.004-08:00

Photo: Nyamilepedia

Whether the detained politicians in South Sudan are rebels by guilt or association is a question that takes one down memory lane to unending local, regional, and international requests for their unconditional release. The eleven prisoners were detained in connection with what the government insists as a coup attempt, but one stoutly countered by arms-bearing rebels and their international backers as a concocted incident to crack down on political rivals by President Kiir and his government. The claims and counter-claims of what really brought the country to where it is at the moment are difficult to verify, but an underlying truth stands out understandably clear: these detainees may not be firing at anyone, but their actions before the war and their status as prisoners are part of a puzzle of violence presently ensnaring the nation.

What do we know about the prisoners in question?

The prisoners were people who roamed the political and military scenery of South Sudan for years and could best be linked to events and positions they shone in order to understand their merits. Here is what we know about them: they were all members of the ruling party; many were high ranking members of the Political Bureau and National Liberation Council of the ruling party; many were illustrious military officers before independence; some held ambassadorial, gubernatorial, and ministerial positions in the government until July 2013; as part of the government, many acquired significant friends with international powers; many were suspects in massive corruption that once prompted the president to meekly send out imploring letters for a return of four billion dollars into the national treasury; prior to December 15th, they were actively behind the former vice president, Riek Machar, pushing for reforms within the party; and above all, they made it clear to the nation, on more than one occasions, that their party has lost vision and direction.

After their dismissal from the government, they became staunch critics of the government – a critical moment that ushered in the war. In custody, they are Deng Alor, former minister for cabinet affairs; Pagan Amum, former SPLM secretary-general; Cirino Iteng, former minister for culture; Madut Biar Yel, former minister for telecommunication and postal services; Oyai Deng Ajak, former minister for national security in the office of the president; Majak D’ Agoot, former deputy minister for defense; Chol Tong Mayay, former governor of Lakes state; Ezekiel Lul Gatkuoth, former ambassador to the United States; John Luk Jok, former justice minister; Kosti Manibe, former minister for finance; Gier Chuang Aluong, former minister for roads and bridges. They are all accused of plotting an abortive coup against an elected government.

Those conversant with the South Sudanese liberation history could see why their arrest or release is thorny but important. They wield a significant influence on the country's power dynamics. Their arrest or possible partaking in the ongoing rebellion is a better recipe that should convince the region and the world that the SPLM had treacherously fought for the creation of the nation, and correspondingly, demolishing it dangerously.

Technically, from the list above, the SPLM is wholly in custody or back in the bush, with remnants heading the government.

Since the detention of these politicians and the subsequent outbreak of violence, call it with a proper name as war, the talks to divert the country away from another protracted war have hovered over nothing but their 'release,' as demanded by the rebels. Although the government accepts the demand for releasing them, it argues that their release must go through legal scrutiny to clear them from the alleged coup attempt. Having thus stolen the process toward the resolution of the conflict, their weight in South Sudanese politics as well as the ongoing conflict - duped as ethnic conflict - cannot be ignored. What is important to ask, is whether these detainees are really rebels, or are being verbally bailed out from detention to join the rebellion by the rebels themselves and others who demand their release? Behind the walls of their cells, one could ask if they really hold the key to the ongoing killings, or got the mechanisms to actually end it? The truth to these questions will be known in the future, though it will be rather too late. Likewise, the truth will reveal if the rebels are using their detention case to implicate them in a comprehensive mess for a comprehensive solution.

What is obvious is that the government is determined not to release these detainees unconditionally; for the action will definitely qualify the counter-argument that what actually took place on the night of December 15^th in Juba was not a coup but a political fiasco. The government sees itself losing legitimacy in the eyes of the public and would rather maintain its consistency with the claim of a coup attempt. This, therefore, begs further questions whether guns are buzzing because of these prisoners and whether those demanding their release are asking for peace through more rebellion? That is, swelling up the rebels' ranks for better prospects for peace. It is a call that needs to be tested for its genuine peace desire for the people of South Sudan.

With negotiations currently enduring in Addis Ababa between the South Sudanese government and the rebels, led by Dr. Riek Machar, himself a former Vice President dismissed by President Kiir in an across-the-board presidential cabinet dissolution in July 2013, hints are that rebels have no interest in a ceasefire if the detained politicians are not released as a precursor to serious and realistic negotiations on the cession of hostilities. Many international voices have, too, ringed out starting from the UN, The USA, and the East African region. They all urge, but most of the time, demand the unconditional release of the political prisoners. But then the condition of their initial arrest is the one that never fully gets addressed.

Why were they arrested in the first place? It is significant to factor in that the conditions of their arrest preceded the circumstances so violent that the situation demanding their release at present is tantamount to the situation of their initial arrest. Following through carefully, the government sees no difference between the gun-wielding rebels and the detained politicians. Michael Makuei Lueth, South Sudan's Minister for Information, had once said the detainees would only be released if the court of law of the land determined it so. And that if found guilty 'they will be hang by the neck until they are dead.' The fact that the prisoners are gathering international sympathy, drives the government crazy while equally inherently impacting the peace process and the halting of the conflict. This is the prevailing confusing condition for those attempting to make peace for South Sudan through talks in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Is there any reason why Dr. Riek Machar claims the detainees?

This question allows us to look back at the minute before the disaster. Their boycott, together with Riek Machar, of the final sitting of the National Liberation Council, confirms his reason for claiming them. When the spasm of war binge ultimately birthed out in Juba on December 15^th, these detainees and Riek Machar were the immediate targets for the arrest by the government. Machar circumvented arrest as a cardinal suspect of controversy: coup d’état versus armed rebellion, the former being the charge for which the detainees are in custody for. Riek Machar mysteriously slipped out of Juba and headed straight to the state of Jonglei where he officially raised his voice that a military armed rebellion was underway. He also denounced the allegations of a coup, and as a substitute announced the illegitimacy of the South Sudanese President, adding that he should step down.

In another twist to be regretted later or might have already been, he called for the toppling of government through armed insurrection and pledged solidarity with the arrested colleagues. He is currently believed to be based somewhere in the marshlands of Nasir; the seat of his 1991 guerrilla base, or in Akobo; where he directs the marching battles of the White Army (a horde of armed youth with faces dappled with white ashes from burnt-out cow dung) or in Bor, capital of Jonglei; or anywhere on other frontlines in the Greater Upper Nile region. ‘Forced to’ yet again make painful decisions to go to war in a controversial episode of rebellion-cum-coup d’état, a seasoned warrior like Riek Machar gathers no blame for jumping into the woods rather than staying put in the capital. He quickly assessed the deteriorating political and security situations in Juba and came to an impulsive conclusion that, should it implicate him, as it came to be, he would face severe charges of treason with consequences he knew literally well might cost him an ultimate price. Hence, the bush and not the bullets were, to him, the only options in order to make strategic meaning out of the chaos.

The past in Riek's Present

In essence, Machar is well known for his rebellious past than his personality. Upon setting foot in Jonglei, he effectively became the head of a ‘second liberation’ – as he declared to the BBC some days after he left Juba - against what he believed was President Kiir surreptitiously nurturing a ‘dictatorship’ through manipulations of SPLM (Sudan People’s Liberation Movement) party processes. It is to be recalled that when he first broke away from the SPLM/A in 1991, his first grievance among several reforms he wished for, was a chronic dictatorial nature of John Garang who then headed the liberation movement. Next on his list was the challenge to a one-way ideology of the New Sudan which, to his dissatisfaction, deprived southern Sudanese a chance for self-determination exercise in any events of peace deals with Khartoum. The SPLM and its army wing later in 1994 made the reforms through a highly-publicized National Convention in Chukudum but deliberately failed to acknowledge the pressure behind such reforms. Riek Machar came back in 2002 with the drop of the slogan of ‘Garang Must Go.’ It was shelved for another period. That period came with his departure from Juba in December 2013. Thereafter, he said ‘Kiir is no longer our president, he has to go.’

Although Riek Machar joined the list of South Sudanese post-independent rebels - many of whom were lured back into peace through numerous presidential pardons - he made it lucid in an interview to the BBC that he 'never thought he would consider becoming a rebel again 'in his lifetime.' As was the case in 1991, Dr. Riek goes with a huge following when he leaves, especially his tribesmen. In the present conflict, he is seen carrying under his arm what was the SPLM Mainstream or Torit Faction, in which the current president of South Sudan was an important leader, and his designed and recycled SPLM Nasir Faction back to the bush, or precisely, back to Nasir. Those that remained behind are the current leaders in detention. They are yet to make their decisions upon release whether they are for Riek Machar's armed conflict or not. But one thing is unmistakable: the detainees were, and might as well be, his SPLM’s archenemies, better equipped to disagree with him than President Kiir himself. It will be a great disclosure later if it became perceptible that they too share his wisdom of democratic change through violence or drip away namby-pamby.

Some of the SPLM politicians such as the late Dr. Garang’s wife, Rebecca Nyandeng (guided by the spirit of John Garang as an esteemed mother of the incumbent government and the rebels alike), and Pagan Amum, now jailed, were vying for the highest office prior to the turmoil that has now cost the country the lives of about 10, 000 people (according to Brussels-based International Crisis Group) and displaced thousands.

A critical look through the ruling party, the SPLM, before violence, showed a cluster of politicians playing the game of using each other. Riek Machar was using other party colleagues to oust President Kiir, while behind him, the party was using Riek to pressure reforms in the SPLM, after which he himself would be clandestinely ousted when the democratic elections for the party's chief take place. In turn, and maintaining the government's position of a botched coup d’état, Riek Machar seemed to have dressed all the plans up in the form of a coup. This, to prisoners, would be a surprise if indeed they were immune.

The war in which everyone is desperate and reeling wild in search of the solution has become the war to release the prisoners. "Cease hostilities and release the detainees" appears to be the catchphrase for South Sudan's overtly denied but covertly accepted ethnic conflict. Other voices are, however, needed to pressure the government to speed up the due process of law in order to set the stage for their release. When the tides settle on the negotiations table, whether or not in the events of detainees' ultimate release, achieving a ceasefire to stop bloodshed would be the only thing to count on. To some extent, as I wrongly rephrase John Garang's view of peace in the two Sudan, 'there is no peace per se, even the graveyard is peaceful.'

Presidential Guards in Juba: Mistiming The Nation’s ‘Zero Hour.'

2013-12-17T23:29:00.001-08:00

Pic: SPLA soldiers. Photo by Lomoyatdit

The eve of presidential guards’ clashes in Juba on December 14, 2013, trailed the long-awaited convening of the Political Bureau by the ruling party, The SPLM; whose political party structures had adhered to linearity in the order and commissioning of business since 1994 when the first National Conventions was convened in Chukudum, Eastern Equatoria. The business protocol of the party had been to convoke The National Convention, a gathering of several hundreds of delegates nationwide; The National Liberation Council, which is composed of no more than 275 members; The Political Bureau, whose membership stands at 27; and The General Secretariat, from where the start of the party national activities work their ways upwards through corridors of intervening powers.

The year 2013, however, introduced confusing changes. In the least, President Kiir on November 15, 2013, made a controversial dissolution of the party organs, a very surprising move that indicated was aimed at SPLM heavyweights who were recently part of the government, including Dr. Riek Machar; himself a self-declared aspirant for the party mantle for 2015 presidential elections. Consequently, the convening of National Liberation Council (NLC), contrary to the anticipated Politburo, took priority but did nothing to alleviate already simmering political temperatures over party leadership. SPLM party wrangling on power had had an immense impact on the nation’s viability three years into freedom.

As the president lambasted his opponents in NLC with claims of non-deviation from the movement since its inception, his deliberate reference to the 1991 Bor Massacre (already apologized for by Riek Machar and reluctantly forgiven by Bor communities) perforated old wounds and succinctly proclaimed a national doom in front of the ‘prophet of doom,’ as he later referred to Dr. Riek Machar. From that point, armed elements commenced mistiming of events in what has led to the death of scores of people, both civilians, and military personnel. Civilians have so far become the underdogs, caught in the crossfire, targeted for no reason, or locked in their homes without food or water in Juba. Reports have hinted that the Jonglei capital of Bor had come under heavy gunfire with several deaths reported.

Either it was a coup d'état or security forces mishandling reassignments in their quarters, The SPLM has tarnished its reputation by putting innocent lives at risk. Whatever the truth in the recent government rhetoric, the rhyme and whine over state power from the leaders carry the blame for the current state of affairs in Juba.

South Sudan has a history of rebellions which had been made excessively ethnical during the decades of war of independence. It is a reality that can be seen in all aspects of life in the country. It’s, therefore, the responsibility of the SPLM leadership to have acquainted itself with this reality by urging leaders to refrain from using ethnic cards in their power manipulations. It is now apparent that the much-internationalized marginalization of the people had been put to an end with the achievement of sovereignty. The unknown components of democratization have proved so alien to South Sudanese governing guerrillas. Tranquil years starting from 2005 to 2013 sowed hope that the country was in the best stage of democratic progression. This is not to dismiss David Yau, George Athor, and other rebels who were dissatisfied with democratization processes, service delivery profanation, and grand systemic corruption. Yet, the country was, by and large, seemed hopeful.

But cynics had a point. South Sudan had nevertheless continued to offer messianic credence to many who predicted her current affairs. A lot had been said about the people of South Sudan before the nation entered a defining moment in 2011; when for the first time, South Sudanese became their own masters. Concerns ranged from the inability of the people to govern themselves democratically, to possible intolerance of human rights. None of those predictions failed to prove wrong. There have been concerns of possible ‘Somalization’ or ‘Balkanisation’ of the country. Such concerns were perceived by ordinary citizens as voices not so divergent from the clenched fists of a coloniser’s misconstructions of innate abilities of the people. But the people’s party has never been at par with them.

Many South Sudanese are not in the know why The SPLM has become such a demigod that politicians fear to exit or lose it. Clamouring for the SPLM tells ordinary South Sudanese that our guerrilla-turned-politicians have nothing better to offer when conferred with state power other than stressing liberation history through the party to predominantly uneducated masses in the rural areas. There is no reason why the politicians who are supposed to be judicious and charismatic shy away from forming their own parties to offer a formidable challenge to the ruling elites which, in fact, is one way to peaceful resolutions of political squabbles. There is equally no reason why the governing SPLM flayed party processes which are part of a democratic transformation. If the politicians have faith in the people of South Sudan; strong confidence and clarity on the policies they wish to implement for the people, then they should not have permitted the bloodshed for the past three days (Dec., 15^th, 16^th, and 17^th), and days to come.

To the South Sudanese army, civilians would have disciplined their politicians through the ballot box. You have mistimed their zero hour.

Abyei: Abandoned In Unilateral Referendum

2013-10-25T06:27:00.007-07:00

Photo credit: Lwal Baguoot

Another summit has lately gone by without agreement between the two presidents: Bashir and Kiir over the future of Abyei. Abyei’s question had tumbled down to a two-man dialogue from both its international and national projection as a deciding region of statehood for South Sudan and possibly, Sudan. It is now an issue of table manners for the two heads of state. Since none of the presidents is ready to correct his manners, deadlock continues to rule. What is wrong with the future of Abyei?

Some people in the Republic of Sudan call it the Kashmir of the Sudans by, perhaps, inaccurately contrasting its geographical location, ethnic composition, strategic national security and resources implications, and religious affiliation to the region at the foothills of the Himalayas, which is controversially administered by three nations: China, India, and Pakistan. A very unfortunate comparison indeed! However, judging by the look of insanity involved in the two regions, Abyei could easily and sadly qualify had the decisive dissimilarity not been that of its history. By settlement, Abyei cannot and has never been synonymous in character with Kashmir. The notoriety of claims by Sudan through Messeriya transhumance is the problem of the area. Abyei is a region claimed by both Sudan and South Sudan. It sits perilously on the borders of the two staunched enemies (South Sudan, to Sudan, is the number two enemy state after the state of Israel). It has long been seen along with several other areas as a conflict flashpoint on the North-South borders of Sudan. Its inhabitants are, according to the 2005 Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement, nine Ngok Dinka, and others.

Ngok is a Nilotic section of Dinka broadly famous among other Dinka sub-tribes as Ngong Deng Kuol/Majok or Ngong Abyei. Historically, the family of Arop Biong through Kuol Arop and Deng Kuol or Deng Majok and other descendants in the line maintained the chieftaincy of Abyei in what was the volatile part of the last quarter of 19^thC and first quarter of 20^thC. This period, according to historians with authority on Sudan such as Douglas Johnson, was when the area experienced intense slave raids.

Pragmatically, Sudanese Arabs saw venturing south through Abyei as a mission of advancing Islamization to the rest of Africa by whatever means necessary. Most of the time, it was through aggression: slave raids, trade, accessing resources forcefully, or cultural conquest. Oral histories along the borders of Sudan and South Sudan bear no wickedness in stating that the coming of Arabs to Sudan has led to embittered relationships of all times. Along the borders, the Jieng, the Naath, and the Collo continue to tell vigilante stories due to unforeseen attacks. Security at the borders has always continued to be a blister needing caution even from the depth of sleep. Records reveal that an administrative transfer of Abyei to Kordufan in 1905 was a means to curtail or lessen aggressiveness towards Ngok. Aggression towards Ngok has mostly been engendered by the Messeriya section of Humr; now claimants of the nativity by transhumance through Abyei.

Other inhabitants of Abyei are non-Ngok Dinka but those who have lived there for generations. These are the ‘others’ acknowledged in the Machakos protocol on Abyei. Note that "other" is an ogre of malevolence and a significant term of substance in Abyei’s case. The owners of the land, the Ngok Dinka, at their own discretion cannot shed off the term even if asked to do so. From "others," we get the presence of Messeriya Arabs in Abyei who are either historically a welcome group of individual settlers among the population or those who weaved into Ngok communities through intermarriages. If you ask the Ngok Dinka what others in Abyei are, they will precisely point out that so and so over there are the ‘others’ in their region. Ask anyone in Khartoum and the list may include the planes that fly above the region – a deliberate misunderstanding of facts. So, who are the real Messeriya in Abyei?

From the snapshot above, it should be easy to place Abyei in its rightful place. As the month of October 2013 concludes, sureness and inviolability of life for the natives in Abyei will depend, for better or for worst, on the decision that will be taken by the majority. Indeed, emotions from failures of the AUHIP and UN Security Council have driven the citizens of Abyei and sympathizers in general to feelings of dissatisfaction, uncertainty as well as a bolstered enragement. Why would they not harbor these feelings when daily life in the region is a terrifying ordeal: full of uncertainty, deprived of the natural bequest in terms of oil resources, constantly threatened by Messeriya Arabs and for the unknown session, held between the two mystical states that would never ever agree on anything without coercion? Successive deliberations and negotiations processes have stalled indefinitely leaving Ngok community as in-betweens of Khartoum and Juba. It is on these uncertainties that the citizens of Abyei have decided, stealthily perhaps, to hold an independence referendum to determine their national status.

Of course, there is a worry. The plebiscite is eclipsed by anecdotal evidence that the Messeriya, armed by the Sudan government and given assurance that they too belong in Abyei, may likely cause a bloodbath. Also, Satellite images from Satellite Sentinel Project (SSP) of the Hollywood actor George Clooney and John Prendergast of Enough Project have reported extraordinary Sudanese military activities from their bases closer to Abyei. Sudan has a potted history of taking advantage of precarious situations. The invasion of Abyei in 2010 in which thousands of civilians were displaced serves as evidence. The killing of the paramount chief of Abyei, Kuol Deng Kuol, while accompanied by United Nations Interim Security Force in Abyei (UNISFA) has further exacerbated the resolve to go ahead with the vote.

What is the position of South Sudan in this mess? The vocal push by South Sudanese politicians and notable figures had fuelled the desire for the citizens of Abyei to go forward with voting decision regardless of formal agreement on the matter. One is surprised by the South Sudan government's reversion in tone and support for the people of Abyei. Whatever eventuality that the people of Abyei may encounter, South Sudan should know that it is part of it. Denial of reality is simply unprincipled and dangerous.

It would have made rational sense if the two countries had resolved Abyei’s self-determination exercise in a manner that reckons responsibility and value of human life. Leaving the inhabitants of Abyei to decide their own fate is indistinguishable from entrenching inter-state animosity between the two countries and between Abyei and its Messeriya neighbours for eternity. It is too late now.

In answer to the question of the real Messeriya, consider that every year millions of passengers go through Heathrow Airport in the UK on their way to greener pastures anywhere in the world. If by strange happening UK votes to determine its fate, whether to go to Mars or remains on earth, it will be only the Whites indigenous and Chinese or Indian or African ‘others’ permanently based in The UK as citizens that will determine UK’s future. Not millions of Chinese, Indians and Africans that go through Heathrow. The Messeriya on maroon cows passing through Abyei are comparable to the passengers on an Airbus A380 passing through the UK. It is the transit fee that is needed to be paid.

Ad Hoc Technocracy In South Sudan

2013-07-25T10:45:00.028-07:00

Photo credit, owner. Pagan Amum, SPLM SG.

Finally, the push has come to shove in Juba. In a move that dazed many South Sudanese as well as international observers of political developments in South Sudan, President Salva Kiir Mayardit had on 23rd July 2013 bravely dissolved his government. It was highly anticipated but vulgarly engendered by poor government performance and the struggle for power within the ruling party, the SPLM. The multiple presidential decrees relieved the vice president, 29 ministers, 29 deputy ministers, and 17 brigadier generals in the police force. Another promised an overhaul of the government ministries while the SPLM Party Order suspended the Secretary-General of the SPLM. The SG, in another capacity, functioned as the chief negotiator in the post-independent arrangements with Sudan

As could be construed in these shake-ups, all efforts seemed to have been designed to prioritize the efficiency of the government. However, punishing dissent and rewarding supporters often go along with situations of this nature. It will be clear in the formation of the next government if all intentions were for the good of the nation or actions that are circumspect disciplinary among the SPLM's heavyweights. The dissolution has already been believed by many as targeting the removal of the vice president, Riek Machar Teny, who had on numerous occasions, criticized the government while voicing his wish to lead the party into the next elections.

The president's application of his constitutional prerogative was the second since he took power as the new country's first bearer of the highest office after independence. He had reshuffled the same government in 2010, but with the least panic from the street. Many more were expected but did not materialize. As some residents in Juba confirmed, the situation had since changed. The city remained tense, making the likelihood for a small bang of any kind to disrupt the day. On the other hand, citizens who have been calling out for the government to do more are now shy of praise even though their wishes are being slowly fulfilled. The need for effective service delivery had been overshadowed by fear of violent reprisal from the demoted government officials who might be left out of the incoming government, especially from the outgoing Vice President and his supporters. However, I am of the belief that Riek Machar had done his calculations correctly, and the presumptions many might have for him – especially his penchant for power in which he often applies violence in its pursuit – have something to do with his past, not his present. But who can testify for Riek? He is a man cut for his own desires and might do exactly what people think he couldn't.

Cognizant of the oil shutdown and the war with the Sudan in Panthou, South Sudanese see this second reshuffle as exceedingly bizare but on equal terms with previous actions in which proper plans were reserved to be attempted afterwards. The plan is now for the president to sit down with his advisers and do the mammoth task of selecting the new cabinet while the government in Juba remains literally in the hands of technocrats in the respective ministries. It was simple to set the pace of restructuring, but the enormity of the task at hand might likely require weeks to complete. That would leave a vacuum for possible unruliness. The president must act fast and in the approved manner in his formaton of a new government.

Can the president be encouraged to be a little harder? If President Kiir is to be beleived and trusted, he has to do a bit more. Whether internal party wrangling for leadership might have caused the dissolution, South Sudanese and the world are wishing to see that the 75 officials whom he sent letters to return the stolen US$4 billion must not show faces in the next government. Of course, if the wells of the decrees have not run dry, expectations are that few remaining decrees must be channeled towards the formation of investigation committees to probe the whereabouts of US$4 billion for the benefit of the impoverished citizens.

Boma That Fell: The ‘Al-Qaeda’ of SSDA Rebellion

2013-05-14T07:14:00.001-07:00

The South Sudanese town of Boma in Pibor County had fallen to South Sudan Democratic Army, SSDA, a gubernatorial rebellion led by David Yau. The same month, May 2013, the South Sudanese army at the frontline in Pibor demonstrated uncharacteristic display by abandoning positions at the frontline and going on a looting spree in Pibor itself as many reports propose. Other incidences of civil disorder staged by the retreating army from Pibor have been reported on the outskirts of Bor town, the state capital.

Although the army behaviour could not be delinked from poor performance in service delivery and logistical negligence, the fall of Boma plateau is remarkably atypical. It is possibly the very first time that a military incursion into the SPLA/M Boma had merely lasted for minutes, if not hours, after which her inhabitants are sent helter-skelter into the immediate surroundings or merciless Tingily semi-desert. It is implausibly difficult to put thoughts together in determining the underlying circumstances that led to the easy slip of Boma into the hands of the militia. The South Sudanese media and the military seemed to have also resigned to the fall of Boma. No one knows if Boma has been abandoned only for a season or for eternity.

This raised questions whether the softly captured and eerily whispered Boma in the news was the same Boma that served as the springboard into Eastern Equatoria by East Equatoria Axis in 1980s? Was this the Boma so known to Major Nyachigak Nyachiluk, Lt Colonel Martin Manyiel Ayuel, commander Kuol Amum, Commander Gilario Modi Hurnyang, and Bol Madut or the Kiswahili ‘boma’ the homestead? South Sudanese who have wandered the bushes of South Sudan during the war for the total liberation of southern Sudan are perhaps asking these questions. One convincing answer rests in the reasoning that the mentality about the importance of Boma has increasingly become elusive to leaders and the military. The Boma of today is not synonymous anymore to the Boma of yore.

The Boma of today, the Boma of South Sudanese regular and paid army, the Boma that could be captured, and the course of history would never change, the liberated and outlandish Boma of logistical clumsiness and of command and control debacles was probably the Boma that fell. This is the Boma that nobody cares if it is overrun a thousandfold for it will forever be in South Sudan. Welcome then to Jebel Buma, the Upper and Lower Boma, ‘Boma Up and Boma Down’ (as Kuol Manyang, the defense minister put it), the SPLA and SSDA Berlin divided by ridges.

The Boma of old was a different bush town, too daring to meddle with and too comfortable to hold on to. It became the recuperating point for recruits and refugees crossing Sahara Tingily either way between Ethiopia and South Sudan. Incarcerated SPLA/M political prisoners like Arok Thon Arok, Kerubino Kuanyin Bol, and others had their home at Upper Boma. At an elevation of about 1100 meters above sea level, anyone defending it had an eye view of the attackers and wielding a demigod power to rain munitions on them. During the dry season, her surrounding semi-desert was always a deeply cracked and waterless alluvial soil; a hell of a place not only to thirsty humans but also to animals. Boma was undeniably impermeable to alien forces. The SPLA forces stormed it once and battled for its defense countable times.

It was Major Bior Ajak, famous as Tahir Bior Abdala Ajak, who commanded the Neran battalion that forcefully entered Boma for the first time in the early 1980s and established a command base for Eastern Equatoria Axis. The SPLA/M Movement was at the time arching out military operational fronts throughout Southern Sudan. Since that time, Boma never fell to Jellaba and their allies. One proven historical wartime reality had for years stood unremittingly opposed to the quick fall of the area to external invasion after its initial capture: elevation of Boma itself. The town or a post had always served as a defensive armory to her inhabitants throughout the twenty-one years of war, particularly where there was a will to defend it. That willpower is unquestionably dwindling much to the forgetfulness of the eminence of the area as a national heritage.

The prominence of the Boma plateau and its national importance in South Sudan is as historical as it is strategically significant. Boma is the hub of wildlife diversity in South Sudan, expanding in the area to about 2300000ha, probably followed by Chelkou. It is an area of vast resources that a nation could tap into for economic gains and progress. Little known to many is the botanical implication of Boma. Boma has a profusion of Coffee Arabica grows in its rain forest ecosystem as a wild plant. This is a rare gift of nature that ought to keep Boma within the government’s arm’s length for resource mobilization and development in the country. It was first noticed in colonial Sudan in the 1930s by a botanist, Dr. A.S. Thomas. He later wrote an academic paper in 1942 entitled: “The wild Arabica coffee on the Boma Plateau, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.” After that, Boma slipped into the Sudanese negligence of her multiple marginalities. So if anyone feels the compulsion to tabulate the regions of national importance in South Sudan, Boma will, for a reason to be defended, jostle in the second place after oil fields.

There are veritable corollaries of the fall of Boma to Yau Yau rebel forces but one is of particular concern: the Potentiality for the expansion of broad-based rebellion that might recruit, not only from the Murle but also from other local population in the area. Boma is home to Murle, Kishipo/Suri and Anyuak. It is therefore indispensable to worry for invariable reasons since the ethnic composition of Boma is that of a people who have never been friends, but may find a unifying factor in Yau Yau. He could use Murle pastoralists to forcefully recruit sedentary agriculturalists Kishipo and Anyuak.

A biblical maxim states that a prophet is not accepted in his hometown. Yau Yau’s testimonial of seriousness in South Sudan would likely be felt when he exerts control over Murle’s adjacent communities. The probable outcome would be an establishment of a base - the Al Qaeda of the rebellion. If this happens, Juba might not have to worry about Boma but Pachalla, Jebel Raid, and Pakok/Korchum without forgetting the support Yau Yau might get among the Taposa. Effectively, Juba would be cut off from the Ethiopian and Kenyan Borders closest to it.

This move could completely turn the tables on summary ‘amnesties’ that the government is fond of extending. Often such amnesties have only served to build personalities than to provide credible solutions. There is proven belief going around that ‘if you want to be a Major-General in the South Sudanese army, first be a rebel.’ Well, a rebel one might be and Major General one might win, but certainly what angers a civilian to take up arms in the first instance may get him into the woods again albeit heavily laden with military titles. Yau Yau is a case in point.

From Gumuruk, the village town of one blue mountain, Yau Yau the pastoralist and theologian is presently in the mountains of ‘Boma Up’ Plateau. Opposite to his theological training as a preserver of souls, he is slaying people up there. The South Sudanese army must do a lot more to bring him to ‘Boma Down’ and out of town.

Wau Casualties of Taking Towns to People

2012-12-14T06:01:00.005-08:00

Just like the time of Jervas Yak ubango, acting governor of Bahr el Ghazal during the premiership of Mohamed Ahmed Mahjoub (1965-1966, 1967-1969), and on a completely differential paradox, the city of Wau on Sunday 9^th December 2012, witnessed death in yet another horrible setting.

It all began with Western Bahr El Ghazal State governor, Mr. Rizik Zakaria Hassan’s cabinet decision to transfer Wau County headquarters to Bagari, about 12 miles Southwest of Wau town, in an apparent reckoning of taking services closer to people. The decision had made the local town dwellers uneasy, prompting them to take to the streets in protest. The ensued drama was a horrendous nightmare. A video coming out from Aljazeera English Channel clearly shows people with guns firing into the crowds of unarmed civilians, many on foot, some on bicycles, and others on motorbikes. The dead are seen on the ground in pools of blood in the aftermath of the shooting. South Sudan government and the police are yet to agree on who did the killing. Whichever side will take the responsibility; the action was unacceptable and unpatriotic. The defensive governor, Rizik Zachariah Hassan, was on record denying that the demonstrators were killed in the clash with the police - or the army. Earlier the minister of Information and Communications, Mr. Derik Alfred Uya, said that about eight people were killed. Numerical flaws sway between 25 deaths and the number that Mr. Derek had put forward. In fairness, he had outperformed the governor who denied in totality that any of the protesters were killed. Why did a simple street protest that teargas with batons might solve attract the full gallantry of the police? The anger shown by protesters, as alleged, in setting ablaze what was in the way could have risen to such height due to slackness in conveying to the people the decision of the cabinet to move the headquarters out of town.

One was stunned to see the repeat in South Sudan of South African police heavy-handedness, which characterized the apartheid regime and more recently, during the Lonmin’s Marikana platinum mine in which the police gunned down thirty-four miners in cold blood. South Sudan government and Western Bahr el Ghazal government, in particular, ought to do better than allow the civilians to die for the decision that should have been communicated smoothly to the people. Had the transfer of the headquarters been thoroughly and candidly put to the people, this incident could have been averted. The wanton use of force by the police will serve as a signal that the life of the citizens is of little value. Wau and its authorities must chart a different trend in order not to bring to memories massacres that nearly made it the city of death in the past.

Similar incidences had occurred in Wau before, in which authorities had acted out of malice on people. But the circumstances were different. One of these incidences is easy to recall from history. On the night of July 11, 1965, two cousins, Cypriano Cier and Ottavio Deng Maroro Rian wedded two sisters and daughters of a prominent chief, Benjamin Lang Juk. The wedding took place in Wau cathedral whereupon a double wedding party was announced. Many southern intellectuals were invited to the party. The government of premier Mohamed Ahmed Mahjoub saw it fit to exterminate southern intellectuals at one sweep since southern Sudan was then a war zone and activities of the Anya Nya needed to be curbed. The difference between a southerner in town and those of the outlaws Anya Nya in the bush was proving difficult. To end the southern quest for a free country, the best way to do it was to cut off the head of the southern region through her knowledgeable cadres. It follows that the wedding party was surrounded at night by the army and everyone, including the brides and bridegrooms, was massacred. Wau woke up on the 12^th July 1965 to a sobering count of seventy-six dead people, forty-nine of whom were southern government officials.

Jervas Yak Ubango, the acting governor who was revered as a high-quality public administrator, was forced by the government to deny the occurrence of the incident. He, in his own right, luckily escaped death earlier that night by leaving the venue just minutes before the killing occurred. In facts twisting, typical of Sudanese politicians, Sayed Ahmed al- Mahdi, minister of interior said the army had to shoot because some of the outlaws were planning to attack the armed forces and were using the wedding as a launching pad, and that they searched the party venue and have found weapons and ammunition. Al-Ayam newspaper on the ground disapproved the minister’s allegation of the plan to attack the town as well as the presence of the outlaws in the wedding party. The paper was shut down for its defiance.

Unlike Wau of the 1960s, home to wolves and sheep, Wau of the modern era is expected to play a critical role in spreading development, not to serve as a city of terror anymore. If Dr. John Garang were to be alive, his astonishment in witnessing the first casualties of his aphorism of taking towns to people vis-à-vis the popular expectation of the reverse would be eminent. Garang suggested the idea in president Kibaki’s State House, Nairobi in 2005 and in presence of many African and world’s dignitaries and heads of states and governments during the signing of Six Machakos Protocols. For South Sudanese present at the time, it was sweet on the ears. The harbinger of towns coming to the villages was what was needed, or expected so as to realize the fullest of freedom.

When Garang made the statement, however, the pressing issue was the reality of peace coming to the old towns. General Lazarus Sumbeiywo, IGAD envoy in charge of the Sudanese peace process had just completed his tactical knowledge of bush dashing and had managed to bring the parties to peace together to sign the penultimate documents, which were to pave the way towards the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. It was at the State House in Nairobi that the merry-go-round came to full circle. Because of fear that the Sudanese were infiltrating the negotiating delegations every time an agreement was about to be stroke and causing delays and possible stall, Sumbeiywo had moved negotiations venue from Naivasha, Machakos, Nyanuki and finally to Nairobi thereby confining the fly-in-fly-out parallel negotiators from Khartoum to hotels. This, for records, saw the success of peace succeeded, and as a consequence made the CPA "The Nairobi Agreement." It would have been the "Washington Agreement" had the IGAD committee accepted president Bush’s request to have it signed in the White House.

In truth, peace was coming. To many who had never been to towns in the old Sudan, the idea of towns coming home in the villages was just right. At least the overweening behaviour of town folks would come to an end when the country achieves independence. No one would again ask anyone about having been to Juba, Wau, etc. In fact, it would be the village folks that would be asking themselves if towns have come to their villages. But a few must have given it an indebt reflection if it would involve administrative reordering and shifting. Indeed, following this lack of knowledge, what happened in Wau had doled out that there must have been a belief in a cheeky hypothesis that towns would be built from scratch and people asked to inhabit them in full functioning. It is a terrible misunderstanding! However, Wau is a city of controversies where death en masse had horrific historical precedence.

And The Question is: What killed Isaiah Abraham?

2012-12-11T00:08:00.006-08:00

On December 5th, 2012, a day that has become one of the drabbest days in South Sudan, and particularly bloodcurdling within the circles of the intellectuals and the media, Isaiah Abraham was killed in the coldest of the night by, thus far, unknown assailants. The brutal killing of Isaiah Abraham - a real person whose real name had been wrongly understood to be a cognomen for Isaiah Diing Abraham Chan Awol - a political commentator and a government critic from within, shook the nation that Wednesday morning. Many thought Isaiah Abraham, a name familiar to many readers of South Sudanese sociopolitical and economic commentaries, was that of a coward guy hiding behind a pseudonym. But he wasn’t. As an ordained Christian pastor and born of a Christian family that follows baptismal renaming cult, Isaiah had nothing hidden in who he was. In actual fact, he was just he: Isaiah Abraham.

It is believed that Isaiah was confronted in his house in the wee hours of the morning and was physically assaulted and eventually silenced by the barrel of a gun. Family, friends, and his readers were crumbled by the news of his death. Dark clouds hang over freedom of expression as well, for Isaiah could only die through what he writes. Those who were greatly affected were members of the South Sudanese blogosphere who intuitively felt the urge by the country’s sheer lack of development in its wholesomeness (physical infrastructure, change in attitudes, psychological development, ideological development, social development, etc.), and who wished to save the country by offering advice from a politically non-allied perspective. They had initially thought that the gunmen might now need the intellectuals to push the nation to its credible viability. But on this day they were wrong. The brutal death of Isaiah Abraham left many querying where in the world would enduring stability and development of a nation not require the two polarities to cooperate and coexist? Following the news of the death of Isaiah Abraham, there appeared to be no room for intellectual comments in South Sudan. Never had it crossed anyone's mind that the penman, usually located within the capitals: Juba, Torit, Malakal, Aweil, Bor, Yambio, Bentiu, Abyei, Rumbek, Kuacjok; and in the diaspora, would inadvertently enter into war with the gunmen. Such seems to be the unfolding state of affairs. It is hinted that Isaiah Abraham had received threatening phone calls before he was eventually hunted down and killed. The queerness of it all is that threats have continued to be issued to others after him.

There are people who say they have received anonymous phone calls ordering them to cease making critical comments on the Internet about the death of Isaiah Abraham. Those receiving these death calls from hell are told to shut up or face the consequences. But Isaiah Abraham was a major in the SPLA (Sudan People’s Liberation Army) and bore the brunt of war so that those who do not speak for themselves would have the prospect of living the dream of freedom. He is not a man whose name should be whispered with fear, not when he is dead. There are courageous statements in the media from many South Sudanese citizens who do not want to comply. Some of his readers say that if Isaiah Abraham wasn’t quiet, then no reason to quieten about his death when what killed him may still be out there.

What really killed Isaiah Abraham? My assumption is that many South Sudanese writers, bloggers, columnists, commentators, and their readers are in the full knowledge that what they write or read about is often not about themselves but what they ought the society to be for everyone. A commentator like Isaiah, who wrote till death, did so because he wanted to see an equitable, just, and fair society flourishing in South Sudan. It would conversely be of no much an interest to focus on the human face of who took the life of Isaiah Abraham. At this point, speculations are that his death, if methodically investigated, may not criminalize one individual but a system of some category. Believing this may be the case, then, logically, there is no prison structurally capable of hosting culprits of a crime of such enormity. South Sudanese too, are aware that investigations have been ordered in the past, and to present, no culprits have been incarcerated. The kidnapping and near-death torture of Deng Athuai, the Chairperson of South Sudan's Civil Society Alliance, is a case in point. Deng’s attempts to let the government disclose the names of seventy-five officials meekly implored in the letters sent to each one of them to return the money to the national treasury landed him in a sack, thoroughly beaten and left for dead just a few kilometers from the outskirts of Juba. Other tortures and disappearances have been reported. These tortures and now the death of Isaiah Abraham makes one believes that whoever kills and tortures cannot be found. Only what makes the killer so ferocious could be unwrapped.

The events leading to Isaiah’s demise are clear. Many think the country’s leadership is perching on shame for failing to restart oil flow and correspondingly, reeling in fear of an unforeseen seat-swapping civil unrest if things stand the way they are. It is important to note here that the South Sudan government remains the major employing sector in the country, and with ninety-eight percent of its budget coming from oil, stakes of discord can never be any higher. The private sector is yet to emerge. The quintessential truth rests on what citizens see; impending suffering might be looming. There is no economy that anyone would say is free-falling, rather, there is no real economic move from ground zero. On the political-economic front, neighboring Sudan holds the nation by the throat. No future date is set for oil flow insight, borderlands are being invaded, and prices of anything but everything are skyrocketing in the local markets. Frustration is comprehensible on the faces of the people. These and others are what Isaiah Abraham was commenting on.

The second last article he wrote mentioned his participation in the demonstrations. He was among the demonstrating crowd of the people of Northern Bahr el Ghazal and other areas who dissent Mile-14 and other borderlands in the security arrangement between Sudan and South Sudan. He also wrote strongly about South Sudan’s intransigence in dealing with the Sudanese rebels. The facts that Isaiah wrote about are strong enough. In fact, someone who is ill-trained in matters of national security would think he had trespassed too close. But he was miles away. Sometimes his controversial commentaries leave some with doubts as to what he was unto. Some thought Isaiah was the government, or at least, its agent. Until now, some people are yet to be convinced of who Isaiah Abraham really was. Even some of us who might have seen Isaiah physically would not be able to clear this mystique. However, in the face of this anonymity in the person of Isaiah, just as much as the anonymity of his killers would keep clouding our vision of the reality, one thing would be clear, with or without investigation into his death – the question of what killed him. Could Isaiah Abraham be a victim of ordinary crime - of which Juba is said to be notorious due to lack of effective crime-stopping mechanisms, or comments on Mile-14, Sudanese rebellions, leadership stagnation, fear of an uprising, lack of basic services in the country, or siphoning corruption? What is it?

Ordinary citizens who love South Sudan as a country and the shrewd Isaiah Abraham would be gratified in the ultimate justice if what killed him is systemically addressed. What killed Isaiah, when found, might probably be what is killing the nation. If Isaiah Abraham, a man without an opposition briefcase and following could die for his views, then South Sudanese opposition leaders in the like of Dr. Lam Akol are justified to oppose via remote control.

Mile-14 in the Security Arrangement: Failure, Arrogance or Lack of Popular Understanding

2012-10-20T23:19:00.002-07:00

South Sudan politics is beginning to move along the customary of realpolitik. Just recently, the populace living on the new country’s borders voiced their misgivings over land issues in the government’s agreement with Khartoum. Their grievances appear to have been ignored without proper explanations and the political latitude tilted towards religion. South Sudan is now sending her first independent black Muslims to Mecca on a presidential sanction to cast their pebbles at Kaaba al musharraffa (the black stone), in a ritual move that will define one of the SPLM’s premises of the New Sudan built on equality of all races and favouring freedom of religion. As many South Sudanese do not hold any bad feelings towards those who have fought to have their freedom of worship recognised in the theology of colour-blindness, expectations are that the same support the president extended to potential black sheikhs, where they must travel to Saudi Arabia without having to go through any religious medium, be also extended to those who fought for so long to gain reclaim the land and oil resources within it.

Two days after the South Sudan legislative assembly ratified nine bilateral agreements including Mile-14 in a near-unanimous vote, the Minister of Petroleum and Mining, Stephen Dhieu, ordered oil companies to commence operation with immediate effect through Sudan’s oil infrastructures. The timing could not be perfect for the petrified and internationally cornered government of South Sudan that experienced the first-ever peaceful demonstrations by the citizens against it. The people of Northern Bahr el Ghazal and other citizens who disapproved of the oil agreement did not see the security arrangement relating to Mile-14 just as a temporary pen-and-paper arrangement – as mediators would want all to believe – but in terms of land and the legal backdrops attached to it.

Unlike the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the two Sudans – a model of accomplishment that should have been adopted for peaceful deliberations by South Sudan’s ruling party (The SPLM) with Sudan – which was first communicated to the citizens from grassroots to diaspora by late Dr. John Garang - the already missed savviest negotiator and architect of peace in the Sudans - oil agreement becomes visible to have been a shove down the throat to the citizens. If there is anything that South Sudan government must be credited for, it is the sincerity and easy lending of its sensitive documentations, classified or otherwise. The nine bilateral agreements instantaneously hit the web the moment they were signed in Addis Ababa on the 27 September 2012 and by the time President Kiir and his mediators arrived in Juba, the populace had already gurgled the contents of the agreement and were waiting to hear from their face-down heroes. When this awareness took a little longer, the Mile-14 people, Abyei people and the people of other contested areas made no concealed articulation of their fears. They demonstrated on the streets of Juba and around South Sudan parliament amidst gunfire in the air. Inside the parliament, the president was not substantively convincing the lawmakers to make the right decision but coerced them to ratify the agreement through his hard language and denigration of the protesters outside the building.

But what exactly is in the security arrangement involving Mile-14 between Sudan and South Sudan that warranted mediators and president’s arrogance in communicating with the South Sudanese affected by the agreement?

The agreement was actually simple and it was this simplicity that the people quickly understood. And in simple summary, it can be stated that the security arrangement over Mile-14 deviated from the CPA path and the essence of fighting for the land and the negotiators, under pressure, created by admission of a problem from out of the blue thereby subjecting the land of Dinka Malual to future legal contest. It had further exposed and compromised the security of the people in the area who had for ages battled for their survival singlehandedly in the hope that a future nation in which they would be part of would not kowtow under any stress but to stand with them.

This summary has no nonsensical legal jargons that need consultation. It is therefore surprising that South Sudanese mediators and the president would dare question the intellectual capability of millions who read the document in totality and felt it was a game of oil flow but in the dubious way that will eventually haunt them.

I remember sitting a few meters from the SPLM’s negotiating panel at Kenyatta International Conference Centre in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2004 where Dr Garang gave a lengthy deconstruction of the Machakos protocols and the intricate arithmetic of oil sharing. When asked about the reason behind equal oil quota allocation in wealth-sharing agreement, his argument was fairly simple. He urged the people to accept fifty per cent and use their referendum vote to get the other fifty per cent. It is therefore the leader that must have the propensity to make complex agreements clear before adopting them in a binding agreement rather than gloating in a manner suggestive of a reverse of an argument.

The South Sudan negotiators, including President Kiir might have a completely different interpretation of the security arrangement involving Mile-14. This is not a new obsession in Sudanese politics where the truth is often absurdly entrapped in the opposite plane in order to cause confusion, delay, suffering and domestic and international frustration. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement, negotiated by Dr John Garang, and Ali Osman Taha, whose portfolio went to John Garang immediately after the implementation modality went into effect, referred to Abyei referendum participants in two words: Ngok Dinka and others. Legal experts during the Sudanese peace talks should have known that the word ‘other’ was the only ambiguous word that any enemies would try to interpret differently. Abyei referendum is today held hostage by the simple, yet politically loaded term, "other." And the word is dragging the Sudans into war every minute of every day and putting the Ngok Dinka of Abyei and "other" proper in danger of violence. It is this assigning of absurdity, double dealing, and what Eric Reeves, a Smith College professor with a special interest in Darfur and now the Sudans, calls a ‘moral equivalence’ that differentiates, complicates and sets the parallels in the citizens’ understanding of the bilateral agreement and president Kiir’s and mediators’ uncommunicated intention of ensuring that the oil flows first.

The Sudanese and South Sudanese politicians seem to have been misled by past colonial agreements. However, colonial and condominium agreements in Sudan were not right. Had they been fair, there would have been no wars? The 1924 Munroe-Wheatley agreement described by Douglas H. Johnson in his book; When boundaries become borders: The impact of boundary-making in Southern Sudan’s frontier zone seems to have induced a campaign on the border between Sudan and South Sudan and with Rizeigat copying the notoriety that Messeriya Arabs play in Abyei’s referendum exercise. We must remember that the Munroe-Wheatley agreement initially built on other grazing and hunting rights arrangements of the citizens between Sudan, where Dinka Malual were subjects and Rizeigat were citizens of Darfur Sultanate, later annexed by Sudan in 1916. In fact, and much to the chagrin of South Sudanese who were not at ease with the current security arrangement involving Mile-14, the book, published in 2010, has hinted on page 45 that GoSS had earlier considered the demilitarisation of Mile-14. The predetermined demilitarisation will, therefore, leave many to question whether recent Addis Ababa oil agreement was pre-emptive ratification of government policy regarding Mile-14 by the negotiators, and if so, what then was the security guarantee for the people living in the area?

Dissimilar to the Sudanese mediators who sometimes admit guilt and shed tears, their South Sudanese counterparts have no-nonsense in the politics of apologies. Once confronted, as was the case of Mile-14, they beat their chests in a gorilla-style show of force and swing the blame back to the people in a new bag stamped ''lack of understanding and failure to read the agreement.'' President Kiir had been on records where he is seen to have taken a side in the row but took matters to a higher level. He boasted to the demonstrators outside the national assembly for the length of time he spent fighting for the land, which he was accused of surrendering to Sudan through the admittance of contention over it. Little was he aware that in the crowd were SPLA veterans of the Anya-Nyas. Logically, if arrogance and wealth were to be awarded in South Sudan based on the length of time in the service, then the lion’s share still has not found the right consumers.

Actions of the South Sudanese government following disagreement with Sudan over oil transit fees are indeed a conjecture that should allow people to question the par excellence of SPLM political negotiations skills and gun-wielding bluffs. The recent agreement that fits a relationship of commensalism with Sudan have raised doubts among the majority of the people, with some introspecting if late Dr Garang were to be alive, whether he would have been threatened by a leak on the oil pipeline, his nation’s vital artery to the point of summarily shutting it down without arrangements in place, or whether he would, as a consequence of oil theft during export, encourage South Sudanese, through adding more lands to the contest, to enter a post-CPA relationship of commensalism with Sudan? Even though nobody knows what other leaders would do in a similar situation, people still imagine that the nation’s Legislative Assembly would do its job. but as things are, we are yet to witness its democratic independence where the power to ratify an agreement for oil to flow has equal measure with the power to order a shutdown.

Dinka Malual: Going North or Going it Alone

2012-10-02T08:03:00.005-07:00

The devil is in the details of the South Sudan and Sudan oil agreement for Dinka Malual

September 27, 2012, will be remembered by Dinka Malual of Northern Bahr el Ghazal as the month which brought back to life the dark history over the control of the frontiers with the Rizeigat and the Baggara of southern Darfur. On that day, in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, President Bashir, and President Kiir swapped the rhetoric with brotherhood; new cowboy-hat-on-the-bald amity; and together they signed an oil agreement which is courteously wrapped in the throngs of other subsidiary agreements to form something angelic in the framework.

The entire deal, which comprised of nine bilateral agreements, included the diabolic insertion of the Mile-14 pasture-land between Dinka Malual and the Rizeigat into the national frames of both countries, thereby making it a bitterly contested border zone. Panthou is already a thing of the past and the Abyei referendum, always used as a winning bargain or peace mantle by South Sudan, remains as elusive as ever. To Dinka Malual, nonetheless, the Mile-14 situation is almost akin to the time between 1860 and 1880 when Zubeir Pasha formed forces with the Rizeigat and drove Dinka Malual beyond River Kiir/Bahr el Arab. Though Rizeigat had had the backing of the authorities most of the times that they ventured southwards, their numerous attempts in the early twentieth century had been prohibited forcefully by Dinka Malual. The result had been continuous traditionally-acknowledged seasonal agreements between the two communities on how to access pastures on either side of River Kir. It is important to note that Dinka Malual never goes to Dar Rizeigat for pastures. Always, it is Dinka Malual that is forced to open up and be accommodative. And judging by the recent Kir-Bashir agreement, they have once again been forced - perhaps sooner or later - to relent for the sake of peace that ought to kill them. Of course, the anger is enormous in the Aweil community worldwide. Some think they have been abandoned by their government through allowing another opportunity for the marauding Murahaleen to resume their rustling; while others view it as trading off of their land for Abyei, a region that initially legally and administratively chose not to be part of South Sudan. Common men are asking whether Aweil should shoulder Abyei's problem. But the reality is that both Aweil and Abyei will always shoulder their own problems with Rizeigat, Baggara, and Misseriya. And all have burdens to share with South Sudan and Sudan.

Where is the Mile-14 conundrum, or what Magdi Gigouli, a notable Rift Valley Institute scholar referred to as "Abyei in the making," heading to? Might we be seeing old wounds being pricked once again? Paul Malong Awan Anei, the governor of Northern Bahr el Ghazal State, a former general in the SPLA army, a native of Dinka Malual whose part of his native area lies within the Mile-14 area, and a veteran who sustained more than eight bullet wounds from the Baggara as the then zonal commander in the Second Sudanese Civil war in Aweil area Command Post, made no less show prior to the conclusion of Kiir-Bashir talks in Addis Ababa. Upon sensing that his state’s national security would be offered as a sacrificial lamb, he hastily went to the Ethiopian capital where he had talks with his boss, President Kiir, and the mediating team. One is unsure if in the tense and pressurized atmosphere of the negotiations Kiir was able to listen to him. His message to South Sudanese upon returning to Juba, and to Aweil citizens, in particular, was no less categorical, "I want to assure you that we are in the Mile-14 and we will be there to stay. This is our area and we know how to manage relations," he said. He had indeed fumed earlier on that implementation of such an agreement would be done when he is not there. Whether this indicates a resignation or an old adage, ‘over my dead body,’ is a matter open to interpretation.

The whole scenario of withdrawing SPLA forces ten kilometers south of Kiir River thereby paving way for creating a safer border demilitarised zone (SBDZ) carries an emotional charge among the Dinka Malual of Northern Bahr el Ghazal. To the Rizeigat, it may mean an implementation of the boundary which the British governor of Bahr el Ghazal, Mervyn Wheatley, and the then governor of Darfur, Patrick Munro, agreed on and imposed in 1924. Dinka Malual never accepted the agreement that went any mile beyond Kiir River. And to Dinka Malual, it is another imposition in which they are never consulted that had just occurred. The Sudanese had a delegation of Rizeigat presenting their case to the African Union High Implementation Panel (AUHIP) while South Sudan never spoke with Dinka Malual, the custodians of the border clues. This already justifies trouble. Both Dinka Malual and Rizeigat are a surprise to one another when it comes to what goes on along the Kiir River. In all the historical wars on Kiir River, it begins with pastures, picks up in the water, culminates in the rustling, and fully accelerates in the blood flow.

Many South Sudanese would not agree with the Mile-14 being a contested area. However, given the economical implications that oil shut-down had created, sceptics perceive this latest agreement as a sell-out to Khartoum for the oil to flow. Khartoum might praise its negotiation skills and views the Kiir-Bashir agreement as a booty of war of attrition. The economic implication of oil stoppage gives an impression that South Sudan is dying for cash. The national treasury is running dry. In any sense, South Sudan is now frantically paying heavily for halting its oil torrent which constitutes the mildly spoken ‘lifeblood’ of the two nations by many analysts. The craving for economic freedom that accompanied the government's decision to stop the oil flow in the first place is now running down by an avalanche of desperation. People are angry and hungry. When South Sudan shut down its oil earlier in 2012, hunger was a minute thing that could be sustained. What was at stake was national pride and economic freedom. The South Sudan chief negotiator, Pagan Amum - just like his countrymen and women who demonstrated on the streets of Juba in support of the decision that halted oil transit through the theft-perforated pipeline of Sudan - asserted his contentment saying it was a matter of national economic freedom. So it was, no doubt.

But to Dinka Malual, the adored economic freedom is now forfeiting their land for cash. The freedom in demand for Malual Giernyang or Malual Buoth Anyaar, as they fondly call themselves, is not only economic or political, it is freedom from dispossession that they must counter from any Sudan, be it South Sudan or Sudan. And as the governor asserted, so are the people of Aweil who will have to join the land when it goes north, or hang on to it to the detriment of peace between the two Sudans.

Sudan's Street Protests are not Entirely Good Omens

2012-06-25T22:25:00.003-07:00

Sudanese are on the streets! And they are poised to carry on with their intentions irrespective of government rebukes. Perhaps the Arab Spring déjà vu has ultimately come to town. It will remain to be seen if the Sudanese will really muster the strength and courage seen on Tahrir Square in Cairo and on the streets of Tunis and Tripoli. One is not really convinced that the Sudanese masses have reached maturity to persistently sustain longer demonstrations against a full-throttle government's immediate response and crackdowns that may ensue. However, one may be wrong. It is almost two weeks now since the streets became live with demonstrators. Who knows, the pain of military rule had penetrated the marrow of the Sudanese commoners and have come out to resist it.

What we do not see clearly is the system the Sudanese people would want to replace the NCP (Nation Congress Party) with. New opposition parties in Sudan have little acquaintance with the public and the already existing prominent ones are led by the Islamists that have had a fair share in the mess and misrule that have eventually angered the citizens today. It is reasonable to suggest that the main opposition parties in Sudan would do no better than the NCP. What may boost the confidence of the people on the streets would be the emergence of a strong Islamic Political party that will promise to steer away from military preoccupations and economic mismanagements that have characterized the Sudanese political arena since independence in 1956. It will have to chart a path too different from that of the NCP – which still views itself as an Islamic movement of the people – that many see as the reason behind the break up of the country. For this to happen, they have to imitate Egypt, a model country which some Sudanese politicians wish to see theocratically recolonizes Sudan and merge the borders to form a larger Arab entity in Africa. This tangential shift will too push farther away from the rebels in Darfur, Eastern Sudan and Southern Kordufan.

Regionally, if the Sudanese manage to bring down the government with stones and burning tires, they would have dealt a big blow to the ICC and economic blockades. Nevertheless, Sudan will have no better relations with South Sudan; a country which its secession is the key abstract behind the demonstrations and which the government - now so despised - have categorized as the number one enemy state after Israel. Critically, the parties lining up for power in Khartoum had in the past dealt with the main ruling party in South Sudan (Sudan People's Liberation Movement) and will not succeed in any deal to settle the post-referendum issues with fewer tricks and fairness as expected. For many South Sudanese, it is the frantic and erratic nature of the NCP; a party in which two-thirds of its pivotal members have been indicted by the International Criminal Court, that they wish diminished. At least, a free-thinking Sudanese government would be better for the two Sudans. Other countries that have had the feel of the Sudanese bad omen such as Malawi, which had recently relinquished the duty of hosting the African Union Summit following pressures to invite President Bashir will breathe freely heavily in the African affairs.

To the ''bubble demonstrators," as Bashir would want them to be known, what began on the campus of the University of Khartoum, be it theocratic or secular, must have a seasoned torch-head for it to be meaningful. In other words, leaderless demonstrations end up in failures, manipulations, or implosions, most of the time.

Panya, Mende Na Wadudu: Lugha Ya Kumalizana

2012-04-26T10:03:00.001-07:00

Ni kama watu hupata mdadi wa aina isiyoaminika wakisikia viongozi wao huwaita wenginge kwa majina yajaayo na udharaulifu na uonefu. Kwa viongozi wachache barani Afrika, katika miaka mingi iliyopita kuanzia 1994, hali ya matamshi haya ya ukorofi ilizidi mno. Ukifikiria ni kwa sababu gani viongozi wanaamua kutumia lugha ya kuchochea baadhi ya watumwa wao dhidi ya wengine, unashindwa kupata maana mwafaka. Mara kadhaa, lugha chochezi ilileta maafa wa halaiki kwa njia ya kuwadhalilisha wengine.

Juzi, tulisikia kiongozi wa Sudan, Omar Bashir, akiwaita viongozi wa chama kinachotawala nchini Sudan Kusini (SPLM) wadudu. Bashir alitamka neno hilo akiwa anasherekea hadharani hali ya vikosi vyake kuingia eneo la Panthou/Heglig ambalo lilichukuliwa awali, Aprili 10, 2012 na vikosi vya Sudan Kusini. Maafisa wa Sudan Kusini walisema walisukuma wanajeshi wa Sudan ambao waliwashambulia mbeleni, hadi wakateka kwa nguvu eneo la Panthou. Panthou, ambalo liko chini ya udhibiti wa Sudan, ni eneo lenye mtaji wa mafuta na kisima kikubwa cha mafuta ya kutosha kwa uchumi wa Sudan.

Katika harakati ya kushindwa vitani, mzozo wa maneno ulizidi baina ya pande zote mbili, Sudan na Sudan Kusini. Marekani, Umoja wa Afrika, Umoja wa Mataifa na serikali ya nchi nyingi nyinginzo duniani kote, walilaumu Sudan Kusini kwa kuvuka mpaka hadi Sudan na kupeleka mzozo ugaibuni. Lawama hili lilikuwa zito kibisa kwa serikali ya Sudan Kusini hata wakaondoa vikosi vyao katika eneo la Panthou. Hali hilo iliwaghadhibu wananchi ambao mbeleni walikuwa wanasherekea ushindi wa wanajeshi wao.

Bashir alichukuwa fursa huo wa umoja wa kimataifa kulilaumu Sudan Kusini, na kuwachochea wenyeji wa nchi yake waone majerani yao kama wadudu. Hali iliyowabidi wananchi wa Sudan kuchoma kwa moto kanisa la wakristu jijini Khartoum. Waafrika wa kiasili wa Sudan Kusini walioko Khartoum waliteseka mikononi mwa raia hadharani katika upuzi lililofuata.

Mnamo mwaka 1994, tuliona vile mauaji wa halaiki yalisababishwa kwa kuwachochea watu. Nchini Rwnada 1994, mwaka Afrika Kusini ilipata uhuru wake na wananchi walikuwa na furaha tele, na Nelson Mandela akiwa mwangaza mpia wa bara, mambo yalikuwa yanageuka vibaya. Kabila la Hutu lilianza kutekeleza uamuzi wa kuwatimu Watutsi. Wahutu waliwaita wenzao wa Tutsi, mende. Fujo na maiti yaliyotokea katika uhasama huo zilishangaza dunia nzima. Idadi ya watu karibu milioni moja waliuawa.

Katika Majira ya Waarabu, ambapo tulitahamakisha tafiri kubwa ya kisiasa katika Afrika ya Kaskazini, rais wa Libya, Gadafi aliwaita watu wake, ambao walihitaji mabadiliko wa mamlaka wake, kuwa panya. Aliwaonya kwamba atawafukuza katika kila pembe la jiji la Tripoli mpaka awacharaze vyema na vikali. Mwishowe, Gadafi mwenyewe ndiye alikamatwa akijificha ndani ya bomba. Idadi ya watu waliokufa katika harakati za kumwondoa katika mamlaka yake haihisabiki.

Kama ilivyonenwa, haba na haba hujaza kibaba, ni vizuri kufanya lawezakanalo kuzuia hali itakayowaua watu kwa wengi. Maneno yake Bashir ni maneno ya muuaji. Afrika na vilevile dunia nzima inayojali haki za binadamu zikae macho.

Ten-Day War: South Sudan Withdrawal From Heglig Was Important

2012-04-21T22:40:00.001-07:00

But, never ignore propaganda, it is another frontline.

It was strategically important for South Sudan to withdraw from Panthou. The new country has made its point amidst international fear that it might be crashed if Khartoum unleashes its military wrath on it. No one knew South Sudan would hold Khartoum by the throat, given Khartoum's bellicose rhetorics of war and continuous aggression on the new republic. The international community and Khartoum sympathisers failed to realise that it was the South Sudan that kept Khartoum in check for half a century and eventually liberating themselves from their hegemony. A few were surprised by the developments in Heglig and how SPLA forces handled the situation. No one knew they would be so remarkable. A disbelieving UK official said it beats logic to see the South Sudanese army performing the way it did. The comment came when South Sudan armed forces (SSAF) drove out Sudanese forces from Panthou and maintained their control by repeatedly repelling Sudan armed forces. The question now is, who will win the day if war becomes the only solution to the outstanding issues of disagreement?

The decision made by President Kiir to withdraw South Sudanese forces from Panthou, though painful to the South Sudanese community at home and in the diaspora, was significant and nationally strategical. In the event of the skirmishes in Panthou, South Sudan nearly lost the confidence of good allies and friends, a state that has been corrected and restored by the decision of the president to pull the troops out of Panthou. South Sudan cannot ignore the international community in which it had become a member. The crux of the world's social economic and even military power rests in having good relations with allies and friends and more importantly, winning their trust.

The world now knows South Sudanese ability. Regardless of being a young nation, it can be aggressive if her national security is threatened. Khartoum too had learnt something from its aggressive cross-border incursions and ariel bombardment of South Sudanese civilians. The infantry that came had known what it means to engage another country's military. In the words of Gaduel, South Sudanese top commander that steered operations in Panthou, 'those enemy soldiers who escaped from Heglig will never think of joining the military again. They will be good civilians thereafter. They have learnt a hard lesson.'

The most critical aspect of this Ten-Day War was its ensnaring implications on the continent and in particular, the East African region. The Sudanese war had always involved the region in various ways: small arms proliferation and refugee influx into neighbouring countries. This new war was on the verge of drawing other countries again. The decision by South Sudan to ease tensions by pulling out its troops from the contested area was crucial in averting the regional aspect of it. Regionally, the sound of war was not played down. As the rhetoric and bellicosity become the advent to actual engagements, Uganda said it would join in if South Sudan was attacked. The southernmost South Sudan neighbour hinted at the sanctuary provided and the link that Sudan maintains with Lord Resistant Army (LRA). South Sudan is also economically important to Uganda. It imports relatively highly from Uganda than it reciprocally exports. This gives Uganda an economic advantage.

No one knows what Kenya was mulling since it has a multimillion/billion project involving the South Sudanese pipeline, railway and roads posing to prosper her citizens. One Kenyan newspaper commentator wrote that 'the war between the Sudans will burn us all this time.' This summarised the feeling of other Kenyan business magnets operating in South Sudan. Kenya would want to be praised for successfully steering to completion the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Sudan, not manufacturing conflict, or allowing another to come up. If anything, its relative status of development will always be overwhelmed by refugees in the events of the war in the region.

The region is tired of the continuous Sudanese wars. Just as the escalations were heightening up, the top military brass of the Great Lakes Region met and decided to take a side in this third war, citing incidences where Sudanese Arabs always draw in support from the Arab world to kill Africans in South Sudan. Rwanda was among them. The Arab League had also called an emergency meeting to discuss the situation in the Sudans. The meeting was to be convened at the request of Sudan. If the Arab world takes a side - beware they will never oppose Sudan - expect someone else to match it up. See how complicated the situation nearly became and how South Sudan nearly dragged Africa and the world onto the verge of an all-out war? Even if it means that not everyone would join in to fight, those who would shoulder the responsibly of the displaced, the refugees and political asylum seekers resulting from the war would have been tormented further. The two nations themselves can become proxies in the war of natural resources.

President Obama of the USA was concerned. His direct video address to the two nations underscores the severity of the situation. He urged the two nations to consider the path of peace adding that those who follow the path of peace will always find a strong friend in the United State. With the history of past US assistance to the Sudan during Nimeiri's presidency and South Sudan having tasted the bitter sweets of American military assistance - there were nasty experiences with Reagan Tanks at the onset of liberation war - the best ploy was to listen and act wisely. It should also be noted that Khartoum's Islamic regime is America's worst human rights partner but a good friend in the war on terror. Nothing will be more pleasant than cooperating with the stronger nation on matters threatening its national security. America (USA) could be anyone's friend.

The truth is that the international community had the confidence in South Sudan listening to them than Khartoum with its jihadist mentality in this war. At the moment, they are wild and weird and would not contemplate logical arguments. One Sudanese student from Khartoum university once said, 'the world, and the West in particular think that we (Arabs) are mad because we make too much noise in things that should be discussed quietly.' The problem is that when political issues become a bit tough, the Sudanese state manipulators switch from the temporal world to the sacred and subsequently become hysterical and garner supporters in the process. The behaviour has entombed the public psyche for decades.

In this war, the vagueness of South Sudanese on the Abyei boundary commission and the ruling of International Court of Arbitration doesn't register well internationally. Many in South Sudan believe it is the failure of diplomacy and that of the foreign affairs ministry. But it is not. It is time to note that the reason why the international community blames South Sudan for occupation lies in the acceptance, by South Sudan, of the ABC ruling knowing fully well that borders were not demarcated in the areas of Abyei and Panthou. If anyone is to blame, South Sudan and the negotiating delegation that went to The Hague, including the ABC itself, must have a piece. The international community too has made a mess by relying on imaginary borders rather than drawing the borders between the two nations. How do you know which one is Sudan and South Sudan when the issue of borders is under discussion? This would only mean there is a premeditated solution to the borders, which the AU and the UN are not communicating to South Sudan! South Sudanese people believe there is an international conspiracy surrounding its borders with the Sudan.

As for the Ten-Day war over Panthou, South Sudan has the right to lay it on the cross-border aggression by the SAF military and its supporting rebels against the Republic of South Sudan. Khartoum all along wanted South Sudan to say a goodbye of fire. It is now back to the drawing board where reason might replace rhetoric, fanaticism and dogmatic theocracy.

The element of propaganda had also emerged. One would argue that propaganda is a subtle way of obscuring the victories of your opponent while fully aware of them, but doing so to raise the morale of your people for a course. When applied to South Sudan by Sudan, it will always be followed by reason and extreme care to avoid lies. In Khartoum and with Bashir, at least economic pressures will not push down the government any time soon because propaganda had done its job so well to unite the nation. South Sudanese have also soildified their unity in this war. Patriotism and nationalism will be in the air for sometimes. Both South Sudan and Sudan governments have used propaganda maximally in the war on Panthou. As the US representative confirmed in Juba the SPLA withdrawal from Heglig and relayed the same message to Bashir, the ICC indictee in went out on Thursday, April 19 2012 and announced to the public and his beleaguered and weakened army that they would then get good news from the frontline in a few hours. South Sudan never made the announcement on Thursday and so went the lie from Bashir. And on Friday 20, the Sudanese claimed version of victory in the oilfields came just after South Sudan announced the withdrawal! A very smart way to drum up support from the public. Propaganda has its merits in situations like the one currently existing between the Sudans. In the old walls of Nazi Berlin, Germany, and the corridors of Kremlin in Moscow, USSR, propaganda was a portfolio held by officials on the government payroll. The USA was and is now not immune from this. Khartoum is just playing an old game properly.

As with Khartoum's rhetoric and the propaganda about the recapture of Panthou, South Sudanese should not be heartbroken. Just like during the CPA era and Torit incident, there will be some sense in the negotiations this time. But, never ignore propaganda, it is another frontline. One thing will catch attention if it did happen again. In the Torit battle during the CPA negotiations, some South Sudanese soldiers appeared to have been poisoned in the battle. The traces of dirty weapons used against soldiers would be my concern if I were in the South Sudanese military investigative team. The world must know all.