Can South Sudan peace talks yield a fruitful outcome?
7 min readBy Morris Mabior Awikjokdit- Kuajok
We do not ask whether peace is desirable or undesirable due one reason or the other. No public records have supported the war more steadfastly than this. Through all the varying fortunes of the struggle, it has never for an instant bated one jot of faith or determination. But this has not been because we have loved the war for its own sake and for own naked fix interests, the war we are fighting today is the war of individuals. It is a senseless war that lack national background and the people interest of South Sudan. It is a naked war led by misguided PHDs Holder lacking a sense of humanity.
It is a war waged by those who are drunk of power struggle since the first day of liberation in history of our movement. It is a war being led by half minded leaders with different biological background and races. It is a senseless and meaningless war without national vision objectives. None but a devil could do that. This sacrifice of blood, of treasure, this monthly making of widows and orphans by the thousand, this turning of acres by the hundred thousand into desolation, is dreadful work. We have upheld it only because it is a necessity because its only alternative is something more dreadful yet. It has been because war alone cannot save Riek and his childish rebellion.
The last hope of popular government of South Sudan and human progress, and because if the Republic perishes it must be succeeded by an indefinite number of military confederacies with discordant interests and in endless conflict, that we have sustained the war and shall sustain it. We shall stand up to it unwaveringly so long as these reasons are in force. For all that, it is a thing to be deplored. Peace is a consummation most devoutly to be wished all South Sudanese citizens.
Can peace be had? We believe it. In our judgment it is sure to come within twelve months, if the European Union, IGAD and African Union mediators are true to their duty. How is it to come? By negotiation with the Confederate Government? No. It is the most baseless and the most pernicious of all delusions to imagine that the Riek’s thoughts. The so-called SPLM/A in opposition crew will treat with our National authorities on any basis that can end this war. What they have demanded from the beginning has been to be “let alone.” To let them alone is to make them independent.
Upon that independence they have staked everything they have, or expect, on earth. They mean to fight for it, and they will fight for it to the last senseless conclusion and aimless achievement. They have never yet given the slightest sign of abating their claim, and they only utter the absolute truth when they say they never will. The very spirit of the arch-rebel himself possesses them. They have an untamable lust of power, and would sooner reign in hell than serve in Heaven. Riek Machar and his groups are not fighting for a genuine thing but they are only fighting for leadership because they had been reshuffled out in the national government and others have removed from state gubernatorial positions.
It is weakness to doubt that the rebel ruler, in declaring these three things, spoke his fixed purpose. All of his past history shows him to be a man who means what he says; and no rebel of his mould ever took backward steps like Riek Machar. Riek’s rebellion lacks the national basis. Today he claimed to be fighting for SPLM transformation and tomorrow he claimed to be fighting for federal system of governance in the country. What is the genuine point Riek is fighting for in the above two narrated words.
Riek with his in deplorable support from the West will not make him anything in South Sudan as he claimed he don’t want to get blind without running this country. Here and there is a creature in the North Sudan who would yield it, but the great body of the Northern people are incapable of any such treachery to their fathers and to their children. With only that alternative before them, they will fight this war for years, and, If need be, until the extermination of which the rebel chief talks is made a dire reality. At whatever cost to this generation, this Republic, which was made for centuries and ages, shall be saved.
How then is peace being attainable in South Sudan?
Peace is to be attained by separate State action through the power of the people of South Sudan and the entire African regional leaders. With EU and West mediation, the ongoing peace process in Addis Ababa- Ethiopia will not go into a successful end. We are now having a practical illustration of the process in Addis. A president of the Republic or state Governor is to be elected through the democratic election process instead of gun point. I though, Riek would have been patience for 2015 elections if he assumed to be more popular than President Salva Kiir Mayardit.
Riek assumed the failed coup attempt to be short cut but there is no short cut in a democratic world to take legitimate government by force. Riek should lay down fire arms and accept peace and let’s assume that we have two candidates for presidency are before the people of the Republic of South Sudan: General Kiir Mayardit , the present incumbent elected president, and Dr. Mangar-Aliap Riek Nyandak should 2015 or 2019 comes. Those who would have voted for the two candidates in question had been massacre and killed in 7 months senseless war. The former of these is an adherent of the Riek’s Government in the bush of Ethiopia, willing to stand by its fortunes to the last. The latter is an enemy of that Government, and is pledged, if elected, to call a convention to sever all connection with it. The last accounts make it seem very probable that he may be elected. There are two tremendous motives operating to produce this result.
First, the general falling condition of the “Confederacy,” which is becoming evident, in spite of all misrepresentations. Second, the fact, staring the people of Nuer community full in the face, that when Mabior Garang and Taban Deng Gai are driven from wealthy lodges he will fall back into their State, and, if once allowed a foothold there, will make it the same terrible scene of desolation upper Nile now is. The only way to prevent this is for a sovereign convention of the State to assemble, to declare the State no longer a member of the “Confederacy,” to call home its forty or fifty thousand soldiers, to protect the State, and to ask his un polished Federal Government to assist in that work.
This request would be met with a ready and a liberal spirit. Government. Holden, if so elected, would have but to utter the first syllable of such a solicitation to insure from the Northern people a special army of a hundred thousand volunteers, if there were need, to defend the old North of Unity State from “Confederate” invasion. Northern men would leap to her deliverance, as brother leaps to the rescue of brother.
Such action upon the part of Nuer community would bring out a show of national good will that would make an instant end of every misconception and ill-feeling, and would put the State back into the Union with hardly an effort. Every question of dispute would melt to nothing, every difficulty would vanish. What the people of Nuer community can now do so easily, if they are but will, the people of any other Southern State can do. They simply have to quit the rebel flag, to be hailed as fellow-enemies of the Riek usurpation, and to be welcomed back as fellow-citizens of South Sudan in all our countless national blessings.
The writer is a freelance opinion writer and a professional teacher based in Warrap state- Kuajok. He can be reached by email: morrisawikjok@yahoo.com or contact the following numbers below: 0954243501, 0912646306
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