The stain on South Sudan: Is South Sudan failing the nationhood test?
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Photo/FILE Inter-ethnic fighting and failed promises put Salva Kiir’s administration on the spot
Posted Thursday, March 1 2012
The YouTube video footage shows a patient groaning in pain in a bare bed. His left leg and shoulder are swathed in bandages through which blood seeps from the underlying wounds.
The narrator explains that the injured man, like the rest in this crowded Juba Hospital ward, is a victim of the recent upsurge of tribal violence in the neighbouring state of Jonglei.
“They came at dawn and opened fire randomly on fleeing people, killing women, children and the elderly before burning the houses,” Yien Tap, another patient with less severe wounds explains in the footage.
“Even those who fled were followed in the bush. We survived by hiding”.
The 25 year-old is lucky to be alive after Murle warriors descended on his village, killing more than 50 people and abducting many more as they drove away thousands of cattle.
The attack he is talking about is part of a series of raids that have besmirched the newly independent South Sudan as critics blame it for abandoning its liberation war era promises and failing to rein in negative ethnicity.
The Jonglei conflict pits the dominant Lou Nuer against the Murle.
Reportedly fuelled by need for grazing fields, cattle rustling, excessive dowry demands and negative politics, the clashes have claimed thousands of lives according to some officials and left many more destitute in displaced peoples’ camps.
The chaos peaked in January when more than 6,000 armed Nuer tribesmen, called the White Army, marched through Murleland in a scorched-earth operation that left in its wake a trail of blood, smouldering villages and thousands of homeless people.
Vowing “to wipe out the entire Murle tribe from the face of the earth as the only guarantee against long-term security of Nuer’s cattle” according to a Juba-based blogger, the Nuer climaxed their murderous march in the town of Pibor, where unconfirmed number of people were killed.
Pibor County Commissioner Joshua Konyi claimed that the invasion left more than 3,000 people dead but UN and Government of South Sudan officials said the figures were unconfirmed and may have been inflated.
Aid agencies said more than 60,000 were in urgent need of help after being rendered homeless in a region where UN and government centres are far and wide between swathes of bandit-infested, barren wilderness.
The 800-strong combined force of UN and government soldiers holed up in the dusty town could nothing other than warning residents to flee their homes.
The inaccessibility of this state the size of Bangladesh, late deployment of troops from Juba and reluctance to intervene in a historical tribal conflict have been cited as the reasons why authorities were unable to stop the advance of the deadly column.
The Nuer were revenging against a spate of attacks on their villages by the Murle late last year where dozens of people, mostly women and children, were killed or abducted.
Nuer Youth in the Diaspora (NYD), a group claiming to represent members of the community abroad, endorsed the revenge attacks claiming they were a justified act of self-defence.
“It should be recalled that the right of self-defence, which includes pre-emptive strikes, is a right that can be exercised by communities in absence of a functional government that guarantees security,” the NYD said in a statement to the South Sudan News Agency (SSNA).
“Unfortunately, a functional government does not exist in South Sudan and different tribes in the South live in Hobbesian anarchy in which men live without a common power to keep them safe”.
The Lou Nuer blame their woes on the government of President Salvar Kiir which disarmed them in 2006 in an operation where, it is claimed, more than 300 died.
The new state is accused of failing to do the same to the Murle who have since been taking the advantage of the tilted balance of power to mount cattle raids and child abductions.
“The Nuer community in USA, Canada, Europe, New Zealand and Australia must raise funds for the White Army to defend property and cattle of Nuer civilians,” the NYD resolved.
These sentiments were backed by the Ngudeng Historical Society Association, a group that oversees the community’s religious heritage, whose chairman declared the Murle have committed a sacrilege by attacking the holy city of Wec Deang.
The shrine is the birthplace of Prophet Ngundeng, a religious legend of the Lou Nuer people. Stories are told of how the holy man killed British soldiers with a swipe of his divine rod when they tried to attack the holy place in 1902.
“They first attacked Dengjok Payam and killed over 30 civilians and took over 20,000 head of cattle… on January 14, 2012, the Murle fighters attacked Prophet Ngundeng’s bieh (Pyramid) and killed innocent civilians,” complained the Society’s chairman and the prophet’s grandson Gai Ngundeng.
“All Nuer officials, politicians, students, soldiers, youth, doctors, lawyers and White Army have to fight Murle youth and to bring them to justice for attacking the holy city of Wech Deang”.
Media and aid agency reports indicate that the animosity between the two communities is so fierce that even in Juba Hospital where most of the injured are nursing their wounds, the Nuer are housed in different wards from the Murle with police officers placed at the door to take care of any eventualities.
According to United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), the conflict has displaced more than 50,000 people, a situation aggravated further by the recent fighting in Sudan’s southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states which forced 75,000 Sudanese refugees to cross over into South Sudan’s Unity and Upper Nile states.
With UN-backed peace talks having collapsed last December, there are no signs of lasting peace in the foreseeable future. But the Nuer-Murle conflict is just one of the numerous internal feuds afflicting the infant state.
Throughout the history of the region, conflicts have been the norm rather than the exception. From wars pitting tribes over pasture lands to blacks fighting against Arab domination, South Sudan is one of the continent’s oldest battlefields.
Although the formation of South Sudan Liberation Army (SPLA) in 1983 created a unified front through which a consistent war of independence from the north was waged, the movement also experienced breakups and revolts throughout the 22 year-old campaign.
But a peculiarity of this conflict is that many rebel groups and armed militia have emerged and flourished after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005 and the 2010 general elections.
The SPLM has pointed fingers at Khartoum but many observers tend to differ, accusing the movement of planting the seeds of discord by failing to deliver its pre-independence promises like provision of services, creation of employment and particularly the inability to address negative ethnicity.
“Minority tribes who joined the SPLA in their thousands found themselves left out in the movement’s leadership and participated only as cannon porters and nothing else,” complains an anonymous on-line writer to the SSNA who goes on to claim the root cause of current tribal hostilities has been abated by the current regime.
“It took Col John Garang and his henchmen nearly three years to create fictitious titles like the one known as “Alternate Members” of Politico Military High Command to accommodate few non-Dinka like Galario Ornyang, James Wani Igga… and Dr Riek Machar in the SPLA leadership’s hierarchy”.
With his name withheld by SSNA for “security reasons”, this author launches a scathing attack on the SPLM government which he blames for the high number of rebel movements that have been popping up in every corner of the new state in recent times.
“The Political Bureau (PB) which is the highest political organ of the ruling SPLM is actually a rubber stamp used by one ethnic group (Dinka) to dominate others by using their numbers to impose decisions on others,” he alleges.
The discontent stirred by the dissatisfaction with the Juba-based administration has led to the emergence of several rebel groups in recent times, the most prominent being South Sudan Democratic Army (SSDA) and South Sudan Liberation Army (SSLA), said to be in the process of forging a united fighting alliance.
The two group’s new friendship is said to have bee triggered by the killing of SSDA leader Gen George Athor Deng in December by government forces along the Uganda-South Sudan border.
The 49 year-old Athor was a former member of the SPLA high command who revolted after losing the race for Jonglei governorship during the 2010 general elections.
“Another Athor will emerge tomorrow unless real progress is made in providing political and economic opportunities to communities that feel marginalised in the process of independence,” explained John Prendergast, co-founder of the Enough Project that operates in South Sudan.
“The South Sudan government, with international support, must address inter-communal divisions within the South”.
As we went to press the South Sudan Information Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin said that the government had signed an agreement with Athor’s fighters to be incorporated in the national army.
The fighters, he added, had accepted President Salva Kiir’s amnesty.
As things stand now, the delivery of social services in South Sudan remains a tall order for the SPLM government partly because of the unresolved oil revenue sharing formula with Khartoum.
The South Sudan government recently claimed that the north had stolen more than two million barrels of her oil worth $200 million and stopped pumping it to the north for export.
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