Over 200, 000 Firearms Presence in the Hands of Civilians in Lakes State.
By Emmanuel Malual Makuach, Kenya
March 19, 2015 (SSB) – Lakes state has become the worth and trouble state in south Sudan. According to a survey carried out by local and the international organization working in the state, it has been revealed that lakes state has the highest number of illegal’s firearms in the hands of wrong people.
This is the main contributing factor that has made it difficult to have sustainable peace among the communities in the state.
In fact, lakes state is not the only state that is being occupied by pastoral communities; it is like other states of south Sudan. But the different is the way local people use their guns.
The sons and daughters of lakes state should request the government of South Sudan to embark on firearms registration exercise to ascertain the number of the arm illegally held in the state and to commence disarmaments exercises across the state.
The state cannot achieve peace with over 200,000 firearms in the hands of civilians.
Lakes state should prioritize statewide disarmament process before thinking of other interventions like the peace and reconciliation process recently initiated by the church leaders under the leadership of Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul.
The disarmament process should specifically target the entire pastoralist communities in the eight counties of lakes state that have continued to witness an upsurge of banditry and cattle rustling which has led to loss of lives and property.
The latest death toll was about 80 killed when inter-clan violence and revenge killing that has defined lakes state since the days of the CPA in 2005.
Most people living in the cattle rustling prone areas of greater Yirol counties, Cueibet, Maper, and Greater Rumbek have never known peace.
The government needs to do something substantial, undertake a game-changing mechanism that would break and end the cycle of violence in lake state where carrying firearms and inter-clan cattle rustling and revenge killing have become an integral part of the lifestyle of these communities.
According to the report, the upsurge in incidents of banditry and cattle rustling has been greatly facilitated by readily available small arms and light weapons among pastoral communities in lakes state.
The killing of more than 80 people in Malek cattle camp of Maper county of lakes state is hard to understand by the government and people of South Sudan at large.
Moreover, raiders, who are better acquainted with the harsh terrain locations and also have sophisticated equipment, often outnumber police deployed in areas prone to cattle rustling.
The sophisticated weaponry in the hands of these communities is frightening. All government efforts to disarm them have failed largely because of some current conflicts, which could not allowed to deal within insecurity in the regions.
And culturally, it is become norms when people used guns to get wealth. Most young boys prepared to have a gun more than education or school.
The national assembly should enacted a law to have the military intervene in civil crime to avert situations like the ones witness in some neighboring countries like Kenya and Ugandan were there is no need for the army to remain at the barracks or be deployed to help restore law and order in neighboring countries while at home runs out of control.
This, however, does not mean that South Sudanese have lost faith in the police and other security arms of the government but the army should intervene for sake of peace.
Crimes has become more violent because of the availability of small arms, with business people have move away from the state capital of Rumbek to neighboring states like western Equatoria, Warrap and Central Equatoria state because businesses are closed at any time due to insecurity situations.
No agricultural activities because most of the people are not able to engage in farming and children are not going to school for fear of being attacked by different communities in the state who are carrying out revenges attacks.
The report further observes that so long as South Sudan remains unstable, it will be hard to control the proliferation of arms into the hands of people.
This is where the military should have been involved by retrieving all the arms that have found their way into the communities in the state.
With the firearms, traditional cattle raids have become a fully-fledged war that has left behind scars of bitterness and hatred among the warring communities. Traditionally, elders were responsible to work and identify the youth with guns.
That can help the communities to live in peace and embrace culture of togetherness without killing each other.
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