US envoy calls for changing South Sudan’s power-sharing deal ; State Department Says South Sudanese Rebel Leader Should No Longer Try to Return to Power
AP News |Posted: Sep 07, 2016
JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — The U.S. special envoy for South Sudan is calling for a “reconstruction” of the power-sharing agreement in the country’s peace deal, just a year after the United States pressured both sides to sign it.
Donald Booth told Congress on Wednesday that “we do not believe it would be wise” for rebel leader Riek Machar to return to his role as vice president after he fled the country amid renewed fighting in July.
Neighboring Sudan has said Machar is now in that country. Machar’s rival, President Salva Kiir, has replaced him as vice president.
South Sudan’s peace deal was signed in August 2015 to end a civil war that began in December 2013 and killed tens of thousands in the world’s youngest country. Hundreds were killed in the July fighting.
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State Department Says South Sudanese Rebel Leader Should No Longer Try to Return to Power
Siobhán O’Grady Sep 8, 2016, 12:44 AM
State Department Says South Sudanese Rebel Leader Should No Longer Try to Return to Power
The United States helped facilitate South Sudanese rebel leader Riek Machar’s return to the capital of Juba last April in a move that, at the time, was expected to kick off a transitional government and finally implement the August 2015 peace agreement between Machar and his rival, President Salva Kiir.
Instead it resulted in chaos, as troops loyal to each of the two men opened fire on each other in July. The violence ultimately killed more than 300 people, displaced thousands more, and prompted Machar to flee South Sudan after government troops bombed his camp in the capital.
Now the State Department says Machar, who under the terms of the peace agreement should have been the country’s first vice president, should no longer bother trying to return to that role in Juba.
“We do not believe it would be wise for Machar to return to his previous position in Juba,” Donald Booth, the State Department’s special envoy to South Sudan said at a House hearing Wednesday.
“That said, this cannot serve as justification for President Kiir to monopolize power and stifle dissenting political voices,” Booth said.
Reath Muoch Tang, who serves as a Washington representative for rebels loyal to Machar, told Foreign Policy after the hearing that Booth’s suggestion for Machar to not return to his role as first vice president is a “very big concern.” Machar’s supporters claim the first vice president’s replacement, Taban Deng Gai, was tapped by Kiir only after he defected from the opposition, and thus cannot be expected to represent them in office.
“The U.S. supports the unraveling of the peace agreement done by Salva Kiir,” Muoch Tang told FP.
Booth’s testimony before the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa came at a particularly tough time for U.S. policy in South Sudan. Despite tremendous American support for the young nation’s 2011 independence from its northern neighbor, a two-and-a-half year civil war that broke out in late 2013 has pushed the country into perpetual turmoil.
There has been renewed American interest in the conflict since August, when an Associated Press report detailed a brutal government attack on an expatriate compound Juba in July. Troops loyal to Kiir raided the apartment complex, singled out Americans, then sexually assaulted, gang raped, and beat them. It took hours for the victims to be rescued, despite repeated phone calls to both the United Nations and the U.S. Embassy in Juba to inform them about the attack and beg for help.
That wasn’t the only time Americans were ambushed that week. On Tuesday, FP chronicled how the State Department downplayed a July incident in which government soldiers shot between 50 and 100 rounds at seven U.S. diplomats who were traveling in armored vehicles through Juba on the evening of July 7. (No one was killed or injured in the incident.)
Under intense pressure from lawmakers — both on the subcommittee and others who attended the hearing out of personal interest — Booth fielded more than an hour of intense questioning. He defended the U.S. embassy’s response to the attack on the expat compound and unleashed skepticism as to whether the South Sudanese soldiers who fired at the diplomats really could have understood they were American.
Booth offered details about the diplomat ambush, saying that it came “very shortly after similar-looking vehicles that were driven by opposition forces” refused to slow down at a checkpoint in Juba, sparking gunfire between the two sides that killed five government troops.
He also said the informal checkpoint where U.S. diplomats came under fire was in a very dark area, and that the vehicles they were traveling in had tinted windows, which may have made it hard for the troops to see that the passengers inside were American.
As for why the soldiers continued to shoot despite the fact that the license plates on the vehicles carried the number 11 to signal that Americans were on board, Booth said it should be taken into account that the army is “primarily illiterate.”
“Even for the brief time they stopped and tried to show identification, it was not at all clear if these soldiers would’ve been able to see it, or even understand the license plate,” he said.
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle who were present at the hearing repeatedly expressed frustration with the Obama administration for failing to implement an arms embargo that has been on the table since the beginning of the conflict, which has killed more than 50,000 people since December 2013.
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US envoy opposes Machar’s return to office, faults Kiir’s actions THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 8 2016
By KEVIN J. KELLEY More by this Author NEW YORK
Rebel leader Riek Machar should not return to the post of first vice-president of South Sudan, President Obama’s special envoy to the country told the US Congress on Wednesday.
“It is not for us to tell South Sudan who its leaders should be,” Ambassador Donald Booth cautioned, but added: “Given all that has happened we do not believe it would be wise for Machar to return to his previous position in Juba.”
Dr Machar is currently staying in Khartoum, Sudan, after fleeing what Ambassador Booth described as President Kiir’s “egregious action of militarily pursuing his first vice-president out of South Sudan.”
The US special envoy went on to present unusually blunt criticisms of South Sudan’s head of state.
Ambassador Booth’s litany of complaints marks a shift in the US stance toward the leadership of a country that Washington had helped achieve independence in 2011.
“President Kiir and those around him bear much of the responsibility for the extent to which the Transitional Government has failed to become the representative body it needs to be,” Ambassador Booth said in prepared remarks to a US House of Representatives panel.
PRIVILEGED DINKA GROUP
He cited President Kiir’s “unilateral implementation of his 28 states decree from December 2015, stoking grievances in many parts of the country and among various tribes for the way it privileges his own Dinka ethnic group.”
After installing Taban Deng Gai, another opposition figure, as Dr Machar’s replacement, President Kiir demoted politicians from the Nuer tribe who are loyal to Dr Machar, Ambassador Booth recounted.
The president “has facilitated a zero-tolerance policy toward dissent both within the government, from fellow politicians, and without, from civil society and the media,” the special envoy charged.
Ambassador Booth also accused the Kiir-led army of carrying out human rights violations.
“One particularly upsetting aspect of the current crisis is the conduct of South Sudanese government forces,” he said.
“We continue to receive reports of civilians being targeted, including with brutal sexual violence. Recent reports indicate a new campaign by government commanders to recruit child soldiers.”
In separate testimony to the same House panel on Wednesday, Ambassador Booth’s predecessor as special envoy to Sudan and South Sudan warned that Dr Machar’s ouster will not bring about unity in the fractured country.
CONFLICT CONTINUES
“Taban Deng does not command the loyalty of all those forces that have been fighting the government of Salva Kiir,” said former Ambassador Princeton Lyman.
“Without broad-based participation in a transitional government,” he added, “conflict will surely continue. Indeed, conflict continues now in several parts of the country.”
Ambassador Booth stepped up US pressure on the African Union to move forward “expeditiously” with creation of a hybrid court that would pass judgment on war crimes committed during South Sudan’s nearly three-year-long civil war.
The AU should establish an office of prosecutor and hire staff to administer the envisioned court, he said.
The US is “on the verge” of providing the AU with a $3.3 million grant to help clear away obstacles to putting the court in place, Ambassador Booth added.
He said the US will support imposition of a United Nations arms embargo on South Sudan if the government does not fulfill its stated commitment to accept deployment of a supplemental UN force of 4,000 troops drawn from East African countries.
About Post Author
administrator
PaanLuel Wël is the founder and editor-in-chief of PaanLuel Wël Media Ltd, a news website that covers news, opinions, analysis, history, culture and literature of South Sudan and the world. Founded in July 2011 by PaanLuel Wël to create a platform for free expression and constructive dialogue, the website features articles from various contributors, including columnists, commentators, poets, authors, activists and academics. PaanLuel Wël believes that media can play a vital role in informing, educating and empowering the people to participate in nation-building and social transformation. He also believes that media can foster a culture of dialogue, tolerance and diversity among different communities and groups, and hopes to inspire and mentor the next generation of South Sudanese writers and journalists.
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