Open letter to the Special Representative of the UN SG, Mr. David Shearer of UNMISS
5 min readBy Sunday de John, Juba, South Sudan
Your Excellency,
September 6, 2017 (SSB) — It is my humble submission to write to you this open letter aimed at communicating my thoughts on the Regional Protection Force deployment. Likely, the deployment is in conformity with United Nations Security Council’s order but in breach of the South Sudanese laws.
Although this deployment is one of the provisions structured to end the expensive conflict in the Republic of South Sudan, it shouldn’t be made to look as though that your mission was taking over of the South Sudanese authority.
The significance of your mission is vested in civilians’ protection. As such, the civilians are not inhabitants of the Juba International Airport. Nobody is killing civilians in Juba city either and therefore there isn’t even a need for any deployment in the city. Few of the crime cases that you seem to exaggerate would be dealt with by local security forces and satisfactorily, they have been diminished.
Your Excellency,
Your forces should conform with United Nations Mission in South Sudan’s mandate as clearly stipulated. You primary responsibilities are (a) Protection of civilians (b) Monitoring and investigating human rights (c) Creating the conditions for delivery of humanitarian assistance (d) Supporting the Implementation of the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement.
Those are what you are here for and since the Regional Protection Force falls exactly within your command, you ought to direct them according to your line of mandate. There are hostilities on Juba-Nimule road, more in Kaya and other areas of the country. You ought to deploy there.
Your forces shouldn’t be parallel, they ought to consult with the SPLA. They should not choose their sites of deployment. It is imperative that your forces do not engrave the conflict by acting like they were loyal to one of sections to the conflict. Doing so may escalate the problems.
Since your interest is civilians’ safety and all sorts of rights, please, maintain neutrality. From 2013 to date, there have been cases associated with UNMISS arming one section of the conflict and therefore, it has from time to time breached her international mandate aimed at civilians’ safety.
Those incidents won’t be wholly blamed on your leadership, Hilde F. Johnson was in charge and was having ulterior motives against the government and so her attitudes were to blame for what happened. Your vast experience in peace keeping field should be experienced in this part of the world.
You seem to be a man of integrity. Your top commander is too a man with experience of over 28 years and so you will both be viewed as changers of the game. There is nowhere in the world where international forces have deployed to their sites of choice on their own discretion.
It isn’t acceptable for the Regional Protection Force to deploy where they won’t create any impact. That is akin to directing services where they aren’t needed. The regional protection force has outgrown its usefulness in that it was supposed to polarised and completely halt the aggressiveness of the forces that came to Juba with Riek Machar Teny headed by his Chief of Staff Gatwech Dual and other commanders.
The aggressiveness of those forces led to their attempt in a suicide mission to overthrow the government with support from the UNMISS. Point to note is that UNMISS has meddled into the South Sudanese affairs and its actions are akin to that of an analogous kind of government acting in a precarious comfortment in aggression of the host one.
However, since they weren’t here to effect a different mandate other than that of civilians protection and the related derivatives, it is imperative that the world body of its caliber denounces its sinister motives of championing a regime change.
If the UNMISS is not having foreboding reasons, its actions would have spoken for themselves. Cautiously tossing my dice, the apparent inability of the UNMISS’ over 15 thousand troops to avert the J1 catastrophe was a nonfictional manifestation of its sinister motives.
Your excellency,
Deployment of RPF shouldn’t be a reason of logger-heads. What do you crave for in the South Sudanese Airport? What have you hidden under their bridges? What do you want in their barracks? Please, let your officials stop acting arrogantly against our armed forces.
Your forces wander around Juba with heavy machine-guns and this act is in itself terroristic to the civil population. They ought to have reasons for incessant mobility. They should work for peace. If the forces cannot avert the catastrophe but only report about it, then they aren’t useful in anyway.
Frankly speaking, the regime change strategy being effected in South Sudan is in fact destructive. It has not birthed fruits elsewhere. Those effecting it have no good references. Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, etc. are not good references and it is for this reason that the UNMISS should cease being the prime contributor to the destruction of South Sudan.
How exceptional would South Sudan be in the futility of the regime change strategy that hasn’t succeeded elsewhere? Whoever that you want to install as a President forcefully as Kiir’s replacement would perish on the same day with engraved and detestable consequences.
Give South Sudanese the opportunity to make changes for themselves. We have home grown solutions. South Sudan’s conflict will cease through South Sudanese.
I hope this finds you well, yours truly Mr. Teetotaler!
Sunday de John is an MBChB, University of Nairobi, former Editor in Chief, Stone Soup Magazine, Columnist (THIRD EYE), Khartoum Monitor now Juba Monitor, (Streets Sweeper), Juba Telegraph. Currently in Juba South Sudan. He can be reached via emmajoson@yahoo.com.
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