The Bewildering Conundrum of Disarmament Exercise in South Sudan

By Malith Alier, Kalgoorlie, Australia

Tuesday, September 01, 2020 (PW) — In this month of August, we have witnessed, the perils of unplanned disarmament in Tonj area, Warrap state. In that bungled disarmament process,over a hundred soldiers and civilians lost their lives unnecessarily in a South Sudanese fashion. This is yet another painful example of gun ownership debacle. 

Owning a gun in this part of the world was a blessing that brought the independence but continuing possession of the same gun spells destruction to organized forces and civilians alike. The gun ownership dispute between civilians and organized forces is never in doubt sofar.

I am writing this piece just days after the heartless killing of a well-known person from Bor, Jonglei state, Maj. Gen. Bior Ajoh Bior in Juba. General Biortook up arms to liberate South Sudan from coloniallyminded north Sudan only to end up being killed by his own people for no reason whatsoever!

No reason, logic or justification will atone the death of this man under the earth or under the sky. He had given up(retired from army and police) on owning the gun after independence, and no one, not even himself knew that the gun wielding maniac would kill him mid-life. This is unfortunate as it’s sad.

Coming back to the gun, the deadly import from wherever, South Sudan with guns in every corner is not a safe place now or in the near future. It has been so since the interim period, 2005 – 2011. 

When I was a child, about ten years of age or so, I heard people talking about where to source this deadly contraption. This was before the outbreak of conflict in 1983. The youth were talking of going to “Kamanyolo which they also call Kamanyola.”Kamanyolo is believed to be somewhere between Zaire now Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, where guns were on sale in an open-air market to whoever that wanted them for whatever reason.

Once there, the youth would return with guns to their villages for usages including self-defence or prestige! It should also be recalled that the Anya-nyaone fighters used to receive weapons from the same location in the fifties and sixties to wage war of independence from Sudan. Of course, the wars of Anya-nya one and the SPLA are the genesis of todays’ deadly proliferation of arms in independent South Sudan.

South Sudan is not the only country in the region to have gone through armed struggle. Uganda to the south had fought a war involving arms between 1980 and 1986. Ethiopia to the east, was in the war of its own while the SPLA waged its twenty-year war right from Ethiopia with the full support of Mengistu Dergregime. The Ethiopian armed struggle came to an end in 1991, displacing the SPLA from that country. 

Going by the standard of the said countries, South Sudan has fared far worst than both. How they managed (Uganda and Ethiopia), to control their arms from going into the hands of civilians and criminals should be a lesson to the government of South Sudan or the South Sudanese populace.

During the bush days, the SPLA was better organized than today. In those days, once you’re trained and armed in those training camps in Ethiopia, one was fully meant to be under command and control of the SPLA until the moment they die in the battle. One was not supposed to leave the rebel force at will for whatever reason without express authorization to do so by a commander. There was no AWOL, Absent Without Leave, as the Americans correctly labeled this kind of absence in their armed forces. 

There were so many instances where the rogue soldiers who went AWOL faced the consequences severely meted out on them by unforgiving officers. Some deserting individuals or groups were condemned to death and they had to die by firesquads. Some others who were lucky, paid in cattlein lieu. A mere loss of one’s gun was also severely punished with no exception. Though these men were volunteers of the war, it didn’t really matter – they had to obey the laid down commands as soldiers would be.

Compared to now, well, can we say that the fundamental era when the revolution was conceivedis sadly come gone maybe with some of the founders of the SPLA who did not live to see the new country they sweated so hard to bring forth.

The SPLA we have today is the shadow of the original SPLA of William Nyuon and KerbinoKuanyin. The original SPLA was aware that,possession of coercive power and force, was the preserve of the state or organized rebellion for that matter. Though the original SPLA did not have related law enforcement components, it was able to juggle all the powers of the police, correctional services and the like, effectively.

The current amnesia or call it fatigue crept in the moment the original powerful movement, the SPLM lost its proponent and founder, Dr. John Garang in 2005. Actually, there is no need to reminisce over the leadership of the movement if the current generationsays enough is enough and we therefore, have to move on and assert the ideals of which the fight was necessary in the old Sudan. 

A fight for certain ideals was not waged once but two times resulting in the separation of the country in to Sudan and South Sudan. The ideals or values that remain on paper today such as “justice, liberty and prosperity can be revived and fervently implemented in no time if there exists a political will. prosperity cannot be achieved without justice. Where there is justice and prosperity, liberty is a jewel in the crown! 

In the current unfortunate dispensation, people continue to perish daily for preventable reasons. Why should anyone kill you because of property that is legally and rightfully belong to you? Why should anyone take the law unto their hands to avenge the death of a relative or a close friend?

A true and permanent disarmament of civilians can be done in a UNMISS way. When the civil war broke out in 2013, many armed men ended up in UNMISS compounds later branded Protection of Civilian Sites, POCs. The presence of arms in those sites prompted government to accuse UN of harbouring combatants on its compounds. The UNMISS accepted to disarm those alleged to have been under their protection while in possession of guns.

The UNMISS not only disarmed the guns in the camps but went further and destroyed those guns collected. This is the way forward for a meaningful disarmament process. It’s of no use to disarm and later on those collected arms find their way back to the hands of criminals. Disarmament is no a perennial exercise. It began to lose meaning if it becomes an incurable disease.

The existence of any government anywhere the world over, is primarily to provide security to citizens, especially, those who have no other power of their own. The government of a given territory is obliged to enact and enforce law and order for the benefit of all. If such a government, so formed, is unable to cater for the common needs of citizens on top of which is security, such a government should be dissolved and a new one be formed in its place. 

In many instances in Africa, tragically, people are stuck with a dysfunctional system because such a lament duck arrangement managed to perpetuate itself in power using the force of arms against the interest of the very citizens that helped bring it forth. This is what we witnessed here. This government is a power unto itself! It’s accountable to no one.

The author is a concerned citizen who can be reached via his email address: Aljok Deng <alierjokdeng@gmail.com>

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