By Dengdit Ayok, Cairo, Egypt
Thursday, September 03, 2020 (PW) — In the end, the three policies resulted into overwhelming and deadly military confrontations between the Garang’s SPLA and Kerubino’sforces, which had habitually gone out from Gogrial town in successive waves, to launch military attacks against the citizens. It also resulted into death of hundreds of citizens, and occurrence of a considerable chaos within the SPLA under the command of John Garang, as the soldiers who were under punishment for insubordination to their commanders’ orders fled and joined the forces of Kerubino in Gogrial. These policies also caused social and economic instability in the region and consequently caused lack of production and economic depletion and exhaustion of citizens’ resources, which eventually caused famine in the region, and caused the death of 600,000 citizens in Bahr El-Ghazal in 1998.
Since the war that Kerubino was leading was full of bitterness against John Garang, his leadership and his supporters, Kerubino’s soldiers had been frequently going out from Gogrial town shooting at the citizens, and saying in Dinka language: (lakBor), and the meaning of this phrase comes in the imperative form: (Go to Bor). And its indication is that those citizens, after their refusal to support Kerubino as their leader; and adhering to their support and loyalty to John Garang, had to go to Bor, the place Kerubino and his soldiers thought as Garang’s hometown. In other words, they were telling the citizens: Leave Bahr El-Ghazal and go to John Garang in Bor, because you are convinced of his leadership.
One personally witnessed part of these atrocities and violations for two years (1994-1995) at a very young age then. This was before I left Gogrial for Wau and to Khartoum in August 1996. One still remember how we used to flee from ”Kot Nhom” village in Apuk Giir Thiik to “Abiem MayarMareng” in Tonj, and then return after days, if there was relative security in the area.
After leaving Wau town with my mother in August 1996 for Khartoum, my father, Ayok Deng Agor Wol, a veterinarian by profession and a Second Lieutenant in the SPLA under the commandership of John Garang, was captured in an ambush in Ajiep village by Kerubino’s forces and was taken to Gogrial town, where Kerubinojoyfully welcomed him, for they were classmates in school when they were young. Major General Kerubino Kuanyin immediately appointed him as his political advisor because he was very good in politics. He accompanied him to Khartoum in January 1997.
While my father was in Gogrial, he was kept under strict surveillance; because Kerubino knew that he would return to the SPLM/SPLA if he was not closely watched. Then he asked him to accompany him to Khartoum in 1997 to negotiate the Khartoum Peace Agreement (KPA). In January 1998, my father fought fiercely in the battle for Wau, and Major General Kerubino and his forces left him in the battle fighting the Mujahideen and the Popular Defense Forces in Ishlakneighborhood in the center of the town until they almost captured him during the battle, but he narrowly managed to withdraw. Many of his soldiers died. And through that historic battle, my father returned to the SPLM/SPLA after three years of captivity by Major General KerubinoKuanyin Bol.
2. The Khartoum Peace Agreement, April 1997
After their differences in 1994, Major General Kerubino Kuanyin Bol and Riek Machar Tenysigned a political charter under which they made a political alliance with the Sudanese government in April 1996. They were the two factions that signed on behalf of all the other renegades and rebel factions. In that charter, the parties agreed to end the civil war in southern Sudan, conduct a referendum, after achieving comprehensive peace in the south, at the end of a transitional period, to define the political destiny of the people of southern Sudan through ‘’the Right of Self-determination’’. On April 21, 1997, this charter was incorporated into the Khartoum Peace Agreement (KPA) which Riek Machar and Kerubino Kuanyin signed with the Sudanese government on the same day.
Major General Kerubin Kuanyin Bol signed as the Chairman of SPLM and Commander-in-Chief of the SPLA (Bahr El-Ghazal Group), as the government used to call it in its mass media. Among the former SPLA commanders who signed the Khartoum Peace Agreement were, RiekMachar and Arok Thon Arok, the SPLM Chairman (Bor Group) according to government mass media, and Kawac Makuei Mayar, while Lam Akol Ajawin’s faction signed the FashodaPeace Agreement in the same year. Kawac MakueiMayar was an ally to Kerubino, but he was based in his hometown of Aweil.
Riek Machar and Kerubino Kuanyin were the two who had forces in the field and fought fiercely against the SPLM/A led by Garang. In 1997, Kerubino transferred his forces to Marial Baai, a village close to Wau, after he was defeated in a fierce battle by the Garang’s SPLA, in which his forces fought alongside the government forces in Gogrial.
3. The capturing of Wau town, January 1998
The year 1997 had gone down in the SPLM/SPLA history, under the leadership and commandership of John Garang, as a year of overwhelming military victories against the Sudan government’sarmy in all their barracks. The SPLA had begun to take control of many areas, beginning from Kaju-keji, Kaya, Morobo, Mundri, Yei, Kubri-Bo in Equatoria; in addition to Terekeka, Tali, Yirol, Rumbek, Tonj and Gogrial, except Wau town. After the SPLA captured Gogrial, which was Kerubino’s headquarters, his forces fled to Marial Baai, a village nearby Wau.
Since Khartoum government was not serious in the implementation of the Khartoum Peace Agreement, it had signed in 1997, Kerubino had two options: either to continue his alliance with the National Islamic Front Government in Khartoum against his own will, or return to the SPLM/SPLA under John Garang’s leadership. Wau was the next target for the SPLA campaigns that began in Kaju-keji after controlling Rumbek, Tonj and Gogrial.
Wau is the second largest of the three cities in southern Sudan, and its estimated population was (120,000) at the end of 1997. It was caught up in panic after the SPLA seized in May 1997 three towns in the northwest on the road leading to Wau, namely: Tonj (sixty miles only to the southeast of Wau), Rumbek and Yirol. This campaign continued from a major military offensive launched by the SPLA in March 1997, near the Sudanese-Ugandan borders in which Yei was captured, with thousands of government soldiers also captured, and a number of the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels who were fighting a proxy war against the SPLA in Equatoria, known as (Tong Tong) killed.
The government forces had gone to Tonj from Wau to fight the SPLA after the liberation of Rumbek in April 1997, to obstructive and frustrate the SPLA’s aggression and prevent it from entering Wau, so the people in Wau thought at the time that the government forces were too huge and could not be defeated, but the SPLA defeated them. Panic and terror spread across Wau city after the government troops were defeated in Tonj.
In those battles, the SPLA used multiple-barrel rocket launchers, the (BM) that launches their missiles on trucks. After those fierce battles, the government soldiers returned to Wau on foot from Tonj, with their feet badly swollen and full of bruises, and with great weariness and fatigue that was beyond description. News of Tonj conquest by the SPLA shook every corner of Wau town, so the northern officers and merchants began to send their families to Khartoum by air.
In May 1997, Major General Kerubino Kuanyin fought the SPLA forces in Gogrial, a hundred kilometers northeast of Wau, and succeeded in preventing the SPLA from seizing Marial Baai village, which he had taken over and used as his headquarters and his army barrack. Many Wau residents said at the time that the fighting was close enough to Wau, as those in Wau could hear the banging of bombs and the sound of heavy gunfire inside the town. They also heard that hundreds of Dinka soldiers from both sides had been killed.
“Kerubino definitely did a favor to the government by preventing the SPLA from capturing Wau. Kerubino defended the Arabs by killing his people”, one citizen stated in his own opinion on the war fought in Gogrial. Nevertheless, in May 1997 the SPLA succeeded in capturing Wunrok, to the northeast of Gogrial. Wunrok had been one of the strongholds of Major General Kerubino Kuanyin until then. Gogrial was the place where he seized the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) plane and held its crew hostage in late 1996.
In mid-January 1998, President Omar al-Bashir appointed Major General Kerubino Kuanyin Bolas Vice Chairman of the Coordination Council for the Southern States and Minister of Local Government and Public Security in Southern Sudan. It was believed that Al-Bashir offered the position to Kerubino because of his rivalry with Riek Machar over leadership in southern Sudan. Kerubino had then disagreed with the composition of the proposed regional government by Riek Machar. He argued then that there was no fairness in the composition of southern Sudan government led by Riek Machar. Machar had assumed the presidency of the Coordination Council for the Southern States in accordance with the provisions of the Khartoum Peace Agreement.
The author, Mr. Dengdit Ayok, is a South Sudanese journalist, writer, poet and political commentator. He be reached by dengditayok88@gmail.com