The Redbelt Saga: South Sudan’s Government Must Not Allow the Killing of Redbelt Leader Leek Mamer Leek
Redbelt Leader Leek Mamer Leek
By Dr. Sunday de John, Nairobi, Kenya
Thursday, 01 January 2026 (PW) — Bor County Commissioner Hon. Ateny Pech Ariik and Journalist Mading Ngor Akech Kwai want Redbelt Leader Leek Mamer Leek dead because he knows too much of their ulterior plots! That stated, I beseech the government of the Republic of South Sudan to pause, look twice, and then think beyond the noise being hatched in the name of Leek Mamer Leek. This is because the narrative surrounding this name is a struggle for control over the armed youth, control over the narrative, and control of the truth. For this reason, it raises the eyebrows; the matter at hand is a big national security concern.
Sitting at the helm of this matter are two men, namely Mading Ngor Akech and Hon. Ateny Pech. They both failed to secure the services of Leek Mamer Leek and his Red Belt, and now they both want to destroy him. According to Leek, he and his colleagues in the Red Belt did not rise as rebels. They rose as community defenders in response to cattle raiding, violence against the community, and collapse of the local protection. His forces, the “Red Belt,” were not created to challenge the state; they do not have a political agenda. Their interest is to protect the cattle, villages, and civilian lives where the state has receded. This fact matters because the origin of the forces tells of their souls.
According to Leek, Mading Ngor Akech tried to own him. However, local protection establishments like Gelweng, White Army, Arrow Boys, Nyirango forces, and now Red Belt, among others, are dangerous for political manipulators. They cannot be easily owned. Leek has made it clear to the duo. He has declined to sell his men, his cause, and the community that he dearly loves and that he has vowed to protect with his blood.
In their separate attempts to coerce him into rebellion for the case of Mading Ngor and into a brutal local force for the elimination of adversaries for the case of Ateny Pech, all resisted by Leek because his focus is the protection of the community and their properties, the duo in question, after failing to secure the services of the young man, are out to eliminate him through the government with false narratives created in his name.
According to Leek in a recorded video, Mading brought him to Nairobi under the guise of safety following the clash of Leek’s forces with raiders that could have prompted the government to look for Leek, perhaps for further investigation on what has transpired so that possible solutions could be made.
However, Mading Ngor has his hidden motives; bringing Leek to Nairobi was not for safety reasons, it was for the purpose of recruitment. Nairobi is Mading Ngor’s marketplace for rebellion. He brought Leek to introduce him to the “rebel” leaders. When Leek refused, he abandoned him and his companion in a hotel, stranded, and later opted to rewrite the story. Why did Mading leave the boys in a hotel without telling them that he was leaving? Why did he fail to take them back to where he brought them?
Mading Ngor Akech’s recent partial response to Leek’s narrative is very much untoward; it was skewed, a revelation of untruthfulness that has highlighted gray areas on the matter in question. He seems to know more about the Red Belt than the leaders themselves. He wrote with the intimacy of a person who was trying to manage it from above. His writing is not a rebuttal to Leek’s assertions; it is a prosecution brief. A piece designed to criminalize a young man who refused to be bought. He might have even gotten bargaining allowances from the state actors or rebels.
Mading Ngor has unconsciously acknowledged his motives through the written piece in question. He wrote to counter accuse Leek and others in a manner designed to incriminate them, rather than to deny or affirm Leek’s allegations against him in his video; he claimed to reveal all in what he called full disclosure. Is Mading a fifth columnist? Should government agencies take him in for further interrogation? Is he working for any of the rebel movements? Is he bidding off Leek? After the failure of his attempts, must Leek die to conceal the secrets?
In the case of Ateny Pech, his strategy to acquire the services of Leek was different but also dangerous. He wanted Leek’s Red Belt as his private army, a local elimination force to crush his adversaries within Bor. When Leek refused to turn his boys into political hitmen, he turned against him. He immediately rejected the Red Belt that he had been supporting and that he once wanted as his protection force, labeling them as a “threat.” He suddenly mobilized the community not for dialogue but for denunciation of the Red Belt. Suddenly, he deceptively invited the government forces, particularly the National Security Service Operations, not to investigate the events that transpired but to eliminate the threat. This, to my understanding, is an organized retaliation. In most instances, retaliation tells everything about the motives.
Impartial analysis of this matter can accurately tell that Leek’s crime is not rebellion but refusal to accept being misused by the political actors in question. Leek has refused to join the rebellion through auctioning by Mading Ngor. He has refused to fight for Ateny Pech’s domestic ambition. He has refused to turn community defense into elite violence. This means Leek is an upright gentleman whose conviction is to ensure the safety of his people and their properties.
Leek wanted to be upright and refused to be bent into a tool for achieving political goals, but now his name is being fed into the government systems as a security problem. Is Leek Mamer Leek a victim of his refusal to be misused? This needs the government to reflect and ask this question. Who benefits from Leek’s death? If he is eliminated, the truth dies with him. Another angle is that of Hon. Michael Makuei Lueth Kang. The narrative is audible in Leek’s video; the involvement of Hon. Michael Makuei is limited to protection of the community, as he would never support Leek if he turned out to be a state enemy, which Leek is not.
The only question about Hon. Michael Makuei Lueth’s involvement is his stature as a statesman. Does his involvement come from the influences of Ateny Pech and Mading Ngor, and if so, what does it suggest in relation to his national stature? Supporting an armed group against other armed citizens of the country when, in essence, he is a state actor with both factions, one he is supporting and one he is against, all as his subjects? Is there no alternative solution that he can provide? I leave that for the public contemplation. Critically analyzing this matter, the statements issued by Ateny Pech and the community leaders he mobilized to support his narratives against the Red Belt and the writing of Mading Ngor Akech and his promised full disclosure, something sinister is afoot.
Are Mading Ngor and Ateny Pech using state machinery to accomplish what they failed to achieve privately? If so, then these actors are dragging the government of South Sudan into a crime, “the murder of its own witness” disguised as counterinsurgency. This means the state agencies should now look for Leek Mamer Leek not as a person to eliminate but as a source of understanding of all matters that transpired in relation to the armed youth under his command and why he is targeted by those who once sought the services of his group for their own motives.
Those who are championing for the elimination of Leek Mamer Leek and his group could be the true rebels trying to kill the evidence in the person of Leek Mamer Leek. A clandestine movement may be struggling, which is why Leek, and his men are being coerced to help save it. It’s important to keep in mind that insulting the Bor community at this stage is unacceptable. The Bor community couldn’t be hatching any rebellion in the Republic of South Sudan because since the inception of the government in 2005, Bor has been at the heart of South Sudan’s power.
Politically, militarily, and institutionally, Bor is involved. Well represented in the government with irreplaceable ministers like Hon. Kuol Manyang Juuk and Hon. Michael Makuei Lueth Kang. This list is augmented with the presence of other key stakeholders like Gen. Peter Wal Athiou, who then served as the undersecretary in the Ministry of Interior, and Hon. Abdon Agau, as secretary general of the government. Alongside these political leaders are many in the top military hierarchy, with Gen. Jok Riak Makol being the then Chief of Defense Forces (CDF) and others as Deputies to the Chief of Defense Forces, like Gen. Malual Ayom Dor and Gen. Wilson Deng Kuocrot, among many others. Even a son of Bor was once a director of the military intelligence. Bor has never lacked representation.
In terms of development, the only road constructed with South Sudan’s wealth is from Juba to Bor. With this said, when the rebellion is whispered in the name of Bor, one must always ask, who is speaking behind this mask? The answer is simple: it is those who want to kill Leek before he speak. The government should rethink its strategy toward Leek Mamer Leek. He should not be treated as a target. He must be treated as a source. He is a valuable source of information about the events that transpired in Nairobi. He is also a source of information about who attempted to recruit him. He is also a source of information about who attempted to weaponize his boys and who now wants to silence him.
If the strategy of the security forces is to kill Leek Mamer, they will not be killing a rebel; they will be killing the evidence. Unfortunately, when the evidence is gone, the real rebels, the men who are trading this chaos, manipulation, and blood, will walk free, hiding behind the flag they pretentiously claim to serve.
Till then, yours truly, Mr. Teetotaler!
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