By Professor David de Chand
February 16, 2013 (SSNA) — Salva Kiir’s tyranny has already pushed Africa’s newest pre-born and pre-failed state to a state of civil war in South Sudan. Ever since the signing of the CPA in 2005 and then followed by the formation of the then Semiautonomous GOSS during the Interim Period, South Sudan had not experienced peace dividends, but continuous ethnic conflicts, rivalries and strives purposely created by the SPLM led weak and high rampantly corrupt system from the President to the lowest scale in the system if there were to be a system with checks and balances at all in South Sudan. The South is ruled as a non-benevolence dictatorship resemblances the Joseph Stalin’s tyranny in the former Soviet Union, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge in Cambodia (1975-1980) and Yuri Museveni’s regime at the next door neighbor of South Sudan who had for years committed genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Acholi people in northern Uganda and squarely putting the blames on the Lord Resistance Army (LRA) led by Joseph Konyi a onetime SPLA Officer trained in Bonga, Ethiopia, by the then Dirge regime (1974-1991). The world should know that the civil war has begun in South Sudan. The supporters of the SPLA leadership would bear full responsibility for the carnage, genocide and the ethnic cleansing ‘going on’ in South Sudan. The UNIMISS has already failed its mandate in providing equal protection to all civilians’ population in South Sudan and Jonglei State in particular.
In Jonglei State like in all other states in South Sudan most of the problems have been created by the SPLA and the GOSS that has been out of touched with national problems. The problems in Jonglei State have been dumped on the Murle and the Luo Nuer folks, but this is true or false. The notorious Kuol Manayang, his protégés and sycophants have missed the point. They should admit that they have been the root causes of the problems in Jonglei State. This is the bottom line. The problems arise because Kuol Manyang, Majak Aggot, Bior Aswot Ajang and Phillip Aguer have failed to undertake a universal UN Disarmament, Demobilization and Rehabilitation (DDR) Program arcoss the board amongst all the ethnic groups in the state. The focused has been the Nuer majority in the state that Dinka Bor fears like the African Black Mamba, African King’s Copra snakes, and the Europeans fear of the Germans similar to the current Western fears on Islam as a faith-based religion and Muslims as its followers worldwide, thus, creating Islamophibobia, Shiaophobia and Sunniphobia in the streets, subways and commuter trains in many Western capitals or the Asians developed Japanophobia in Asia and the Far East.
Kuol Manyang Juuk a Slava Kiir’s appointee so-called Governor of Jongeli State, failed in providing good leadership as he did when he disastrously failed as Minister of Transport, Roads and Bridges in the Government of National Unity (GONU) (2005-2011) in the central government in Khartoum to disarm his Dinka Bor group. As the Murle and the Nuer fully cooperated with the UN DDR Program and disarmed, he Kuol Manyang turned around again to re-arming the Murle tribesmen to jointly with the SPLA to launch fresh attacks against the Nuer populations like the incident in Uror County in which more than 800 innocent civilians’ population killed, more than 900 wound and more 208 children kidnapped or abducted on 17 August 2011. The UNMISS failed its mission to stop this carnage and did not make any serious statement of condemnation on the incident. We hold Miss Heilga F. Johnson (Norway) as the UN Secretary-General Representative and head of the UNMISS fully responsible.
Certainly, the Uror County incident was the specific reason that the Luo Nuer Youth retaliated against the Murle tribe and the SPLA, unfortunately. We had worked feverishly to reconcile the Murle minority and the Nuer majority who have been living side-by-side for generations and through traditional and modern conflict resolutions. We succeeded in brokering the peace between the two tribes and the situation returned to normal. Nevertheless, the world should know that the current instability and the deteriorating insecurity in the Jonglei State has been solely the responsibility of the Dinka Bor leaders. They would be held accountable and they should acknowledge that they are not of out of the woods yet. This time around, it could become their turn and they should not forget the things that they have done, which they ought not to have done. In the last incident that killed more than 123 Nuer people mostly women and children was fueled and ignited by the SPLA and Kuol Manyang Juuk who attempted to put the blame on the Murle poeple. We have succeeded in restraining the Luo Nuer Youth not to turn the muzzles of the AK-47 against the Murle folks because the common enemy has been neither the Murle vs. the Nuer nation nor the Nuer vs. the Murle folks, but we have now discovered the source of the common enemy for both the Nuer and the Murle folks. Of course, it emanates from the Bor County and Juba respectively. Now, we have a clear vision on what is to be done and it will be done appropriately on time to be determined by both the Murle and the Nuer Youth on their own terms. Kuol Manyang should know that enough is enough and the people cannot take it no more. Let all hell break loose because the measures the SPLA and Kuol Manyang gave would be equal to the measures that they would get.
It is shameful on the so-called Luo Nuer leaders to be idle in Juba and their kin and kith or folks being systematically murdered before them. Shame on them the so-called Luo Nuer leaders in the GOSS in Juba and within the state government in Jonglei State. They failed to speak out loudly on behalf of their people. They must and ought to wake up for the rights of their people and the Nuer nation that is now being challenged by idiots that their great grandfathers, their grandfathers and their fathers never ever challenged our great grandfathers, our grandfathers and our fathers, including the present generation of the Nuer nation in South Sudan and in the SPLA. We will fight back with all the force that we have to regain ‘majority rule’ in Jonglei State with ‘minority rights’ protected and the capital of Jonglei State would have to be relocated elsewhere instead of dirty and filthy Bor town. Kuol Manyang must and ought to know that Jonglei State would remain unify and can exist without Bor county. We would make sure that ‘democratic rule’, social justice, freedom and equality prevail in the state and all citizens would be protected under the law.
We wanted educational development for all and no child be left behind, but not war. We wanted to produce a new generation of thinkers, doctors, engineers, economists, agronomists, pilots, architects and social scientists to deal with the problems of sustainable governance, socioeconomic development and democratic change. It is now about time for the notorious Kuol to get the hell out of Jongeli State. We call on the local Bor people to disassociate themselves from Kuol Manyang Juuk and his gangsters. Their days are numbered for them to go. This is a promise to the people of Jonglei and South Sudan as a whole. We will not sleep in creating concrete strategies to defeat the SPLA failed leadership. We urge and appeal to all South Sudanese to create conducive political atmosphere for South Sudan Spring or South Sudan Streets that could be the beginning of the African Spring or the Africa Streets. Both Slava Kiir and Yuri Museveni should know and underscore that if Ben Ali of Tunisia, Colonel Maumar Qaddafi of Libya and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt could go through the people’s power, they should reckon that it is about time for them to go as well. ‘South Sudanese folks under the current highly rampantly corrupt in a pre-born and a pre-failed GOSS in Juba that is incapable of governing itself has caused the citizens great suffering, hunger, disease, widespread of human rights abuses, social injustice, lack of freedom, democracy and equality as well as extremely entrenched ethnocentrism (tribalism) or the so-called “Mongjiengism” or a quasi Dinka supremacy or hegemony and Apartheid system in Africa’s newest failed state” in South Sudan.
Undisciplined, untrained and marauding SPLA forces have been responsible for all of the provocations and the dying of civilians who have been harassed, beaten and killed by the SPLA as a party’s army rather than a national army and the notorious national security forces led by killers and murderers. The SPLA and the national security forces have been responsible for different ethnic groups fighting within Jonglei State. It has provoked the Luo Nuer the largest nationality that makes up alone 60%, excluding the Garwaar Nuer and the Laak Nuer (Geizera &the mainland) who makes up a 1/3 of the population in the state with a population of more than 1.5 million people, and part of the largest homogeneous Nuer nationality in South Sudan that straddles also into southwestern Ethiopia of Gambela Region#12 according to Sudan 5th Population Census in 2009 and one of the potentially rich because of the discovery of oil and gas and other strategically critical materials in Greater Upper Nile States, including southwestern Nuer-Ethiopia as well.
The GOSS has deployed secret tactics of committing genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity as well as ethnic cleansing under the pretext of the UN Disarmament, Demobilization and Rehabilitation (DDR) Program in the last few years and drastically failed in the process because the DDR had been conducted unfairly. The notorious unelected Governor Kuol Manyang Juuk, the State Government and the GOSS in Juba concentrated their efforts on disarming the Nuer majority, the strongest and potentially rich nationality because of oil and gas discovered in the Nuerland in the late 1970s-1980s and then became the ‘oil hub’ of Sudan then and now the ‘oil hub’ of the banana republic of South Sudan.
The Luo Nuer cooperated more than enough with the UN DDR Program and as they turned in their weapons; they had been constantly attacked by their neighbors the Dinka Bor, the Murle who were not disarmed and the SPLA party’s army rather than as the national army or sometimes a combination of the above-mentioned. The Luo Nuer has got the means and they re-armed themselves for self-defense from their neighbors who have failed to live and let us live in peace and in harmony. The re-arming of the Nuer also became a threat to the octogenarian and under educated Dinka power elites who had the ‘Nuerophobia’ in South Sudan like Europeans had ‘Germanophobia’ in Europe, the Asians had the ‘Japanophobia’ in Asia and the Korean Peninsula and currently the Western industrialized countries and the US had Islamophonia, Shiaophonia, Sunniophobia, including the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) ‘nukeophobia’ in Israel that had already stockpiled more than 400-500 nuke warheads in its arsenal in Demona, Negev, Israel.
The US as a superpower also had the North Korean ‘Nuclearophobia’ and the ‘Sinophobia’ in both marketplace economy and its inner secret weapon that would surprise the US when the Chinese would declare the “Yuan” currency based on gold because it has more gold in the world compared only to Germany, Republic of South Africa (RSA) and the Russian Federation plus its nuclear power. It does not matter anymore how many killed or died in Jonglei State, but there is one thing for sure though, democratic change or democratic transformation is inevitable to emerge not only in Jonglei state, but throughout South Sudan. The Dinka led GOSS has failed the Southern revolution because of greed, rampant corruption, embezzlements, widespread human right abuses in violations of the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights under the UNGA resolution 217 A (III) of 10 December 1948, Paris, France, and the Four Geneva Conventions and the Amendments thereunto and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CORC) in South Sudan.
The Murle realized that continued provocations against the Nuer majority were not in its best interest as a small minority within the State and South Sudan as a whole. It reckoned that the Nuer nationality is also living within the Murleland is not the enemy, but the real enemy has been the Dinka Bor. Of course, when the Nuer Youth retaliated against the Murle, the consequences were too severed against them. The two nationalities through consultations were able to sit down through the traditional and modern mechanisms of conflict resolution and resolved their differences and peace returned to the area among the Lou Nuer majority and the Murle minority.
In recent weeks, however, the rebellion intensified against the weak GOSS because of the guerrilla warfare being waged against it by the South Sudan Revolutionary Forces (SSRF) that seeks truly democratic change or democratic transformation in South Sudan. The SPLA deployed Major-General Peter Gadet Yak to do another cruel and brutal disarmament against the Luo Nuer White Army (LNWA), the Nuer Youth Militias (NYM) and the Gokdeng (Prophet) Forces who had acquired new more arms for self-defense; further provocations and incursions from both the SPLA, the Dinka Bor supported by the GOSS in Juba against the Nuer and the Murle in Jonglei State.
Almost a week ago or so, the SPLA went on rampage against the local Luo Nuer who was preparing to move on with their cattle and families to the grazing lands in the Toich (marshes/sudd). At night the SPLA came in with the military cars and attacked the local Luo Nuer and killed more than 123 mostly women, children and kidnapped or abducted more than 90 children and claimed that the incident was committed by the Murle against the Luo Nuer in order to provoke another Luo Nuer and the Murle inter-ethnic fighting. But according to an eye witnessed, it was not the Murle who committed this heinous crime, but the SPLA forces per orders from Bor and Juba. Therefore, based on direct reports from the area of the incident via telephones, it was rest assured that the killing of the local civilians mostly women and children without any provocation was committed by the SPLA one of the most hated and despised outfit in South Sudan against the Nuer and the Murle folks. When the Luo Nuer retaliated, most of the dead were SPLA soldiers rather than Murle tribesmen and most of the cattle and all the kidnapped 90 children were all rescued. Tensions remained high in Jonglei State and unless something is done it could explode into a civil war between the well armed local Luo Nuer and the Murle populations against the SPLA forces with backing from the SSRF, the Copra Forces (CF) and the South Sudan National Revolutionary Forces (SSNRA) inside Jonglei State. The SPLA will be exhausted and defeated in Jonglei State before long.
Two days ago, the Luo Nuer Youth went on to the streets demonstrations in Bor town and presented a written statement to Kuol Manyang and his government in which they gave him an ultimatum petition to let Juba know that enough is enough, that they would be ready to fight anybody in the state, that they would rearm every Nuer Youth from the ages 15 and older and that they would join the SSRF rebel forces to wage war against the failed GOSS and the state government. They gave the so-called Governor Kuol Manyan Juuk a dateline to give them an urgent response from Juba by today’s dateline or else all things could break loose. The Nuer Youth feel that the state government favors some citizens and disfavors others or social discrimination based on tribal lineages and that this has been one of the root causes of the confusion and inter-ethnic rivalries within the state. Secondly, they requested Slava Kiir to unconditionally dismiss the current notorious Kuol Manyang to go and to replace him with someone that would cater to all the citizens and that would also be the people’s choice and accountable to the people’s power in the state rather than to Juba. Thirdly, they demanded the immediate transfer of the state power to ‘majority rule’ with ‘minority rights’ protected and, fourthly, state resources (wealth) be shared equitably instead of one man’s monopoly or a group monopoly at the expense of others that had been the case under the notorious Kuol Manyang and his protégés and sycophants rule in the past few years. Most of the state wealth had been utilized to develop only Dinka Bor County whilst other State Counties have been left underdeveloped, without electricity; road construction; schools; healthcare system; agricultural development; clean drinking water and socio-impact. This is a reflection of a ‘cluster’ development rather a universal approach for the improvements of all socioeconomic and political conditions within the state.
The Nuer Youth accused the UMISS for its failure to do its mandate by providing equal protection to the civilians’ population. They also called on the UN Secretary-General Ben Ki Moon to replace Miss Heilga F. Johnson as the head of UNMISS because she has been a registered and a card carrier ‘partisan’ of the SPLA party for years and she does not care much about the civilians’ population and the Luo Nuer and the Murle in particular, known to be anti-SPLA. They further called for the UNMISS to remain as a neutral body, that its needs to remain as neutral as much as possible in South-South affairs, and that it needs a neutral person to lead it rather than a ‘partisan’ in order to properly do its mandate.
Meanwhile, the SSRF rebels would intensify the armed struggle against the rampantly corrupt GOSS in Juba and calls on the people of the Greater Upper Nile region (Jonglei, Unity and Upper Nile States) to unite their ranks and files for ‘secession’ of the region as an independent and sovereign state from South Sudan. It would be recalled that South Sudan, albeit, ‘separated’ from the mother country- the Republic of Sudan- on 9 July 2011 because of alleged social injustice, domination, exploitation and oppression from our Northern brethrens. The current mode of operandi and mode of Vivendi has been far worse compared to our previous circumstances with the North there was law and order instead of lawlessness. Civilians were not harassed, beaten and killed randomly without any probable causes because there was police protection. Nowadays, in South Sudan, it has become a lawless state and people die everyday without investigations of the probable causes of death, no autopsies done before burials and without remorse at all. The SPLA security forces have been responsible for all the deaths and many bad things that happened to the populations throughout South Sudan. We hope that the Governors of Unity and Upper Nile States would cooperate in this matter.
There have been also so many bad things and many bad cases of abuses committed by the SPLA throughout South Sudan that the SAF did not commit against the innocent civilians during the war years. In despite of the war between the North and South, there was good and extraordinaire civilian-military relations compared to what we have been experiencing in South Sudan with the SPLA as one of the most hated and disliked outfit by the civilians’ population. Because the SPLA has broken the law, we would not submit and then turn around to build up another ‘neo-oppressor,’ dictatorship and oligarchic rule in a pre-born and a pre-failed state in South Sudan that’s now moving from being an unstable state, to stateless and to statelessness similar to Somalia in the post-Sayaid Bari rule in 1992.
Therefore, the best solution for the South would be to break up into three (3) mini-states like it was divided in 1983 into three (3) autonomous regions per recommendation of Major-General Joseph Lago (ret.) and the Equatorians intelligentsia to the late President Al-Nuiemri that the Niolitics majority (Dinka-Nuer) dominated the then Regional Government. Instead of bloodshed, the best tenable reasonable alternative (TRA) solution would be for the South to disintegrate peacefully and politically into three (3) mini-nation-states of Bahr-el-Ghazel, Equatoria and Upper Nile resemblance of the Czech and the Slovak Republics during the days of Perestroika (restructuring) and Glasnost (openness) as the legacy of the former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
The current situation in South Sudan has been deliberately and willfully instigated, fueled and ignited by the Western powers under the umbrella of the US, Israel and the UK who have been venturing to utilize the GOSS in Juba as a surrogate to implement the orchestrated policy of the regime change in Khartoum. The GOSS, Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF) and the SPLA-N do not have the guts and gusto to topple the democratically elected government for the first time in a quarter of century in the Republic of Sudan. The South Sudan Revolutionary Forces (SSRF) would provide the necessary protection to the local civilians in the countryside. We urge and appeal to all the good men and women in the SPLA to defect and join the revolution for social justice, freedom, democracy, equality as well the development of a constitution that enshrined the Bill of Rights for the protection and safeguarding of all the citizens. Slava Kiir’s must and ought to go through the people’s power, he would have to go and neither the US nor Zionist-Israel and Uganda would provide him protection. Save
Finally, we would call on the human rights watch (HRWs), the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR), and the UN Department for Humanitarian Affairs (UNDHA), the European Union (EU) to investigate all the abuses committed by the GOSS and the SPLA before it is too late. As I see it, Africa’s newest state is at the brink of making of civil war in South Sudan. We are afraid that South Sudan could become the next Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge Cambodia (1975-1980), the 1994 Rwanda Genocide, the ongoing dreadful and treacherous war within Syria for the past 22 months and the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mali, West Africa. This situation could be averted if the world leaders, i.e., the African Union (AU), the US and the UK in particular, if they could do the right thing. Any prolong civil war in South Sudan could create a pretty ugly Horn of Africa (HOA) with serious consequences not only for South Sudan, but the entire region as a whole.
Dr. David de Chand is the chairman of South Sudan’s opposition party, the South Sudan Democratic Front Party (SSDF).