South Sudan is gearing up to the climax of the Revitalized Agreement on the Restoration of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (R-ARCSS). The climax is supposed to occasion the formation of the Revitalized Transitional Government of National Unity (R-TGONU). But this looks to be in limbo despite the dramatic hopes that peace, in its real form, lands on Saturday, 22 February 2020.
The past plays the future in the R-ARCSS
The R-ARCSS and The Agreement on the Restoration of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (ARCSS) are one and the same. It was the failure of ARCSS that brought about its revitalization. In echo to the political climate during the August 2015 signing of the ARCSS, political wobbling has resurfaced in earnest among the antagonists. President Kiir and his government are desperate to accommodate Dr. Riek Machar and the SPLM/A-IO group but the latter has no hurry. Dr. Riek Machar wants all the stipulations in the agreement to be implemented accordingly. Thus the formation of the government on 22 February 2020 will likely be blighted with problems of exclusion (by the government in Juba) or pull out (from the rebel opposition).
Up to this point, the path to an all-out peace is nothing less than a thorny case and Dr. Riek Machar is clearly not making it any easier. It was clear in his timely rejection of the Final Resolution of the Meeting of the Presidency on the Number of States and Boundaries issued on February 14, 2020. The resolution was rushed in favor of his movement and was grounded on a good gesture to give peace a chance. He should have jumped to that gesture promptly. However, he quickly issued his rejection on February 15, 2020, chastising the government on the statuses of the three administrative areas of Ruweng, Pibor, and Abyei. Perhaps, he was calling to mind the unfortunate past experiences.
Five years ago in August 2015, president Kiir reluctantly signed the ARCSS at the last minute and attached several pages of his own demands, and forwarded it to the mediators. It was a clear signal that he had little trust in the agreement. It could be argued that such action contributed to the later collapse of the agreement. Riek is still aware of that as well as the nasty security corollaries that ensued. If he was not petrified this time around, then he was rather more cautious not to take the same dangerous political highway. He probably did not want things to repeat themselves unpleasantly. No more confusing and dangerous 'annexes' or 'appendices' as it was in the beginning in 2015 agreement; which led to the 2016 J-1 shoot-out and heightened in an uncalled for 40-day escape marathon to the Democratic Republic of Congo; is now when President Kiir is again toying with the number of states and grooming too many VPs to counter his weight; and ever shall be conflict without end.
The ARCSS syndrome
The ARCSS lives in the R-ARCSS. Like ARCSS, it is proving even more problematic to implement. Since it was signed in September 2018, it has been pushed from side to side with all parties unable to reign in their differences. The formation of the TGONU was expected in May 2019 but, to no one’s astonishment, was deferred due to disagreements over security arrangements and territorial issues emanating from the government's creation of the new states. It had been the rebel opposition that contentiously argued against all actions and compromises made by the government. The government on its part has not been true to peace protocols as it kept changing goal posts whenever implementation drew near. The six-month additional time given did not help, forcing IGAD mediators in November 2019 to add yet another 100 days or three months up to February 22, 2020. The IGAD threatened consequences if the deadline was missed. Since IGAD is toothless but still feared, the approach of the deadline has emboldened the rebels who pressed harder for their demands. They hope to benefit in the fray if any punishment is handed down, thinking they have nothing to lose. The whole point of dragging the feet has come to center heavily on the number of states and the three administrative areas.
The Three Administrative Areas
Apart from Ruweng, the other administrative areas have been part of every agreement in South Sudan. Abyei is the baggage from the partial failure of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Greater Pibor Administrative Area was part of the 2016 government in which the SPLM/A-IO was a key ally. If anything is new, it is Ruweng, and it had been threatening and her rhetorical monologue had been loud enough for all to hear. But it is unreasonable to blame the people of this region for being too sensitive and skeptical when all they see and smell around them is death. History is still too raw for the Ngok people on this eternal frontline to be asked to forget. The atrocities of Malakal in which even the unborn children were pulled out from their dead mothers’ wombs and macheted still traumatize people in the area and countrywide. If the Ngok people of Ruweng believe governing themselves as an Administrative Area offers them a break from the cycle of atrocities, then the presidency could make good on this arrangement by surveying the land and establish permanent boundaries with their neighbors or work on the past problematic maps of colonial Sudan and Anglo-Egyptian Sudan to bring about a permanent solution to this area.
Pibor, as stated earlier, is a case older than the SPLM/A-IO. The Cobra Militias of Pibor under David Yau Yau share a discontent with the Late George Athor's Movement, both of which emerged from the gubernatorial election shambles in Jonglei state in 2010. The Pibor armed group was there when Dr. Riek Machar was a vice president. Peace with David Yau Yau was reached before that with the SPLA-IO. Throwing this in as part of the problem means that the SPLM/A-IO expects wide-ranging conflicts to flare up in the country.
With Abyei, the SPLM/A-IO must come out clearly as a national political player and states its position rather than lumping it within the meaningless Anglo-Egyptian boundaries and districts that served no good to South Sudan but isolated the region from the rest of the world. The clash of modernity and ruralism in every South Sudanese today is a result of the Closed District Ordinance. As much as arguments in its favor point to the temporary stoppage of the slave trade, its adverse impacts far outweigh what was purportedly being controlled. Failure to resolve the Sudanese problem in Abyei is the responsibility of all South Sudan political stakeholders. Leaders must remain true to the course of the people.
The 32 States then and now
The government’s decision to redividing the country into 28 states and later 32 states at the time was reactionary in nature. It did not want to be stuck in the past because the rebels, during the negotiations, were calling for more states and especially the 21 colonial districts; a call that would reintroduce memories of the time of the Anglo-Egyptian proxy rule. Many have come to believe that Dr. Riek wanted to win the favor of the UK, the former colonial power that is part of the Troika countries supporting the peace process in the country. The government also realized that the August 2015 ARCSS was inclined on awarding oil-producing areas to the rebels in the Upper Nile Region, thus ethnicizing the country’s natural endowments and making the region even more contested. It thought it right to correct the misconception since some international and regional powers were erroneously keen to associate the rebels with the oil. It also perceived that the ARCSS, signed in August 2015, attempted to split the country into two strong domains, one controlled by the government and the other by the armed opposition.
The division was, therefore, partly to place the resources where they belong and to dissuade those who might be thinking that the government was just sitting on an empty eggshell. The reaction was immediate and bloody. As the weight of the decree reverberated across the country, it began to be understood in the rebel corners and among the anti-ethnic hegemony in the country post-independence that the action, by its very design and execution, placed all major oil wells within the Dinka territories and further annexed a few patches of land here and there, particularly the Nuer lands and those of the Shilluk Kingdom. As much as the division of the country into 32 states was good for enabling people to locally develop their immediate areas, the circumstances in which it was introduced have created new geographies of ethnic enclaves where land wars were, in the process, set to become real and eternal.
Fear of Elders
It was in the division that many believed emerged the powerful Jieng Council of Elders (JCE). This assemblage of tribal sages, many of who were, and still are, seasoned politicians from the days of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan until now, have members hailing from all tribes and territories of the Dinka. They stand accused of having influenced the government in redrawing the borders and continuously providing a leaning rod to the government in dire political and military situations. Minus the elders, the opposition believes it can outwit the government to win the population to its side. The JCE has since become a catchphrase for anyone who has a bone to pick with the government. Others go as far as castigating whoever is working with the government and delivering services to the people. Seeing the government fall has become a preoccupation of some desperate tribal cliques and hateful individuals who did not benefit in peacetime, never benefited in the bloody chaos, and have no heart left for the country except welcoming a recolonization in dubious forms, hoping a mysterious master will have a lofty handout.
Beneficiaries of 32 States
No one can predict that the return to 10 states, plus, 3 administrative areas will not have its own casualties. The level of political confusion has grown wild in the country. It is plausible to state here that in trying to speed up the formation of the government, meant to consolidate peace or bring about it in the first place, not every citizen will be euphoric. Given that some happy and joyful people of yesterday have been denied states and local administrations today and without proper consultation and heavy hearts, returned to old places for peace to descend upon them, makes it clear that peace will have enemies from its recipients. Collapsing the government by reducing it from the operational 32 states to ten or thirteen – if we add the three administrative areas thus created - would not be a simple return of the tidal waves. The Juba government will now have more on its plates to deal with. That includes numerous public officials who have been made redundant or have lost their jobs in the big calculation for peace, many citizens trying to come to terms with the sudden dispossession of their new states, lands, and territories, and bitter others who have lost friends and dear ones in the commitment to make the new states operational to deliver services. Some of these dissolving states have already put up new public infrastructure in the shortest time possible and were happily making them fully functional to their respective people. These are the groups that will eye both the government and the SPLM/A-IO with fully rolled-out eyeballs.
In all this, it appears Dr. Riek and his SPLM-IO wield enormous power to enable things to move or stall them. Since the war began in 2013, no major developmental plans have been initiated in the country simply because people have to deal with the war first. The government and its machinery seemed to enjoy this deflection from public scrutiny and have relaxed the commitment on many important projects such as building a lasting road network. The pre-occupation of the government had always been how to stop the war first. Any criticisms or meaningful analyses of the situation in the country have often been pointed in the direction of the war.
The SPLM/A concept of peace through development has become a thing of the past. Dr. Riek has got what he never used to get during the bygone days: waiting for him. The SPLM/A mainstream has no history of waiting for people walking on the sidetracks. Dr. Riek knows this. When the ‘theatrical coup’ of 1991 occurred, the remaining SPLM/A took a giant leap of faith and initiated many projects and redoubled war efforts such that by the time he came back to the fold in 2002, he had no idea where to start. The SPLM/A was a real, undeclared four-by-four vehicle without reverse gears. It was completely divergent from the one in sight today. William Nyuon Bany confirmed this when he returned to the movement after his stint in the bush within a bush. He was said to have put it that the SPLM/A seemed weak when one was inside but an impenetrable strength and a progressive movement when one viewed it from the outside.
Riek and the Dragon Behind him
Why had Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon become a bone that cannot be swallowed nor expectorated? It leaves many to say now that if Riek Machar and the SPLM/A-IO were a genuinely registered political party, devoid of the threats of use of arms and bloodshed that often ensue, South Sudan would have announced her democratic strength in her unyielding opposition. But, to all South Sudanese both at home and in the diaspora who have been yearning for peace and the resultant progress that follows, Dr. Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon is undeniably holding everyone hostage. People have been reduced to begging him to come home. It is a slap in the face to all by the man who was essentially chased away and nearly lost his feet while running. He was humiliated but has now returned the slap of humiliation slowly and painfully with the determination of a stalking Panthera. To his political opponents and to all citizens of South Sudan, it is a damning warning. South Sudanese are not always tolerant of any individualistic leader. They have disowned many leaders who exhibited such characters. But Riek Machar Teny keeps coming back more powerful than each time he left. No one knows exactly the dragon in the shadow of the man. That’s what scares the government, the people, and President Kiir in particular.
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