The South Sudanese town of Boma in Pibor County
had fallen to South Sudan Democratic Army, SSDA, a gubernatorial rebellion led
by David Yau. The same month, May 2013, the South Sudanese army at the frontline in
Pibor demonstrated uncharacteristic display by abandoning positions at the
frontline and going on a looting spree in Pibor itself as many reports propose.
Other incidences of civil disorder staged by the retreating army from Pibor
have been reported on the outskirts of Bor town, the state capital.
Although the army behaviour could not be
delinked from poor performance in service delivery and logistical negligence,
the fall of Boma plateau is remarkably atypical. It is possibly the very first
time that a military incursion into the SPLA/M Boma had merely lasted for
minutes, if not hours, after which her inhabitants are sent helter-skelter into
the immediate surroundings or merciless Tingily semi-desert. It is implausibly difficult to put thoughts
together in determining the underlying circumstances that led to the easy slip of
Boma into the hands of the militia. The South Sudanese media and the military
seemed to have also resigned to the fall of Boma. No one knows if Boma has been
abandoned only for a season or for eternity.
This raised questions whether the softly
captured and eerily whispered Boma in the news was the same Boma that served as
the springboard into Eastern Equatoria by East Equatoria Axis in 1980s? Was
this the Boma so known to Major Nyachigak Nyachiluk, Lt Colonel Martin Manyiel
Ayuel, commander Kuol Amum, Commander Gilario Modi Hurnyang, and Bol Madut or
the Kiswahili ‘boma’ the homestead? South Sudanese who have wandered the
bushes of South Sudan during the war for the total liberation of southern Sudan are perhaps asking these questions. One convincing answer rests in the
reasoning that the mentality about the importance of Boma has increasingly
become elusive to leaders and the military. The Boma of today is not synonymous
anymore to the Boma of yore.
The Boma of today, the Boma of South Sudanese
regular and paid army, the Boma that could be captured, and the course of
history would never change, the liberated and outlandish Boma of logistical
clumsiness and of command and control debacles was probably the Boma that fell.
This is the Boma that nobody cares if it is overrun a thousandfold for it
will forever be in South Sudan. Welcome then to Jebel Buma, the
Upper and Lower Boma, ‘Boma Up and Boma Down’ (as Kuol Manyang, the defense minister put it), the SPLA and SSDA Berlin divided
by ridges.
The Boma of old was a different bush town, too
daring to meddle with and too comfortable to hold on to. It became the
recuperating point for recruits and refugees crossing Sahara Tingily either
way between Ethiopia and South Sudan. Incarcerated SPLA/M political prisoners
like Arok Thon Arok, Kerubino Kuanyin Bol, and others had their home at Upper
Boma. At an elevation of about 1100 meters above sea level, anyone defending it
had an eye view of the attackers and wielding a demigod power to rain munitions
on them. During the dry season, her surrounding semi-desert was always a deeply
cracked and waterless alluvial soil; a hell of a place not only to thirsty
humans but also to animals. Boma was undeniably impermeable to alien forces.
The SPLA forces stormed it once and battled for its defense countable times.
It was Major Bior Ajak, famous as Tahir Bior
Abdala Ajak, who commanded the Neran battalion that forcefully entered Boma for
the first time in the early 1980s and established a command base for Eastern
Equatoria Axis. The SPLA/M Movement was at the time arching out military
operational fronts throughout Southern Sudan. Since that time, Boma never fell
to Jellaba and their allies. One proven historical wartime reality had for
years stood unremittingly opposed to the quick fall of the area to external
invasion after its initial capture: elevation of Boma itself. The town or a
post had always served as a defensive armory to her inhabitants throughout the
twenty-one years of war, particularly where there was a will to defend it. That willpower is unquestionably dwindling much to the forgetfulness of
the eminence of the area as a national heritage.
The prominence of the Boma plateau and its national
importance in South Sudan is as historical as it is strategically significant.
Boma is the hub of wildlife diversity in South Sudan, expanding in the area to
about 2300000ha, probably followed by Chelkou. It is an area of vast resources
that a nation could tap into for economic gains and progress. Little known to
many is the botanical implication of Boma. Boma has a profusion of Coffee
Arabica grows in its rain forest ecosystem as a wild plant. This
is a rare gift of nature that ought to keep Boma within the government’s arm’s
length for resource mobilization and development in the country. It was first
noticed in colonial Sudan in the 1930s by a botanist, Dr. A.S. Thomas. He later
wrote an academic paper in 1942 entitled: “The wild Arabica coffee
on the Boma Plateau, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.” After that, Boma slipped into the
Sudanese negligence of her multiple marginalities. So if anyone feels the
compulsion to tabulate the regions of national importance in South Sudan, Boma
will, for a reason to be defended, jostle in the second place after oil fields.
There are veritable corollaries of the fall of
Boma to Yau Yau rebel forces but one is of particular concern: the
Potentiality for the expansion of broad-based rebellion that might recruit, not
only from the Murle but also from other local population in the area. Boma is home
to Murle, Kishipo/Suri and Anyuak. It is therefore indispensable to worry
for invariable reasons since the ethnic composition of Boma is that of a people who
have never been friends, but may find a unifying factor in Yau Yau. He could
use Murle pastoralists to forcefully recruit sedentary agriculturalists Kishipo
and Anyuak.
A biblical maxim states that a prophet is not accepted in his hometown. Yau Yau’s testimonial of seriousness in South Sudan would likely be
felt when he exerts control over Murle’s adjacent communities. The probable
outcome would be an establishment of a base - the Al Qaeda of the rebellion. If
this happens, Juba might not have to worry about Boma but Pachalla, Jebel Raid, and Pakok/Korchum without forgetting the support Yau Yau might get among the
Taposa. Effectively, Juba would be cut off from the Ethiopian and Kenyan
Borders closest to it.
This move could completely turn the tables on summary
‘amnesties’ that the government is fond of extending. Often such
amnesties have only served to build personalities than to provide credible
solutions. There is proven belief going around that ‘if you want to be a
Major-General in the South Sudanese army, first be a rebel.’ Well, a rebel one
might be and Major General one might win, but certainly what angers a civilian
to take up arms in the first instance may get him into the woods again albeit
heavily laden with military titles. Yau Yau is a case in point.
From Gumuruk, the village town of one blue
mountain, Yau Yau the pastoralist and theologian is presently in the mountains
of ‘Boma Up’ Plateau. Opposite to his theological training as a preserver of
souls, he is slaying people up there. The South Sudanese army must do a lot
more to bring him to ‘Boma Down’ and out of town.