Siad Barre’s Style: ‘Rebooting’ South Sudan

Pint. Tripoli 1978. Siad Barre & Mu'ammar Al-Qadhdhāfī

It (food) must be put back into the pot so that we serve it. No visitor serves food; if you don’t put it back into the pot, we will tip it over.

(By Akut Kuei - A group of young Dinka traditional singers. They sang about Arabs’ exclusive use of national resources in Sudan at the expense of long time indigenes)

The Intergovernmental Authority on Development, IGAD, plus the Troika (USA, England, and Norway) and China have brought the negotiations for peace in South Sudan to what seems to be a successful ending. The South Sudanese government and the rebels convened in Addis Ababa on the 17^th August 2015 to sign the final peace accord. It had taken almost twenty months of fruitless deliberations. The government and rebels, all along, showed little remorse for the suffering that war had wrecked on the people. Even as peace draws nigh, it was how it first started, the savage way it had been fought, and the peacemaking process that dragged on in attempts to ending it that presented many concerns in its dynamics. 

South Sudan is the youngest country in the world, but looking at her messes as well as the ambitions of her leaders, one could surely be persuaded that political climate, as the nation moves further into the future,  would not be an all-time easy. The reason for the uncertainty is visible in the post-independence war of 2013. Post-independence war in this country has highlighted that cruelest things, such as events that cause the loss of life, easily spiral into abysmal ending whilst life-preserving undertakings, such as peacemaking and forging of strong national attitude, assume highly visceral hatred that it becomes impossible to balance the books of normality. In other words, what appears normal to the leaders of this new nation is not a march towards prosperity but a ‘rebooting’ of the country to its prewar and wartime eras. All this is aimed at bringing the country down if aspired political and existential space for ascending to the top job in the land is not guaranteed. Meaning, ambitions for top leadership and patriotism, the two values that should go concurrently, are far apart. Patriotism itself has no place.

Compromised Peace Proposal

The recent peace negotiations tell us more of what occupies the minds of South Sudanese leaders; the very reason it is important to compare the situation with that of the failed state of Somalia and the way her independence leader, Siad Barre, behaved towards the end of his rule in the 1990s. We begin at the recently debunked climax of the peace process in Addis Ababa. We may ask, why was it so hard to quickly agree when destruction stares everyone in the face in the country? Why was there a rush to gloss over issues that might entrench war longer than were the expectations? These questions have simple answers: leaders were worried about their own positions. The rush was meant to run away from more problems, especially on the side of the rebels who suffered a deep breakup. The government, on the other hand, was not ready to push on with the war unnecessarily because the economy was shrinking badly. Continuation of war might lead to multiple rebellions, which would be hard to quell. It was a distressing situation, similar to the Middle East’s nuclear talks, which prompted Christopher M. Jones to title his 2010 book on the subject as “Rushing Ahead to Armageddon.” Rather than pacifying with confidence, that would be meaningful in the healing process, the warlords of South Sudan have rushed to uncertainty with peace. Peace was signed with bitterness. That was not a good sign. Wars might be consequences of rushed decisions, fired up by emotions and hatred among the populace and substantiated by inexperience, ineptitude, and callous over-ambitiousness among the bearers and would-be bearers of power, but procurement of peace is expected to walk the path of peace because it is meant to result in justice and responsibility.

The Signing Game

Despite the rushing, however, the day of reckoning saw no unanimity in the agreement. Better put, there was half peace, the one signed by the armed opposition and the stakeholders, clustered as the Group-10, but rejected outright by the government on the pretext of abrupt and surreptitious new and unclear texts that needed time for proper deconstruction and selling to the public. President Kiir simply used the word “consultation” and only initialed the document and declined to append his signature and requested more time. He was expected to sign in fifteen days from the previous deadline set by the IGAD-Plus mediators.

So, there was no complete peace signed in Addis Ababa on the final day. Instead, there was some kind of a multilateral show orchestrated by IGAD and Partners to ensure the war had ended. IGAD -Plus have worked very hard to see South Sudan returns to peace and quietude, but had inadvertently got locked in the tangram of controversy, not by choice, but by intention as ‘powerful third parties.’ That alone caused some bitterness and fears. Armed opposition sat back and felt that IGAD-Plus was their backer and a power broker, ready to launch military actions against the government in Juba or lobby for sanctions that might cripple Juba and gives them the advantage. The government and supporters felt betrayed by complacent mediations. What was clear in all this was that: peace was coming home more imposed and forced than voluntarily agreed upon by the rivals.

Globally, treading the path of pacifying two groups had never been easy for any peacemaker. Peace writers such as David Johnson contend that “imposing the peace suppresses the conflict but does not resolve underlying grievances and does not establish positive long-term relationships among the disputants.” If the South Sudanese situation turns out to work differently under peace imposition, many people would be relieved. But the character of the disputants means that physical retribution remains a big worry.

Many months of negotiations since the outbreak of war have seen many peace drafts that would, in normal circumstances, qualify for bipartite ratification and acceptance gone by without concrete pacification. The international community that supported the peace process got weary, the death toll from war surpassed surprises and eroded sympathies, the yearning for peace among the population heightened, mediators got frustrated and only the competing leaders maintained their unyielding and dogged demands for the right share of power. Severally, neither the government nor the armed opposition (and the stakeholders) budged from their tabled positions particularly on issues related to power and security arrangements. In attempting to cut the power cake according to needs, the mediators have many times almost ran the risk of reproducing 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that divided Sudan in 2011. It had quite often been reflected in the power-sharing and security provisions.

Jumping from Draft to Draft

The first of the latest draft proposal granted armed opposition 53% of power in the three states of the former Upper Nile Region. This, together with demilitarization of Juba, the national capital, to the radius of “twenty five kilometers “within ninety days of signing the agreement” and placing the security of the city in the hands of foreign forces that would come from a combined deployment of the “Transitional Third-Party Security Unit” (TTPSU), which included the UN forces (already present in the country in huge numbers) and a contribution of further supplementary contingents from IGAD member states, the AU, and the UNMISS enraged the government and many of its supporters. The text of the first draft of the three documents summarized the status of the national capital as the “Special Arrangement Area (SAA).”
 TTPSU seemed to be acting as the police force in the city during the transitional period since the role of the police is never stated anywhere in the entire proposal.

The proposal was a hot pie for the government to sell and was expecting a high turnout against it. Public demonstrations were held across the country to reject it. This was a clear contradiction to the position presumed by IGAD mediators and partners who seemed to think that any agreement to end the hostilities would be readily accepted by the general public without resentment. Based on the public outcry following the first draft, it was possible to note that citizens of South Sudan read the proposed agreement twofold: the end of one war and the beginning of another, which was being made conducive by ambiguity in the agreement. Interpretations of the draft from the protesters across the country showed that the first draft was clearly rejected. It also highlighted the need for a just peace: a peace that sets no preconditions for cyclical suffering. There was also panic grounded on the assumption that recently gained sovereignty from colonial Sudan was being replaced by another, this time, a massive international and regional coalition backed by multinational companies and businesses that see South Sudan as a resource mining field to be exploited.  Nothing gave this thought more credence than the clause which made the national capital a ‘Special Arrangement Area’ during thirty months of the transitional period. Many leaders in the armed opposition and Former Detainees have been quoted as randomly pleading the UN to take over the country if they failed to dislodge the government. The chief mediator, Seyoum Mesfin, recently confirmed the fears.

Following the first draft, however, the government wrote to IGAD member states and the mediators, pushing for more changes. It led to the second version, the Kampala version, which convinced Juba that it had won the favor of many IGAD’s heads of states who all agreed on the government’s suggestions and made changes to the draft. As president Kiir went to Addis Ababa, despite his initial refusal to show up, he was aware of a new favorite deal. It turned out that the new deal was re-made even newer than he thought. The third and final version of the deal appeared on the final day in front of him for immediate signing. This time, there was no time to push for changes. This version removed authoritative control of armed opposition in the three states of the former Upper Nile Region, reducing its power influence from 53% to 40% and gave the government 46% of power control. Juba remained to be demilitarized, only the change of terminologies was made. Armed opposition moved on to get 15% power influence in all other states of the country. That further extended opposition power tentacles to the new influencing level. Stakeholders in the name of Former Detainees were also given a reasonable percentage. The result caused a commotion on the government side. Being in charge of the country with so many other political groups, civil society organizations, and interest groups, there was a need to make consultations and bring everyone on board. President Kiir believed he was signing himself out of power. His reservations matched the calculations of the opposition's resentment to his demands: we all get the power or we all lose it.

The mediators felt that there was no more room to consult and tried to force the deal through. The international pressure that followed mirrored Siad Barre’s Somalia toward the end of his rule. The warring parties became entrenched. Observing from the rear, one would see that South Sudanese leaders can and have the powers to turn the country into whatever state they desire. They know they fought and brought the country to independence and desperately want to be part of it as long as they are alive. To be edged out by an equal partner in the liberation of the country is not an easy option to accept as long as South Sudan is what it is today. Every liberator in South Sudan believes that without his/her participation, there would be no country. Since many of the top leaders were comrades-in-arms, they believe that none of them has the authority to push the other – for the sake of peace or not – out of the country. If one still has the military power, a thought they all possess without regrets, the best way is to cause trouble for all so that one is recognized and maintained. In case of failure to use past military background to acquire political power, going Barre becomes the apparent way out. This can best be viewed as a self-destructive strategy and here is how:

Cornered by Africa Watch, Human Rights Watch and inter-clan rebellions, all aiming and pushing him (the independence leader) to cede power to the people whom he was accused of being their contemptible totalitarian, Siad Barre knew he was not going to stand his ground. He remembered how he alone maintained the cohesiveness of the greater Somali community and state; he recalled how he single-handedly shaped education by introducing the Somali language in Latin scripts. He also remembered discouraging clan significance in civil society and in governance affairs, hence, success in forging a strong nationalism for his people. 

In a mood of desperation to the people he then thought were ungrateful to his cohesive leadership and deliverance from the yoke of colonization, he somberly, audibly said for the last time:

“When I came to Mogadishu,” he thundered on, “there was one road built by the Italians. If you try to force me to stand down, I will leave the city as I found it. I came to power with a gun; only the gun can make me go.” 

Mohamed Diriye Abdullahi quoted him in his book, Culture, and customs of Somalia (2001), p. 41. Barre was ousted soon after and fled to Kenya (the country that secretly blamed Somalia in the events leading to The Shifta War of 1963-1967 in which ethnic Somalis from Kenya aspired to join Somalia), then to Nigeria where he died of a heart attack. No question, the Somalia he left behind was Somalia he prophetically told he would bequeath on his people. 

Today, the situation in Somalia is everybody’s concern. The federal government of Somalia (Dowladda Federaalka Soomaaliya) in Mogadishu is powerless and is constantly guarded, guided, and protected by forces of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), a force that is largely and technically fighting for Ethiopia for Somalia’s alleged historic support of the insurgency in Ogaden Region where ethnic Somalis of Ogaden Clan (Barre’s mother is from Ogaden Clan) have formed the Ogaden National Liberation Front and sought to unite with the motherland Somalia. AMISOM is drawn from countries that once criticized Barre’s leadership. 

The territorial integrity of Somalia today is shambolic. Somali waters today are fished and used as dumping ground for toxic wastes from multinational companies of the countries that formed regional and the International Community that were his staunch critics. Security in Somalia following the emergence of militias such as Al-Shabab makes everybody twinge with embarrassment. Foreign drones with lethal weapons fly the skies without entry permissions, kill with impunity unmindful of human rights violations, and leave without departure orders to do so. Also, unannounced encroachment on Somali waters by foreign fishing vessels has depleted the local fishing grounds, leaving fishermen with no survival means and turning them towards piracy. All in all, a simple request for leadership change has set Somalia up for international and local meddling.

Could South Sudan go the Somali way?

Many citizens are concerned that this might happen if leaders do not take patriotism seriously over simple leadership ambitions. The young intelligentsia must not fall prey to tribal affiliations but wake up with serious national agenda and focus their energies on restorative justice in order to bring South Sudan back on course as a country for all. However, coupled with the behavior of the international community, backed by regional groupings that have interests to cater for by venturing into the green Savannah of South Sudan, and informed by the aggressive nature of the Nilotic of this country, logic tells that it is possible to bring down this country to her knees. Sad, but a reality.

What was wrong with the peace deal in South Sudan?

IGAD'S error, first and foremost, was the ambiguous push to force the deal through. It was a serious discontinuity in the rules of effective, genuine, neutral, and honest processes of negotiations or conciliation in which disputants are expected to reach a compromise in the atmosphere of concessions. If shuttle diplomacy had not been shelved to oblivion, then it would have been an efficient tool used by IGAD-PLUS to avail and discuss the compromised peace deal to its desired ending. Herding the parties into the signing ceremony without fully securing positions of acceptance or rejection on the document was futile at best. For both parties to be completely trusting in the deal and in the process of mediation, both parties must have signed at the same time having all agreed to the text in its conclusive form. Allowing one side to sign while the other refused was a weakness that mediators should not have permitted to happen because of the tendency to burst neutrality and instead, inculcates mistrust. The agreement was muscular, ignorant, rushed, and overtaken by impending pride of having won over the warring sides. It was a recipe for reneging on the modalities of implementation.

The Way Forward

Finally, South Sudan is not home to IGAD and Partners, but for South Sudanese. The buck stops with the South Sudanese themselves and their leaders. Therefore, the government and the rebels must know that South Sudan needs patriotism, not destruction, or surrendering it away because of bitterness and frustrations. The nation must repossess itself and not prove to the world that as much as her refugees depend much on international aid and humanitarian assistance, managing her national affairs is also subject to international assistance. A country that ignores its leadership's worth should not even call itself sovereign. 

I conclude with the words of Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, an eloquent former Sudanese ambassador to the UN, Chief Negotiator for G77+ China at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2009, Copenhagen:

“Our government has chosen to give away our national sovereignty and territory, as demonstrated by Mile-14 and the presence of foreign troops and military advisers to maintain in power a regime as politically and morally bankrupt as never witnessed in the region.”

Lumumba had since joined the rebellion against the government in Juba. He spoke these words on his maiden day in the bush. I guess we know what he was saying, it was ‘rebooting,’ more or less.

What Would it Take to Rebel in RSS?

Rebelling in South Sudan is as simple as saying the word itself. In this simplicity, attached to an action that has disastrous consequences, in the long run, I suppose if a Junubi (South Sudanese) key personality avails in front of you an itinerary, stating that he would pay a visit to his very important government official in the morning for some money, then go buy groceries and returns home in the afternoon to his family with the shopping or money in cash, or rebel that same afternoon if he fails to secure the order of the above itinerary, you would better believe him. Explanations about grievances leading to rebellion are usually unreal when stated, but the decisions to implement them are dead-serious. 

In that respect, it is, therefore, important to ask the question, what would it take to rebel in South Sudan? Given the fairness of the question, the questioner would be keen to hear a long list of political grievances that, if achieved, might lead to a stronger foundation of the republic so desired. However, many politicians, warlords, and key personalities of our time do not frame all grievances on firm nationalistic and patriotic attitudes and conviction, but on a simplistic itinerary. We will find out shortly the kind of grievances that would be topping their lists. However, if the same question is put to commoners, the citizens, those for whom services are aimed, the answer would be different.

The ordinary South Sudanese at the grassroots are likely to give pragmatic answers as to why they would want to pick up weapons against the country they call home. Their answers would include, among other things, basic necessities to life itself: food, water, health facilities, schools for kids, roads; and necessary training so that they could work their lands for maximum production. Virtually, nobody can say that he or she has a life if basic necessities are deficient and/or non-existent.

Put the same question to the intellectuals of the land, or rather, listen in to their grievances and you will find that some issues of rebellion will confound you when their intentions have been made a reality. A recent defection of Brigadier, Gatwic Puoc, of the 11th Infantry Division, and Agel Machar, former National Youth Leader, attracted a very important press conference for the SPLM-IO in Nairobi. The conference was convened at the Methodist Guest House. Among the opposition speakers were Agel himself, Gatwic Puoc and Mabior Garang Mabior. From among the three, I chose to listen to Mabior first following their order of seniority in the coldness of the bush as rebels.

Mabior had his position clarified many times. He maintains that the people's movement had been hijacked, momentum reduced, vision deferred and aspirations dashed. It is a solid position that he shares with many others who are dissatisfied by the inaction of the government on matters of corruption and slow pace in service delivery to the people - the beneficiaries of independence. The only problem with his position lies in the terms of reference. You may ask what has the 'movement' got to do with an independent country of South Sudan, or why would inexactitudes of the 'movement,'- initially headed by his father - which automatically self-transformed into a political party after independence, be corrected through rewinding to its former military glory as supposed by the second 'movement' in which he is part of? But the young Cuban trained (communist? socialist? socialist-communist? whatever he may call himself) has spoken plainly. He is wrestling with ideology and he ought to do so. He has seen it clearly in Castros’ Cuba how an ideology must be nurtured by all means, with the rider of 'the horse of ideology' maintaining persistent resistance to dismounting orders whether the horse gallops through the mists or fire till a destination is reached - whatever the destination. Mabior Garang de Mabior is an interesting pawn to pay attention to in this raging South Sudanese conflict as well as in the projection of the remaking of a nation (from an opposition point of view). For once, it would be difficult to differentiate him from Salva Kiir, the man his dad baptized with guerrilla ideologies. It was his dad, Dr. Garang, who told Kiir Mayardit boldly that 'a thorn is removed using another thorn' when Kiir cautioned that peace had come to Sudan but there were still some thorns that required careful tread in the South Sudanese ever-narrow paths in the shrubs. Today, with Kiir using the thorns he feared to solve his thorn troubles, and Mabior, using another third thorn category to solve the troubled thorn blessed by the Legendary Dr. Garang, you got to get your head spinning a bit in this forbidding 'de-thorning' exercise of liberation. In the press conference, Mabior was not the first or the second speaker but a character to think about. 

The first speaker was, Brigadier Gatwic Puoc, who helped narrowed down his list of grievances to his lack of promotion and insulting promotions of junior officers to the positions above him in the hierarchy. At this point, it will be interesting to know who is elder between Gatwic Puoc and Simon Kun Puoc, his brother and governor of the Upper Nile State. But that is aside. A rebel brother and government agent brother will always be connected by the stream of common blood flow in their veins. What is important to underline is that the Chief of Administration and Logistics and former big belly Intelligence Officer in the Government of National Unity, GoNU, has taken up arms against his country for lack of promotion. He is not the first or the last South Sudanese to be radical about these bureaucratic by-passes in promotions. Major Kerubino Kwanyin Bol, the man who shot the first bullet in the rebellion that led to the SPLA/M in 1983 would too call such bypasses in promotion as 'disrespect and insubordination!' Many say Kerubino would be out of control at that point. From the positions stated, there is no doubt that Gatwic Puoc commands experience. As a former teacher and an administrator, he knows how to get through the system to be promoted than anyone had he chose to do so. His rather reluctant statement rings some bells in the head and you can start to count one from here.

Then came Agel Machar, former National Youth Leader of the republic, a fast-spoken young man, and possessing a sense of intelligence that you can easily admire. He thought quickly, spoke quickly, and blinked quickly. His new boss, Dr. Riek, blinks similarly under pressure. He poured out his rather ingenuously crammed national ailments which he spoke less and less while in office until he reached the point of taking up arms. His defection, he said, was to 'offset the balance' in the narrative that Warrap, his native State and that of the president, was controlling the country and was, therefore, better off with the status quo in the country. You can take the count down to two at this point.

Like anyone who wanted to save time, you can conclude vaguely that the cheapest thing you must not bet an RSS revolutionary intellectual, a politician, or a key personality, is whether or not, he or she would rebel over anything petty and beneath the basic necessities of life. Strictly adhering to this gives an insight that you have cracked the code! 

After all, at the height of Nasir Faction, battled by the stresses and strains, it took Professor Bari Wanji – a fiery man at that – a few seconds to storm out of the meeting and out of the Nasir Faction altogether following a bitter quarrel with Dr. Lam Akol whom he accused of taking his camera and failed to return it. Who knows, but that camera was frankly not a basic necessity, but a necessary ingredient for rebellion.

Juba’s Political Machinations: Peace By All Means

Events in South Sudan are revisiting the early and mid-1990s, the periods when rebelliously callous militias shuttled between Khartoum and the bush unable to zero in on what they wanted. It was the period that saw many unpatriotic southerners trained their minds on the benefits of intransigence and insensitive retraction from the popular discourse of liberation. Throughout those times, many rebel groups that self-ostracized due to detesting of the Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M Mainstream) for one reason another, fell prey to Khartoum’s political machinations in the most daring manner. When allegiances were thus remapped, the enemy of yesterday became today’s comrade. The reasons many groups defected from the SPLA/M mainstream then were not celebrated for long when they reached Khartoum because of cold reception and displays of certain kinds of triumph by the former enemy. Could such scenarios replay themselves in Juba as now demonstrated by the ongoing detrimental internal rebellion in SPLA/M - In Opposition rebels? 

There should be no surprises in the SPLA/M - In Opposition’s rebellion bursting into smithereens of factions following the defection of a key spokesperson and Brigadier-General, Lul Ruai Koang, to join the government in Juba. For once, the path of a cracking rebellion was paved right in Juba in December 2013 when violence surged. When the government arrested most of the politicians - now Group of 10 (G-10) - who were very influential and numerically key to Dr. Riek’s aspiration to win the chairmanship of the SPLM, the gamble was on in the minds of those skimming for clues to predict what would become of a rebellion that was taking off in the most unexpected way in South Sudan. Critical voices have stated at the beginning of the war that if the coup-implicated political detainees were released and failed to join Dr. Riek’s camp, it would be the end of organized formality in the rebellion. That line of thinking was not far from the truth. The fact that Juba is well-tuned into the game of winning over some rebels is not untrue as well. It is widely known in South Sudan that militias and their leaders have always come back to where they started given that they often ended up suffering from irreparable internal fighting.

Juba might be playing a significant role in wooing some rebel generals to abandon rebellion through availing and displaying advantageous political drawings. Whatever game Juba plays, they are playing it well, just as Khartoum used to do. The same thing that made Khartoum so powerful that it pulled almost every rebel in the South to play by her rules is going to make Juba powerful against her own rebels. Apparently, it had always involved a regime sitting on national resources of the country and wielding that power to punish the disenfranchised people who rebelled. This alien nationalistic chess board game was actually the kind of leadership that the citizens of South Sudan wanted their leaders to pursue all along against external aggressors for the benefits of the country - not looking inwards to punish citizens whose differing political arguments and demands could be resolved without a fight.

For certain, no one expected that the country’ leadership, particularly the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, would take eyes off Khartoum’s rhetoric purporting to dismember it eternally following Heglig’s border contest. The spirit of nationalism was in the air and the Mandella of the nation was needed in multitudes. Leaders were expected to rise above their differences and upwards to the podium of patriotism for which they fought since their youth. Nobody knew that leaders only ‘wanted jobs’ just as they used to charge the Anya Nya One fighters when that movement accepted peace in 1972. Many thought that through many years of struggle and strife, South Sudanese leaders were better armed with modern political sanities and machinations to combat poverty, illiteracy, hunger, disease and meditate on how to haul their nation out of the dimness of history of underdevelopment to the limelight of modernity through holistic development. There were many expectations for the country. 

But suddenly, the country turned so violently inwards - to the laughter of her enemies. It was a bitter pill to swallow. It was a great shock to the commoners who eventually had to drag their feet into fraternal battles hoping for a quicker end to fighting since war's ‘senseless nature’ after independence was recognized by all and sundry. War, then, became so real and as it assumed its name, its impacts reverberated across the country. In South Sudan, emotional mourners began to gather. In diaspora: USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, continental Europe, the rest of Africa, everywhere and anywhere a sizeable South Sudanese population is found, wailing rang out. The maladies proved to be beyond leadership contests.

To date, nobody boasts about war anymore but counting the heavy losses it so far generated. Not even the euphoric "regime change" is mentioned with threatening frequency in peace talks; not even the figure of the dead is recited as it used to be; not political accusations are traded for fear that peace may never come. If anything of significance is talked about as a prerequisite for peace, it is the position of power in an old guards’ hierarchy that was once seen as ineffective. Peace in itself has become a foreign intervention prevention mechanism. If it is not achieved, politicians often thought, foreign powers may chip in with heavy-handedness. One may ask, who are these foreign powers coming to discipline a broken country if peace is not achieved? Are they coming after the citizens who are already dying or the leaders who are still questionably being pampered with positions in a yet-to-be-instituted Transitional Government of National Unity? In peace talks, it is noticeable that peace is wanted swiftly. This leaves us with an important question: If the rush for peace is this immense, what was the problem in the first place? With soul-searching questions like these, even selective memory serves no good. You wonder whether the problem that brought war was only in the minds of the leaders or in the system they created? Was it the new order that was needed or the old order that should have been built on for peace to reign and lasted? No doubt, South Sudan needs peace. It had never enjoyed any political order to extend a borrowing hand to. It must and must've built a better political order for her citizens. 

What about the constant rebellion that was always never punished but forever rewarded? Would it stop this time? In answer to the last question, no it wouldn't stop if what is desired is not granted. Violence would continue. That was the courageous utterance from the Brigadier General, Lul Ruai Koang, who just formed his own parallel revolutionary movement to the one led by Dr. Riek Machar Teny-Dhurgon – South Sudan Revolutionary Movement/Army (SSRM/A). He announced it in a press release attended largely by members of the South Sudanese embassy in Nairobi on February 18, 2015. It could be understood as an achievement of  nominal political machinations by Juba and a blow to Dr. Riek and his camp since Lul represented the White Army. 

The power of being behind the White Army was easily discernible from his cool answer to Garang John of South Sudan TV. Simply put, according to the interview, General Lul Ruai Koang’s frontline was still Juba, the city whose power he stood protected. That was very innocent on his part. To the SPLA/M in opposition, General Lul Ruai Koang was just a sell-out. Rather than shuttling between the bush and Khartoum, Juba has taken over the role of Khartoum with her own troops of ‘Dr. Ali Al Hags' of peace combing the streets of Nairobi and Kampala looking for heartbroken and pocket empty warlords. However, given that no judicial mechanisms are in place to punish rebels involved in the killings of thousands of people when they come back, Juba will be bringing them back with nothing to offer to peace but old places of power to be occupied by the old guards who went to the bush to steam out and returned. 

It is now unto Dr. Riek Machar to play his cards well and jump on board with the G-10 and disserting generals like Lul to pre-empt peace. He is well equipped with history and temerity to know that this is one way to cross the river before torrent from upstream catches up with you. Like some of the Anya Nya forces that heard about 1972 Addis Ababa Peace Agreement over the radio, the numerous South Sudanese militias that only saw CPA on TV or heard about it over the radio (before rushing in for integration with the South Sudanese army), it is the right time to put the cart before the horse. What is wrong with that? 

Me Against My Brother: The Defection of General Dau Aturjong Nyuol

Photo: Radio Tamazuj

President Kiir had of late made two appointments that would ensconce rebellion in the state of Northern Bahr El Ghazal in the form of pitting rivalries against each other. Of the significant appointment is that of the army’s chief, General Paul Malong Awan, who was uplifted from a gubernatorial position as a civilian governor to the army top stratum. Malong’s appointment and that of the caretaker governor of NBG State closed all doors on Dau, leaving him with only one way out: that of rebellion.

Dau Aturjong became the latest South Sudanese Military General to break ranks with Juba and joined Riek Machar in circumstances that swerved from claims of personal security, marginalization of his community and their Northern Bahr el Ghazal State, intense political rivalry to superimposed nationalistic dream of bringing about good governance in the country. The news of the rebellion of this well-respected General, much known for a high level of a technicality in tactical guerrilla warfare than his wealth; the latter which he never had but dreams of – just like future-hopeful citizenry – was made in a hotel in Nairobi, Kenya, and carried to a resounding propagation by Paris-based Sudan Tribune, which published a full version of the press release; SBS Dinka radio in Australia, which later interviewed the General in his language of comfort; and many other local and international media.

Like every all other rebels from within and without of Juba who made their discontent apparent since president Kiir took office in 2010 in circumstances sympathetic to colonial break away from Sudan, General Dau, singing to the tune of others before him, has a keen interest in removing President Kiir from power in the country. He accused him of scandalous stewardship of the nation to catastrophe. Well, the nation is already in the abyss. The question to ponder upon is how to get out of it, something that every leader in South Sudan who calls for arms insurrections finds difficult to undo because of inherent fears of retributions and other complications that arise from combatants and acquired allies with own political interests. For now, General Dau has his finger on the trigger and has no time to droop down attending to the political opportunistic networks that weave around every step he makes.

Why did Dau really rebel? It is the question that South Sudanese who think that Aweil and Kiir are inseparable and one and the same, would want to know? Many people want to know why Aweil, a place that contributed a river full of blood in the most unsurpassed and bizarre conditions during the war of liberation with Sudan, fails to decelerate in the war of political opportunism emanating from Juba.  As difficult as the questions are, so are the answers, and I think General Dau can provide some hints. Dau was the area commander of the SPLA forces in Northern Bahr el Ghazal in the 1990s, a position he swapped so often with Paul Malong, sometimes in the most uncanny lobby with the General Headquarters where Malong always won the army politics of appeasement and deployment. 

Although Dau was popular for better provision of solid protection of the area against Marahaleen counter-insurgency units, mobilizing local resources to buy uniforms for the battalions in his command in the periods when SPLA soldiers at the extreme peripheries of war in Aweil were completely rugged and indistinguishable from the poverty-stricken civilians they protected and introducing the now famous ‘Toyota war’ among the Darfur rebels by purchasing numerous Toyota ute cars and transforming them into military fighting vehicles, Dau could not hold on to his position in Aweil. He found himself transferred to the vicinity of Wau and replaced in Aweil by Paul Malong Awan. Since both men are undoubtedly battle-groomed for battle madness that often resulted in successes, civilians in Aweil have always struck an understanding with Dau who remained a bad student of snobbishness, much to their liking. That is where he always picks an ax to grind with ‘King Paul Malong,’ as adorned by a few of his toadies with interests. 

The bitter differences between Malong and Dau are national in character. President Kiir knows about them and with him on Malong's side, there is no better ally for Dau. When Dau was interviewed by SBS Dinka Radio from Australia, he said that it was the late John Garang that knew his mind and how he rationalized situations. No wonder President Kiir saw a 'Garang's boy' in him and played one-sided favoritism in the fraternal battles of fame. During the 2010 elections, the SPLM, too, under new masters who were busy setting up traps for themselves by setting them up for the future enemies of the party, disapproved of Dau’s nomination as a front runner for gubernatorial position in Aweil. Dau went on to contest the elections as an independent candidate with no assurance of support from the core. To him, he won the majority votes only to receive swapped ballots, followed by a humiliating condemnation and accusation of rebelling. For the second time, Malong ruled the state and kept Dau at bay in Juba. The hope, to everyone who watched Dau from afar, was that he would circumvent Malong in Aweil and finds some consolation in what the country would offer him at the national level. It never came to pass. What came to pass, instead, was that an enemy, ‘The King,’ was given the ‘knife’ at his expense. Adding to his frustrations was an occasional presence of security personnel wolfing around his house in Juba, sometimes firing a few aimless shots at it. For a man near a hostile core of politics, stakes could not be any higher for making up his mind. If anything, popular understanding about notorious army leaders is that they do not like to be fired at in awkward positions. Their bravery has an underlying fear. They do not like to be humiliated and do not like to be attacked either. In a meeting held under a tree in Mapuordit, Yirol, in early 2001, and which was attended by Marial Nuor, a not-to-mess-around-with SPLA Commander, a disgruntled soldier appeared from nowhere and cocked his gun so loud that everyone was taken by surprise in the meeting. I did not know what he had in mind. But the first person to stand up shouting at the soldier and ordered him disarmed was Marial himself. Continuing along this line, we come to know about Major Kerubino Kwuanyin Bol. The man is reactive and preemptive. He is always battle-ready for the enemy that he alone sees. Ask the late Karubino Kwanyin Bol why he moved around every place with a pistol just like the Palestinian Yasser Arafat and he would tell you that nothing was certain. In the case of the temporary retired General Dau who is left without orders to give but a security report to make when fired on, the situation became less peaceful in Juba than in the bush: the only door that remained open for him. 

Had President Kiir wanted Dau to stay, he would have pushed him to Aweil as the Caretaker Governor. But that would anger the president's darling in his army chief. He needed Malong because he believes he has a rebellion to deal with. Already, a Caretaker Governor in Aweil in the person of Kuel Aguer Kuel closes all avenues for a rebellious rethink from Dr. Dhiew Mathok Diing Wol.  The two, Dhieu and Kuel, have truck-loads of colonial baggage they brought with them from Khartoum. The only difference is that they have unwillingly exchanged positions proportional to their past. 

For the people of Aweil, it was the dilemma that forced Dau out of Juba. The question is not why he rebelled but who has he joined, and at what time did he do it. That is where he misjudged Aweilians and where his right answers started with a wrong formula.

From Kuol Manyang and George Athor, Malong Awan and Dan Aturjong, Taban Deng Gai and Angelina Teny, Riek Machar and Kiir Mayardit and others, the SPLM knows how to create rebels. With Dau in the list, they might have created General Terrible.

Malong Awan and Marial Nuor

Gen. Paul Malong in Military Uniform. Photo: Anthony Chimir

President Kiir has made another shake-up, this time in the military. The army’s chief of general staff, James Hoth Mai, and the head of military intelligence, Major General Mac Paul Kuol, were relieved and respectively replaced by Gen. Paul Malong Awan (former governor of Northern Bahr el Ghazal) and Gen. Marial Nuor Jok, who previously served in a different capacity as Major General of the Police force.

The appearance of these military men at the war front in South Sudan, per the unending presidential decrees, has frozen the marrows for some people. To some, they will be the dreaded exterminators or genocideurs; to others, they come to instill discipline as well as manage army operations with less frustration in areas where skirmishes are still ongoing with the rebels. Yet, those who are not satisfied with blood-spill are looking and unearthing the geographies of births of these men, geographies that were unquestionable throughout their careers as army commanders. This is a note of proof to those who see the war in South Sudan as being driven by ethnic undertone because the appointment of leaders is not evaluated on their capabilities, experiences, or qualifications, but where people come from in terms of ethnic origin. 

Treading fairly, the two generals are not the monsters that people should fear, at least in my view. On this note, and in situations where the mind stands conditioned to terror and fear, I love reading from the book by Wafa Sultan: A God Who Hates: The Courageous Woman Who Inflamed the Muslim World Speaks Out Against the Evils of Islam. Wafa cautions that the object of our fear can be huge or minutiae depending on our mental abstracted constructions. A prominent American tele-evangelist, Joel Osteen, preaches too that fear blows out of proportional circumstances that are otherwise manageable. Like Wafa, he denounces giving in to fear for in doing so, we are imploring the greatest power in the universe to make the subject matter of our fears come to pass.

In Malong and Marial Nuor, I think people have the 'ogres' they know little about. One might be wrong. However, if the witticism of 'highly decorated military general,' often used by ethnic followers of these generals, has any meaning in the history of the SPLA/M, then the two newly appointed leaders as Chief of Staff and Military Intelligence, respectively, have never passed with distinctions in the army's popularization of titles in South Sudan.

To assume, therefore, that they will be likely bloodier than the rebel general who captured Bentiu and shocked the world with grisly bodies of massacred civilians in cold blood; or the leader of the youth who attacked the UN Compound in Bor killing several unarmed people; or the dreaded Peter Gadet Yak, the man whose opportunism is solidified in blood-letting, is to christen them into bad boys; a stance they would humanely opt-out of in their new leadership assignments. It will be wise not to sing death into the ears of these appointed leaders before reading their true books of deeds unless the flow of blood 'opiumises' the spirits for those who do so.

If anyone has traveled in the zones of operations of the two army strongmen, Marial and Malong, one would agree to the fact that even David Yau Yau (who recently signed peace with the government and winning a special administrative consideration for his people in the troubled state of Jonglei) and Ismael Konyi (a notorious Sudanese government counter-insurgency militia leader of the 1990s) was more brutish than the two were. Now is the time for history to record their deeds one by one. 

Finally, as the violence had become a commitment of killing each other in order to become one strong country, and not to split up into nations of ethnic identities, the game of innocence must therefore end. Both the rebels and the government must not freeze themselves in the corners of 'playing the good diplomat,' as expected of the government and 'becoming aggressive in order to be pleased,' as always hoped by the rebels. If the objective in the overall differences in the war is to make a prosperous and peaceful country, then it is time for each party to own up to the atrocities so that a solution for ending the killing in the country is found.

The Dang And The Spear: Spiritual Warfare Over Leadership In South Sudan

Lomoyat: Addis. Church leaders, Yau Yau and GOSS

There are unrecorded sacred and manipulative spiritual games in the military and political lives in South Sudan. They happen between the churches and the shrines. They are games of supernaturalism, mingled with high capacity military and revolutionary experiences, and backed up with intellectualism befitting modern rationality. They are games where the gods are supplicated for luck, but when they (gods) renege on wishes and prayers, things get managed humanly violently. It leaves people awestruck whether education and military experience by some South Sudanese leaders mean anything in these mixed worlds of mindsets. Like it or not, leaders' tuning to spirituality influences how some affairs are managed in the country.

Over the past few months, politics in South Sudan has shifted from temporal to spiritual. But it was not only in the last few months that midnight calls to local super-visionaries were put on display by the leaders, and perhaps, the army. The practice had been around among South Sudanese societies where leaders venture out of profanity to spirituality, especially when events of unfavorable twists become uncontrollable through human force. 

In the case of the military, especially during the long war, some SPLA soldiers at the front lines went spiritual with intentions to survive attacks and military advances toward the enemy. Some prayed and others sought local spiritual help. There were SPLA soldiers who bragged of their purchased powers from local medicine men, spear-masters, and seers. The powers they got were thought to render bullets powerless in the events of shootouts. No force made it explicit than the famous Mobile Task Force (MTF). This amalgam was a tactical response special unit called upon when the swiftest firepower was needed on a particular front. It was said to have been made up of soldiers with impenetrable bodies - kind of bullet-proofed skins. Army rumours had it that in the events of launching attacks on enemy positions; if a Mobile Task Force soldier was not bullet-proofed enough, as was thought by his colleagues, he was tasked with the duties of preparing meals while the seemingly impenetrable ones did the fighting. The story could be wildly wrong, but MTF's victorious notoriety on the battlefields around Juba in the 1990s accorded them respect and some kind of immortality. 

Among the Sudan People's Liberation Army commanding officers, going spiritual was common too. Some commanders were rumoured to be possessing extraordinary powers that made them successful on the battlefields. There was a high-level rumour circulating that the baton carried by the SPLM/A Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C), Dr. John Garang, was magically powerful and would tell which food was poisoned and which one was safe for the leader to feast on. The current president of South Sudan, Salva Kiir, was also rumoured to possess certain powers that would make him escape any attack deemed to kill everyone. In the early 1990s when he got involved in a plane crash in Western Kenya and walked away unscathed, the rumour nearly got logged in certainty. These are just some of the spiritual games that South Sudanese play when things are very hard and complicated.

Outside South Sudan, no one seems to be aware or cares to recognize the mystical African traditional unbroken beliefs in deities and spirituality among the leaders, and how such beliefs play important roles in both national and ethnic political sentience. It is now time to begin to envisage the impacts of these beliefs in national politics.

A simple glance at the current political leaders shows nothing different from what distressed soldiers used to do at the war fronts: going spiritual. In the continuing crisis, which began in late 2013, invisible games led the way between President Kiir and former vice president, Riek Machar. It began with the presumed prophetic zenith of Ngundeng, where it was prophesied that a left-handed man from the Nuer people would rule a country somewhere on the Nile. Ngundeng, as a Nuer prophet, was recorded in history, but his prophecies were seen as leaning toward folklores and were erratically subject to ahistorical oral tradition in which meanings and interpretations depend on successive generations' tastes and needs. In the traditional African oral histories, each generation is left to give meaning to some oral prophecies as the situations suit them. 

Factually, Ngundeng's prophecies are not taken for granted by Dr. Riek Machar and his community. He is believed by his community as the leader foretold by Ngundeng Bong to be that futuristic leader. Other  antedate prophets, or spiritual couriers such as Wurnyang, the former White Army's leading prophet of 1991 Bor massacre, and Dak Kueth, White Army's current leader responsible in part for the Armageddon of the same area, had continued to influence Dr. Riek Machar along that line to respond to his divine vocation: that a Nuer man must rule the country and he was the one. Machar's calls for President Kiir to step down confirmed his answer to the prophetic call. 

The trouble is that it is hard to know which country Ngundeng foretold. In the history of the area in The Nile Valley where South Sudan emerged, countries appeared, disappeared, and reappeared with different names. In Turkiyah Sudan, the Nuer people knew of their local Nuerland as their country. The British later arrived and changed the field of view. Then came South Sudanese independence and the name of the country in which Ngundeng’s prophecy would be fulfilled became harder to plot. From Nuer country to present-day South Sudan, many countries have evolved. Present South Sudan was part of the Sudan where the fulfillment of Ngundeng prophecies would have made more sense. I am convinced of Nuer's geographical expansion in the area after Ngundeng brought his prophecy of conquest to finality. Any other claims that go beyond that period are mere political-spiritual distortions for political gains.  But that is South Sudanese history of political divinities anyway. It matches perfectly with other proclaimed prophecies where a date is never stated on the actual occurrences of events.

When Dr. Riek Machar left Juba as a warrior in mid-December 2013, spiritual games began to take centerstage but were only known to some South Sudanese. Riek left Juba with the dang in his hand. The Dang was the magical stick once carried and, with disputations, used positively by prophet Ngundeng against the British. It was later taken away by the same British when the prophet's son commandeered powers after the death of his father. He is said to have displayed uncooperative manners towards the British authorities and had tried to use the dang to defeat them but failed. They killed him and took the dang away, purposely to stop the craze that people attached to the harmless weapon.  One wonders why the British decided to return it to South Sudan in 2010? It arrived back home, nevertheless, and Riek Machar took it into his custody. With dang around, political-spiritual matters reached a crescendo in Juba and elsewhere in the country. Riek is said to have stuck to the ownership of the stick with a deep interest in what it might give him.

On the government spiritual front, president Kiir never took the combined forces of his political arch-rivals and their prophets lightly.  He must have looked around for help which eventually came from afar on the African continent in the form of the prophet with an already failed prophecy.

Somewhere in West Africa, specifically in Nigeria, Prophet TB Joshua (looked down upon at home because of his low-level education in a country with more than 72 strong universities), announced that he saw a leader in East African country being captured. He stated that if the evil was not curtailed through prayerful intercessions, thousands of lives would be lost. His prophecy did not talk of thousands that would still be lost even if the doom that would befall the head of state was averted. As prophecies continue to become unbelievably wrong these days, no one paid attention to TB Joshua's prophecy until after the events of December 2013 in Juba. President Kiir, upon learning of it, wasted no time but wrote a thankful letter and sent a delegation to TB Joshua in Nigeria with the promise that when all is finished, he would attend, in person, the Assembly of God, presided upon by TB Joshua himself. He further requested that the prophet prayed for reconciliation in South Sudan. Joshua responded with more powerful prayers, but thousands went on to die and thousands more were displaced. 

But all was not resolved. Riek Machar's Dang continued to haunt president Kiir, who later got a backing of the Spear masters in his home state of Warrap to counteract the dang with the spear. That appeared to have ended the game of the gods. 

From the firmament of the sky, it looks like the spiritual scores have been settled. The locus of war has now descended down from up in the heavens where it all started. It is currently on the ground, on the battlefield, where the powers of the gods must merge with those of human leaders who are, in the end, the utmost beneficiaries of the apocalypses.

Dr. Riek Machar has officially named his rebellion as a resistance movement and subsequently sidelined the controversial detainees as part of his rebellion. This sways the calculus on the negotiations table. What appeared as the SPLM party's internal problems, needing internal solutions, has assumed a configuration that would make power-sharing arrangements a bitter possibility. 

Mediators in Addis Ababa will have to solve the SPLM party's problems and then turn to the rebellion whose demands would be far from the party's internal reforms. The rebellion is already feeling the pressure in regards to the question of political detainees - cum - coup plotters arrested by the government in Juba. Should the detainees become a political force, making eventual concessions with the government on reforms, the rebel group will need all of them, as one or separate bodies, to create a space. That means only one thing: the rebels are coming back to town with their armed militias, and that is another recipe for a potential renewed fighting in the capital, Juba. 

Solving this spiritual-political dilemma will be hard. But the right steps must be taken. IGAD and international mediators must consider involving civil society in the peace process and more so, the church. It would also do well if a conducive atmosphere for national reconciliation precedes mandatory elections, after which the country must be structurally redesigned for what should last, not what the prophets of gods are dictating.

‘Madina’ Bor In Bor

"What you see troubling people here, is your fault..." 

(General Malual Ayom speaking in Dinka to advancing troops on Bor).

 R-L: Gen: Malual is forth. Photo. Deng-Athoi Galuak

Talking about Bor can be tremendously challenging at times to a non-Dinka outsider because the word has a tendency to ping pong from being a name of the city of Bor proper (Popular informally as Mading Bor), to a descriptor of the Dinka section inhabiting the swathe of the Nile on the East Bank in Jonglei State. It is not even enough to stop here, but continuing on with etymology would mean making too many historical mistakes. Here, we are roughly talking of the city of Bor, Madina Bor, and perhaps Bor, the area, and the people.

From the colonial Sudan, unto independent Sudan – and South Sudan - the city of Bor had received umpteenth spotlights, both domestic and international for all reasons with good ones tipping the scale. But in the last thirty years, it had been the cataclysm that befell this serene city and her people that struggled to overshadow the best of it.  The period, 2013-2014, is a case period of tragedy; the latest of these tragedies being the destruction of the city and inhumane killings by the rebels set loose by Juba’s inefficiencies of governance and democratic misguidance.

In less than a month, Bor has changed hands four times between the rebels fighting the government, and the national army, the SPLA, which is defending ‘the country’ and the ‘constitution’ yet to be rectified. Division 8 General Peter Gadet Yak, based in Bor, defected with three brigades, per the narrative of the South Sudanese army, and stormed the city on the 17^th and 18^th of December, 2013, killing about a thousand civilians, wounding many more, and displacing all that remained mainly to Awerial County in the neighboring Lakes State on the West Bank of the Nile. Other vulnerable civilians unable to make a prompt escape tolerated the terrifying ordeal of sheltering in the city’s compound of United Nations Mission In South Sudan (UNMISS). The South Sudanese army later drove Peter Gadet out of the city.  A week later, the White Army mainly from Lou Nuer and Gaweer marched on the city once more, this time, on a counter-offensive with a prophetic mission of nonstop walk to Juba, the nation’s capital. Like in 1991, some villages on their way got burnt down and the people were killed indiscriminately. The march worried the nation and the world.

Residents of Juba were undeniably terror-stricken by the news of close to 25000 armed men eyeing their city of dwelling. The pressure was felt for real by those who live in the city and foreign others who knew that a violent elemental fall of Juba since its founding might unleash walking pilgrims from other armed and dissatisfied groups, hence, setting the stage for Africa’s Yugoslavia, with neighbors absorbing the shock waves of war. Rumors of war at the city’s gates were exacerbated by the newly embraced technology in the forms of mobile phones and the internet. International Media played its part to the dismay of the authorities who were themselves not impervious from trepidation. Mohamed Adow of Al Jazeera English Channel, who suggested that a reliable source told of a column of the White Army that slipped through the heavily militarized Juba-Bor road and was advancing on the capital was quickly sent packing to lessen the airing of unjustified fear. On the internet, the newly emerging nationalism disintegrated into ethnic chest-beating.

Further afield, responsibility then turned to frustration. The neutrality of president Museveni of Uganda was phenomenally compromised. As a member of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) that hurriedly descended on South Sudan for the purposes of peace, Uganda’s South Sudan matched that of the Democratic Republic of The Congo, with the responsibility to protect (R2P) winning over the concealed evacuation of stranded nationals. What began as a peaceful mission became a mission to hunt for the vainglorious rebels or in defense of the indefensible abstractions. A warrior of Museveni’s character in a war zone is indisputably not an excellent peacemaker. With South Sudan’s geographical cauldron able to gulp down Uganda at least three times, President Museveni is well-versed that ‘going after’ Joseph Konyi is less wearisome than going after Riek Machar whose 25000 White Army’s firepower on one front almost doubles the firepower that propelled the Lion of the Ruwenzori Range into rebellious reign in Uganda, back in 1986.

Bor fell again to the national army on January 18, 2014, after almost a month of battling the ‘mobilized civilians,’ as the army spokesman, Colonel Philip Aguer, would like to assume. Actually, the city was found empty when the national army moved in after surviving heavy losses in ambushes on the way aboard Ute cars, barges, and tanks as a conventional army – a strange position opposed to the good old days of not being a sitting duck on the road. 

Just like the natives of this historically significant and embattled city would want to know, a perturbing question is: ‘why always Bor?’ The simple answer, among many, is that Bor is a victim of peace in a region that is otherwise peace wary. It is unwise to assume therefore that the people in this area are not doing enough to protect themselves when for generations they have done all they could to train, lead, fought and accommodated others for a national entity that would safeguard all South Sudanese. Note that Abel Alier and Joseph Lagu, first post-Addis Ababa Regional Government leaders of Southern Sudan went to Church Missionary Society School at Malek in Bor.

“...People have gone for business and abandoned the army, we have to lead the fight into Bor and the rest would follow us...,” 

General Malual Ayom continued his speech to an ululating battalion of the sons of the soil. He was clearly subdued by the loss of his colleagues, General Abraham Jongroor and Ajak Yen, Gadet’s first victims of rebellion (quote inaccurate…meaning retained). The fly-in-fly-out generals in the battle of Bor are to be warned that General Malual’s bravery must not be tried in the field, only at home. This was the same General Malual who was featured on the BBC video in an ambush, self-stripped of any weapons and walking with head held high amidst the showers of bullets and disorderly dashing soldiers. The question of why Bor can pick up another answer: because Bor thinks there is a nation, but alas! General Malual needs to take 'fault' blame somewhere else.

So, when the city of Bor speaks of resilience to bounce back in the face of Gadet's atrocities to all, including those who shot the first bullets of liberation in this city (Kerubino Kuanyin and William Nyuon were also Gadet's victims), they simply mean business.