South Sudan army says it is capable of providing adequate security Article Comments (21) Email PrintSave --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Ngor Arol Garang April 14, 2011 (WAU) - The Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) said on Thursday it is capable of providing adequate security to all its citizens and their properties, across the ten states and in the surrounding areas. Chief of General Staff of the SPLA, James Hoth Mai Under the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), in which north and south Sudan signed to end more than two decades of civil war in which an estimated 2 million people were killed. The SPLA, a military wing of the south Sudan’s governing party; the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) became the official regional army. In January 2011, the oil producing region conducted a referendum on self-determination in which majority of the South Sudanese voted in favour of secession from the rest of Sudan, several years after repeated attempts including armed rebellions aimed at putting a pressure on central government to endorse division of one of the biggest countries on the African soil into two states. However, following conduct of the 2010 general elections and the January vote, the region appears facing immense challenges as it prepares to become the world’s newest nation on 9 July 2011. Pessimists expressed concerns and fears indicating that the rivals would turn the region into a tribal state and that corruption will spiral out of control, returning its people to further suffering and abject poverty. Reports from the UN indicate that more than 800 people were killed at the beginning of the year in increasing incidents of violence in the three states of the greater Upper Nile Region following the rebellion of some of the senior military officers in the regional army. General James Hoth Mai, Chief of General Staff of the SPLA dismissed fears that the region would slip into a tribal and lawless state after attaining independence in July, saying his army is capable of providing what he described as "adequate security" to protect lives and properties of the ordinary citizens across the ten states and their surroundings. "The SPLA is capable of providing adequate security by protecting lives and properties of all citizens across south Sudan and their surroundings," said Mai while responding to a question by Sudan Tribune on a similar statement he made on South Sudan Television last week while officiating a graduation ceremony of senior SPLA officers passing out from financial management training at Malou Military Academy in Rumbek, Lakes State, Bahr el Ghazal. "We in the SPLA had faced of a lot of challenges but we managed to overcome them. This is part of the history into which the SPLA was born. It is not a new phenomenon. The history of the SPLA has always been either sad or smile. There has never been absolute happiness or sadness. We have had both smiling and sad days," explained General Mai in a telephone interview with Sudan Tribune on Thursday. He accused the Khartoum based government of supporting political opponents of the Government of South Sudan (GoSS) while training and arming military dissidents. "As you may have followed recent events, the SPLA forces have been engaging George Athor until he was uprooted from his base in the north western part of Jonglei State in Khorfulus. He [Athor] is now on the run like Osman Bin laden and hiding somewhere but we will get him," said General Mai. The top military officer said the SPLA forces were also engaged in fighting in Unity state against forces he said were loyal to Gatluak Gai and other groups whom he said were later dislodged to northern territories. "The SPLA forces fought against these forces which are trained and armed by Khartoum and sent to the South with intention to create instability. They were fought and sent back to the north. They are currently in areas around Heglig," said the SPLA Chief of General Staff. Mai made the statement just a day after the UN broke their silence by saying 151 incidents across nine of the South’s ten states have killed 801 people and displaced nearly 94,000 more since the year began. "The violence has crippled developmental activities. We are worried, with at least seven militia that are active, with inter-communal violence continuing, with the LRA [Lord’s Resistance Army] active in Western Equatoria. This is not a good picture," said Lise Grande, the UN’s senior humanitarian official in the south at a press conference held in the regional capital of Juba on Wednesday. Grande said the wave of conflict in the last two months had stalled the progress needed to build the new African nation, starting almost from scratch, and the imminent rainy season would soon make much of the region inaccessible. "We can’t start winding down an emergency operation if 100,000 people have been displaced," she said in a news conference, adding that emergency relief was now underway in about half of the South’s counties. Grande singled out Uganda’s LRA rebels as posing a persistent threat to any hope of the south feeding itself. "LRA attacks occur every couple of weeks and when it happens people become terrorised, they don’t plant ... this has a big impact on food security around the south as a whole." Last year the UN said almost half the southern population was short of food. Militia groups have clashed with the southern army including a February massacre in which over 200 lives were lost. Long-standing tribal rivalries have reignited, leading to 31 deaths in the first two weeks of April. These crises are compounded by the hundreds of thousands of southerners returning to the region from the north and elsewhere, before the looming independence. Some 264,000 have returned since October and another 300,000 are still expected to arrive, according to the UN. Many hope July’s independence celebrations could become a rallying cry for peace and unity. However, some analysts believe the unity will be short-lived given how quickly southern tensions re-emerged after the euphoria of the referendum. (ST) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "JFD info" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/jfdinfo?hl=en.
