SOUTH SUDAN CIVIL WAR (The Battle Between SALVA KIIR and RIEK MACHAR / DINKA TRIBES against NUER TRIBES)

                                           

       SOUTH SUDAN CIVIL WAR.

     The Second Sudanese Civil War was largely a continuation of the First Sudanese Civil War of 1955 to 1972. It was a conflict from 1983 to 2005 between the central Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). Although it originated in southern Sudan, the civil war reached to the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile. It lasted for 22 years, one of the longest civil wars in history. The war resulted in the independence of South Sudan six years after the war ended.
      In January 2011 South Sudanese voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence from Sudan, with 98.83% of voters reportedly preferring to separate from the North. On nine of July 2011, South Sudan became an independent state, with Salva Kiir as its initial president. Kiir positioned himself as a reformer, using his inaugural speech to call for the South Sudanese people to forgive, though its hard to forget perceived injustices at the hands of the northern Sudanese over the previous decades and announce a general amnesty for South Sudanese groups that had warred against the SPLM within the past. A week later, he publicly addressed members of the military and police to warn those who rape, torture and human rights violations committed by different armed personnel would be considered criminal acts and prosecuted sharply by the Ministry of Justice. His presidency was characterized as a period of reconstruction, with internal and foreign crises, as Heglig Crisis, that caused a border war with Sudan and an enclosed political crisis, that tried to overthrow him from the presidency.

      After 2 years South Sudan has been wracked by war, fighting broke out in the oil-rich country when presidential guards loyal to President Salva Kiir troops clashed with Riek Machar supporting ousted president, vice, who went hiding and organized a huge rebel army.This ongoing conflict in South Sudan between the government forces and opposition forces began on the evening of 15 December 2013, at the meeting of the NLC and Nyakuron, when opposition leaders Dr. Riek Machar, Rebecca nyandeng and Pagan Amum voted to boycott the January 15, 2013 meeting of the National Liberation Council (NLC). President Salva Kiir ordered the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) Major General Marial Ciennoung, commander of the Presidential Guard (The Tiger Battalion) to leave the meeting venue and return to the barracks to disarm the troops. After disarming all the troops, ordered that the Dinka Marial members be re-armed.Member from the Nuer ethnicity, began to question this order, argue and a fight started when officers saw the soldiers surrounding commotion.Nuer also rearmed themselves. Chaos and fighting started between the Dinka elements of the Presidential Guard and the Nuer elements.It culminated in the Nuer soldiers taking control of the military headquarters.It is when the elements of the SPLM Dinka Nuer began targeting civilians in the capital city of Juba civilian casualties began.The next morning, Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) reinforcements arrived and dislodged the mutineers.This lasted from Sunday night until Monday afternoon.

      Military doctrine dictates that once a contingent of mutinous troops have been ousted appeal is made for them to surrender and then disarmed. Those who remained loyal to the president were also disarmed to prevent blood bath. The loyal troops of Tiger, mainly from Aweil and Warrap, have not been disarmed. In fact, they are the ones wildly and violently attacking Juba, looting and killing any Nuer in residential neighborhoods. Reports indicated that 66 soldiers had been killed in clashes in Juba during the first two days of fighting, but that number was complemented by between 400 and 500 people, according to a government official and UN diplomats quoting sources in Juba.

      President Kiir is from the Dinka community, the largest tribal group in South Sudan.While Machar, who was sacked his deputy in July along with the entire cabinet, is from the Nuer group. Many have complained about Dinka Nuer political domination in the country and Machar had said he wanted to challenge the current president in 2015 presidential elections.
     Tribal tensions between these two groups have been high since fired his entire cabinet Kiir happened to be from to Nuer tribes earlier in the year including:

 Riek Machar rebel chief

  Machar, his former vice president and a former guerrilla commander who was married to British aid worker Emma McCune, who died in a car accident in Kenya.
  Police Service Inspector General Pieng Deng Juolo, senior officials sacked by Kiir along with Machar in July.
  Former minister of defense Majak D'AGOOT,
  Former minister of environment Gier Chuang Aluong,
  Former governor of Lagos state Chol Tong Mayay,
  Former minister of investment General Oyai Deng Ajak,
  Former justice minister John Luk Jok,
  Former culture minister Cirino Iteng,

  Former  telecommunications  minister  Madut Biar Yel.

      The next morning Salva Kiir appeared in a military uniform, flanked by his cabinet to announce Dr. Riek Machar and other senior SPLM officials of staging a failed coup against his government.Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, blamed the violence on an attempted coup by the country's former vice-president, Riek Machar, an ethnic Nuer.But fighting erupted again on 16 December and reached beyond Juba, to the region around Jonglei which is prone to ethnic conflict. Early estimates stated that at least thousand people were reported to have been killed and over 800 other people were injured in Juba but this number has now been cited to be much higher than initially thought as Human Rights Watch article cites eye witness seen large numbers of dead bodies in Juba on December 17, and their removal in transport to an undisclosed location December 18.

The witness accounts also cite SPLM Dinka groups assisted by guides in house to house searches to homes and killing civilians Nuer inluding inJuba.

Similar house to house searches of members of the Nuer ethnicity have been reported in the government held the capital city of Upper Nile State, Malakal.

     The war dispersed rapidly across the country and marked by widespread human rights violations and atrocities against both members of the Nuer people, belongs to Machar, and revenge attacks against Kiir's Dinka group, the single largest tribe.

      Later limited revenge killings took place in Bor, Bentiu and Akobo and the whole region of Upper got into a mess and the cycle of revenge killings. Properties were destroyed and looted. Innocent civilians have been massacred and dumped in mass graves, patients murdered in churches and hospitals, places as flattened entire urban centers including key oil-producing hubs changed hands several times.

Members of the White Army, which is a Nuer militia

      A ceasefire signed in late January has not stopped the fighting, instead has been intensifying in recent weeks. Both sides have been implicated in rapes, massacres, attacks on UN bases where civilians sheltering from the violence, and the recruitment of child soldiers.
      Zainab Hawa Bangura According to, the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, conditions in South Sudan after almost ten years of conflict were worse in terms of attacks on women and girls. Adding, it was worse than she had seen conditions in many countries including Central African Republic, Bosnia,
Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and Liberia. This is the worst case scenario for her, it is extremely difficult to deal with.

sexual violence against women and girls is rampant in camps for internally displaced people.                                                     

     Thousands of people have been killed and almost two million have fled fighting between mutinous soldiers, government troops and ragtag militia forces divided along tribal lines. About 100,000 people are sheltering in squalid UN peacekeeping bases fearing they will be killed if they leave the barbed wire protection.

Civilians fleeing  from clashes 

     Later, on the coup theory was rejected and went unrecognized by almost all western countries and African countries because of having been promised by Riek that he would give oil and other minerals under the ground to western countries for mining if he would become a leader except Uganda who sent troops to fight alongside Kiir's private army. More than 6o% of the national army joined to Mr. Machar's movement in a matter of a week as the army was almost made up of one ethnic Nuer whose most of them are professional soldiers almost the whole of the Upper Nile region was under their control.

     Now the whole world has acknowledged that there was absolutely no coup attempt on December 15, 2013 on President Salva Kiir's regime. It is now clear that the South Sudan crisis was sparked by in-fighting of President Kiir's presidential guard brigade.
     Kiir informed the world that his former vice president, Dr. Riek Machar planned the overthrow of the regime Juba, sparking the crisis of South Sudan. Riek Machar but Kiir said all along that organized the chaos to forcefully purge political opponents. The chaos in South Sudan has resulted in the loss of thousands of lives as well as a devastating and spiraling tribal-based civil war.

                                                 

      For weeks, Kiir's regime determinedly tried some of the detainees who were charged with treason audaciously. On several occasions, the government threatened that any convicted detainees would carry a penalty of a maximum sentence for treason. That could mean the death penalty. Yet the pressure built up by the International Community on Kiir to release the detainees remain untouched. Kiir then clearing his position saying that detainees would be tried and if found guilty, could be pardoned as a gesture for peace. And with that calculating twist, the court acquitted all of the detainees on account of their total innocence.
      South Sudan government's recent document signed by its various factions in Arusha, under the auspices of Tanzania's ruling party (CCM) confirms president Salva Kiir as the country's democratically-elected and legitimate leader.
      Several factions of South Sudan's ruling party Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) signed a framework agreement seeking to address the root causes of the conflict that erupted in mid-December and plunged the country into violent crisis.
The SPLM three factions:
        President Kiir, who chairs the SPLM in government
        Riek Machar, former vice president and now the leader of the SPLM-in-Opposition.

        SPLM former detainees

Sudan People's Liberation Army soldiers government  

     The document was signed in Tanzania, Arusha and witnessed by the two principal rival leaders, namely President Kiir, who chairs the government and SPLM Riek Machar in, the former vice president and now the leader of the SPLM-in-Opposition.
     SPLM former detainees also participated in the talks and inked the document as well.The framework has only outlined guiding principles, the preamble, principles, objectives and agenda that will be discussed in the intra-party dialogue. It also included rules of engagement and the role of the CCM. Substantial issues are yet to be discussed by the three factions, which will include SPLM self-assessment and evaluation that will also look into the political, organizational and leadership issues. It will also discuss how to reconcile and heal the party as well as come up with implementation mechanisms.The future of leadership will be discussed in subsequent agendas which will encompass political and organizational issues. The framework agreement was simply to launch the process and was not a final agreement.A possibility of whether Salva Kiir shall maintain or relinquish the party leadership will be dealt with in the next phases.
     These conflict in South Sudan, which only won independence from Sudan in 2011 and is the world's youngest nation, has left thousands dead and forced around a million people to flee their homes.

    UN blames South Sudan's "self-serving elite" of leaders and rebels are the one responsible for a looming "man-made famine." "We are at risk of seeing the worst famine in the country's history, and it is not because the rains did not come. It is because of a man-made disaster, it is because of a man-made conflict, and if it comes , it will be a man-made famine. Because leaders of the now bitterly divided ruling party, the Sudan People's Liberation

Movement (SPLM), including both rebels and government, were ruled by the gun and not by the law. Leaders were sick with "the cancer of corruption" with the country's billions of dollars worth of oil, a curse rather than a blessing, "according to a UN official.

South Sudan's oil fields have become a battleground in the struggle for power in Africa's newest nation, 

     South Sudan is currently Africa's worst crisis with nearly 4 million at risk of severe hunger and an aid effort that has so far reached only half of those in need.

                                                     

     Africa's worst humanitarian catastrophe descends into more misery and famine is inevitable if funds do not start arriving soon to help the people of South Sudan. People were at risk of disease. violence and starvation.