President Kiir and Dr. Riek Machar Dancing on South Sudanese graves! *

Left: President Kiir;
Right: Dr. Riek Machar

"A child born the year South Sudan achieved independence will be 7 this year," wrote US ambassador to the United Nations in an opinion piece for Washington Post. As someone who grew up with the horrors of war, it's very sad that South Sudanese children still go through the same tragedies. A child who was born when the war started in 2013 will be going to Kindergarten this year. Sadly, all they will know is war unless Riek Machar and Kiir Mayardit develop moral hearts.

South Sudanese children are being born into what we were born into. However, the two protagonists of the civil war in South Sudan are toying with the lives of South Sudanese and the fate of the country. 

"A child born the year South Sudan achieved independence will be 7 this year." Nikki Haley

That President Kiir and his former deputy, Riek Machar first met in Addis Ababa on Wednesday after two years and then a few days later on Monday in Khartoum, is more than bizarre. What makes these meetings bizarre is the fact that these meetings are meant to prepare the two men to commit to peace. Why these two men should be convinced by foreign leaders to do something absolutely crucial for South Sudanese is incomprehensible and disheartening.

When Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, recently decried the suffering of South Sudanese, a prominent South Sudanese intellectual and scholar, Dr. Jok Madut Jok, questioned why Haley thinks she cares more about South Sudanese than South Sudanese themselves describing Haley tears as 'Trumpier than Trump." 

But given the political and power game Riek Machar and Kiir Mayardit are playing, it's difficult not to question our sense of responsibility to South Sudanese civilians and South Sudan as a country. We tend to focus on what others are saying than what Riek Machar, Kiir Mayardit, and their SPLM have done. If South Sudanese ended their war, people like ambassador Haley wouldn't have much to say.

It's very difficult to understand what President Kiir Mayardit and Dr. Riek Machar want, really. Many of you would say, 'duh', it's power! What else could it be?' While power is like the Marxian opioid, one would still expect reasonable concessions for the sake of the suffering South Sudanese.

However, the way Riek Machar and President Kiir have been acting lately makes one really question not only the moral consciousness of these two men but also their perception of reality in Africa and in South Sudan. One can understand the complexities involved in brokering peace; however, it's hard to understand why the two men need to go to two different capital cities within a few days to commit to peace in South Sudan? This is bizarre. A waste of time! A waste of resources!

But still, all we've got are promises. "We came to Khartoum to look for peace," said Riek. And Kiir said that "I came to this meeting with an open mind and hope my brother Riek did the same." 

That they don't care about South Sudanese and South Sudan is clear. Neither Riek Machar nor Kiir Mayardit has ever called a press conference to formally apologize to the people of South Sudan and to make sure people are held accountable for the atrocities committed. But no, President Kiir and Dr. Riek Machar believe that verbally saying things amount to being a good leader and a conscious patriot. Until these leaders end the war, people like Haley will continue to take the moral high ground and for good reason: South Sudanese leaders are letting down their children and South Sudan.

 Any rational man who cares about his country and his people would value the importance of political compromises. That the two leaders cannot sit down without a mediator is indicative of the nature of their moral outlook and the extent to which power has blinded them. 

South Sudan will continue to bleed, to cry, to remain in destitution as it has been for the past 100 years.

As long as President Kiir and Riek Machar need a third party to convince them to do what is valuable to South Sudanese and South Sudan is a worry fact about the kind of leaders we have.

Power is an intoxicant. It gives people a 'high' that is not easy to avoid. That is understandable. However, President Kiir and Riek Machar should acknowledge more than half a century of the suffering of South Sudanese under the elite ruling class in Khartoum and centuries of dehumanization by slave traders. 

As Riek Machar and President Kiir continue to pay lip service to the South Sudanese and the world, they are digging the graves of South Sudanese and then dancing callously on them. President Kiir needs to dissociate himself from warmongers in Juba if he is indeed not the obstacle to peace. Riek on the hand needs to see what political concessions he should make because, in politics, concessions are as permanent as change.

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*Kuir ë Garang is the editor of The Philosophical Refugee. 

My Contribution to the Liberation as a Young Boy

By Dr. William Abur

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"The mobilization of the boys and girls in the community was one of the difficult tasks; however, it was decided that the SPLA as a movement need to reveal good a sign of respect within the community. Therefore, for the SPLA officers to be successful in their mission, they were asked to  go and recruit boys from their own tribes. The officers were asked to start with their own relatives and close friends. This strategy helped the SPLA officers a lot in their mission.  My uncle, General Francis Marial Abur Bol, was one of the senior officers in the SPLA, who went to our village and mobilized the boys to join the SPLA/ school. He came and spoke to the parents and the boys about the importance of education." Dr. Abur

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William Abur, PhD

Photo: Abur's Facebook

This article is a personal testimony of my journey from the village as a young boy to my current work in Australia as a social worker and a researcher, who just completed a Ph.D. in migration and refugee settlement. The aim of this reflexive article is to provide encouragement to young readers, who are facing some challenging issues in different ways. 

I was born and raised in South Sudan (Tonj, Luacjang village) where my earliest memories were of a happy child, who woke up every morning and drank fresh milk of cows. My parents were farmers. They had enough cattle, goats, sheep, chicken and enough land for cultivation. They were also well-respected members of the community because of their positive attitude and the help they provided to the people within the village and in the cattle camp. As a Dinka child, I thought life was very easy for us by then compared to now, although there was no electricity, clinics or hospitals for sick people, banks or money to think of or bills to pay.

The only thing we thought about was how to take the cattle for grazing and how to help other people in the village during farming and harvesting. Along with my 6 other siblings, of whom I was the second youngest, my first job was to look after the cattle, sheep and the goats. Being in such a traditional life or a village life can be described as horrendous in this modern life. However, it is a normal life for many Dinka people as they enjoy looking after their cattle, sheep and goats as a pastoralist society. 

In 1989, I was one of the boys, who joined the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) at the young age of 14 due to the civil war escalation in the then Southern Sudan (now South Sudan). The war in Sudan started between the autonomy-seeking Christian and animist southerners against the successive Islamic governments in the north. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people were displaced and many lost their lives. Over two million died and many were forced by the situation to depend on food aid in refugee camps and other internally-displaced camps within Southern Sudan.

During the SPLA war, boys were mobilized and taken from their parents to join the SPLA army to fight against the enemy of Southern Sudanese. The SPLA leadership decided to send officers to different villages to conscript boys as school children with an aim of joining the rebel army when they grow up to fight against our common enemy (Arabs) of Southern Sudan. I remember my uncle, who served in the Sudanese Government before he took his gun to fight against Khartoum, used to tell us all bad things the Arabs had done to the people in Southern Sudan.  He had a deep knowledge of Arabism, the people, and the Government of Sudan, which was dominated by Arabs.

The mobilization of the boys and girls in the community was one of the difficult tasks; however, it was decided that the SPLA as a movement need to reveal good a sign of respect within the community. Therefore, for the SPLA officers to be successful in their mission, they were asked to go and recruit boys from their own tribes. The officers were asked to start with their own relatives and close friends. This strategy helped the SPLA officers a lot in their mission.  My uncle, General Francis Marial Abur Bol, was one of the senior officers in the SPLA, who went to our village and mobilized the boys to join the SPLA/ school. He came and spoke to the parents and the boys about the importance of education. There was a great interest that some parents wanted their boys to become like him when they grow up as big men. He was the only educated man in our community, who managed to be in a senior rank of commander in the SPLA. I and my other several cousins accepted this request from my uncle and decided to go with him to the bush where the SPLA was.

The headquarter of the SPLA was in Ethiopia and many Southerners already traveled to Ethiopia on foot. My brother was one of the first young boys, who traveled to Ethiopia on foot with my cousins and uncle. We were told frankly that the journey to Ethiopia would be several months because there was no transport apart from our own feet. We were also advised of some dangers on the way including some of our own people in the villages we were passing by. Some villagers tended to be very violent. Sometimes they didn’t allow us to get water  or ask for food in their areas. My uncle knew all the dangerous areas so he used to make us pass at night instead of the day time to avoid conflicts with some villagers.

On the way to Ethiopia, many people also lost their lives due to starvation, hydration because of water shortage and predators. I personally encountered starvation, shortage of water or hydration and long walking by foot. Our Journey was not that bad in terms of the people, who lost lives compared to the rest of the groups. My uncle was a well-experienced man and he also knew the places that were very dangerous. This helped us in many cases, otherwise, some of us would have not made it to the destination.

In the Ethiopian camps, young men and boys, who were conscripted and trained, were then sent back to Sudan to fight for liberation.  When we were about to arrive in Ethiopia, we received bad news that the Mengistu's government was struggling with rebel groups within Ethiopia, which later led to Mengistu's overthrow. It was a shocking news to all SPLA and their supporters because President Mengistu's regime was a strong supporter of SPLA.

There was no way for us and all the SPLA people were forced to leave Ethiopia by the new government because SPLA was also supporting Mengistu ‘s regime to fight their rebels. This made it hard for all SPLA forces and their refugees to remain in Ethiopia any more under the new regime. This was a big setback for SPLA and it was a great achievement for the Khartoum government because SPLA lost its headquarter and support from Ethiopia.

From 1990 to 1991, some of us were sent to a displaced camp known as Polataka close to Uganda. This camp was described by a UN aid worker, Emma McCann, as a “military camp for young boys” in her book. It was a very complex situation for us as young boys; we had to go under military training and other hardships circumstances. Polataka camp was full of many challenges including shortage of food, diseases, abuse or child-labor as we used to work for senior officers to build their houses. 

There was also some serious discrimination practiced in the camps because some of the officers tended to favor children who came from their own areas. They looked after them better than the children who came from different regions such as Great Bahr el Ghazal and the Nuba Mountains. There were no many children from the Equatoria region or the Nuer area. There was serious capital punishment practiced in Polataka camp by the men in uniform. Some of these men were also teachers, who were commissioned to take care of us as young boys. Some of us used to escape at night to go to Torit town to avoid some of these difficulties. Commander Kuol Manyang (now South Sudan's minister of defense) was in charge of the town and other areas around Torit including Polataka. I remember I once escaped to the town as I wanted to join soldiers who were going to Bor to fight Dr. Riek Machar's group. Commander Kuol Manyang came and removed me with other young boys and ordered his military to return us to Polataka because we were very young. I still have a great respect for Commander Kuol Manyang. He is a man of principles, discipline and very courageous.

Participation in the Liberation of South Sudan