BY KOKA LO’LADO
For the majority of South Sudanese citizens, being in the same place with a group of SSPDF soldiers, or even a lone one, creates trepidation and amounts to hugging the Grim Reaper and dancing with death. Their terror is authentic, for how do you comprehend elements of a supposed national army perennially preying on, killing, pillaging, raping, shelling, and mowing down the very people they are meant to protect using canons from helicopter gunships and
It can no longer be seriously disputed that South Sudan is a vampire state. What begs critical investigation, however, is the nature of killings, looting, plunder, maimings, rape, land grabbing, and other evils by the calculatingly unorganized armed forces, particularly the South Sudanese People’s Defence Forces (SSPDF), which is the apparatus of choice for sowing unbridled chaos by the country’s inept and devious leader/s.
For this missive, the SSPDF encompasses the army and the myriad security outfits whose members are drawn from that military ensemble.
For the majority of South Sudanese citizens, being in the same place with a group of SSPDF soldiers, or even a lone one, creates trepidation and amounts to hugging the Grim Reaper and dancing with death. Their terror is authentic, for how do you comprehend elements of a supposed national army perennially preying on, killing, pillaging, raping, shelling, and mowing down the very people they are meant to protect using canons from helicopter gunships and more??? It is inconceivable, outrageous, and pathetic!
Last week, we woke up to disheartening news that SSPDF soldiers shot, injured, and left for dead a student who was walking returning home for holidays from school in neighboring Ethiopia. He survived the ordeal with ghastly injuries, was rescued, and narrated his tribulations to his family. His relative became instantly enraged, saw red, and attacked the army, killing two officers. The relationship between the army and the people of Nasir has been acrimonious, with the latter perceiving the former as an occupational and vulturine force that has disrupted their livelihoods by encroaching on their fishing grounds, charcoal burning and trading and other businesses because soldiers have not been paid for the nth month. The absence of attempts by the army to stimulate smooth civil-military relations in the area is another matter. We will come to this later.
At this juncture, it is worth listing a few of the SSPDF’s criminal actions against civilians in the last couple of years, for context. Also, numerous cruel and absurd atrocities by the SSPDF against innocent civilians have been severally documented and authenticated by UNMISS, the UN Human Rights Office, numerous local and international rights bodies, and other groups.
Last September, the SSPDF unit stationed in Pochalla Town attacked the local population after a newly deployed commander had an altercation with his predecessor. A matter that could have been addressed administratively, nipped in the bud, escalated to a war between the army and civilians that displaced the townsfolk to Ethiopia after the army deployed helicopter gunships against them. Can you imagine a government bombing its civilians?
In May this year, the authorities in Warrap State confirmed that seven suspected cattle rustlers were arrested by the SSPDF and locked in a shipping container where they died of suffocation.
Earlier in the year, SSPDF soldiers killed 3 unarmed young men in Kajo Keji County and proceeded to desecrate their bodies by quashing the heads of the deceased with their boots.
A few years back, soldiers gunned down a foreign nun who was one of a few badly needed doctors in Central Equatoria State’s Yei River County. The raping of Western aid workers at the Terrain Hotel in Juba in July 2016 and the killing of a journalist by soldiers from the elite Tiger Unit of the army which protects Kiir is also a vivid very poignant memory.
SSPDF commanders and soldiers have also been faulted for escalating the Twic-Abyei conflict and this was proved several times with soldiers found lying dead after battles between the two communities.
Elements within the army have also been involved in cattle rustling and many have been left dead at the hands of armed youths who believe the SSPDF has abdicated its cardinal role and has been overtaken by criminals. In May 2022, the local authorities in Warrap State confirmed that 18 SSPDF officers, men, and seven armed youths were killed in clashes in Rualbet Payam in Tonj North County. The soldiers were purportedly deployed to recover stolen cattle. Among those killed were the Military Chief of Intelligence Division 11, Lt. Col. Akec Ciman Paac, SSPDF Division 11 Military Chief for Operations Maj. Santino Kuot Kuotdit and the former Mayen Jur County Commissioner Kuol Agok. Interestingly, SSPDF Generals and senior officers, soldiers have also taken to the practice, often giving guns and ammunition to their relatives back home to protect cattle. The same munitions are eventually used in cattle rustling, resolving conflicts and even minor disputes, and killing the army and police who are sent to enforce law and order, check cattle raids, and contain communal violence.
The above are just a few cases for reference and christening the SPLA to SSPDF has not washed away the army’s malevolent nature and debaucheries.
The army is actively involved in staging illegal roadblocks and checkpoints along roads and rivers, especially the River Nile, where they extort money and grab personal effects and goods from travelers and traders. They are also used for grabbing land by their seniors who get away with it, so, the rank and file have also embraced the practice, without reprimand or consequences. One ponders if the leaders in this forsaken country let the wrong elements in the army get off with these evils because they have deliberately failed to pay them salaries or because they are complicit in the criminality. I believe it is the latter!
Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), now SSPDF, soldiers wearing UNICEF backpacks intended to be distributed to school children walk along a road in Mathiang near Bor on January 31, 2014, after pillaging an NGO facility. (Credit: CARL DE SOUZA)
South Sudan is the only country where the army and other armed forces disregard the orders and commands of the president, a Full General who is also the Commander-in-Chief of the SSPDF and supreme commander of the armed forces, as the rumblings of a happy man who is out of touch with realities and the suffering of his troops and the masses.
How else would one explain the many orders to remove cattle from farming areas, remove illegal roadblocks and illicit revenue collection checkpoints, return embezzled monies, and the opening of one bank account for the collection of government revenues among many other commands that have not been implemented for years on end?
The wrong elements in the army and other armed forces have also not spared humanitarians, including the UN, and have often and continue to loot, illegally tax aid convoys and workers, and have in some cases killed aid workers, and gotten off scot-free. Foreigners, especially traders, get it worse if they do not have a local partner and or friend to protect and vouch for them.
The ranks of the criminal elements in the armed forces only keep swelling because errant soldiers are seldom held accountable and get away with capital offenses like aggravated rape, armed robbery, murder, etc. Their bosses do it wantonly and use the soldiers who have also become emboldened and embraced land grabbing, robbing, maleficent killings, and other vile deeds. A case in point is Gen. Gregory Vasili, President Kiir’s brother-in-law, who has become a dreaded land grabber in Juba who even discharged a weapon into the roof of a courthouse in Juba, intimidated court officers and got away with it. He was not reprimanded but instead promoted. The rule of law has thus been reduced to being dispensed by the thugs who are holding the citizenry at ransom. What a country!
This April 2017 photo shows the remains of a man killed during a raid on Parjok in Magwi County by SPLA/SSPDF soldiers. Up to 16 people were killed, many of them execution-style. (Courtesy photo)
Once in a while, a ‘circus’ of a court martial comes to a town, and some random soldiers are displayed and charged for various offenses yet the real big game watches with smiles. The court-martials and other mobile courts are normally sponsored by UNMISS and other UN agencies because the inept Government of South Sudan has abdicated one of its cardinal roles of dispensing Justice. Subsequently, the people have taken the law into their own hands, resulting in cyclic revenge killings and mob justice. A state of anarchy reigns!
Not to be left out, the police have become extortionists, have illegal checkpoints too, and rob people in broad daylight. This is because they also go for months on end without pay. Consequently, corruption has taken over, cases are poorly investigated, case files are tampered with or deliberately made to disappear and the one with money gets away with murder and other crimes. Again, this created mistrust and made the people take the law into their hands.
I was shocked to read a story by the reputable Radio Tamazuj a couple of weeks ago which stated that the commissioner of police in Eastern Equatoria State admitted that police officers at checkpoints share the loot (illegal taxes) they pilfer from the people among themselves at the close of business. This is depressing because it is clear that the authorities know about the depravity but let it slide.
One wonders how the armed forces have become so entranced and not mutinied after not being paid salaries for so long and being treated so inhumanely by their leaders. On the contrary, they have unleashed their wrath on innocent civilians who are their real people and the communities from which they are drawn.
It is however of paramount importance to highlight that many soldiers, and indeed citizens, suffer from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) due to what they have experienced and seen over close to 50 years of war with only a few years of hiatus in between. This has led to a society characterized by conflict, violent resolution of even the simplest of misunderstandings, domestic and gender-based violence, different forms of depression, and outright madness among other mental conditions.
The lack of salaries for soldiers and civil servants has rendered many destitute. Countless soldiers have lost their families, had their wives taken by men of means and others have committed suicide because they could not stand to see their children starve to death among other gloomy situations. The more resilient soldiers have resorted to cutting firewood, burning charcoal, and doing other menial jobs to survive.
It was sad to hear many a speaker eulogizing the fallen celebrated bush war hero, Gen. Bior Ajang Duot, fondly known as Bior Aswad, who died in his house in Juba last week of heart complications. Many said he was neglected and deprived of resources to seek treatment abroad. Now, if a man of Gen. Bior’s stature who was a gallant commander, yet a judicious, quiet, amiable, and lovable community leader who multitudes coalesced around, can die the way and in the circumstances he did, then it definitely does not bode well for the thousands of voiceless soldiers. You see?
The SSPDF has become the butt of the jokes of many South Sudanese who contend they are only good at killing, raping, and robbing civilians, but cannot protect the country’s borders from foreign encroachment. On 26 June, three SSPDF soldiers were arrested by Ugandan troops in the Owinykibul area along the common border and they are still incarcerated in Uganda. In May 2022, UPDF killed three SSPDF soldiers and a South Sudanese policeman along the common border of Yumbe District in Uganda and Kakjo Keji in South Sudan’s Central Equatoria State. At the time, Ugandan authorities accused the deceased of raiding Ugandan villages, robbing people of money, and looting livestock and properties. South Sudanese local authorities on the ground however countered that the Ugandan citizens had encroached and settled in South Sudan. In October 2022, another confrontation happened between the two armies over a disputed border area between South Sudan and Uganda that claimed the lives of two SSPDF soldiers.
Consequently, the now stoic South Sudanese who often deal with their sorrows and suffering self-deprecatingly and through humor, now joke that the UPDF are the husbands of the SSPDF. Disparaging indeed!
There are exceptions however where civil-military relations are splendid but these often depend on the magnanimity, training, and discipline of individual commanders who love the populace, run tight ships, and bring to book soldiers who run roughshod on the people.
The pattern and circle of impunity by the rank and file of the SSPDF must be broken with perpetrators being held accountable and given harsh deterrent sentences.
A soldier selling charcoal on a bicycle. (Courtesy photo)
It would be ineffectual and imprudent not to prescribe some solutions to the innumerable iniquities, even though it will be disregarded. Another lot in the future might put the advice to use. One of the main solutions is to expedite the process of building a truly national army through the genuine unification and retraining of the various armed groups in the country.
The process has been slow, lackluster, and draining, with the opposition groups, principally First Vice President Dr. Riek Machar’s SPLMA-IO, blaming President Kiir and his cabal for deliberately frustrating and circumventing the process. Kiir’ lot on the other hand counters that the opposition forces, especially SPLA-IO, and other rebel groups are too top-heavy with too many senior ranking officers and very few Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs) and real soldiers. It is a conundrum that has led to an impasse while the people continue to be killed licentiously.
So, please hear the people’s cries and get on with creating a genuine pro-people national army!
Now, it would be futile to have an army that is not paid, fed, and have their welfare catered to, after all, legendary reggae artist Bob Marley sang, “….A hungry man is an angry man…” Knowing our people, they will just use the guns to survive at the expense of the population if they are hungry. So, build the army, then ensure that they are paid, fed, and supplied with basic amenities timely. There is an adage, often attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, that “an army marches on its stomach” meaning that a force can only go so far as its logistics allow. Meaning that if you do not keep your force fed and supplied, they are unable to proceed further. Today, this concept is called Operational Reach and is defined as the distance over which military power can mass effects and employ them decisively.
The other prescription is to inculcate civil-military relations international best practices among the rank and file of the SSPDF. Peter Douglas Feaver, an American professor of political science and public policy at Duke University and a civil-military relations scholar, argued in a paper he wrote in the Annual Review of Political Science Volume 2, 1999, that just as the military must protect the polity from enemies, so must it conduct its affairs so as not to destroy or prey on the society it is intended to protect.
“Because the military must face enemies, it must have coercive power, the ability to force its will on others. But coercive power often gives it the capability to enforce its will on the community that created it. A direct seizure of political power by the military is the traditional worry of civil-military relations theory and a consistent pattern in human history,” he argued. “Less obvious, but just as sinister, is the possibility that a parasitic military will destroy society by draining it of resources in a quest for ever greater strength as a hedge against the enemies of the state. Yet another concern is that a rogue military could involve the polity in wars and conflicts contrary to society’s interests or expressed will.”
The SSPDF, its leader Kiir, and its commanders have indeed drained South Sudan’s resources and become a reprobate outfit.
Prof. Douglas asked: “And, finally, there is a concern over the simple matter of obedience: Even if the military does not destroy society, will it obey its civilian masters, or will it use its considerable coercive power to resist civilian direction and pursue its interests?”
This is a scenario of the basic problem of governance that lies at the core of South Sudan’s political problem; the government is too inept to run the country but has become tyrannical and strong enough to prey on the societies that now cower in desolation. You see the miserable picture!
That said, the relationship between civilian authorities and the armed forces is critically important to democratic political stability, defense policymaking, and international security cooperation. The problem is that in South Sudan, the army is at the helm of politics and this complicates matters with army bosses pillaging the people. It is therefore important for the SSPDF and the government to invest in civil-military relations and have the army and people coexist peacefully. The army should develop, embrace, and disseminate among its ranks a strict doctrine that teaches soldiers that the people are their bosses, after all, an army can only survive through the citizens.
Also, strengthen and empower the Military Police and Department of Military Justice. This should be done by drafting a strict code of conduct and penal code for the army and other armed forces and making sure that the officers and men understand, practice, and make them a way of life. Interestingly, the SPLA had a very strict code of conduct during the liberation struggle, and people, errant soldiers were executed by firing squad for capital offenses and even crimes like stealing goats. Whatever happened?
Military justice should also be devolved to all units to avoid justice being delayed because the UN has to sponsor members of Court martial and fly or drive them to adjudicate cases in far-flung areas. In the event the aggrieved are civilians hurt by soldiers, trials should be held publicly so that the people are placated after witnessing justice being fairly dispensed. This will reduce the endemic cyclic revenge killings across the country.
A military maxim attributed to Aeschylus, the father of Greek tragedy, states: “In war, truth is the first casualty.” So, we should end this salient but unchecked war by the army on the innocent people of South Sudan.
Unfortunately, Kiir, his cabal, and the other leaders only pay lip service, are contented with the doleful state of affairs, vehemently defend and maintain the status quo because they thrive in chaos and benefit from it, so, they will not create a proper national army. Depressing!
To the people of South Sudan who have been reduced to the wretched of the earth, be strong because if we act collectively, a day will come when the unscrupulous lot, and their minions, who prey on us will be held accountable.
Whatever the length of the night, the sun will eventually appear, an African proverb says.
The author, Koka Lo’Lado, is a journalist and can be reached via kokalolado@gmail.com.