December 21, 2008 (JUBA) — The President of the Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) and Commander-in-Chief of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), General Salva Kiir Mayardit issued a Presidential Decree appointing Nhial Deng Nhial as Minister for SPLA Affairs.
Nhial Deng Nhial is seen behind the late SPLM leader John Garang before a documents signing ceremony between a Sudanese government official and a negotiator from the former rebel SPLM on November 19, 2004.
The Presidential Decree No. 175/2008 appoints Nhial Deng, former GoSS Minister of Regional Cooperation, as the Southern Sudan army’s defense minister with effect from today, December 21, 2008.
The appointment comes after a statement by the Governor of Jonglei State, Kuol Manyang Juuk, that he had been approached by Salva Kiir to fill the important vacant position since the death of the former SPLA Affairs Minister, Dominic Dim Deng, who died in a plane crash on May 2, 2008.
Nhial Deng, who belongs to the Dinka Bhar El-Gazal region, is the son of the famous late southern Sudanese leader William Deng Nhial, who was assassinated in 1968 by the Sudanese army. William Deng led the exiled Sudan African Nationalist Union (SANU), but returned to Sudan just before his death to take part in the 1968 elections.
Aspiring to his father’s role of statesman, Nhial Deng completed an education in Khartoum and earned a degree in law in the early 1980s.
Nhial’s resignation from GoSS ministry of regional cooperation in May 2006, only a few months after his appointment, brought controversy and debate over the reason for his departure. Some reports said it was because his ministry was financially neglected and with there was rampant corruption inside the government, or because of the significant funds spent on the integration of the SPLA with the SSDF armed groups.
However, neither Nhial nor any other official explained why he had quitted the nascent southern Sudan administration. Afterward, he left Sudan to settle in England for two years where he continued his studies of law.
As a result of continual attempts by his comrades in the SPLM, particularly Pagan Amum and others, he made his comeback to Juba earlier this year. He then caused a surprise by declaring his candidacy for the chairmanship he SPLM against Salva Kiir as well as Riek Machar at the second convention of the party last May in Juba.
His appointment will likely be appreciated by the southern Sudanese army, which is dominated by generals who believe they are the holders of the legacy of the late John Garang, the founder of the SPLM.
The close relationship between Garang and Nhial once sparked rumours that Salva Kiir would possibly be evicted from his position as deputy chairman of the movement. But the matter was cleared up in a three-day meeting which took place in Rumbek from November 29 to December 1, 2004, one month before the signing of the CPA agreement that ended the north-south war.
The SPLM was originally the political wing of the SPLA, an insurgency that waged war for 22 years against the Khartoum-based government of Sudan, before joining the national government in a 2005 peace deal that also made SPLM the ruling party in Southern Sudan.
The CPA established the SPLA as Sudanese army is southern Sudan while the Sudan Armed Force is considered as northern Sudan army. Both are forming the Sudanese army. The Joint Integrated Units formed in accordance to the peace deal are supposed to the nucleus of the future united army id the southern Sudan opts to remain part of a united state.
This week the Juba parliament passed the army budget; accordingly the SPLA gets forty percent of the southern region’s budget annually which translate to 400 million Sudanese pounds (US$187 million).
Kadugli — Nosa Abdalla Anglo, 19, was only a year away from joining a secondary school in Khartoum in 2005, but is still in primary school four years later and worries about her chances of going to high school in 2012.
Anglo, a returnee to the state of South Kordofan after fleeing the North-South war, which ended with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, was in an Arabic-medium school in Khartoum but is now enrolled in an English-medium primary school in her village of Karkaraya, on the outskirts of Kadugli, the main town in the state. “When I joined the school I was taken back to class two,” she told IRIN.
“I was not happy about this but learning was not easy for me because it was now in a new language,” Anglo said. “I find arithmetic easy but now even the subjects I knew before seem tough.”
“The curriculum is a mix of Kenyan and Ugandan [syllabuses] with a Southern Sudanese twist,” said Andrea Naletto, from the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) education project. “This will probably present future challenges for the children as they seek to advance their education.”
“Children returning from the north are getting frustrated; this is also contributing to school dropouts,” said Cecilia Pino, CARE team leader for South Kordofan. “For most poor people, education ends after the fifth grade.”
The few parents who can afford it send their children to schools in the south, in Yei for example, even Kenya and Uganda. There is one English-medium secondary school in Kauda, about 120km from Kadugli, with about 90 students, 12 of whom are girls. The school is inadequately equipped, does not run up to form four and lacks boarding facilities.
The political situation in South Kordofan has resulted in a dual system of education compromising effective learning, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). During the war, no side won a convincing victory in the state, with some areas being under the control of the predominantly Arabic Khartoum administration, while others were under the control of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, which has adopted an English medium.
“The demand for education is high but so are the challenges such as a shortage of schools, learning facilities and qualified teachers. The returnees have seen city life and are sending children to school; we do not want to discourage them,” Vijaya Singh, UNICEF education specialist in the state, said. UNICEF is supporting school construction, teacher training and has an accelerated learning programme to help support late school entrants.
The education system relies heavily on volunteers, most of whom have been educated in Arabic and therefore find it difficult to teach in English. The schools have also not been integrated into the state education system and lack government support.
“The quality of education is not very motivating. We have to work a lot on teaching skills,” said Singh.
Some of the primary-school teachers are grade six dropouts. “Whoever is available to teach something teaches,” said Theodora Oikonomides, education project manager with the NRC.
“Integration between the two systems of education [Arabic and English] has made progress but structural differences in the curriculum, recruitment and training of teachers as well as the salary and employment policy, are an obstacle to the good delivery of services,” Oikonomides said.
The adoption of a foreign curriculum is another problem. “We are teaching a Kenyan syllabus but we do not have enough teaching materials, especially for Kiswahili and CRE [Christian religious education],” Ayub Stephen Janerabi, a headmaster said.
In 2007, no passes were recorded in Kiswahili. “This was because the students started learning late. Teachers for the basic classes have now been requested from Kenya,” said Anju Mursal Tutu Kuku, the education coordinator in the Ministry of Education.
“Our geography and history are also not included in what we are teaching,” Kuku said. “We would like the curriculum to reflect the whole of Sudan and its history, not that of a certain place.”
The education ministry has requested the deployment of high school certificate-holders to work as primary school teachers for the 228,000 pupils in the state. There are 1,200 primary schools, of which 165 are English medium, with about 660 volunteer teachers.
There are plans to integrate the two education systems, employ salaried teachers, and develop a curriculum in both Arabic and English, according to the education ministry.
Meanwhile, Anglo is hopeful that in 2009 she will proceed to class six; her school only runs up to class five and has about 391 students but no latrine or water source.
Sitting in the afternoon sun of a dusty courtyard in Juba, this overgrown African village that is now Southern Sudan’s capital, a veteran humanitarian worker explained how the roughly 1,000 insurgents belonging to the Lord’s Resistance Army – the LRA – continue to defy four states and keep millions in distress in east central Africa.
“They’re the world’s best bush guerrillas” was the simple conclusion, which is why the dramatic attack this week on their bases along the tri-border area by Ugandan special forces — assisted by Southern Sudan and Congo troops — is unlikely to have done much more than kill women and children and make the peace process even more difficult.
The LRA is unsurpassed for violence against civilians, including killings, rapes and kidnappings of children who are turned into soldiers and sex slaves. Its leader, Joseph Kony, claims to communicate with God and fight for his Acholi tribe of Northern Uganda, but many of the crimes have been committed against those same people.
Two years ago, there was a sliver of optimism after Kony’s representatives and the Ugandan government began to negotiate peace in this town. But the process seems at a dead end. On 29 November Kony again failed to come out of the bush to sign the deal at the appointed hour — his fourth “no-show” in seven months.
Understandably, patience has worn thin among those trying to seal peace: Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, the special UN representative, the Southern Sudan vice president who facilitated negotiations and donors like the U.S.
Peace is still possible, but only if three truths are recognised. First, the Juba agreements are deficient in two ways. The LRA is no longer really just an issue for Northern Uganda. Since it moved operations to Sudan, established a base in the Congo’s Garamba Park and began to raid in the Central African Republic, its composition has changed radically. Probably more than half its fighters are now Sudanese. Even if Kony wants to sign – by no means certain – they probably would not let him.
Moreover, Kony and several top commanders have been indicted for atrocity crimes by the International Criminal Court. His desire to escape trial and prison in The Hague likely helped bring the LRA into negotiations, but now the threat of legal action could be keeping him in hiding. Uganda is preparing his trial by a special division of its High Court under circumstances that could ultimately persuade the International Criminal Court and UN Security Council to set aside the international indictments. But no one has adequately described terms to the reclusive Kony.
The UN and the African Union should jointly mandate a special representative to try shuttle diplomacy directly with Kony over terms for the LRA’s Sudanese elements similar to those offered his Ugandans and about guarantees for his fair trial in Africa.
Likely nothing will persuade Kony to allow his fighters to be disarmed and to submit himself to a legal process that would expose him to long prison time. The second need, therefore, is to quarantine the LRA so it cannot return to Uganda and is no longer on call if Sudan’s long-ruling National Congress Party decides to destabilise elections in Southern Sudan next year or revoke its promise to allow the South to vote on independence in 2011.
No conceivable force in the region has the capability to wipe out these “ghost” guerrillas. But they could be kept in their isolated Garamba stronghold by a screening force of AU or UN peacekeepers around that park and along the common border areas of Sudan, Congo and the Central African Republic, perhaps with contributions from states like Kenya, which has Luo speaking-soldiers who can communicate with LRA fighters.
Finally, Northern Uganda is quiet – for now. The LRA never represented its people, but there are bitter feelings in the North of victimisation, disenfranchisement and marginalisation. The Juba protocols promise a new deal that the Musevini government says it will carry out whether or not Kony signs, but its record is not encouraging.
Here is where donor countries are essential. They must keep Kampala to its word and not, as Washington has tended to do, take the increasingly undemocratic Museveni at face value because of his anti-terrorism stance.
Pressure needs to be applied so a promised stakeholders conference becomes a vehicle for Northerners to share in planning and executing a reconstruction program that could otherwise become a regime pork barrel and land grab, and so a truth and reconciliation commission can reveal not only LRA but also army misdeeds in the long conflict.
If these actions are taken, the LRA will no longer be a threat, even if Kony hides from justice. Otherwise, the “ghost” soldiers will still haunt the borderlands, and one day a new insurgency is likely to arise in Northern Uganda.
They found traces of blood, burnt out huts and signs of human activity but no sign, whatsoever, of LRA rebel leader Joseph Kony.
UPDF Special Forces yesterday arrived at the camps destroyed by Sunday’s bombing in the jungles of the Democratic Republic of Congo but could neither give details of casualties or the whereabouts of the rebel fighters.
Not even the commando unit of the UPDF special forces, the first military element to enter Kony’s command post at Camp ‘Kiswahili’, about 90km North of Dungu in the vast Garamba jungle, could trace the whereabouts of the LRA rebel leader yesterday afternoon, according to various UPDF officers Daily Monitor spoke to but, who could not be quoted because of the sensitivity of the matter.
WHERE IS HE? LRA leader Joseph Kony holds his daughter, Lacot, and son, Opiyo, at peace negotiations on November 30. REUTERS PHOTO
“Our ground troops from the commando unit reached the biggest LRA camp. They have not found any bodies or wounded persons although there is evidence that a considerable number was wounded or killed at the scene during the air strikes,” Capt. Chris Magezi, the spokesman for the UPDF operation code-named Operation ‘Lightning Thunder’ said.
He said nine sub-machine guns (SMGs) and four anti-personnel mines were recovered. The spokesman said there was likelihood that the rebels carried away the dead or wounded and concealed them between the air strikes and the time the ground troops reached the scene.
The army could not explain how rebels under intense attack would find time to conceal dead bodies or carry away the wounded.
But Defence State Minister Ruth Nankabirwa said, those who have doubts about the raid should wait for the pictures of the attacks including the dead.
“As much as we are eager to tell Ugandans the number of casualties, we are constrained to do so because the camps were completely destroyed and people were killed,” the minister said.
The practice after military operations is to take the press to the scene to record first hand accounts other than depending on pictures or information supplied by the military.
“The six abductees who were rescued near the camp said they jumped over bodies as they escaped,” Capt. Magezi said.
He said six Congolese and Central Africans, aged between 11 and 17, were rescued from the gardens of sweet potatoes, rice, groundnuts, simsim, cassava and beans around the camp.
Ms Nankabirwa said Kony’s female bodyguard, who was abducted from the Central African Republic, surrendered to the UPDF.
But Ms Nankabirwa said the essence of the strikes is to put pressure on Kony to come out and sign the peace deal if he is still alive. “Since we went in, he has not engaged our troops. We are just hitting him, he does not respond,” she added.
The commandos under Maj. Noel Mwesigye, aboard the military helicopters were parachuted in the radius of between five to 10km from the camp and they crawled into the deserted expanse.
Capt. Magezi said in the camp the forces found guns, explosives, a generator, granaries stuffed with food, saucepans, clothes and other personal effects.
“The forces moved through acres and acres of food crops, which is a sign that Kony has been using abductees as slaves to cultivate the food,” Capt. Magezi said.
But like Army and Defence spokesman Paddy Ankunda, Magezi could not say whether Kony was in the camp at the time of the attack.
“We are trying to verify some reports. Give us some time to do that,” Maj. Ankunda said. Neither Defence Minister Crispus Kiyonga, nor the Chief of Defence Forces, Gen. Aronda Nyakairima, could be got for comment.
But the Governor of Central Equatoria state, which covers Juba city, Maj. Gen. Clement Wani Konga, has warned of imminent attack by the LRA rebels following the military offensive.
Gen. Wani issued the warning in the state council meeting on Monday, which reviewed the security situation in the region with emphasis on taking precautionary measures by the population, the Sudan Tribune reported yesterday.
Gen. Wani, who also chairs the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) party in the state, asked the council to mobilise the citizens to fight back if the rebels attack the area. As the offensive continued yesterday, Resolve Uganda, a US-based organisation that monitors human rights in the North, called for the international community to act decisively to ensure that operations target LRA leaders only.
The call comes as the United Nations Security Council prepares for a briefing this week by Mr Joaquim Chissano, the UN envoy to regions affected by the rebels.
“We must not forget that this is an army comprised primarily of children being held against their will whose lives also hang in the balance,” said Mr Michael Poffenberger, Resolve Uganda executive director.
Human Rights Watch (HRW), an international rights group, said all parties should respect international humanitarian law and LRA leaders accused of war crimes who surrender or are captured should be brought to trial.
“There is a history of grave abuses against civilians by every belligerent force operating in eastern Congo, including foreign armies,” said Ms Elise Keppler, senior counsel with HRW’s International Justice Programme in a statement on Tuesday.
“All commanders involved in this operation should ensure that their troops rigorously obey the laws of war,” she added.
Khartoum, 17 Dec. 08 (Sudan Vision) — The report presented by the head of the Allocation and Revenues Control Commission, Dr. Mohammed Osman Ibrahim, before the National Assembly yesterday indicated an increase in the allocations of the Government of South Sudan (GoSS) for 2008 along with a drop in the allocations of the federal government and northern states for the same period.
Ibrahim stated in his report that the rate of GoSS allocations stood at 19.1%, at an increase of 2.9% while allocations of the federal government amounted to 54%, posting a drop of 1.2% over the previous year. Allocations of the northern states rated 26.9%, registering a drop by 1.7%
The report in addition indicated a drop of 4.9% in the actual performance of the federal government during the first half of 2008 while GoSS performance scaled up to 10.7%, ascribing the increase to settlement of some of GoSS arrears for 2007. Ibrahim noted that total national revenues deposited in the national revenues fund reached 9.5 billion pounds for the three levels of government. The report on the other hand stated that actual performance of expenditure during the first half of 2008 amounted to 11,019.3 million pounds at a performance rate of 98.2%.
Ford gave a lengthy apology for uttering the insult Sunday during his weekly Newstalk 1010 radio show to dozens of reporters at City Hall before addressing the departure of his press secretary and deputy press secretary.
“I want to start off by apologizing to everyone of you with the derogatory comment I made on my radio show with respect to the media,” Ford said. “I’m sure you understand this has been very stressful for myself and my family but that doesn’t justify using the terminology that I did.
“I sincerely apologize to each and everyone of you. I understand you have a job to do … it has been bothering me a lot.”
Ford slammed the media Sunday, muttering that reporters were a “bunch of maggots” along with lamenting how he was being treated over allegations he has been seen in a video smoking crack in the company of drug dealers.
“You’ve called him worse than that sometimes, not you necessarily,” he told a reporter. “I think it was a good show and we can continue on with the business of the city.”
“I wouldn’t call anybody a name,” he said. “Certainly any media that I’ve encountered here are very professional and do a great job and work hard.”