Eight No Agreements Signed in Addis

Final peace talks end without any agreement, March 2015

Eight No Agreements Signed in Addis

 

With Opoka Christopher Arop

 

But first who looted Bor in early 2014? One of the most daunting realities for me in the ongoing conflict in my country has been the very issues I and many others blindly and may be even knowingly allowed the world to ignore just as we have chosen to be part of the larger cover up that has masked this whole charade.

 

While we have all in our own ways dealt with pages of the bitter chapters of this reality, one particular episode in this drama of death and diseases, guns and children, pregnant women and rationed food; my recent visit to Jonglei’s capital Bor has reawakened that sad feeling journalists and humans altogether have, a belief that if we confront our fears by writing about our deepest bitterness, like all “European/American” kids are told everything will be alright in the face of despair, we too tell ourselves South Sudan will one day have the kind of togetherness its citizens have not learnt to dream about.

 

One of the cruelest but simplest ways of confronting demons of every epoch is to have the nerve to ask the right or wrong questions. And mine was this perplexity with regard to the idea that if the people of Bor town were the ones who looted the town, then surely the amount of food items stolen from Catholic Relief Service (CRS) stores alone would have bolstered the livelihoods of those that benefitted.

 

Far from this sad reality, the concocted story was that the rebels looted Bor town as they were pushed further away from Bor town. It was also generally synchronized that the massacre in Bor town was done by the fleeing rebels following the advancement of either the fragmented, demoralized and defeated Sudan People’s Liberation Army soldiers [at the time] or the fierce and gallant, better equipped terror machines of Uganda’s President Yoweri’s Museveni People’s Interest Defense Forces (MPIDFs).

 

The mockery-like satire that UPDF has become President Museveni’s individual tool or that it has become a force that can pursue the interests of senior commanders without following due process of military interventions by authorization from legislators [although Uganda’s President seems to argue time and again the rather dead angle, albeit borrowing a northern Uganda saying that ‘if your brother’s house is burning, you must first put out the fire, before find out the cause of that very fire], is no mockery at all, but another chapter of the realities we have ignored enough for the regional powers to assume as our impotence and inaction. I will explore this matter at an appropriate time and with more accurate information therein.

 

Back to the story of Bor, and what lessons it may provide us. Bor town was looted to the bone and it experienced one of the most brutal and yet open massacres, needless of investigations of any kind nor a need for eye witness accounts. Unlike the case of Juba where many people were killed in cold blood behind closed doors and their bodies later dumped in sewers, killings in Bor were in large numbers, planned, organized and done in broad daylight. Even those rare cases of persons killed in the night, the eye witness accounts can only serve a preemptive purpose, because the architects of the Bor massacre have allowed their actions to remain an open secret, or score high on the board that we as South Sudanese do not know how to fashion our secrets.

 

If we are learning to keep secrets, may be analysts should rethink President Salva Kiir’s strategy of falling asleep [as has been alleged by activists in Addis Ababa, on a day when serious issues that would lead to the signing of a peace deal are discussed]. Is the commander-in-chief, chairman of the SPLM, a leader who is reported to have an unwavering support of the ethnic divide that has become politics in our country, and relative politicking that has had Equatorian politicians becoming the choir that may have Bishop Taban Paride even rethink his choir options should peace be signed and President Kiir allowed to resume mass at the Kator Catholic church!

 

The bitterness among the people of Bor, the original inhabitants of what has become Bor town has been kept in a jar for far too long and events December 2013 were a trigger that it needed to spiral out of control. Please indulge my few questions: who looted Bor town? Who looted all the stores of humanitarian agencies? Who looted cars, trucks, air-conditioners, solar systems office windows and chairs? Who looted fridges, tables, curtains all in the midst of raging violence?

 

You are sure to find the answer in the silent murmurs and not in the loud noises that is if you have the patience to hear with your ears and listen from the heart. The people of Jonglei are talking and nobody is listening and the same massacre will repeat itself, this time with more dire consequences than imagination can permit.

 

The complicity of politicians and business interests has not helped to address the matter. I will say this for a fact. The government in Juba and its policy of appeasing disgruntled soldiers who have a tribal following will soon lead to a more devastating fragmentation of the so called referendum republic! The soldiers soon forgot that their barrels had failed to secure a nation-state, but for the votes of the citizens; illiterate as they were, sick as they lived, hungry as they starved, beaten as they were tortured by the same machinations that claimed to have delivered them from all evil that was northern-Arab.

 

Still, while in Bor, I was surprised that the cabinet of Caretaker Governor John Kong Nyuon had a rather diverse membership, and as I looked back at the shorter history of Jonglei State, I discovered that representation of the different ethnicities has never been as terrible as say Central Equatoria or Western Equatoria where specific tribes have been taking turns at the State tits for time immemorial. I once even thought Western Equatoria was composed of only a single tribe the Azande! I also thought Central Equatoria was simply a Governor Clement Wani Konga and Vice Resident James Wani Iga [Mundari and Bari love affair]!

 

Shocked I was as it proved shocking in deed. The Murle who had acquired two counties through the fighting of their brave son David Yau Yau were still present in the Jonglei cabinet. In fact, the Spokesperson of the government was a Murle himself, in the person of Information minister Judy Jonglei. Pardon my French, but if our politics is ethnic and the rewards of violence take ethnic proportions, then surely, analysts must only produce analysis from the ethnically fused data. But Jonglei transcends all reason. If the Greater Pibor Administrative Area (GPAA) was created to improve service delivery to the people of Pibor and Pochalla, how come a majority of the inhabitants of these Counties are still holding key positions in the government in Bor? Shouldn’t they have left by now?

 

I am no advocate for the masses to demonstrate, but if one of my children were to ask for his share of my wealth, say a plot of land; it would be foolhardy for me to keep him as a resident on the remaining plot of land that is shared among I and my other children (boys and girls alike!).

 

But no! Our politics is much more advanced and in the wrong direction. I hope I have asked my fair share of the questions; although this is no guarantee that I will get answers. I still have the picture in my mind of people fleeing from violence being burnt alive in a church just less than 300 meters away from Bor Hospital. I shut my eyes and see a select few residents of Bor unafraid of running away as the rest scampered about the outskirts of town. I still have with me a painting of a selected few with plenty to eat, and with spare time to sell a strand of ‘abel alier’ (stinky, but nutritious fish that is usually braided into four strands) for three times the previous pay for the actual healthy-smelly weave?! These are my pictures.

 

I have one last sad picture. And it is Addis Ababa 2015. On the 3^rd of this month from 3:30 PM �" 10:00 PM) 1. Status of Forces (No agreement) 2. Federalism (No agreement).  Issues discussed on March 4th, 2015 (10:00 AM �" 1:30 PM) 1. Transitional Security (No agreement) 2. Wealth Sharing (No agreement) 3. Contracted Debts (No agreement) 4. Parameters of the Permanent Constitution Making Process (No agreement) 5. National Assembly and Council of States (No agreement) 6. Transitional Justice (No agreement) and they started their next session yesterday at 5:00pm….. My picture is that there is no picture as there is no single agreement on any of the prior discussions. Let the cartoonists try capturing 8-NO-AGREEMENTS!