South Sudan is finished, Central African Republic, DRC, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan & Uganda be alerted!

BY MARGARET AKULIA, CANADA

“So, what happened is that the people of Mangala have never celebrated Christmas or New Year simply because the illegal occupants, the invaders from Dinka Bor who came with their cattle and went marauding with their cattle to the farms, started also shooting at people, burning villages. This caused a serious devastation of our people in that area” (https://youtu.be/R05xsIy_YqE). 

Those are the words of Kalisto Lado, a former Mayor of Juba the capital of South Sudan which seceded from Sudan on July 9, 2011, but now resembles a lawless jungle! Lado was referring to yet another killing spree by militia from the Dinka ethnic group who maraud as lowly cattle herders when in actual fact they are armed members of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, a purported liberation army that duped the entire world when its members presented themselves as angels of light and liberators fighting for the right to practice Christianity in a predominantly Muslim Sudan among other rights but turned out to be criminals, disciplines and agents of Lucifer, another name for Satan (https://vimeo.com/ondemand/southsudantalks). The attack Lado was talking about at an impromptu Press Conference occurred around Christmas 2022 and the slaughter continues with impunity despite a visit to South Sudan by Pope Francis, revered head of the Catholic Church from February 3, 2023 to February 5, 2023 (https://youtu.be/OcrutIffDzk); (https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/pope-wraps-up-congo-visit-heads-volatile-south-sudan-2023-02-03/); (https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/02/03/south-sudan-rights-abuses-overshadow-popes-visit). 

As if to wave fingers dripping with human blood at God Almighty and dare Him to judge them, on Thursday, February 2, 2023, the eve of the visit by the Supreme Pontiff to South Sudan, “local authorities and the clergy reported that 21 civilians were reportedly dragged out of their homes and gunned down in Lire Payam in Central Equatoria State’s Kajo Keji County by armed pastoralists suspected to be from Bor in Jonglei State” (https://radiotamazuj.org/en/news/article/archbishop-of-canterbury-horrified-over-kajo-keji-killings). Totally oblivious to a rare visit by the head of the whole Catholic Church, the haughty murderers and interlopers continued to commit genocide for their master Satan during the visit by Pope Francis instead of repenting to the Holy Father of the Catholic Church (https://www.vatican.va/holy_father/index.htm). Imitating the December 2013 door to door massacre of members of the Nuer ethnic group, some among the fake pastoralists were the same ones who killed members of the Nuer ethnic group in December 2013. These phony pastoralists have clearly been given permission and immunity by South Sudan’s professed government to kill for purposes of attaining Dinka “ethnic supremacy and genocidal conquest”. 

The “cattle herders” who are homicidal members of the purported Liberation Army in actuality are determined to implement a nefarious and Satanic Dinka plan to dominate the rest of the ethnic groups of South Sudan through terror. Trained and permitted to kill by design, the emboldened so-called cattle herders are always armed to the teeth with sophisticated rifles supplied by South Sudan’s self-styled government. The felons roam about robbing and murdering unarmed civilians. They go about systematically raping women, men, and children.  After decades of fighting a very bloody war that cost millions of lives, the so-called liberators continue to commit the most abhorrent forms of human rights violations! Long after their self-styled revolution came to an end and the territory currently called South Sudan became a sovereign state according to international law, they are still using terror as a premeditated tool against the supporters they duped (Reformed Rebels? Democratization, Global Norms, and the Sudan People's Liberation Army). 

“My president is Salva Kiir Mayardit,” Lado asserted in pidgin Arabic, the lingua franca of South Sudan and the Equatoria region in particular. It is a lingua franca developed over centuries through contact with predominantly Arab northern Sudan. Accepted as a shared language among speakers whose Indigenous languages are diverse, this pidgin Arabic is now embraced as a common language especially in the Equatoria region. Former Mayor Kalisto Lado was paying homage to Kiir, the incumbent president, but critics were quick to reassert that South Sudan has collapsed as a state, and it no longer has a head of state presiding over all the sixty-four plus ethnic groups of the territory but a Dinka chief masquerading as a sham president. 

They brazenly refer to Kiir as the head of a criminal cartel and village chief looking out for only his Dinka ethnic group. The pundits allege that the incumbent government is a self-appointed Dinka government that is aiding and abetting the rampant lawlessness for purposes of grabbing ancestral lands belonging to the other ethnic groups of South Sudan and illicitly gifting these lands to the Dinka ethnic group. Many cite Dr Carol Berger’s well researched paper titled “Ethnocide as a Tool of State-building: South Sudan and the Never-ending War” (https://martinplaut.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/ethnocide-in-south-sudan.pdf) as authoritative proof that many people among the Dinka ethnic group are actively participating in the evil plot to capture state power and apparatuses for purposes of stripping non-Dinka ethnic groups of their ancestral lands and endowing all these lands to the Dinka. 

In her paper, Dr Berger outlines the tactic of the Dinka-led government of South Sudan to implement the perverse scheme. She names destabilization of areas neighboring traditional Dinka lands and forced dislodgment of non-Dinka populations as some of the ways the Dinka-led government aids and abets the dispossession of other people’s ancestral lands that are then given to members of the Dinka ethnic group. In “Ethnocide as a Tool of State-building: South Sudan and the Never-ending War”, Dr Berger declares that ““ethnocide” has been employed as a tool of state-building” (Berger n.d.) and “this ethnocide, led by the country’s “organized forces” (the national army, police and irregular militarised groups) is characterised by the indiscriminate killing of civilians based on ethnicity and the systematic use of rape against women and men” (Berger n.d.). Dr Berger names a number of ethnic groups among the victims of the ethnocide she discusses. The Nuer and the Shilluk of Upper Nile, the peoples of Equatoria, the Fertit, the Balanda and Luo peoples of Bahr el Ghazal form the bulk of peoples that are being victimized with impunity, along with the other tribes. 

“You cannot talk of peaceful co-existence with somebody when you want to kill him. If you want to peacefully co-exist with someone, you have to come and first of all see how they live and request to live with them peacefully and again this issue of migration of all the people of one village to another village. This is an occupation. You cannot come and kill these people with the intention of occupying the area. So, what happened in Mangala we call it invasion. This is invasion” (Lado n.d.). 

Many people have been consistent in repeatedly echoing the allegation that the self-styled Dinka led government is actually the one orchestrating the murder of members of the other tribes and stripping them of their ancestral lands. They declare that the self-appointed government is using a section of the Dinka tribe known as Dinka Bor as proxies. They are adamant that the Dinka Bor are doing the bidding of all Dinka; that they are doing what they have been told or ordered to do by people in positions of power, to expedite Dinka supremacy, state capture and dispossession of other people’s ancestral lands but Former Mayor Kalisto Lado had a contrasting view. 

“The president has issued an order for people to return cattle to their original places, but the Dinka Bor refuse. He has instructed people not to grab anyone’s land illegally, but the Dinka Bor refuse to heed to the president’s instruction”. Lado continued paying tribute to Kiir as his president while imploring him and his government to stop the bloodshed by intervening. He suggested that the Dinka Bor, a section of the Dinka ethnic group is the problem, but many people brazenly declare that Dinka Bor are just a “Trojan Horse” for all Dinka, a diversionary tactic intended for secretly accomplishing the evil Dinka plan to capture state power and systems for purposes of taking the ancestral lands of non-Dinka ethnic groups. In other words, they assert that this section of the Dinka ethnic group is just heading the agenda of Dinka occupation and they are being aided and abetted by the self-styled government of South Sudan; that Kiir himself is involved in implementation of the nefarious plot, along with Dinka ministers, government officials and other elites. 

The conspiracy to murder people with the sole purpose of dislodging them and then taking over their lands is a perversion of “the Roman legal concept of res nullius (things without owners), or the related concept of terra nullius (land without owners)” (Benton and Straumann 2010 ) (Acquiring Empire by Law: From Roman Doctrine to Early Modern European Practice, 1). A Latin expression meaning “nobody’s land”, the perverted version of terra nullius is now being abused to justify members of the Dinka ethnic group seizing ancestral lands belonging to ethnic groups that have been purposely disenfranchised, destabilized and dislodged through “indiscriminate killing of civilians based on ethnicity and the systematic use of rape against women and men” (Berger n.d.). The trend of Dinka people forcibly taking the lands of other ethnic groups after the lands are vacated because of their brutality is now uncontrolled throughout the failed South Sudan State. The rightful owners are often killed or dislodged from their ancestral lands and prevented from returning to these lands through unending threats of murder and rape. 

In addition to occurrences in parts of Upper Nile and Bahr el Ghazal, in Equatoria, what is now commonly referred to as illegal “land grab” has included the violent occupation of lands in Nimule, Lulubo, Magwi, Mogali, etcetera. Other malevolent tactics to dispossess the other ethnic groups of their ancestral lands involve security organs falsely accusing and labeling unarmed destitute peasants as rebels. In Equatoria, these poor peasants have been falsely accused of being members of the National Salvation Front (NAS), a group fighting for all the sixty-four plus ethnic groups of South Sudan. Upon supporting the lie with planted evidence, the neglected peasants are then shelled out of their ancestral lands using the full force of the so-called national army which is dominated by the Dinka ethnic group. This professed national army is augmented by individuals recruited from the dehumanized ethnic groups of South Sudan for purposes of “window dressing” only. This deceptive exhibition was brazenly depicted when the terrorist Sudan People’s Liberation Army renamed the South Sudan People’s Defence Forces to elude the label of a terrorist organization, flaunted a recruit from the Nuer tribe as spokesperson. 

The professed spokesperson proclaimed “victory” over unarmed poor peasants from the Bari tribe that were framed and falsely accused of being members of the National Salvation Front (NAS) (https://youtu.be/GvIRQ3CcA8c). The self-styled spokesperson also contested denials and proclamations made by leaders of the Bari ethnic group as well as Former Mayor Kalisto Lado’s assertions.  During his impromptu Press Conference, Lado had told of burnt villages and dead bodies that lay around because anyone who tried to bury them was killed on sight. Of the condition of Mangalla located northeast of Juba after the vicious and premeditated attack, Lado reported hopelessness. 

“The killing is continuing. The burning of the villages is continuing. The raping of our women is going on. They cannot leave the island. If they come out from the island to the villages outside, the women will be raped. The youth will be killed by the armed people who are outside there” (Lado n.d.). The town of Bor is located north of Mongalla. It is where the Dinka Bor, the alleged current violent implementers of the ethnocide thoroughly researched by Dr Berger (Berger n.d.) and the twisted version of “Terra Nullius” hail from. 

“Let us leave tribalism. Let us peacefully co-exist. Let us not be killing ourselves. Let us not be favoring cattle” (Lado n.d.) Former Mayor Kalisto Lado counselled. It is counsel that is also echoed by a few individuals from the Dinka ethnic group who detest the status quo. These Dinka exist but their voices have been muffled by the enduring chaotic din! The ones who raise their voices risk being ostracized, murdered, tortured, and imprisoned on trumped up charges. Others have been kidnapped from neighboring countries like Kenya and handed over to the lawless so-called government of South Sudan (https://thejubamirror.com/govt-critic-extradited-from-kenya-handed-over-to-national-security-service/). Notwithstanding the “conspiracy theory” that has beleaguered the Westphalian territory currently known as South Sudan, commentators now increasingly and repeatedly assert that South Sudan has failed as a state, and like the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia which collapsed violently and catastrophically in 1992 (Coulson 1993) (Looking behind the Violent Break-Up of Yugoslavia), its total collapse is imminent. “Aljanub antahaa” (the south is finished) is now a common declaration inside and outside the Westphalian territory. In 2021, the International Crisis Group (ICG) declared that the country’s donors are shocked by the magnitude “and ferocity of the country’s epic collapse” (International Crisis Group 2021); (Toward a Viable Future for South Sudan: Tortured History, Troubled Present). 

Genocidal mass rape against civilians by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and affiliated militias has been very pervasive (Pinaud 2020); (Genocidal Rape In South Sudan: Organization, Function, and Effects) with Kiir allegedly goading his rag tag so-called liberators to rape women as their salary (South Sudan soldier's salary: License to rape n.d.) (https://youtu.be/IqD1P5zvFRI). The savagery currently unfolding in the lawless jungle called South Sudan will undoubtedly spill over into the region and the international arena in the form of terrorism if it is not checked. In other words, South Sudan has become a global security threat because the progressive penetration and use of its collapsed state as a launch pad by terrorists affiliated with Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Ex- Séléka, Boko Haram and other terrorist groups that are determined to commit acts of terror globally and to spread their version of Islam in the entire African continent and the rest of the world is looming.  Consequently, the neighbouring countries of the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, and Uganda must stay alert! 

Inhabitants of the territory currently known as South Sudan in Westphalian nomenclature have been victims of ethnic cleansing by the rag-tag so called government army since the country collapsed. The United Nations has failed in its much-touted “Responsibility to Protect” leaving victims with only one option, to establish a professionally trained Protection Force themselves. It is a force that will secure the territory and protect its citizens from the homicidal Sudan People’s Liberation Army, the so-called liberators. The inhabitants of the failed South Sudan State need to be safe to exercise their democratic rights in mapping a different way forward that is devoid of intimidation, exploitation, and oppression. They require protection by a professionally trained Protection Force. Consequently, any objection to such a force by and for the inhabitants of the Westphalian state currently known as South Sudan must be condemned in the strongest possible terms and considered a crime against humanity.