Freedom Fighters or Terrorists: The SPLM /A-IO Equatoria Groups

[Elisabeth Janaina]

Freedom Fighters or Terrorists: The SPLM /A-IO Equatoria Groups
Feb. 12 Politics, Uncategorized 2 comments
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By Mading Gum, FEB/12/2017, SSN;

Of all the leadership qualities that made Dr. John Garang, SPLM/A
leader, one of the greatest freedom fighters in Africa to stand out
was that Garang was a great thinker. Garang offered a new nationalism
of Sudanism, opposed to divisiveness and separatism. He imagined a
political community in New Sudan in which democracy, equality,
economic and social justice and respect for human rights is the core.

In his mind, the enemy was clear: all the institutions of oppression
that have been evolved in Khartoum to oppress the masses of the
Sudanese people. ‘The masses of the Sudanese people’. Remember that.

But why did Garang define the enemy as the institutions of oppression
rather than Arabs? Was the Dien Massacre of 1987 not carried out by
armed Arab Baggara militias who killed and burnt to death hundreds of
Dinkas? Were Arabs militias of Rufa in Jabalyin not responsible for
the massacre of over 200 Shilluk civilians in 1989? What about over 90
Shilluk victims who fled for safety but were killed in cold blood at
the nearby police station manned by Arabs?

The tragedy in the South Sudan brutal conflict is lack of political
imagination beyond tribes, hatred, revenge and self-enrichment. Garang
offered New Sudan that transcends tribes in the past. None does today.

Political violence or terrorism, the missing link:

South Sudan conflict can be read in different ways. If you read from
the perspective of my friend, Professor Remember Miamingi, the Juba
regime is a terrorist state that has expanded the concept of “enemy
combatant to the tribes and communities from which the principal enemy
comes from.”

For Miamingi, the rebels are the principal enemy, the presumed freedom
fighters. Another perspective, underrepresented in the mainstream
media, views rebels as nothing but terrorists who “exploit the
relative vulnerability of the civilian underbelly” in the dark forests
and highways of Equatoria. I will focus on the latter as much has been
written about the former.

Although the difference between political violence and terrorism is
still unsettled, it is Paige W. Eager book “From Freedom Fighters to
Terrorists: Women and Political violence,” that offers a striking
contrast between political violence and terrorism.

Political violence is distinguished by three key features. First, it
is a broader category that encompasses guerrilla warfare, national
liberation movements, violent strikes and demonstrations.

Second, political violence aims to re-order the political and social
set up of the society. To overthrow a tyrannical government, to
redefine and realize justice and equality, to achieve independence or
territorial autonomy are key examples.

Third, violence does not intentionally target civilians but is
directed toward property, law enforcement and political authorities.

Terrorism is distinguished primarily by the intentional or threat to
use violence against civilians targets for political goals.
Intentional targets, who are civilians, differentiate terrorism from
broader political violence where civilians are rarely intentional
targets.

Bruce Hoffman offers five criteria that set terrorists apart from
other criminals. First, there are political motives and second,
violence or the threat of violence is utilized. Third, the violence
act is intended to have psychological consequences beyond immediate
victim. Fourth, organization with chain of command structures conducts
the act. Fifth, and the last, the perpetrators of the act are a
subnational group or non-state entity.

Terrorists in Equatoria bushes
At the height of December 2013 conflict, SPLM/A–IO prided itself as an
alternative to Juba regime and they almost succeeded before tribalism,
hatred and revenge engulfed them. IO existence is of contradiction and
this also applies to the IO in the Bush. It preaches one thing and its
members practice different things.

It is undisputed that IO Equatoria groups have political goals
underpinning the terror on the highways and bushes. Equatorains have
long harboured feelings for autonomous status for their states under
federal framework.

However, July 2016 fighting in Juba and subsequent clashes with IO
forces in the bushes of Equatoria as Riek Machar escaped to DRC
aggravated the situation. Now, these groups have nothing to do with
liberating South Sudan or fighting to realize justice and good
governance. The primary aim is to revenge.

And to them, the enemy is not the oppressive Juba regime but Dinka as
a tribe. Miamingi observation illustrates this: “…right now we are
having ethnic groups within Equatoria region have taken up arms
predominantly in response to abuse they have received but also the
government’s targeting other ethnic groups on response of their
ethnicity”.

The assertion makes two things clear. First, the received abuses are
first attributed to Dinka tribe. The line between the government
forces and ordinary Dinka civilian is blurred. Second, the act is
primarily revenge motivated other than liberating the masses of South
Sudanese from all the institutions of oppression in Juba. Here, the
political poverty of the freedom fighters becomes apparent.

Unlike liberation movements which target property, government
officials and law enforcement agents, South Sudan is witnessing the
emergence of terror groups hell-bent on wiping out members of ethnic
group perceived to dominate the government in particular areas.

Whether this increases civilian suffering or not is not their point.
As long as the targeted ethnic group can be drawn into the bloodbath
for genocide to occur, they are fine with it.

The trumped Ethnic nationalism
In late 2016, Alan Boswell gave a dramatic personal account of the
rising ethno-nationalism in South Sudan. In Upper Nile, an ethnic
Shilluk defence militia marched new graduates to war with songs
against Dinka. At the Western end of the country, a Zande rebel leader
derided a Zande governor as “Dinka”, a handmaiden for a “sell-out or
traitor”.

To understand these ethnic nationalists’ sentiments, one has to look
at Benedict Anderson book ‘Imagined Communities: Reflections on the
Origins and Spread of Nationalism.’ Anderson defines nations as social
constructs, imagined political communities that live in the
imagination of its members and belonging to it is about a sense of
connectedness to those imagined people. In South Sudan, there is no an
imagined political community beyond Naath nation, Shilluk nation,
Jieng Nation etc.

One imagined political community that offers a classic example is
Equatoria. Although there is no ethnic community called Equatoria
there lives in the minds of almost all people in that region of the
existence of such political community, separate from Dinka and Nuer.
There is a tendency to regard Equatoria as a “deep, horizontal
comradeship”.

Dr Justin Ambago, one of the Equatoria prolific writers, admitted “The
situation is not the same with indigenous populations of Equatoria,
the country’s most southern region. People of Equatoria are more keen
to identifying themselves as Equatorians, although they belong to
nearly thirty different ethnicities”.

Now, the Moru rebel leader remarks become clear. Equatoria nationalism
is ethnic nationalism which carries with it the seeds of xenophobia
towards Dinka, the enemy. The freedom fighters have failed to imagine
a political community beyond tribe and region. And here, sadly though,
the IO Equatoria groups have succumbed to terrorism, wallowing in the
miasma of ethnic nationalism.

The writer can be reach at madi...@gmail.com
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2 Comments

Defender
February 12, 2017 at 7:30 pm

Dear Gum,

You started your article well but you got lost in theorizing about
something that is not relevant in our case. For starter, there is
nothing such as a state in South Sudan to begin with to reflect the
philosophy of and the elements of organized political thoughts. What
we have now and what Dr. Garang RIP believed in but not implemented
are two different things. Second, in South Sudan the concept of state
in its purest form is a contested one. The stated has been tribalized
since the arrival of Kiir to power. The clear attestation to creation
of a one size fits all state in the image of Dinka is all but a
forgone reality. If the state has a parallel army that is recruited
and financed, illegally by the state resources to advance a tribal
policy of domination, such as Mathiang Anyoor and Gelweng,how do you
even comprehend to articulate that others with intention to protect
their rights to existence, terrorists?,

Additionally, in South Sudan as you correctly articulated in the
first entry of your article is that Garang wanted to dismantle the
institutions of repression. We all now that in Sudan and South Sudan
by extension, there has never been institutions that suppresses
people. It is individuals and groups who have endeavored and to a
large extend determined our rights for a long time. This reality is
just be replicated by a terrorist state, encompassed and personified
in the person of Kiir and JCE.

So, how you would like to define that cause of others as it
relates to the total and utter failure of the state in South Sudan as
exposed by the recent resignation of Gen. Thomas Swaka? Facts cannot
be replaced by the assumptions that others have the right to determine
the rights of others or build a state the sees the rights of others.

The other glaring omission on your part is this: you seem to think
others are gearing towards some kind nationalism but failed to ascribe
the same to the monolithic dominance of Dinka and their aspiration to
create a state in South Sudan in their image–a state that sees state
of nature as the example to draw upon and manifest through brute force
and barbarism. The Mathiang Anyoor and the Gelweng are good example
when those who are entrusted with power turn the state as an
instrument for their own design, brutalizing the citizenry, in the
process assuming that them and the state are one and the same. This is
the other side of the mirror that you are envisioning your argument
in. It is tasteless and speaks of the hypocrisy that has infested even
the brilliant minds in South Sudan to see their world defined from
this extreme angle.

This same argument that you present here is the same that were
used by the Arabs to determine our involvement and participation in
politics of marginalization that spanned many decades, which at the
end, learnt nothing from but its ugliest form.
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Eastern
February 13, 2017 at 6:25 am

Mading Gum,

The political ineptness bedevilling Kiir’s regime doesn’t require
any academic assessment or comparison. Raw tribalism laced with the
age old concept of viewing no dinkas as dors, nyamnyam, etc hence
second class humans is at play. Dinka, the single largest tribe – yes
tribe in South Sudan is very violent within itself. How do you expect
Dinka to treat non of their own?

SPLA-Dinka went to the bush with a lot of bitterness after Kokora
divided southern Sudan into the three provinces of Equatoria, Upper
Nile and Bahr el Ghazal. SPLA-Dinka later vented their anger on the
Equatorians during the war with successive Khartoum based regimes.
Since most of the fiercest bits of the war was fought exclusively in
Equatoria thanks to its geography, the inhabitants in this region bore
the brunt of the war thanks to SPLA-Dinka brutalities meted on
Equatorians. The besieged town of Juba was shelled several times when
SPLA- Dinka knew very well that there are more civilians than NIF army
in that town.

When the CPA. was signed and later the GoSS was formed and based
in Juba, the scenarios of late 70s/early 80s which culminated to
Kokora were rife – domination of government and the security by the
Dinka and the political space kept on narrowing until the system
exploded in December 2013.

You cannot claim you know the reason or indeed understand what the
forces in Equatoria are fighting for when you have shrouded your
thinking with the label of terrorists. This is the reciprocal of those
fighting against Kiir’s regime looking at those you view as national
army as the Mathiang Anyoor and we will go full circles ad infinitum!