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Tag: president salva kiir

Fighting Rages In South Sudan Oil Regions

Juba (AFP) – Heavy fighting between government forces and rebels was raging Thursday in South Sudan’s key oil-producing north, officials said, as neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia stepped up efforts to broker an end to the civil war.

Army spokesman Philip Aguer said troops loyal to President Salva Kiir were battling forces allied to former vice president Riek Machar inside the town of Malakal, capital of Upper Nile state.

He also said troops were preparing an offensive against Bentiu, the main town in oil-rich Unity State, to follow on from their recapture of Bor, another state capital that had fallen into rebel hands during the nearly two weeks of clashes in the world’ youngest nation.

“There is fighting in Malakal. Our forces are in the northern part of Malakal and the rebels are on the southern part. We will flush them out of Malakal,” Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) spokesman Aguer told AFP.

“The rebels are still controlling Bentiu but SPLA is planning to retake Bentiu soon,” he added.

The violence in South Sudan, a fledgling oil producer which won independence from Sudan just two years ago, has left thousands dead, according to the United Nations.

Tens of thousands of civilians have also sought protection at UN bases amid a wave of ethnic violence pitting members of Kiir’s Dinka tribe against Machar’s Nuer.

The UN Security Council voted Tuesday to send nearly 6,000 extra soldiers and police to South Sudan, nearly doubling the UNMISS force to 12,500 troops and 1,323 civilian police.

Amid reports of bodies piled in mass graves and witness testimonies of massacres and summary executions and rapes, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has promised those responsible would be “held accountable”.

Crude prices have also edged higher because of the fighting as oil production, which accounts for more than 95 percent of South Sudan’s fledgling economy, dented by the violence and oil workers evacuated.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn flew into Juba on Thursday for talks with President Kiir, the latest in a line of peace brokers who have flown in since the fighting began on December 15.

The leaders, the most senior officials yet to visit the country, posed for photos before going into closed door talks.

The fighting started after Kiir accused Machar of attempting a coup. Machar denied this, and said the president was exploiting a clash between members of the army as a pretext to carry out a purge.

Although Kiir and Machar — a former vice president who was sacked in July — have said they are open to peace talks, fighting has spread to half of the country’s 10 states.

The battles have also been intense: an AFP correspondent who visited the recaptured town of Bor on Wednesday said bodies littered the streets and stores were looted, with occasional gunshots still ringing out even as civilians poured back into the town.

The UN said aid agencies need $166 million (121 million euros) over the next three months to distribute food, manage camps for the displaced and provide health and sanitation.

“There are at least 90,000 people who have been displaced in the past 10 days. This includes 58,000 people who are sheltering in UN peacekeeping bases,” said the UN humanitarian chief in the country, Toby Lanzer.

“It is crucial that aid agencies have the resources they need to save lives in the coming months,” he said.

UN rights chief Navi Pillay said a mass grave had been found in rebel-held Bentiu and cited reports of at least two more in Juba, the capital. Around 15 bodies were found in one site in Bentiu, and another 20 bodies at a nearby river, she said.

In Juba, the UN mission was more cautious, confirming the 15 killed but saying it was still “investigating reports of such atrocities”.

A number of witnesses have recounted a wave of atrocities, including an orchestrated campaign of mass killings and rape.

“There are now people who are targeting others because of their tribal affiliation,” Kiir said in a Christmas message to the country, where the population is roughly divided between Christians, Muslims and those with traditional indigenous beliefs. “It will only lead to one thing, and that is to turn this new nation into chaos.”

In his Christmas message, Pope Francis called for “social harmony” and warned the violence was “threatening peaceful coexistence”.

Nearly 100 U.S. troops are on the ground in South Sudan, and the U.S. military said Tuesday it had deployed a “platoon-sized” Marine contingent to neighboring Uganda. Four U.S. troops were wounded on Saturday when their aircraft was shot at during an evacuation operation.

The United States was instrumental in South Sudan’s independence from the north.

U.S. Ups Pressure In South Sudan, But No Military Role Likely

Washington (AFP) – The United States — a key backer of South Sudan’s 2011 independence — is increasing diplomatic pressure amid an intensifying conflict there but will not consider military intervention, experts said.

Analysts do not expect Washington to launch a massive military campaign, despite President Barack Obama’s decision to send nearly 100 troops to the country this week to help protect U.S. citizens, personnel and property.

Obama has warned South Sudan over the week-old conflict, saying the country was on the “precipice” of civil war and that any military coup would trigger an end to diplomatic and economic support from Washington and its allies.

Secretary of State John Kerry also told President Salva Kiir over the weekend that the violence endangers the independence of the world’s youngest nation, born in July 2011 after a five-decade struggle for independence from Sudan.

Fighting has gripped South Sudan since December 15, after Kiir accused his former deputy Riek Machar of attempting a coup. Machar denied the claim and accused Kiir of carrying out a vicious purge of his rivals.

Washington has had a longstanding interest in South Sudan and supported the southern rebels in their battle for independence.

Post-independence, the United States became Juba’s biggest source of political and economic aid as the country took its first steps, recalled Richard Downie, Africa assistant director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Now the U.S. is looking at the situation, and it is driven by this desire not to let all the hard work get away,” the analyst said, noting that Washington’s engagement in South Sudan has been “driven by humanitarian concerns.”

Downie recalled that throughout president George W. Bush’s 2001-2009 tenure, there were “ongoing efforts diplomatically to try bringing peace to Sudan” that begun as a bid to end the bloody, long-running civil war between the North and the South.

Also lobbying for sustained U.S. involvement were South Sudanese living in the United States, many of whom are devout Christians and have the support of the U.S. evangelical movement.

And the fate of South Sudan has long interested Hollywood — with actors George Clooney and Mia Farrow in particular taking up the cause.

Washington was one of the forces behind the January 2005 peace agreement in Naivasha, Kenya that ended the civil war, offering six years of autonomy for the South and a referendum in January 2011 to decide on independence. The South Sudanese overwhelmingly voted to break away from Khartoum.

“When the referendum was being held on independence, the U.S. got engaged diplomatically again, and putting resources in to make sure that referendum happened and South Sudan achieved its independence,” Downie said.

Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice, who has worked on the Sudan issue for 20 years including in her previous post as UN ambassador, repeated calls for all parties to help end the conflict in an audio message to the country.

Rice and her successor at the UN Samantha Power have been impacted by the wars in Bosnia, Darfur and Rwanda, and by what they see as flawed U.S. responses.

But offering a more cynical take was France’s former ambassador to Khartoum Michel Raimbaud, who said he “doubts that democracy and human rights guide the interests of the United States in South Sudan.”

“The secession, in which Washington played a very important role, was motivated by oil and strategic considerations, to break up Sudan — the biggest Arab country in Africa,” accused the retired diplomat who now works as an independent expert.

Downie contested these allegations, saying Americans are “not involved in the oil industry there very much at all,” and “there is a very thin strategic interest in South Sudan.”

The Obama administration quickly sent to Juba its envoy for Sudan and South Sudan, Donald Booth, and deployed 45 troops to reinforce security for Americans staying there after the evacuation of some 380 U.S. officials and private citizens.

But Downie doesn’t expect Washington to engage militarily in any major way.

“It would require a big leap for the U.S. to get involved significantly on the military level,” he said. “Look across Africa, the U.S. military is very, very wary of getting the boots on the ground.”