Tag: south sudan
South Sudan Violence: Kerry Meets With African Ministers To Discuss Prevention Of Civil War

South Sudan Violence: Kerry Meets With African Ministers To Discuss Prevention Of Civil War

By Lesley Wroughton

NAIROBI (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and counterparts from six African nations met in Nairobi on Monday to discuss ways to prevent South Sudan from sliding back into civil war.

World powers and regional states have struggled to find leverage over the country’s warring factions despite U.S. and European sanctions on some military leaders and African threats of punitive actions.

After a two-hour meeting with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta at State House, Kerry joined foreign ministers from Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda to discuss options for putting South Sudan’s peace process back on track. Ministers from Djibouti and Tanzania had been expected.

The meeting was expected to discuss plans by the U.N. to deploy a 4,000-strong protection force in the capital Juba, as part of the U.N. peacekeeping mission. The UN has threatened an arms embargo if the government does not cooperate.

“We will … talk about how we move forward in trying to implement peace in this country,” a senior State Department official said before the meeting.

“The people of South Sudan have suffered for far too long, and the continued instability there has led almost a million refugees and a humanitarian crisis that is far beyond the abilities of even the international community to respond to,” the official added.

South Sudan initially said it would not cooperate with the 4,000-strong force that will be under the command of the existing 12,000-strong U.N. mission UNMISS. Juba has since said it was still considering its position.

“We have not rejected it or accepted it, the sovereignty of the people of South Sudan will be decided by the parliament,” South Sudan’s presidential spokesman Ateny Wek Ateny said.

Since the world’s youngest nation gained independence in 2011, oil production – by far the biggest source of government revenue – has plummeted.

Worsening violence has raised fears of a return to civil war that erupted in late 2013, which broadly ran along ethnic lines, pitting President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, against his rival and vice president Riek Machar, a Nuer.

Machar led a two-year rebellion against forces loyal to rival Kiir before the two sides reached a peace deal in August 2015. Under the deal, Machar returned to Juba in April to resume his role as vice president.

After violence flared in the capital Juba last month, Machar withdrew his forces and Kiir subsequently sacked him as vice president.

Machar was picked up by U.N. peacekeepers in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo a week ago with a leg injury and was handed over to authorities in Congo.

Especially of concern to Washington was an attack on a Juba hotel in July by uniformed men who killed a U.S.-funded journalist and raped civilians, including aid workers. The U.N. has launched an investigation into accusations U.N. peacekeepers in Juba failed to respond properly to the attack.

In a letter to Kerry before his visit, the Human Rights Watch group urged him to discuss rights concerns with Kenyatta. The group said it had documented 34 cases of extrajudicial killings and another 11 deaths of people last seen in state custody over alleged links with al-Shabaab militants in Nairobi and in the northeast.

(Additional reporting by Denis Dumo in Juba; Editing by Edmund Blair and Dominic Evans)

Photo: 2016 Rio Olympics – Artistic Gymnastics – Preliminary – Men’s Qualification – Subdivisions – Rio Olympic Arena – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – 06/08/2016 U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrives at the gymnastics venue. REUTERS/Mike Blake

South Sudan Ceasefire Crumbles As Battles Rage In Oil-State

South Sudan Ceasefire Crumbles As Battles Rage In Oil-State

Juba (AFP) – Forces in South Sudan on Thursday fought fierce battles and traded blame for breaking a ceasefire as the civil war entered its sixth month amid warnings of famine if bloodshed continues.

Both sides reported heavy fighting in the key oil-producing state of Upper Nile, which now pumps almost all of South Sudan’s crude after intense battles shut down most fields in the other main area of Unity state.

Both army spokesman Philip Aguer and his rebel counterpart Lul Ruai Koang reported heavy artillery barrages and fierce gun battles at Dolieb Hill, south of Upper Nile’s war-ravaged state capital Malakal, and in the northern Renk district.

“We will continue to strictly abide by the peace agreement, but we will not allow this ceasefire to be used by rebels to continue moving and attacking our positions,” Aguer said.

Rebel spokesman Koang charged that government troops Thursday carried out “relentless and intensive shelling” of their positions at Dolieb.

He claimed government troops had fired shells as rebels gathered for a morning military parade to listen to ceasefire “agreement messages being read out to them by their respective field commanders.”

Continued fighting comes as aid agencies warned Thursday the young nation faces a catastrophic “tipping point” amid famine and genocide warnings, and as health officials reported the first death from a much-feared cholera outbreak.

“We either act now or millions will pay the price,” Oxfam chief executive Mark Goldring said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said it had begun dropping food by costly air drops, the first time it had done so since Afghanistan in 1997.

The war in the world’s youngest nation has claimed thousands — possibly tens of thousands — of lives, with more than 1.3 million people forced to flee their homes.

In the Renk district, a strategic region just north of the main Palouch oil field still left pumping, the rebels said government troops were “continuously attacking.”

Aguer said it had been the guerrillas who had attacked.

President Salva Kiir and rebel chief Riek Machar signed a fresh ceasefire last week but fighting broke out hours later, the second time a truce has failed to stick.

The ceasefire agreement, signed Friday in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, was the fruit of weeks of mounting international pressure and shuttle diplomacy.

But fighters on the ground appear to have paid little if any notice to it.

The United States on Wednesday called for an immediate deployment of African troops from regional nations to safeguard the ceasefire, with Washington seeking a U.N. resolution to ensure the force is in place as “quickly as possible,” said Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Assistant Secretary for African Affairs.

Thomas-Greenfield warned of possible dire consequences should the shaky peace deal fall apart.

“There is a famine that is looming if this fighting does not stop,” she said.

U.N. rights chief Navi Pillay, a former head of the U.N. genocide court for Rwanda, has said she recognized “many of the precursors of genocide” listed in a report on atrocities released last week by the organisation.

The war erupted on December 15 when Kiir accused Machar of attempting a coup. Machar then fled to the bush to launch a rebellion, insisting that the president had attempted to carry out a bloody purge of his rivals.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon this week warned half of the country’s population will suffer if war continues.

“If the conflict continues, half of South Sudan’s 12 million people will either be displaced internally, refugees abroad, starving or dead by the year’s end,” Ban said.

©afp.com / Samir Bol

U.N. Condemns Ethnic Killings In South Sudan Oil Town

U.N. Condemns Ethnic Killings In South Sudan Oil Town

By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times

JOHANNESBURG — The United Nations on Monday condemned ethnic killings by South Sudan rebels that left hundreds of people dead last week after the fall of an oil town to the opposition forces.

The world body said the killings took place in Bentiu, the hub of the country’s main oil producing region in the north.

U.N. spokesman Joe Contreras said in a statement that some members of the rebel Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement in Opposition broadcast hate messages on radio after taking control of Bentiu, urging certain ethnic groups to leave town.

Some commanders from the Nuer people called on their men to rape non-Nuer women in revenge attacks. Other commanders urged unity and an end to tribalism, but their messages failed to halt the violence.

The governing Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement and the army split in December between supporters of President Salva Kiir, a member of the Dinka people, and his rival, Vice President Riek Machar, a Nuer. The power struggle triggered fighting and ethnic killings in many parts of the country, especially in towns such as Bor and Malakal that have changed hands multiple times.

Peace talks in neighboring Ethiopia produced a truce in January that has not stopped the fighting.

Contreras said U.N. human rights investigators had established that after the SPLM in Opposition took Bentiu in Unity state last week, its predominantly Nuer fighters searched a mosque, hospital and other areas where people had taken refuge and killed people on the basis of ethnicity and nationality. A day later, armed Dinka youths invaded a U.N. peacekeeping base in the Jonglei state town of Bor and opened fire, killing dozens of Nuer.

“At Bentiu Hospital, on 15 April, several Nuer men, women and children were killed for hiding and declining to join other Nuers who had gone out to cheer the (Sudan People’s Liberation Army) in Opposition forces as they entered the town,” Contreras said. “Individuals from other South Sudanese communities, as well as Darfuris, were specifically targeted and killed at the hospital.”

The Nuer rebels also entered the Kalli-Ballee mosque where hundreds of civilians were sheltering, allowing some people to go, based on ethnicity, but detaining and killing others.

More than 200 people were killed and 400 were injured at the mosque, according to the U.N. Gunmen went to a Roman Catholic church and World Food Program compound where people had taken refuge, demanding to know people’s ethnicity and killing members of certain groups.

U.N. peacekeeping forces rescued about 500 people from the hospital, mosque, airport and other locations and escorted them to their base.

About 22,000 people have sought shelter at a U.N. compound in Bentiu. Toby Lanzer, the world body’s humanitarian coordinator in South Sudan, said on his Twitter account that thousands of people thronged the gates of compound after violence broke out last week.

On Thursday, the base in Bentiu was attacked with rockets. Civilians at the base are terrified there may be a repeat of the attack in Bor, where outsiders got into the U.N. base there and opened fire.

“We are not feeling safe now after what had happened in Bor,” said Moubark Mousa, a displaced person in Bentiu, according to a U.N. statement.

Raisedon Zenenga, the officer in charge of the U.N. Mission in South Sudan, or UNMISS, called on both sides in the conflict to stop targeting civilians.

“These atrocities must be fully investigated and the perpetrators and their commanders shall be held accountable,” he said.

About 7 million South Sudanese face severe hunger as a result of the conflict, while 770,000 have fled their homes, including 70,000 sheltering in U.N. bases. The world body launched an appeal for $1.27 billion to prevent starvation, but only 36 percent of the target has been raised from donors.

Contreras said the U.N. was investigating human rights violations by both sides, across South Sudan. The violence has been concentrated in the east and north of the country.

AFP Photo/Simon Maina

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.