Hundreds of people have been killed in intercommunal fighting that has raged in northeastern South Sudan for the past two weeks, according to the U.N. secretary general's special representative to the African country.
U.N. Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) chief David Shearer told VOA that violence in the Greater Pibor Administrative Area had quadrupled compared with two years ago. He said he hoped an agreement on appointing state governors reached by South Sudan’s political parties on Wednesday would help establish clear lines of authority and reduce the likelihood of such clashes.
“There’s been a vacuum of power because in these areas, particularly Jonglei state, there hasn’t been an agreement on the governance. There might have been agreement reached between the government and opposition parties to share those governors’ positions of the 10 states. If that’s the case, it's very positive because it means we can get some degree of authority on the ground,” Shearer said to VOA’s South Sudan in Focus in an exclusive interview Wednesday.
President Salva Kiir and opposition leader Riek Machar had long bickered over the allocation of states, especially the ones that produce oil.
Under the deal, according to Minister of Presidential Affairs Nhial Deng Nhial, Kiir’s side of the transitional unity government will appoint governors for six states, including oil-rich Unity and Central Equatoria, which includes the capital, Juba.
Nhial said the opposition SPLM-IO will appoint governors for three states: Western Equatoria, Western Bahr el Ghazal and Upper Nile. The South Sudan Opposition Alliance will appoint the governor for Jonglei.
Shearer, speaking by telephone from Juba, confirmed “several hundred people had been killed” in the latest round of fighting in Jonglei state that began last week.
He said members of the Dinka tribe "moved from Bor town towards Pibor town, where another tribal group, the Murle, were located and the idea was, we understand, was to attack the Murle. This is not a one-off; this has been a tit-for-tat type of fighting there over the last four months,” Shearer said. He said the Murle, with the help of what he called “outside people,” were putting up resistance to the attacks.
FILE - A boy from the Dinka tribe tends a cow in the early morning at their cattle camp in Mingkaman, Lakes State, South Sudan, March 4, 2018.
The UNMISS boss said he hoped “that it doesn’t escalate into anything more and that the guys on the ground come to their senses.” He said the Dinka tribesmen “are encouraged to come back to Bor and leave in peace.”
Residents of Jonglei state have described some of the recent clashes in Jonglei to South Sudan in Focus. Puok Tut Rang, leader of the Lou Nuer tribe’s Youth Association for Development, said armed youth from Pibor “burnt down villages to ashes” and looted people’s homes and means of income in the towns of Aboko and Pieri during a recent attack.
Jonglei Aturuk told VOA about several clashes he saw last week in the village of Manyabol, also in Jonglei state. “I saw about 14 people who were injured. I don’t know about the number of dead but I saw some people were killed. These people [the attackers] look like an organized army and they have lots of weapons, including big guns,” Aturuk said.
Because of insecurity and the remoteness of the locations, VOA was unable to independently confirm any of the accounts.
Shearer said UNMISS had established a base in Pibor “just a few kilometers away” from where the fighting was taking place, and that it had reinforced the base so it could do more patrols and help displaced civilians.
Escalating violence
The UNMISS chief described the ongoing intercommunal violence between the Dinka, Lou Nuer and Murle tribes as “complicated.”
FILE - Youths from the Luo Nuer tribe carry their guns as they walk home in Yuai Uror county, in South Sudan, July 23, 2013.
He said the situation was “very worrying,” because even though South Sudan’s government and opposition parties reached a peace deal 18 months ago, there has been escalating violence that is not “just tribal.”
“We’re also seeing uniformed personnel starting to turn up, not in huge numbers but they’re certainly there. And what’s worrying about that is that’s organized forces as opposed to ordinary tribal fighting, and that means it's elevating up in terms of its seriousness. Were political parties to become involved, that would be a serious worry,” Shearer told VOA.
It is not clear why uniformed personnel are taking part in the fighting, said Shearer.
“We’re not quite sure whether they’re there — [maybe] because they’ve got friends there. It hasn’t yet been determined,” said Shearer. He said UNMISS wanted to see more “active engagement” by the government to “bring this fighting to an end.”
Shearer said UNMISS hoped the new power-sharing agreement on governors would mean local governments will “have the stamp of authority and create a more favorable environment for these sorts of conflicts to be pulled in and stopped.”
He noted Jonglei was “very fragile” and people had suffered “an enormous amount in the area, not only in intercommunal violence but in August of last year, there were massive floods and the floods killed many of the cattle of all the groups, and these are cattle communities so they depend on their cattle for survival.”
'Fighting for survival'
Given all that, people there are fighting to survive, said Shearer.
“People are absolutely desperate and they had a big hit last year because of the flooding, and now they are being affected by intercommunal violence and it’s just a tragedy, frankly,” said Shearer.
When asked about reports of heavy fighting around Pieri, Shearer responded, “We’ve heard those accounts. Our people were in Pieri a couple of weeks ago. There’s been ongoing violence, some sporadic, but there was a very big attack [by groups] on the Murle, and then the Murle reacted with a very big attack on Pieri, and they have since withdrawn from that area, and this last attack is the last episode. I hope it’s the final episode of the continuation of that violence,” said Shearer.
He said UNMISS counted 420 incidents of fighting between January and May of this year.
“In many of those cases there were deaths and also abductions from both sides, women and children taken. That’s four times as many as what we would’ve seen in 2018, so we’re seeing a doubling of this pretty much every year. It’s at levels now we haven’t seen since 2014,” said Shearer.
VOA's Deng Ghai Deng contributed to this report.