Dear Ambassador Ismail Wais,
I am writing in response to your letter
dated 1 March 2019, Invitation to a meeting in Addis
Ababa. In your letter you labelled
non-signatories from the South Sudan National Democratic Alliance (SSNDA) –
members who refused to buy into the flawed and fake Khartoum Peace Agreement
(KPA) – as being “spoilers and (shall) be held accountable”.
I am outraged and gravely concerned
about the use of undiplomatic language, unethical, unfair, unwise, one-sided
and biased diatribe against the members of SSNDA. Your letter is designed to
bully the National Salvation Front (NAS) and other opposition leaders into
giving in to the complacency of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development
(IGAD).
I would like to respond to your letter
by addressing the following: two concepts of mediators and facilitation; the
imposed, flawed and fake Khartoum Peace Agreement; the real peace spoilers;
IGAD’s bias; and deforestation in Equatoria. I will then draw my conclusion.
A mediator who presides over peace
negotiations should be an impartial facilitator with no link to either party in
a negotiation. He/she should have no interest in the substance of an agreement
itself, but is, rather, concerned with the process of helping the parties reach
a satisfactory agreement on their own.
Additionally, a credible and impartial
mediator should facilitate and negotiate in “good faith”. Good faith is an
important concept in any type of negotiation along with trust and honesty,
which serve to minimise the gaps between the parties in the conflict.
The aim of a competent mediator is to
minimise the gap between the regime in Juba and SSNDA and develop a holistic
plan to address the root causes of the problems caused by the tribal government
of President Salva Kiir; establish a framework to address and propose a fair
way forward to address the root causes of the conflicts; propose a Confederate
system of governance in the post-transitional period; and establish how to
eliminate the culture of corruption with impunity, kleptocracy, administrative
corruption, Dinkanization-Nuerization policy, institutionalised
discrimination, political detention, and land-grabbing by members of the Juba
regime.
By your actions, you are defending the
interests of Kiir’s regime by imposing on the non-signatories of the flawed and
fake KPA. Your biased KPA serves the economic and water resources interests of
neighbouring countries of Egypt, Sudan, Kenya and Uganda.
The non-signatories to the imposed,
flawed and fake KPA are the truly credible groups who represent the interests
of the vast majority of South Sudanese, especially the Internally Displaced
Persons (IDPs) and the refugees, who have been forced out of their homes by the
Kiir regime which you are defending. The Kiir regime has not only killed,
raped, and driven South Sudanese into United Nations protection (UNPCO) and
refugee camps, they have also stolen billions of South Sudanese resources,
leaving the population poor and starving.
As you know, the imposed flawed and
fake peace agreement serves only the interests of the leaders in the region who
are facilitating and fuelling genocide in slow motion in Equatoria and
harbouring looted public funds for development. They are concealing billions of
stolen monies from South Sudan in their bank accounts in Egypt, Sudan, Uganda,
Kenya and Ethiopia. Western taxpayers would keenly want to see IGAD develop
appropriate strategies to recover the stolen money so that it could be
redirected to pay for the implementation of the peace process, and rebuilding
health care and education systems and provide clean water to all. The theft of
public funds is in itself a conflict driver and peace spoiler, but never SSNDA.
The peace spoilers are Egypt, Sudan and
Uganda who deployed their troops to South Sudan to protect their economic
interests – oil fields, illegal teak logging, gold mining businesses, and water
and natural resources in the Equatoria States.
Additionally, the intervention of Sudan
into the internal affairs of South Sudan is an attempt to revive the policy of
Arabisation and Islamisation of South Sudan, and to remote-control Kiir to
submit to the war criminal of Sudan. Such unwarranted and illicit interventions
by Sudan and Uganda in the internal affairs of neighbouring member states runs
counter to the African Union Principles of Non-Interference.
On 19 March 2019, Uganda’s President
Yoweri Museveni wrote to Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame and stated that he
stands by the AU Non-Interfering Principle: “Interfering in the internal affairs of
sister countries is wrong because, first of all, outsiders cannot understand
situations of sister countries well”. And yet the same Museveni interferes in
South Sudan’s internal affairs daily and deploys Ugandan troops to Equatoria
States. Yet IGAD under your stewardship is giving a blind eye to the violation
of the AU Non-Interference Principle.
The IGAD’s Non-Interference policy
simply means that the AU and IGAD turn a blind eye to the illegal activities of
the neighbouring states in South Sudan. Museveni is contradicting himself.
Museveni is responsible for political instability in Congo, Rwanda, Burundi and
South Sudan. He has intervened directly in the internal affairs of South Sudan,
and IGAD is silent about it. Museveni is a clear conflict driver. He is the
peace spoiler of the imposed, flawed and fake peace negotiation, and
deforestation in Equatoria.
The IGAD principle objective for the
establishment of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Drought and Development
(IGADD) in 1996 was to prevent deforestation and now the agency has chosen to
turn a blind eye to the man-made deforestation in Equatoria States. The
illegal logging business is a conflict driver, and Uganda and Kenya by engaging
in illegal logging and mining are peace spoilers to the 2015 Agreement on the Resolution of
the Conflict in South Sudan (ARCSS) and the 2018 Revitalised Agreement on the
Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS).
The 2015 signing of the ARCSS reaffirmed the establishment of the
UN/AU Hybrid Court to prosecute sanctioned SPLA illiterate generals and
government officials who participated in and facilitated the senseless December
2013 and June 2016 ethnic conflicts that targeted the Nuer people, as well as
the perpetration of war crimes against humanity and money laundering.
Once again IGAD under your leadership
failed the hopes of victims of rape and crimes against humanity. This is why
the survivors are unwilling and afraid to leave the UNPCO camps. The donors,
friends of IGAD and victims of the 2013 and 2016 ethnic conflicts are anxiously
waiting to see justice done. They are watching with eagle eyes to see when IGAD
would embark on advocacy to rally support for the establishment of the UN
Hybrid Court.
Currently, there is ongoing forceful
recruitment in eight states: Yirol, Rumbek, Twic, Tonj, Gogrial, Gok, Aweil
(known as Aweil Algadim or Old Aweil), and in Bhar Al Ghazal. President Kiir
and Akol Koor, Director South Sudan National Security Service (SSNS), tasked
and directed Major General Lual Wek and Angelo Taban to carry out forced
recruitments. So far over 9,000 ethnic Dinka men have been recruited.
The illegal, one-tribe recruitment
policy runs against the current KPA. Yet IGAD remains totally silent about it.
This is deafening. If there is any greater danger for South Sudan and a real
peace spoiler, it is the forceful recruitment of one tribal group at a time
when SSNDA is calling for the formation of one national army that reflects the
national character of 64 ethnic groups in the country.
Excluding other parties in the conflict
from renegotiating R-ARCSS is another conflict driver.
In your letter you indicated that there
is to be no renegotiation of R-ARCSS: yet you re-engaged Paul Malong who was
not a party to R-ARCSS and invited him to be part of R-ARCSS, while on the
other hand, you excluded the following parties: General Cosmas WoriKojo,
Chairman of the National Resistance Front (NRF), Dr Hakim Moi of PDM, and Mr
Taban Julu of PDM. Both Dr Moi and Mr Julu are parties to R-ARCSS as well as
members of the diaspora in North America, Europe and Australia. They
participated in the talks.
The above example is evidence that IGAD
is clearly playing the politics of indifference and discrimination, and it has
become a carbon copy of the Juba regime.
Your one-sided and arrogant letter
undermines human rights and the rights of the voiceless, the innocent, the
Internal Displaced Persons (IDPs) in UNPCO, and the victims of the Juba regime
who are still living in the UN camps (UNPCOs). Your legacy will be remembered
as that of a failed mediator who was responsible for selling out the peace
process, leading to the betrayal of millions of people. You betrayed the aspirations
of victims of ethnic cleansing, and the urge to help by donor states and
friends of IGAD.
If the situation does not change, your
legacy will be remembered as being the mouthpiece of the Juba regime, the
sellout peace envoy who has betrayed the region and who has chosen to go
against all principles of conflict resolution and facilitation. Instead, you
are now leading the fight on behalf of the unelected Juba regime’s interests.
You seem to want to exonerate the
burning issues of the tribal government of Kiir and his tribal advisers of the
Jieng Council of Elders (JCE) that led the country into senseless ethnic civil
war, a war which has claimed thousands of lives and driven millions to refugee
camps in neighbouring countries.
For the SSNDA, you will be remembered
as a toothless bully mediator who tried to impose unreasonable conditions on
the authentic voices for the voiceless. From this, I can envisage that your
next move might be to lock up General Thomas C Swaka under house arrest in
Ethiopia or even hand him over to killers in Juba. This is very clear from your
threatening language.
For the suffering church of South
Sudan, the relatives of the late Reverend Lasu of Yei – who appeared before Adama Dieng, the
UN’s Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and was murdered by the SSNS – and rape
victims, you will be remembered as the mediator who failed to hold the Juba
regime accountable for the rape of Western aid workers, and all violations of
the peace agreement.
For the conflict and development
analysts and policy-makers, you will be remembered as the promoter of the
oppressor, and a mediator that asserts the economic interests of neighbouring
countries into agreement and who supercedes the interests of the South
Sudanese.
Your proposed solution is only dealing
with the symptoms, rather than the root causes of ethnic civil war.
Unfortunately, IGADs’ approach to peace is harmful, manipulative and lacks an
overall solution to the main problems created by the tribal government in Juba.
In a nutshell, if Kiir himself has
confirmed that R-ARCSS is a flawed peace agreement and it is not going to
deliver good governance and economic development, then why on earth are you
trying to drag SSNDA into it, while knowing very well that it is not going to effect
any positive changes in people’s lives?
The Juba regime has failed to pay
public servant salaries for over six months, failed to improve living
standards, provide security, and ensure the development of basic service
delivery to effect changes in people’s lives.
There are many still living in the
UNPCOs in Juba and other parts of the country – are you blind to all of these?
How could you call your peace a just peace? Peace without justice is not peace.
The real peace-spoilers are the IGAD
and its leadership; Uganda, Kenya, Egypt and Sudan; President Kiir’s tribal
Jieng Council of Elders; Kiir himself; and the forced recruitment of Dinka
ethnic youth – not the members of the SSNDA.
I call on IGAD, the AU, the Troika, and
friends of IGAD to seriously consider Swisspeace, IofC International, Professor
Vern Redekop of CICR, Jeff Mapendere of the Canadian International Institute of
Applied Negotiation (CIIAN) and the NCPA to replace Ambassador Ismail Wais
before it is too late.
