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Sudan Tribune

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Ugandan LRA the potential candidate to overthrow GOSS

By Steve Paterno

March 18, 2008 — The fragile newly emerged Government of South Sudan (GOSS) will most likely be destablized and overthrown by a potentially unlikely candidate, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a notoriously ruthless rebel group from Uganda. Poor judgments, lack of leadership and incompetence couple with corruption have affected GOSS officials to the point that they could not read clearly the potential threats posed by the LRA to their very survival.

In unpopular and controversial move to mediate peace between the government of Uganda and the LRA, GOSS inadvertently imported the war of Uganda to Sudan by officially designating specific locations for the LRA to assemble in and providing them free passage within South Sudan. In their part, the LRA rather assemble themselves in the place of their choosing, strategically at the proximity of the borders where they can easily have access to Uganda, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Central African Republic. From those strategic locations, the LRA are successfully carrying out their usual killings, abductions, looting and destruction of the properties within these four countries.

Despite all these continuous atrocities perpetuated by the LRA, it is none other than GOSS Vice President, Riek Machar who turned out to be LRA’s chief apologist and spokesperson as he persistently exonerates the LRA from all the atrocities. In fact, he is so persistent in his defense of the LRA that he often accuses his own soldiers of Sudan People Liberation Army (SPLA) or some illusive armed forces for the atrocities committed by the LRA.

One will wonder on why a Vice President of South Sudan will wholeheartedly support a foreign rebel group at the expense of the people of South Sudan including its military. Well, there are several possible answers. The first serious possible answer is that Riek Machar in collaboration with the government in Khartoum is interested in utilizing the LRA as an alliance force for his ascending to power. Machar is ambitiously driven by lust for power. Throughout his power seeking career, he desperately juggled through different enemy camps, searching for power, but he ended up miserably without even commanding a single bodyguard, hence, rejoining the SPLM/A in despair.

Now with the LRA as his potential power base, Machar is back at it again, poised on the verge to take power from the embattle GOSS president, Salva Kiir. The LRA now can easily be rearmed and reequipped from their bases in Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic by their sponsor, the regime in Khartoum. It is just a matter of time before they march in to destabilize or take over Juba, the capital city of South Sudan. Of course, this will be facilitated with the help of those Southern Sudanese who supports them and the regime in Khartoum. Since the establishment of GOSS three years ago, the LRA have been propping the defenses of Juba, by carrying out raids in its vicinity. All those raids went unchallenged, a confirmation that the LRA is going to have it easy comes the D-Day.

To make matters worse, GOSS provides every reason for its overthrow by creating a ripe atmosphere for its disposal. With pandemic corruption, tribalism on the raise, and incompetent government, majority of the population including section of the military has become hopeless and disgruntle. The LRA and its allies with directives from Khartoum will take the advantage of such already ripened situation.

The second possible reason why Riek Machar supports the LRA is because pursuing illusive peace with LRA will generate more money for him personally. So far, the current peace talk is a multimillion dollar operation, and most of those parties involve in this peace talk are awash with corruption with Riek Machar at the helm where the LRA delegation to the peace talk has already accused him of mismanagement of the funds intended for peace talks. Several times the peace talks broke down because of conflict related to money. The orgy to continue with this illusive peace talks increases by day as the amount of the dollars involved are mounting with opportunities to loot becoming more prevalent.

The third possible reason could be that Riek Machar is driven by jealousy of the legacy of his archenemy, John Garang who managed to bring peace for South Sudan, overshadowing the ambition of any South Sudanese leader. This might have exacerbated Machar’s naiveté and poor judgment, making him to think that he could also overshadowed Garang’s legacy by bringing peace to Northern Uganda just as Garang brought peace to South Sudan. Machar tried for years, even fighting Garang and signing bogus peace with Khartoum, mocked as April fool agreement; which all added to his long resume of failures.

The fourth reason could be that by supporting the LRA, Machar will cover his past deeds; the war crimes. Like the LRA, Riak Machar shares another thing in common; crimes against humanity when he embarked in ethnic cleansing, massacring innocent South Sudan civilians of Ethnic Dinka–in Jonglei area where the scene of the carnage is infamously known as Triangle of Death. Machar is aware of the fact that the indictment of the LRA leaders by International Criminal Court (ICC) opens a Pandora- box, leading into further indictments of war criminals from across the world. Worried by such inevitabilities, Riek Machar is compelled to protect the LRA so as to protect his own skin.

In any case, with the LRA gaining momentum, the chicken will soon come home to roost in South Sudan. By then, the GOSS officials will realize the dangers posed by the LRA. Even then, it will be too late as all will already be suffering.

Steve Paterno is the author of The Rev. Fr. Saturnino Lohure, A Romain Catholic Priest Turned Rebel. He can be reached at [email protected]

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