Rebel leader tours war-ravaged south Sudan to explain peace deals
YEI, Sudan, June 9 (AFP) — As a priest intoned “I saw a new heaven, I saw an new earth,” rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) removed their caps to pray before meeting their leader, John Garang, who is touring the south of the war-ravaged country to explain peace accords signed with the government.
About 3,000 people were gathered in this town’s Liberty Square, which is less of a real square than a rough patch of ground bordered with mango and flame trees.
An abandoned tank lay nearby.
“It’s a great day,” declared SPLA officer Loboro Scopas from a makeshift podium with a rusty roof.
“The greatest liberator, the greatest fighter for justice is here,” he added as an introduction for Garang, who had just arrived aboard a four-wheel-drive vehicle.
The insignia of a US aid organisation was faintly visible behind sheets of white paper taped to the car’s doors.
“I thank you for supporting us during 21 years of war,” Garang began in his speech in Yei, a town in the extreme south of the country where the SPLA has its military headquarters.
The balding, white-bearded rebel leader cut an imposing figure in his blue patterned shirt and black trousers.
“You are the people who brought the peace,” he said into his microphone, amplified with the help of a generator.
This town of 30,000 inhabitants, taken by the rebels in 1997 and repeatedly bombed by government planes until 2001, lacks even the most basic amenities.
Roads are unpaved and pitted by heavy rains, there is no electrity, running water or phone lines. Schools are very poorly equipped.
Like most of southern Sudan, where most people observe traditional religions or Christianity, Yei has since independence in 1956 been completely marginalised by Khartoum’s Islamic, Arab governments.
Peace accords that had halted an earlier conflict war broke down in 1983, when the SPLA took up arms.
Since then, at least 1.5 million have died.
Two years of talks in Kenya between the rebels and the government have delivered a detailed blueprint for peace and a comprehensive accord is expected in the coming months.
Security for Garang’s visit was tight. Dozens of SPLA soldiers carrying rifles, with footwear ranging from rubber boots to sneakers to flip-flops, were deployed around Liberty Square.
Some used batons to keep the crowd under control.
Children standing on bicycles craned their necks for a better view of Garang.
Women sheltering from the sun under rainbow-coloured umbrellas let out the occasional ululation.
Outside a bullet-marked hospital on one side of the square, medical staff took a break to listen to the rebel leader, some sitting on rickety wooden chairs behind a barbed-wire fence.
In the hospital courtyard, a dazed, skinny old woman wandered around with a bowl on her head. A nurse stopped her before she stumbled into a wartime bunker in the garden.