Why is the LRA blocking peace in Juba?
By Melha Rout Biel
January 21, 2007 — For a more than a year, the Government of Southern Sudan has been acting as mediator between the the Government of Uganda and the Lord Resistance Army in the north of that country. Progress has been reported from time to time, as have setbacks. At the inception of these peace talks, the Lord Resistance Army (LRA) was setting conditions under which it would agree to Sudanese mediation, one of which was that the Southern Sudanese Vice-President, Lt. General Dr. Riek Machar Teny, act as the Chief Mediator. The GOSS, under Sudanese First Vice-President and President of the Government of South Sudan Lt. General Salva Kiir Mayiradit and his cabinet in Juba, appointed Machar to be Chief Mediator with assistance from national and international experts. The LRA was more than happy to see that someone like Machar had been mandated to lead the peace talks. Riek Machar went as far as meeting with the LRA Leader, Joseph Kony, in the bushes of Sudan and the Congo, a move that no one had ever taken in the 20 years of the Ugandan conflict. Nowadays, the LRA is sending conflicting signals to the international community. First, they want peace talks to continue in Sudan, then they want the peace venue to be in South Africa, then they want peace talks be held somewhere outside the African continent. One time, they also rejected the Southern Sudanese Mediator, Dr. Machar, for reasons which were not convincing to anyone, including the masses of Northern Uganda, which the LRA is claiming to liberate.
Many observers believe that the LRA is not very serious about peace and that is why they rejected Machar as Chief Mediator, as well as the Mediation of the GOSS in general, because the Government of South Sudan wants peace now, not tomorrow. The LRA has realized that Machar truly wants peace and is not merely playing around with time and money. At the same time, the LRA is also afraid of signing a peace treaty with Uganda, because then they will no longer have a reason to stay in hiding. As a result of a peace agreement, they could be asked to return home to Uganda and join the government as the part of the deal, but the issue of the International Criminal Court is still not settled. According the LRA, the best way to ensure its own safety is to play with time, hoping that the International Criminal Court will suspend its warrant against the LRA leaders who are accused of committing countless crimes in Uganda, Sudan, Congo and the Central Africa Republic. So whenever the parties are close to an agreement, the LRA blocks the progress by putting stones on the road to a peace agreement, such as rejecting the Chief Mediator Riek Machar, who they had badly wanted to chair the peace talks in the first place. If Machar leaves his position as Mediator, the same tactic will be used against anyone who succeeds him. It would therefore be wrong for anyone within the GOSS, or outside of it, to allow the LRA to dictate who should be mediator in Southern Sudan. If they reject a highly-experienced Sudanese leader like Dr. Riek Machar, it only means that the LRA is not serious about peace. President Salva Kiir and his cabinet should not allow their actions regarding who will lead the Uganda peace talks in Juba to be dictated by these rebels. Southern Sudan has complete trust that Machar should act as mediator and that these talks will lead to a peaceful settlement, if both conflicting parties in Uganda play an open hand and truly want to stop the bloodshed in their country. A peace mediated by the GOSS will ensure fairness for both sides. If the GOSS’s Mediation fails—as a result of the behaviour of the LRA—then the rebels must leave Sudanese territory by all means. The SPLA should make sure that Southern Sudanese citizens, particularly those in areas which border Uganda, are no longer terrorised by the LRA.
* The Author is a political Scientist and a Lecturer in Germany. He can be reached at [email protected]