Reservations remaining over North-South divide
Reservations remaining over North-South divide
399 words
20 April 2007
Upstream
36
English
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DAVID Gaichan, a former commander in the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA), now has the rank of colonel in the New Sudan Army but has strong reservations about the state of North-South rapprochement, writes Barry Morgan.
He was despatched last July as part of an Oil Community Mobilisation Team organised by Juba to assess contract compliance by the North with the terms of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in nine oilfields – Heglig, Unity, Bentiu, El Tour, El Nur, Bamboo, Munga, Diffra and Neem.
Gaichan visited facilities belonging to Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company (GNOPC) .
“We needed to know how many wells were producing, how many barrels each and how much revenue was yielded per barrel. They insisted some wells were running dry and we asked why but they told us nothing and suggested we visit Minister Ahmed Al-Jaz in Khartoum,” he says.
The team encountered the same story at Petrodar’s facilities on the Upper Nile.
“No southerner was working on the fields despite the Comprehensive Peace Agreement insistence on an equitable employment quota to enable our people to learn the work. So our vice-president Riek Machar Teny said let’s forget them and concentrate for now on the Ascom and White Nile projects.”
He fears for security in Block B, especially around Pibor where disaffected Murle have refused to give up their guns and are attacking the Dinka who disarmed last year. He says: “They will almost certainly interrupt activity, armed by the North, which does not want to see stability in South Sudan – Khartoum is still dropping guns with Antonovs.
“We tried to explain to the Americans this was a religious war. The jelaaba (Arab soldiers) were told (by Hassan el-Turabi, the leader of Khartoum’s National Islamic Front) that if they fell on the battlefield they would go straight to paradise and could take four family members with them.”
Gaichan cut short his education at the American University in Beirut just one year before graduation to rejoin the bush war. He fought in Torit and in the Upper Nile when the Janjaweed attacked Bentiu in 1986.
As well as his native Nuer, Gaichan speaks Dinka, Arabic, Amharic, English and Kiswahili, the common language of East African Community.