Sudan’s Magwi County is a victim not protector of LRA
By Edward Laboke
June 15, 2007 — A news report by The Juba Post weekly titled “South Sudan Army redeploys to fight Ugandan rebels” reproduced by the Sudan Tribune website on March 30, 2007 claimed that the local populations in Magwi and neigbouring Torit Counties are hiding the LRA.
The weekly quoted the SPLA Spokesman, Major General Kuol Diem Kuol as saying that, “these LRA looters are creating havoc and there are complaints that the local populations are hiding those people. It is the same people who looted villagers and when the SPLA comes, they also keep on hiding them.”
If the weekly rightly quoted the SPLA Spokesman, he has grossly misrepresented the position of “the local populations” in Magwi County by way of generalization. The people of Magwi County have suffered the most under the LRA both during the war and the peace era. They are being killed, their assets looted or burnt and above all, their young ones being abducted. More importantly, because of the insecurity, development ventures have been halted in the County while they flourish in other counties. If the SPLA intelligence has any evidence of it’s spokesman’s claim, then it could be the result of both abductions and of those sponsoring chaos all over Southern Sudan and not the choosing of a particular community. It’s in our belief that non-Magwi citizens faking the LRA lingua franca are involved in the chaos.
Many people of Magwi County still live in neighbouring countries as refugees and in northern Sudan as internally displaced people because they dread the LRA presence in the County. Enterprising citizens of Magwi County in the Diaspora would like to come back to develop their area but they cannot because of this unwelcome lawless group from Uganda.
The statement by the SPLA Spokesman that the victims protect the predators defeats logic. The people of Magwi have been persistently, calling upon the Government of Southern Sudan to deploy forces in the County to maintain security, but they never received any swiftly move from the government.
All knows the history of the LRA presence in Sudan. The LRA was invited to Sudan by President Omar Beshir to be used as a leverage to bargain with the Uganda government to expel the SPLA from Uganda. The LRA is still in Southern Sudan with the blessing of the Government of Southern Sudan that is trying to mediate between it and the Government of Uganda.
Having registered their displeasure with the allegation made by the Spokesman, the Magwi County citizens would like to appreciate the move by the government to deploy SPLA forces in the County. The sons and daughters of the County have always been staunch supporters of the SPLA right from its inception. The SPLA should rest assured that it will get all the cooperation it needs from the people of Magwi to maintain security in the area.
(* The author is a member of the Magwi County Community resident in the USA and an SPLM Chapter Chairman in the State of Maine, USA. He can be reached at [email protected])