How to discourage revenge attacks in South Sudan

By Zechariah Manyok Biar

December 27, 2011 — We in South Sudan are living under John Locke’s state of nature in which “everyone has a right to punish the transgressors of that law to such a degree as may hinder its violation.” In Jonglei State, retaliatory attacks are now under way in Murle area in revenge for the Murle’s revenge killing of Nuer some months ago. This is going on despite the appeal of the Vice President Dr. Riek Machar against such attacks two weeks ago. So, is the Government helpless to stop these circular retaliatory attacks in which many innocent lives are often lost? It seems.

When Nuer was massacred by Murle in response to Nuer’s retaliatory attacks few months ago, the Government condemned both killings and urged the Nuer to refrain from retaliating again. The Nuer accepted it. But the Murle did not seem to have noticed such a move. They came to Bor and massacred innocent people in Jale, angering both the Nuer and Bor. That was the time Nuer youth decided to proceed with the action that they had suspended earlier because of the appeal from the Government. They might have concluded that any community is on its own in South Sudan even though the Government claims to be in control. Their conclusion would be reasonable. There is no way the Government can have control on some communities and not on others.

But are the Nuer now justified for choosing the state of nature as the means of achieving their justice against Murle? Even though I sympathize with the Nuer community, I would still argue that no community is morally justified to take the laws into its own hand in its pursuit for justice. Retaliation begets retaliation, leading to unnecessary suffering of innocent people. There are many people on both sides who do not approve of what their youth is doing against other communities. To kill these people in retaliation together with criminals is against justice itself.

The state of nature’s way of achieving justice sometimes goes beyond the proportionate amount of punishment deserved for a particular wrong done. Robert Nozick in his book “Anarchy, State, And Utopia” argues that those who avenge themselves under the state of nature “will overestimate the amount of harm or damage they have suffered, and passions will lead them to attempt to punish others more than proportionately and to exact excessive compensation.”

It is because of this disproportionate nature in revenge killings that many people all over the world make sure that nobody is allowed to take the law into his or her own hand. We believe that our Government can do more to stop this practice and it is trying to do its best.

The Government is willing to stop these attacks, but reality proves them wrong. The style of intervention that the it is using to deter these kinds of attacks is not working. The Ministry of Interior, for example, has sent one thousand police personnel to prevent these attacks, but they are faced with many difficulties beyond their control. There are no roads that would make the movement of those forces easier to deter those attacks because the border between Murle and Nuer communities is wider. One thousand police can just be a drop in the ocean to control that border. Both Murle and Nuer are aware of this fact and they cannot be bothered by a mere presence of those forces since they know those bushes more than those forces or even more than the unarmed UNMISS helicopters that patrol the border.

So what is the alternative? There is no concrete answer to this question, but I will give my personal suggestions. I believe that there are two alternatives to the current method of control: the marking of cows and the armed helicopter gunship.

First, the marking of cows is not a new thing in Jonglei State. Our communities have their own ways of marking their cows to help find them when they are stolen. But these markings are not legally binding for the government to use for the identification of stolen cows.

I am proposing new markings that will be legally defined by the Government. All cattle keeping communities should be given their unique marks for their cattle. Whenever cattle raiding happen, the police and the army should be sent to the communities where the raiders are suspected to have come. When marked cows of the raided communities are found, the chiefs of the raiding communities should be arrested to identify the raiders. The identified raiders should be arrested and forced to hand over all the cows that they had stolen as well as pay compensations for the people they killed during the raiding. They should also pay fines for their wrongdoing, including the fuel used by the forces who tracked down the stolen cows. Chiefs in those areas should be fined for failure to control their youths.

The legally exchanged cows must be registered. For example, cows given to another community as dowries should be registered by the Government and should be known during the identification of stolen cows. The same thing can be done for cows bought in the market.

Second, the armed helicopter gunship should be used to shoot the raiders before reaching their areas so that they know that the Government has the right to punish criminals as individuals and not the entire community where they come from. The Government will also show the raiders that dodging Government forces successfully does not mean that they can hide from the Government.

Somebody may think that the attackers are civilians and therefore should not be shot with gunship. It is true they are civilians. What is not true is that they fit the status of innocent civilians. They are civilians who have armed themselves in order to be threats to innocent civilians. The Government has the right to punish them in any way that would discourage them from engaging in these dangerous activities in our independent Republic of South Sudan.

I am not a supporter of consequential theories of morality, but I believe that sometimes enforcing consequences are necessary when it comes to deterring criminals from harming innocent people. If the raiders raid other communities in order to make a living out of what does not belong to them, then recovering what they steal and adding what they have as a fine or compensation might deter them from raiding since it will not benefit them anymore. If they kill just in mere revenge, then shooting them with helicopter gunship would discourage them from a revenge attack that costs them more lives than the people that they attack.

These methods should be applied to punish any attacking communities without any favor. Remember that the law often considers the attacker as a threat and the attacked as acting in self defense, not a criminal. The Government should punish the attackers to discourage our communities from taking law into their own hands. Punishment of wrongdoer is a sole right of Government. No group should practice it outside the Government’s defined system, no matter how justified such a group is.

Zechariah Manyok Biar lives in Juba, Republic of South Sudan. He can be reached at [email protected]