600 volunteers join SPLA in Lakes State as part of recruitment drive

April 19, 2012 (JUBA) – Six hundred youths from Rumbek, the capital of Lakes State, have joined South Sudan’s army (SPLA) to in order to participate in the border conflict with the young country’s northern neighbor Sudan.

South Sudan says that it is only defending its territory but Khartoum and many in the international community believe that Heglig, which the SPLA have occupied for well over a week, belongs to Sudan’s South Kordofan State.

Juba says it moved into the strategic oil area – known as Panthou south of the border – after repeated attacks by the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) on oil-rich Unity State in South Sudan.

The new volunteers to the SPLA were in Rumbek’s Freedom Square on Thursday to hear South Sudan vice president Riek Machar address a crowd of young people and other citizens.

Machar is on a tour of Warrap, Lakes and Unity states in an effort to promote peace and reconciliation between communities within and between the three states.

He told the people in the square that Khartoum had provoked South Sudan, triggering what many analysts are describing as an all out war.

The Vice President said that young South Sudanese had to be ready to respond to “Khartoum aggression” and put aside their differences in order to confront the security threat.

Youth leaders in Rumbek expressed the unhappiness that Sudanese president Omar Hassan Al Bashir this week said that after retaking Heglig he would attempt to overthrow South Sudan’s ruling party the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM). Bashir described the party, which he spent six years sharing power with from 2005 until South Sudan’s independence last year, as “insects”.

Speaking his local Dinka language, Thon Mangar, a youth cattle keeper leader called for the weapons they had handed over to the army to be returned so they could fight the Khartoum government’s forces.

South Sudan has tried to take weapons away from cattle herders as they are often used to steal cattle resulting in inter-tribal violence.

(ST)