Ethnic tensions threaten to undermine national peace

October 8, 2007 — A simmering tribal conflict is threatening to undermine peace in Southern Sudan, several grassroots leaders warn. The rising ethnic emotions have piled up the tensions surrounding the pursuit of peace as provided for in the two-year old Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

The emerging scenario and the seeming reluctance of Khartoum to conform to some critical provisions of the CPA have shattered expectations ahead of the forthcoming general elections and the referendum.

In addition, high ranking government and security officials in Khartoum have been linked to secretive training of young Muslims to carry out what has been described by intelligence sources as jihad missions in the South.

Throughout the 21 years of war, South Sudan region had became the recipient of the hard bombshells that rocked it, reducing it to nothing. But despite all the impression that all is well in South Sudan today, a silent but risky simmering row and war between two rival communities may be in the offing.

Differences over pasture, water and land for cultivations are the perennially touted reasons for the unending bad blood between the Toposas and Didinga communities living in South Sudan’s Budi County in Eastern Equatoria State.

In Budi County, the open rivalry between the Toposas and Budi (Buya, Didinga) communities is so deep that they cannot drink waters from the same borehole, leave alone their livestock sharing the same grazing fields.

Such is the bad blood that has in the past seen each side of the divide go hammer and tongs at each other in tragic incidents that have left many dead. The deep enmity are precipitated by political interests, scramble over natural resources, un-demarcated borders, escalated poverty and the worst of all, generational grudge.

There have been reports of dangerous and strong weapons frequently used on helpless and unsuspecting women and children. Witnesses say 12.7mm artilleries only meant for anti aircraft and massive troops have been used as well as 60mm mortar (used to remove people from the trench where they are hiding) meant for military alone, P.M.K automatic machine guns and rocket propel grenades. left at the disposal of the civilians and used to terrorize civilians who do not even own the simplest weapon in their pockets. The bone of contention that has degenerated into the extreme bad blood boiling into the frequent clashes between the two ethnic groups lies along the South/East Kapoeta .Here, each community claims its perennial nemesis has encroached into their territory. Toposas are pastoralists while their sworn near enemies, the Budi are farmers. This has only heightened the differences as the two sides differ over land and pasture.

The scramble for the underground riches such as perceived presence of minerals including gold and diamonds too has not spared the two sides of differences.

Though poverty is evident and continues taking its toll in an area synonymous with heavy livestock populations, the few elites from both sides seem to be inclined to ensuring their respective sides take ownership of the disputed huge chunk and stretches of land that bares the symbol of “the mother of the bedrock, untapped gold and diamond in the wider Kapoeta.Rivalry between the Toposa’s and Budi communities can only be traced to way back in 1956 and the roots of bitterness and mistrust slowly germinated over the years culminating to recent spate of counter attacks that claimed several lives of clan members from both sides in retaliations.

Incessant brutal killings have neither spared local vulnerable women and children of irresistible abductions, rapes and defilements besides physical assaults. The latest skirmishes that rocked Budi county, in May, has since been dubbed the ‘Budi Massacre’ it claimed a staggering 54 lives.

The loss of lives re-ignited the enmity, escalated tension in the area and sparked a stormy exchange between the ethnic tribes each justifying their innocence and condemning their counterparts.

Condemning the same vices but all being on the right makes it hard to gather them in a common platform for peace negotiations.

 Though peaceful coexistence was long forgotten, the Budi community maintains they are peace makers and they only go for revenge if their counterparts continuously rub pepper in their nostrils. “We have honoured the peace agreement between the Didingas and Lotukos and also the Turkanas from the neighboring border across Kenya which was sealed in 1920s, the Didinga-Dodos of Uganda agreement in the 1990s. All these peace agreements hold to date,” some Budi elders said.

However they accused their neighbors of encroaching into their territory and forcing their people out of their farmlands, converting them into grazing strips. Recent attempts to re-unite the two communities suffered a major setback.

It ended in disarray, and the Toposas’ skipped it. The situation has only compounded the bitterness.

The Budis’ have since swore never to attend any future peace negotiations held in any other place other than Torit the current headquarters’ of EES.  The Budi community also rejected any conference which would involve other communities as proposed by the government to have a regional conflict management which would include their across the borders neighbors from Uganda, Ethiopia and Kenya.

They have since branded the move as lack of commitment on the part of the responsible state authorities to solve the internal but silently deadly conflict.Never has anybody been apprehended for instigating the conflict. Perpetuators have not been brought to book despite the frequent rising tensions between the communities.

The Toposas who skipped the recent fresh attempts to jumpstart peace talks simply explained that they were strongly opposed to the venue and accused their counterparts the Budis for imposing it on them.

They termed Torit unfavorable and demanded that peace talk’s venue be relocated to Kapoeta if they were expected to participate in the talks. Since the disputes began, the Toposas have strongly believed that Kapoeta should be the official EES’s headquarters as opposed to Torit. To them Kapoeta is a neutral ground since Torit seems to be dominated by their counterparts. “We believe CPA’s Interim National Constitution Protocol clearly states that none of the state headquarters’ was to be changed during the interim period,” they charged

The EES Governor too has not escaped the wrath of the Toposas. He has been accused of deliberately refusing to effect the proposed shift of the State headquarters.

“We still believe that the Government can be run under the trees just as the late Dr. Garang once answered BBC presenter Robin White that he was under a big tree in South Sudan,” another memorandum from the Toposas read.

With increasing cases of insecurity in Budi County, efforts by GOSS to help intervene, mediate over the thorny issues have hit snags.

Past peace initiative that have ended in walkouts are the famous Kapoeta peace conference held in August 2006, the Kimatong Peace conference held in March the same year and this year’s just aborted Torit Peace conference held August.

All the failures only point out to the depth of the rivalry between the feuding ethnics and the dire need for the government to shift gears in its renewed search for a lasting peace.

Observers have since warned that the Government should intervene as soon as possible to contain a scenario that could easily boil to high greater ethnic animosity temperatures. 

Dr. Simeon Kanani, who was earlier scheduled to mediate over the August peace talks, said the Toposas and the Didingas critical situation as fuelled and exhibited on the grounds by high levels of poverty, purely called for institution of an urgent conflict prevention and management.

“They urgently need this unit to prevent a replica of grisly scenes like the ones witnessed before, ” Kanani said.