Yes Mr.Fant, we can expect more of these skirmishes, but please contain your glee. One can almost hear the war drums beating in the background...what a fury we are working up! Oh, the prospect of it all. Bodies being torn to pieces, fathers being killed, mothers, sons, daughters, aunts, uncles, people retreating in fear...then Mr.Garang can say, "I've got Juba, tomorrow, by George, I'll get some more." And the other forces will fight back, and more people will be killed, and on and on and on.
But this is justifiable...the leaders cannot sort it out, so lets get in there and start the killing. Where are the real leaders who would end this bloodshed? Well, I suspect many of them have signed on to the agreement, and we have seen the agreement on this thread. We have seen what the Government has committed to. We have seen the sections guaranteeing religious freedom, civil rights, amnesty, self-determination for the South, etc. But, there is mistrust, and hatred, which obscures recognition of the current opportunity. That is the way of violence, and noone should condone it or support it.
It is not with any particular glee that I close with this report...
Khartoum (dpa) - Fighting between the Sudanese government forces
and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) in the heart of southern
Sudan has triggered a fresh wave of displacement northward with about 20,000
Dinka people said to have moved from Bahr al-Ghazal to Kordofan.
In an inverview with the Alwan daily, the governor of Western
Kordofan state, Ilassan Osman Rizig, said the government forces assisted by
the militiamen of the Misseria Arab tribesmen had put the rebels on the
defensive in the current war in the Bahr al-Ghazal and the Nuba mountain
regions.
The paper also reported that the Southern Sudan Defence Force, the
military wing of the United Democratic Southern Sudan Salvation Front, an
umbrella organisation of the southern rebel factions which signed the
Khartoum peace agreement with the government last April, had recaptured
Warap town which the government had lost to John Garang's SPLA last month.
The paper added that the same force had defeated the SPLA forces in
three other provinces in the area while in the Bahr al-Jabel state the
Southern Sudan Force forced the SPLA to retreat from Tali which they had
occupied at the end of last month.
Elsewhere in the Jonglei state the SPLA rebels are desperately
looking for ways of escaping from Duk Padiet and Duk Pawil, where they are
under siege, into the mountainous areas of Western Equatoria, the paper said
keeping its source a secret.
The Khartoum peace agreement obliges the southern signatories to
fight along side the government forces against John Garang who does not
recognise the agreement.
An east African summit which ended in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi
on Wednesday, called on the Sudanese government and the rebel leader, John
Garang, to resume their peace negotiation which broke down in 1994 as soon
as possible.
DPA 07/97 |
