The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) is to send a delegation to the SPLM/A-IO Kit-Gwang faction area to investigate the cause of the split within the main opposition party to the revitalized peace agreement.
The team—mandated to investigate and deliver their report as soon as possible to IGAD leadership—will be expected to arrive at the areas next week, the IGAD Special Envoy to South Sudan Dr. Ismail Wais has said.
“In the last Council of Ministers’ meeting, question was to send a fact-finding mission to Kit-Gwang and Magenis areas, and we have [obtained] the clearance from the government of Sudan as well as the Republic of South Sudan that in the next few days of weeks, we will be able to send a delegation to that area to find out what happened on the ground,” said Dr. Wais during a nationwide evening program on UN-run – Radio Miraya on Monday.
Bitter break up
In August, Gen. Simon Gatwech Dual and his deputy Gen. Johnson Olony deposed First Vice President Dr. Riek Machar as a leader of the party and Commander-in-Chief of SPLA-IO and declared themselves interim leaders of the SPLM/A-IO.
The move has resulted in several armed confrontations between Dr. Machar forces and those allied to Gen. Gatwech hence threatening the ongoing slow-paced implementation of the revitalized peace agreement.
Gen. Gatwech and his allies accused Dr. Machar of being reluctant in pushing for the implementation of Chapter Two of the security arrangement, which provides for cantoning, registering, screening, training, graduating forces.
It also entails the redeployment of 83, 000 professional necessary unified forces in South Sudan.
The faction said its priority was the graduation of thousands of forces stranded at various training centers across the country. It laments the deplorable situations at the camps due to the lack of necessities such as food, clean and safe drinking water, medicines, and shelters.
Last week, another SPLA-IO Commander in Western Bahr el Ghazal State, Gen. Thomas Bazilio, defected to the Kit-Gwang group, citing lack of implementation of the security arrangement that has caused immense suffering to soldiers at both the training centers and cantonment sites across the country.
But when The City Review reached out to Dr. Machar-allied SPLM/A-IO wing, the party members based in Western Equatoria State rubbished the impacts of the defection.
Knowing that the 2018 peace agreement prohibits defections as it deems it stabilizing to the agreement, Dr. Wais said: “IGAD as an institution will never support a defection of any kind from any party or stakeholder even though we use sometimes democracy that individual has the right move and do whatever he wants.
“But as far as this peace agreement is concerned, we do not support any kind of defection from one party to the other.”
This comes days after President Salva Kiir sent a delegation headed by the Presidential Security Advisor, Tut Gatluak to meet with Kit-Gwang leaders to initiate dialogue on ways of addressing their grievances.
Though the Joint Defence Board (JDB) announced final preparation for the graduation of the first batch of the necessary unified forces in early November, in September, CTSAMVM revealed that more than half of the trainees had deserted the cantonment and training centers in search of basic needs.