Last Friday, the Sudanese leader of the Sovereign Council, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, submitted a new proposal for the joint armed command structure to pave way for the graduation of forces.

In a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, president Salva Kiir welcomed the proposal, which the ministry described as Al-Burhan’s ‘military acumen’ to end the deadlock on the graduation of the overdue unified forces.

“President Kiir welcomed the proposal as reflecting President Burhan’s military acumen and his commitment to lasting peace in South Sudan,” partly read a joint communiqué by South Sudan and Sudan Foreign Ministries stated.

This is the second time that the leaders have agreed to urgently graduate the forces. Last month after the presidential meeting attended by the Sudanese deputy Sovereign Council, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, the principal leaders agreed to resolve the issues of the command structure within a week but the deadline has since passed without a tangible result.

The leaders have not yet agreed on the command structure. They hold firmly to their stand, and the long wait for compromise is yet to be realised.

The parties to the agreement have not graduated the first batch of the necessary unified forces provided for in Chapter Two of the peace agreement since then.

It is time for the country’s leaders to take the second meeting with the Sudanese head of state very seriously and use it to speed up the process of the graduation of forces, which is very crucial in the implementation of the peace agreement.

There is a need for unified forces to provide security to the citizens as well as to reduce cases of subnational conflict across the country.

 We are not sure whether Gen Al-Burhan met all the leaders of armed opposition to the revitalised peace agreement during last Friday’s visit to Juba.  However, one most important is that the leaders need to compromise on the issues of command structure. The constant disagreement over the issue will not bring any lasting peace in the country, but rather keeps the graduation of forces hostage.

The leaders need to compromise to allow the graduation of the first batch of unified forces to take place, as well as to pave way for the second batch. We are quite aware that it is less than one year remaining to the end of the transitional period and almost all the critical parts in the peace agreement have not been implemented yet.

We know that we have leaders who have the interest of the country in their hearts, but they need to show this through actions so that the implementation of the peace agreement can get its fair share of attention.