Unified forces’ graduation date to be fixed
JUBA – Signatories to the peace agreement are due to decide on the graduation of the first batch of the necessary unified forces next week, the Chairperson of the National Transitional Committee (NTC) has said.
Tut Gatluak, Presidential Security Advisor and Chairperson of NTC, told the media Wednesday that a joint meeting would be held to determine when the forces at the training centers will be graduated.
“We have reached the agreement with principal leaders, and by God’s will, next week, there will be a joint meeting between army commanders to come up with a timetable for the graduation of forces,” said Gatluak.
Over 50, 000 joint forces of the government and opposition groups have been under training at various centers across the country since 2019 and were yet to be graduated.
These forces were expected to be graduated to form the first batch of the 83, 000 necessary unified forces as provided for in Chapter Two of the 2018 Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in the South Sudan (R-ARCSS) by 2020.
Arms embargo blamed
The government on several occasions has blamed the arms embargo imposed by the United Nations Security Council for the delayed graduation of the forces, which it said has prevented the acquisition of weapons for the deployment of trainees.
In July, Gatluak assured the remaining forces at the training centers that they would be graduated after Eid-Al-Adha, but that failed to happen.
“We have directed all the relevant security committees based on the directives of the president to visit all the training centers,” said Mr. Gatluak.
“We can assure you that after the Eid-Al-Adha, we will start graduating all the forces in the training centers”.
The Ceasefire Transitional Security, Monitoring, and Verification Mechanism (CTSAMVM) reported in July that thousands of these forces have deserted their bases due to deplorable situations at the training centers and cantonment sites.
In 2020, First Vice President Dr. Riek Machar revealed the delay was due to a lack of formation of the unified command to take charge of the necessary unified forces.
However last week, Minister of Cabinet Affairs Martin Elia Lomuro said the agreement had been reached by the principal parties over the matter, especially over the ratio of forces’ contribution.
“Now that we have agreed on the sharing of command structure, we can expeditiously move on to graduate the unified forces so that they can be deployed,” Lomoro said.
“There was a dispute over the sharing of the command structure but I can tell you that this difference was due to interpretation of sharing of the agreement by the opposition and particularly the SPLM/A-IO.
“They were eyeing for 50/50 percent but that is not in the agreement and they used the wrong parameters in interpretation citing presidency, citing presentation in the National Transitional Committee (NTC), and citing presentation in the Revitalised Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (RJMEC),” he explained.
“We have now come to the correct approach and it is agreed that we will now do the share of 60/40 percent for the opposing because there is no unified opposition; this is just partners to the agreement. So the opposition will have their 40 percent and they will divide among themselves,” Lomoro stressed.
However, the SPLM/A-IO denied that no agreement had been reached.
According to the Chapter Two of the revitalized peace agreement, the process of registration, screening, training, and redeploying of 83, 000 necessary unified forces were to be completed before the end of the transitional period, comes 2022.
However, parties are now left with less than a year to complete tasks that they have failed to accomplish in more than two years since the start of the formation of the coalition government in February 2019.