The people of Southern Sudan have always wanted to be a sovereign state, free from Northern domination.
This is illustrated by the fact the first armed struggle for self-determination began even before independence in 1955, waged by the Anya-nya forces. (Anya-nya is the name for the snake poison used to lace their spears).
The January 9 referendum is the climactic scene of that struggle. And it is important for all Southern Sudanese and East Africans to understand the history of the broken agreements, shattered peace deals and outright injustices that caused the people of the South to rise up in arms to defend their liberty.
The first Sudanese civil war lasted until 1972, when the South signed a peace deal with the government of Gaafar Mohamed Numeiry in the Addis Ababa agreement.
That agreement was breached almost immediately it was signed.
The integration assimilation and disintegration of the Anya-nya forces into the military by Numeiry government was a key part of the agreement.
This was not honoured.
Right after the signing of the Addis Ababa Agreement in February 1972, Numeiry's government in Khartoum immediately started to demobilise the 38,000 Anya-nya forces. Only 6,000 were considered to be integrated into the Sudanese National Army.
The rest of the 32,000 were either put into the police, prisons, wildlife or into the civil service. A large number of those Anya-nya soldiers were made to go back to their homes. Others were turned into a labour force to repair roads.
The armament for the 6,000 ex-Anya-nya soldiers was to come from the North –that is, from the General Command which used to bring rifles not equivalent to the 6,000 men. Some of the Anya-nya rifles were later given over to the Eritrean peoples' Liberation Front (EPLF) by the Sudan government which was secretly supporting the EPLF armed Movement against president Mengistu Haile Mariam regime in Ethiopia. This later became one of the reasons for Ethiopia's Mengistu to offer sanctuary and support to the Southern rebel Movement the SPLM/A.
It was this Numeiry's approach to security in the south that sparked the mutiny at Akobo Army Garrison in Upper Nile when he attempted to transfer that unit of Southern ex- Anya-nya soldiers to the North in 1975. From that time, a lull to the policy was made by the regime following that incident of 1975.
But in 1982 the regime re-introduced that very policy which came to be known as the policy of "Insihar", meaning integration and mixing up of the Anya-nya remaining forces with the rest of the National Army. This meant that the ex- Anya-nya forces were to be re-deployed in the North away from the Southern provinces and regions and were to be replaced with Arab forces from the North.
Injustices in the Military
Also, as part of the discouragement to the former Anya-nya rank and file, promotions were made difficult on the ground that the ex-Anya-nya officers and men were illiterate for not knowing Arabic language said to be the National language for internal military courses and examinations. There was as such, no progress in the ranking system for both the ex- Anya-nya cadets and officers.
Militia creation among Southerners
There was also the 'Haras el Wathon' factor. The Haras el Wathon were what were known during the 17 years' war as the 'National Home Guards'- a Southern Sudanese people who chose to work with Khartoum against the Anya-nya Movement either as collaborators or as militia armed groups that fought side-by-side with the enemy forces against the Anya-nya fighters.
During the absorption process in 1972 - 1973, Khartoum saw to it that these Haras el Wathon elements were included into the Anya-nya force, taking the few chances supposed to belong to the actual Anya-nya fighters.
To compound the situation, the Southern recruits found in the government training camps in the southern towns were aadded into what was called 'Dufa Alib' police force, that is, Batch No. 1000th that formed the first Southern Sudanese Police Force after the war. This was to make Southern Police to have an outlook favourable to the North.
Civil service
Those educated officers and men who were demobilised from the Anya-nya force and absorbed into the civil service departments were soon laid off because the budget then allocated by Khartoum for the South was said to have been exhausted and no supplementary budget was made again to cater for that manpower laid off.
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 Next Page »
Source: Breaking News, Kenya
0 comments:
Post a Comment