From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Wed Sep 23 2009 - 18:41:48 EDT
South Sudan sends in troops to stem tribal violence
Wed Sep 23, 2009 5:05pm GMT
* South Sudan army sends troops to massacre scenes
* U.N. estimates about 1,200 people killed
By Skye Wheeler
JUBA, Sudan, Sept 23 (Reuters) - South Sudan's army said on Wednesday it was
sending hundreds of troops to the scenes of recent tribal massacres to guard
civilians and try to stem an escalation of ethnic killings in the
oil-producing region.
Sudan's underdeveloped south, particularly its marshy Jonglei state, has
been hit by a wave of attacks by heavily armed tribal groups, who have
shocked southerners by targeting villages and killing large numbers of women
and children.
More than 100 people were killed when a large group of Lou Nuer tribesmen
attacked the village of Duk Padiet, home to a rival Dinka group, on Sunday
morning while many of the villagers were in church, officials told Reuters.
The United Nations estimates at least 1,200 people have died in similar
attacks in the region this year.
"There is an SPLA division in the area," the southern minister for internal
affairs, Gier Chuang Aluong, told Reuters, referring to the south's Sudan
People's Liberation Army. "We are redeploying them to these locations . to
Duk especially."
An army officer, who asked not to be named, said a 500-strong battalion was
in the area with more on their way.
The early attacks were widely blamed on long-standing rivalries and feuds
over cattle-rustling that have blighted the region for years, but usually
with much lower death counts.
MORE ORGANISED
The head of U.N. operations in the south David Gressly told journalists on
Tuesday the groups seemed more organised than traditional cattle-raiding
parties.
"We are concerned there may be elements that are directing their attacks on
the institutions of the state. The dynamics are changing," Gressly said,
adding that a ready supply of arms, and a security vacuum in some areas were
exacerbating the violence.
The southern army said Sunday's attackers also killed 28 southern soldiers,
national security and police officers guarding Duk Padiet and destroyed
government buildings. Soldiers have also been killed in other raids.
Senior southern politicians have blamed their former civil war foes in north
Sudan for arming rival southern groups to destabilise the region in the
build up to elections scheduled in 2010 and a referendum on southern
independence in 2011.
Khartoum has denied the charge, and a senior member of the north's dominant
National Congress Party Ibrahim Ghandour said the south was trying to cover
up for its own security failings.
"Regardless of the security situation there and the SPLM accusations, the
election campaign would go on," he told the state Sudan Vision newspaper,
referring to the south's dominant political party the Sudan People's
Liberation Movement.
Some have also suggested southern tribal leaders might also be behind some
of the violence, seeking to build up their constituencies and protect their
ethnic groups by arming them.
"We need to stop blaming the Arabs (northern Sudanese) and look at our own
problems. Our own politicians are involved," a member of one of the affected
communities, who requested anonymity, told Reuters on Wednesday.
Two million people were killed and 4 million fled between 1983 and 2005 as
Sudan's Muslim north and mainly Christian south battled over differences in
ideology, ethnicity and religion.
The fighting also set southern tribe against southern tribe, with the north
backing militias from rival ethnic groups, and those wounds have not healed.
Both the United Nations and the African Union have issued statements
strongly condemning Sunday's attack and the wider spread of violence in
southern Sudan.
C Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved
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