May 11th 2018 (Nyamilepedia) – South Sudan’s president Salva Kiir Mayardiit has claimed that the current civil war was imposed on the SPLA, the national army, during a flag handover to the new army chief Gen. Gabriel Jok Riak who was appointed to the top army position last month.
“The war in the country is imposed on us. What we are doing is that we are defending ourselves against those who are attacking us,” he said.
Kiir threatened “spies” saying that such people in the army will be deal with in the army.
Gen. Gabriel Jok Riak was appointed to the position in April following the death of his predecessor Gen. James Ajongo Mawut who died last month in a military hospital in the Egyptian capital Cairo following a short illness.
South Sudan descended into civil war in December 2013 after forces loyal to the country’s president, Salva Kiir Mayardiit and his then Governor of Northern Bahr Al-Ghazal State Gen. Paul Malong Awan went door-to-door in the capital Juba killing civilians belonging to the Nuer ethnic group sparking a nation-wide protests from top army generals from the Nuer leading to a civil war.
A peace agreement signed in August 2015 by President Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar and negotiated under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the African Union (AU) in presence of Troika and other international observers collapsed in July 2016 following fighting at the presidential palace in Juba “J1”.
The IGAD has employed an initiative called High-Level Revitalization Forum to bring back the peace agreement. Previous rounds of the HLRF has been unsuccessful and the IGAD said it expect the warring parties to negotiate on the last round on 17th of May. This week, the IGAD invited all the stakeholders to Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa for consultations for consultations.
