February 20th 2019 (Nyamilepedia) – The ongoing South Sudan civil war has been sold to the region and the international community by the government of President Salva Kiir as a “Riek Machar issue” according to the main armed opposition faction, SPLM-IO.
In a statement issue on Monday and signed by the SPLM-IO Chairperson of National Committee for Information and Public Relations, Mabior Garang de’Mabior, the group also said the problem has been sold to the people of South Sudan in the same context.
“The conflict has been sold to the people of South Sudan, the region and [the] world at large, as a “Riek Machar issue”, or as a “Nuer problem”, as “1991”, or a variation of these incorrect definitions,” partly said the statement signed by Mabior Garang.
The statement further denied that the problem is a Machar’s making arguing that if had this been the case, then Machar’s 2016 two-year detention in South Africa would have brought the ongoing conflict to an end.
“If the problem was indeed, Dr. Riek Machar, or “the problem of the Nuers”, or “1991”, then we would have found a solution long ago. The fact that Dr. Riek Machar has been under detention without charge[s] for over one year, proves definitively that this is not the issue,” it said.
The statement further accused the First Vice President Taban Deng Gai of staging a “coup on the Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (ARCSS)” and that the presence of individuals in the government “shows that there is no ‘Problem of the Nuers’.
