May 12th 2018 (Nyamilepedia) – South Sudan’s SPLM-IO said on Saturday that the two armies which were stipulated for in the peace agreement signed by their chairman Riek Machar and the country’s president Salva Kiir Mayardiit can bring peace if people were to be working for peace according to the provisions of the security arrangement of the 2015 peace agreement.
Speaking on a live Facebook video with Edward Andrew, Eng. Farouk Gatkuoth Kam, a senior SPLM-IO official, said the two armies can bring peace in South Sudan should the government recommit itself to implementing the peace agreement signed with the opposition in August 2015.
“The peace two armies can bring peace to the country. The government is saying something which is not true that the two armies can destabilize peace in the country,” he said.
The former SPLM-IO representative to China said peace never collapse when the SPLA signed a peace with the Sudanese government in 2015 on the basis of two armies.
“The peace didn’t collapse when the SPLM/A signed a peace agreement with the Sudanese government on the basis of two armies in 2005, it instead let to the conduct of the peace South Sudan referendum in 2011,” he said pointing out that not every one is implementing the agreement as he want but people are implementing something written down.
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” reportedly after President Kiir ordered a failed attempt to arrest the SPLM-IO leader Riek Machar.
Late last year, the IGAD decided to revive the peace agreement and had initiated a peace revival mechanism known as the High-Level Revitalization Forum (HLRF) to bring back to life the 2015 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 of talks on 17th of May.
Representatives of the negotiating parties are currently in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia after the mediation invited them for consultations.
