At last, a peace agreement between friends and not foes in South Sudan.

By Deng Vanang,

Sept 11, 2016(Nyamilepedia) —– Statements coming from diplomats on implementation of South Sudan’s struggling peace agreement are now quite clearer. One thing coming out of these statements is even clearer. That unanimously peace is not dead and its approved implementers are two Generals: Salva Kiir and Taban Deng with Machar excluded.

Those diplomatic statements have been cited previously, although indirectly, by US Secretary of State, John Kerry who regarded Machar’s replacement by Taban as legal while in Nairobi. Others following in his footsteps currently are Festus Mogae of JMEC and Donald Booth, United States’ envoy to both Sudan and South Sudan.

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In his words, Mogae on Eye radio said he was instructed in Addis Ababa to return to Juba since he left it in early July after renewed violence and help implement peace agreement between Taban and Kiir who during the former swearing into First Vice Presidency’s post at Juba – one Palace fondly described each other as best of friends.

A day later, Booth said Machar not to return to his First Presidential post from which he was ousted in July since there is no trust required to implement peace agreement between him and his ex-peace partner, Kiir.

Their position implicitly without contradiction means they no longer need Machar in the peace implementation process and in the Transitional Government of National Unity, TGONU and who to them is an obstacle as Kiir wrongly views him.

The same position also eluded to giving Kiir a free hand to dictate on who to implement peace with, the kind of terms in the agreements he wants and how they should be implemented.

This diplomatic turnaround on peace implementation process is mindboggling in so many ways than one. First the affirmation of Machar’s exclusion flew in the face of UN experts’ report that holds Kiir and SPLA’s Chief of General Staff, Paul Malong Awan squarely responsible for 8^th July deadly violence.

And not Machar to be blamed for and subsequently replaced while still alive and not resigned contrary to what secession clause says in the August peace deal.

Another irony is that worldwide Generals {now in reference to Kiir and Taban} don’t likely make peace, but fight. While similar irony defies scientific law that entails similarities like the two Generals rather repel than attract each other so as to achieve the needed objective, unless the popular dictum that politics is the game of possibilities is always true.

A host of other reasons are nobody makes peace with a friend and neither is he to choose a partner with whom to implement peace agreement. And what is seen as peace implementation between Kiir and Taban is instead the process of tearing up into pieces the peace they supposed to implement through their selective choice on its terms and conditions.

Simply because they discarded or rather influenced {to suit personal interests} key provisions of the agreement. Such as security reforms when Taban said in his own words no two standing armies in the country to co-exist until the end of the interim period. He as well adopted Kiir’s 28 states other than ten states as enshrined in the peace agreement and only to mention a few of the violations.

Having little or nothing to implement, means there is no peace agreement. And without it, the problems at the very heart of three years old civil war will continue unresolved, effectively igniting cycle of violence in the war – ridden country.

In another word, the peace Igad and its flipside Troika have been mediating ever since time conflict erupted back in December, 2013 is all but big joke of the year.

Spending hundreds of millions of United States Dollars courtesy of Western poor tax payers on peace mediation and its subsequent implementation they never meant is a naked financial scandal that is worth the investigation. Leave alone the insistent cry for peace of dying South Sudanese whose flight has been neglected in hot pursuit of fake peace and hard cash.

Deng Vanang is political scientist, journalist and author. He can be reached at dvanang@gmail.com