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Uganda: Machar Should Stop Souring Relations
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New Vision (Kampala)
EDITORIAL
8 July 2008
Posted to the web 8 July 2008
The recent statements of South Sudan's vice-president, Riek Machar, are strange to say the least. Briefing Parliament on June 30, he accused the UPDF of having carried out a raid on a trading centre in Pageri, in which one person was abducted and killed.
A back-pack, left behind by a UPDF soldier, was supposed to be the evidence for the grave allegation.
The pack was found by the Monitoring Team five days after the raid.
However, in a joint UPDF-SPLA meeting in Nimule on June 25, it emerged that the UPDF squad, in pursuit of the rebels, had removed their packs in order to move faster.
The soldier, who was later sent to collect them, left one behind, an offence for which he was reprimanded.
This happened in the presence of 15 SPLA soldiers, with whom the UPDF was carrying out the operation. The Ugandans were subsequently exonerated in a report signed by the local SPLA commander.
However, Machar went ahead not only to accuse the UPDF but call for their withdrawal from South Sudan.
Five days later, he changed his version. At the Council of Ministers last Friday, he now cited a security committee resolution to demand for the departure of the UPDF.
Based on that resolution, he said, President Salva Kiir had instructed his chief of staff to communicate the decision to his Ugandan counterpart. But when contacted by The New Vision, the chief of staff denied having sent such a communication or having been instructed to do so.
South Sudan and Uganda have a long history together. President Yoweri Museveni went far out of his way to support the liberation struggle of the black people against slavery, marginalisation and forced Arabisation by the North. Uganda was punished for that support. The LRA was fed, trained and armed by Khartoum, even long after President Omar Bashir was informed that the rebel army mainly consisted of abducted children.
In view of that joint history, Machar's false utterances are totally misplaced.
But maybe nothing else can be expected from a commander who, at one point, sided with the enemy, armed the LRA and planned the bombing and killing of his own people.
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Machar should stop spreading lies and souring relations. His country has more serious problems to solve, for which they will need all the help they can get.
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