Al-Burhan, Kiir strike breakthrough for force graduation
The Sudanese leader of the Sovereign Council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, on Friday, handed a new joint armed command structure proposal to the parties to boost the implementation of the security arrangement.
President Salva Kiir is reported to have welcomed the proposal, which the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation described as Al-Burhan’s ‘military acumen’ to end the deadlock on the graduation of the overdue unified forces.
Gen. Al-Burhan presented the forces’ command structure to President Kiir on Friday, a day after arriving from Uganda, where he consulted President Yoweri Museveni.
“As a guarantor of the South Sudan Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS), H.E. President Burhan subnational to President Kiir a proposal for the unification of the necessary unified forces, including the command structure for the SSPDF, SPLA-IO, and SSOA.”
“President Kiir welcomed the proposal as reflecting President Burhan’s military acumen and his commitment to lasting peace in South Sudan,” partly read a joint communiqué by South Sudan and Sudan Foreign Ministries on Friday.
The details of the proposed armed command structure remain unknown, and the main armed opposition—Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army in Opposition (SPLM/A-IO) is yet to welcome the proposal, according to the First Vice President Dr. Riek Machar’s office.
Yet to meet
However, there were high expectations that al-Burhan was going to meet with Dr. Machar and his group separately to present and get their reaction to the same proposal expected to resolve differences among the parties over the matter.
The SPLM-IO Director for Information and Public Relations, Puok Both Baluang, who doubles as the First Vice President’s Press Secretary, told The City Review on Friday evening that his boss would declare his position after acquainting himself with the content of the proposal yet to be received.
It remains unclear how different the proposal is from the previous one submitted by Sudan as a guarantor of peace. The SPLM-IO had written back, suggesting how the structure of the army joint command should be.
The contentious forces’ unified command, which has stalled the graduation of the necessary unified forces for more than two years, was supposed to be resolved in neighbouring Uganda early this month but has been suspended indefinitely. No reason was given.
Last month after the meeting of the Presidency, attended by the Sudanese deputy Sovereign Council, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, the principals proposed to go and discuss the status of the security arrangement implementation in front of the Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni but later the meeting was called off until further notice.
Until now, parties to the agreement have not graduated the first batch of the 83, 000 necessary unified forces provided for in Chapter Two of the peace agreement due to complex challenges including financial, logistical, and lack of consensus on the army joint command structure.
According to the September 2018 peace deal, forces were supposed to be registered, screened, trained, graduated, and redeployed within the six months of the signing of the agreement.
But,since the commencement of the transitional government in June 2020, parties have doubled the pre-transitional period. They are now left with less than eleven months to complete the outstanding tasks, as both the government and opposition maintain parallel demands on the establishment of a joint arm command – the prerequisite for the forces graduation.
In September, armed parties –the SPLM-IG and SPLA-IO—rejected the IGAD’s proposed force contribution ratio demanding for 50:50 percent ratio which President Kiir objected to, maintaining that it should be 80:40 percent.
The Executive Director of Community Empowerment for Progress Organisation (CEPO) Edmund Yakani said the principal leaders should respect Sudan’s efforts to ensure lasting peace in the country.
“We heard that Comrade Salva has accessed the proposal and welcomed it,” Mr. Yakani said “We have seen so many promises of unification of forces and all the promises have not been honored. So our concern is how different is this to be honored.”
“We hope that this will move fast and quickly in making sure that the unification of forces is implemented to provide enabling environment for the call for general elections,” Yakani said.
