JUBA – An attack on south Sudanese soldiers in a key oil-producing district left four people dead on Saturday overshadowing celebrations on the eve of a landmark vote on independence for the region.
It was not immediately clear how many of the dead were soldiers and how many attackers but the shooting revived fears of renewed violence around the week-long referendum, centre piece of the 2005 peace deal between north and south that ended Africa’s longest-running civil war. In the regional capital Juba, one of the world’s most impoverished populations had sat at candle lit tea stalls and outside darkened corrugated-iron shacks until late into the night feting the looming end of the long countdown to the momentous vote.
The southern government prepared to host of world figures, including Hollywood actor George Clooney and former US president Jimmy Carter, for the launch of polling on Saturday, as well as a raft of Western envoys who had been involved in an intensive final diplomatic push to ensure the vote is a success.
“There were four people killed in an attack in Mayom county in Unity state,” military spokesman Philip Aguer said.
“It was an attack against the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA),” the former rebel security forces of the south, he added.
Mayom county is the location of some of the south’s main oil fields, which were one of the key bones of contention of the devastating conflict with the north.
Both UN and SPLA sources said the attack may have been the work of loyalists of Gatluak Gai, a renegade militia commander who rejected an amnesty offer from the southern government and whose forces are active in the area.
UN sources confirmed that a food convoy going into the area had been forced to pull back and that a unit of peacekeepers had been dispatched to the area to investigate.
Only Thursday the head of the UN peacekeeping mission for southern Sudan, David Gressly, hailed what he said was the calmest period since the 2005 peace deal in the run-up to the referendum.
“It has been a very conducive environment for the registration, and we expect the same to continue for the polling period,” he said then.
“The government of South Sudan has already put in place a security plan,” involving 60,000 police and troops, the deputy chairman of the referendum organising commission, Chan Reec, told a news conference in Juba earlier, adding that all preparations for the vote had been made. Reec hailed an “historic moment” for south Sudan, and that was how ordinary people in Juba greeted it, partying well into Saturday.
“This is something that has never happened ever since the world was called to creation,” Reec said. “Nobody ever bothered to ask the people of south Sudan as to what their destiny should be.”
Thousands attended an array of free events in Juba, including a “final walk to freedom” concert at which local musicians, including former child soldier turned international singer Emmanuel Jal, performed songs about peace and freedom. “It is the contribution of the artists to the nation of south Sudan,” said singer Mabior Mach.
The conflict between the Muslim, mainly Arab north, and the African, mainly Christian south, has blighted Africa’s largest nation virtually since independence from Britain in 1956, fuelled by religion, ethnicity, ideology and resources, particularly oil..
In an interview late Friday, President Omar al-Bashir, an army man who led the brutal civil war with the rebels for a decade and a half before finally striking the 2005 peace deal, said he did not believe the south was ready for independence. “The south does not have the ability to provide for its citizens, or create a state or authority,” Bashir told Al-Jazeera television.
“The south suffers from many problems. It’s been at war since 1959,” he said. But for southerners the idea that they cannot run their own affairs, however blighted they have been by the long years of conflict, is anathema.
To make the point, regional president Salva Kiir signed 16 measures into law in front of the international press on Friday in a move his spokesman said showed the sovereignty of the south and “clears the legal vacuum.”
