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July 25, 2016 (EL-FASHER) - Police has re-established presence in the locality of Ambro, 350 km. north west of North Darfur capital, El-Fasher for the first time since the armed conflict erupted in the restive region.

The Sudanese army has been fighting several armed movements in Darfur since 2003. Following three months of fierce fighting in Jebel Marra, last April the army declared Darfur free of rebels. However, the different rebel groups dismissed these statements.

Commissioner of Ambro locality Ali Ahmed al-Tahir told Sudan Tribune that the return of the police to the locality after 13 years underscores that the situation in the area is stable, praising efforts exerted by police to maintain security across the state.

He added the deployment of police to the various administrative units in the locality is underway, pointing the police presence would allow the residents to return to normal life.

The commissioner added that the locality faced considerable problems and the residents suffered from clashes between farmers and herders in the absence of the police.

He hailed the efforts of the North Darfur governor, police director and the other security organs in establishing security and returning the police force to Ambro, saying they would make every possible effort maintain security and deploy police across the locality.

Al-Tahir further pointed that the North Darfur police director promised to send further police officers to cover all administrative units in the locality.

Last month, North Darfur state governor Abdel-Wahid Youssef acknowledged existence of security problems in the state particularly in the capital, El-Fasher.

He accused unnamed parties of seeking to keep the “insecurity and instability” situation in Darfur, and pointed to “hidden hands that prompt the security chaos in all Darfur's five states not only North Darfur”.

(ST)

July 25, 2016 (JUBA) – The editor of an Arabic newspaper has been detained and the paper shutdown by South Sudan security forces after it published inaccurate information.

Information minister Michael Makuei Lueth (R) speaks at a media forum as presidential press secretary Ateny Wek Ateny looks on in Juba on 7 September 2014 (ST)

The editor of Al-Watan newspaper, Michael Christopher was arrested on Saturday by security operatives and his whereabouts remain unknown.

Al-Watan newspaper was ordered to cease publication after it quoted Information Minister, Michael Makuei, as having confirmed the arrival of additional peacekeepers from neighbouring countries.

The paper said the troops from Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) would arrive Monday 25 July. But that turn out to be untrue and the paper apologized for the mistake, which it attributed to poor translation from English to the Arabic dialect.

“All these are our mistakes. The right information is that the government has formed a committee to receive a team of African Union Security Council which is expected to arrive today [Monday], Faisal Hassan Lado, the acting editor for the newspaper.

“We apologize for this inaccurate information that came as a result of translation,” he added.

Al-Watan's lead story on Saturday with headline “Arrival of African Union soldiers on Monday” has a quote attributed to the minister.

Lueth, the newspaper reported, said a committee had been constituted to receive the visiting members AU Peace and Security Council on Monday. The government committee, he added, would be headed by his cabinet affairs counterpart, Martin Lomoro.

The Arabic newspaper later published an apology to the information minister he was wrongly quoted in Juba Monitor newspaper, which has remained closed and its chief editor, Alfred Taban still in detention.

Meanwhile, Bol Deng Mayen has been appointed the new editor of Al-Watan, the newspaper's management announced on Monday. He replaces the embattled Michael.

(ST)

July 25, 2017 (JUBA) – South Sudan President Salva Kiir's removal of the armed opposition leader, Riek Machar and appointing Taban Deng Gai as the country's first vice-president could ignite a “full-scale war”, an advocacy group warned on Monday.

Arms and light weapons have been used by both warring parties in South Sudan to commit abuses (Photo courtesy of SSANSA)

“This move represents another marker in the South Sudan's slow motion political suicide,” said Enough Project's Founding Director, John Prendergast.

“It unnecessarily brings South Sudan a step closer to full-scale war, shutting another door to dialogue and trampling on democratic processes espoused by both South Sudan's government and opposition SPLA-IO [Sudan People Liberation Army in Opposition],” he added.

A section of South Sudan's former rebels on Sunday announced they had replaced Machar with Gai, who was the mining minister in the recently established transitional national unity government.

Gai was the rebel's lead negotiator for a peace accord signed last year between Machar, President Kiir, religious groups as well as several other political groups, to end nearly two years of violence.

The deal created a transitional government to last for 30 months in which Kiir was to remain President and Machar as first vice president.

But Machar's allies say the move to substitute him with Gai, was illegal since he had already defected to President Kiir-led faction.

Brian Adeba, an Associate Director of Policy at the Enough Project said if President Kiir's action to remove the former rebel leader and replace him with Deng proves to be part of an elite pact without grassroots support, it could undermine the peace accord.

“It is imperative that South Sudan's leaders adhere to implementing the peace agreement and not allow inner-circle power plays to bring forth more violence and destabilisation,” he observed.

During the formation of the transitional government in late April, both Kiir and Machar agreed to implement the peace deal, which halted nearly two years of a bloody civil which took an ethnic dimension.

Both rival factions, according to the peace agreement, were to retain control of their respective armies until a merge is concluded.

Machar fled the capital, Juba when his forces clashed with those loyal to Kiir, killing over 270 soldiers and displacing 40,000 civilians.

The former rebel leader instead asked for a buffer between his forces and those loyal to Kiir as an assurance of his security in the capital.

Last week, President Kiir gave Machar a 48-hour ultimatum to return to Juba to continue as First Vice President or risk being replaced.

Machar failed to comply and a group of SPLM-IO officials including Gai, Secretary-General Dhieu Diing and Deputy Chairman Alfred Gore met in Juba and nominated Gai as Machar's replacement.

Machar said Friday that he had fired Gai as mining minister, removed him from the SPLM-IO Political Bureau and withdrew his chairmanship of National Committee on Reconciliation and Healing.

“This is to declare to all members of the SPLM/SPLA (IO) that Taban Deng Gai has defected to the SPLM-IG (in Government) under President Salva Kiir Mayardit,” Machar wrote to SPLM-IO members.

“By this, Taban Deng Gai is dismissed and no more a member of the SPLM/SPLA (IO),” adds the letter.

The Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (JMEC), a body charged with supervising the implementation of the peace agreement, said changes within the Machar-led opposition movement depends on the leadership of the movement itself.

“A change to the leadership depends on the Opposition itself and we are not here to speculate on such changes,” JMEC said Sunday.

“We do not see any value in speculating when the people and friends of South Sudan are working hard to ensure a return to the implementation of the Peace Agreement,” it added.

According South Sudan's peace agreement, each of the parties to the accord can either nominate or withdraw its respective minister.

(ST)

July 26, 2016 (JUBA) – In response to the Monday development in South Sudan in which President Salva Kiir issued a republican decree relieving his peace partner, First Vice President, Riek Machar, opposition's officials said the “illegal” action was a long time planned conspiracy to destroy the August 2015 peace agreement signed by the two top factional leaders.

Riek Machar, left, first vice president of the Republic of South Sudan, and Salva Kiir, the president, at the first meeting of the new transitional coalition government in Juba, South Sudan, in April, 2016 (Jason Patinkin/AP)

Machar's spokesperson said the situation had been suspected for a long time only that his leadership thought President Kiir and Taban Deng Gai, the newly appointed First Vice President, were going to abandon their conspiracy for the sake of peace in the country.

“This illegal action by President Salva Kiir to dismiss his peace partner, Dr. Riek Machar, who chairs the SPLM (IO) party and commands its army, the SPLA (IO), does not only violate the August 2015 peace agreement, but is also a long time planned conspiracy to put the last nail on the coffin of the peace agreement itself,” James Gatdet Dak, Machar's spokesperson, told Sudan Tribune on Monday evening in response to the event.

He said since February 2016, the plan came to surface while Machar was still in Pagak, his headquarters before returning to Juba in April, adding that President Kiir with the Jieng [Dinka] Council of Elders (JCE), a tribal group from President Kiir's ethnic Dinka, designed this plot to destroy the peace deal using Taban Deng Gai.

Dak said he had to cover up for Taban Deng when this accusation came out, in order not to expose him at the time, with the hope that he was going to change and not allow himself to be used by President Kiir and JCE to return the country to war.

“I had to cover up for Honourable Taban Deng Gai. I had to dismiss his suspected conspiracy as baseless in the media many times because I did not want him exposed. I thought he was going to change,” he added.

He said President Kiir and JCE are implementing their “reservations” in the agreement using Gai and that the peace agreement is currently in “very serious danger.”

Dak said the newly appointed First Vice President does not command the opposition army, adding that they disliked him and wanted him removed long time ago, but Machar could not act. He also said over 95% of the political leadership of the SPLM-IO are with Machar.

The opposition's spokesperson added that President Kiir was aware of the fact that Gai is never popular in the SPLM-IO political and military establishments, but liked his unpopularity so that the peace agreement can die.

KIIR'S FORCES ON OFFENSIVE

Dak also accused President Kiir's forces of carrying out offensive on Monday as he was appointing Gai to hunt down Machar around Juba with the aim to kill him.

“As we speak, thousands of President Salva Kiir's forces are on the move towards the areas where they suspected Dr. Riek Machar to be situated. Also their helicopter gunships have been bombing randomly in the forests, trying to locate him. Their aim is to kill him so that he never returns to Juba,” he said.

“But this will never happen. Dr. Riek Machar will someday return to Juba whether they like it or not, whether they will be there in Juba to receive him or not,” Dak added.

The opposition's spokesman also accused some members of IGAD of being behind the President Kiir's conspiracy to destroy the peace agreement using the “illegal” and “forced” replacement of transitional leadership of the government and the party.

He said even the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (JMEC), which is supposed to monitor and safeguard the peace agreement has been “dumb founded” and could not know what to do.

He said Machar did not flee Juba out of his own will but was forced out after he nearly got killed at J1 palace by President Kiir's forces, adding that only that they could not get chance to murder him inside the palace as his close bodyguards would have also killed president Kiir.

Machar, he said, due to the incidents at the palace and the attack on his base where his house was also bombed, was simply asking for a third party force to be deployed in Juba to guarantee his safety so that he would return to Juba.

“What Dr. Machar was simply asking was for the deployment of a third party force before he would return to Juba. This is what IGAD and AU have also endorsed. So why replace him with the unconvincing pretext that he was away from Juba when all knew why he has been away from Juba?” he asked.

He also said the agreement did not allow for temporary appointment of an acting First Vice President by the President, but instead Machar should have been the one to delegate one of his officials to act if need be.

Dak said he believed that some players in the region and in the international community have taken part in the conspiracy to make South Sudan ungovernable by supporting President Kiir's illegal actions so that the situation can be used as a pretext for the country to be taken over by the United Nations under a trusteeship.

He said under the current situation where SPLM-IO and SPLA-IO are no longer part of the peace agreement, coupled with the ongoing military offensive by President Kiir's forces, it would be difficult for Machar to return to Juba any time soon.

He said President Kiir's faction and their ally led by Taban Deng Gai have been busy trying to track Machar down by monitoring phone conversations and its GPS and bombing his suspected locations around Juba.

It is the second time that Machar has been forced out of Juba by President Kiir's forces, fleeing for his life. He also fled Juba on 15 December 2013 and his house was bombed.

(ST)

Le président et le Premier ministre ont âprement défendu Bernard Cazeneuve, accusé de vouloir étouffer la vérité concernant le dispositif de sécurité.

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