South Sudan President Salva Kiir is lobbying six other regional leaders to support the political crisis in Sudan, an aide disclosed.
Kiir’s security affairs advisor, Tutkew Gatluak Manime said the South Sudanese leader is currently in Kenya to witness signing of a cessation of hostilities agreement between the Congolese government and March 23 (M23) rebels.
He said the South Sudanese leader would seize the opportunity to persuade regional leader to back efforts aimed at ending the political crisis in neighbouring Sudan.
“He [Kiir] will use that occasion as an opportunity to solicit the support of regional leaders for the Sudanese peace initiative,” explained Manime.
The South Sudanese leader is reportedly lobbying for regional involvement in efforts to ensure the 2 October, 2020 accord is implemented. The peace agreement enabled armed and unarmed opposition groups in Sudan to join the transitional government, thus expanding the representation of the country’s peripheries during the interim period before elections.
However, the peace deal excluded two most powerful rebel movements.
The interim government was envisaged to negotiate with holdout rebels to bring them into the transition. Sudan’s international partners should press for security sector reform that decreases the size and political dominance of a newly expanded military while funding and supporting the authorities’ spending commitments in the peripheries.
In August 2019, the Transitional Military Council (TMC) and the civilian Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC), signed a power-sharing agreement.
That in turn led to the formation of a hybrid civilian-military government tasked with revitalizing the ailing economy and steering the country to elections. The signatories also agreed to talks with insurgents to end decades of conflict in areas neglected by Khartoum. The talks took place in South Sudan’s capital, Juba, leading to an accord on 3 October, 2020.
The agreement excludes Sudan’s two most powerful and politically relevant armed movements: a SPLA/M-N faction led by Abdel Aziz al-Hilu, which operates in the Two Areas, and a SLA/M faction led by Abdel Wahid al-Nur, which maintains bases in central Darfur.
While Wahid’s movement draws significant support from the Fur ethnic group and the internally displaced in Darfur, Aziz’s faction enjoys backing from the Nuba and other groups in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states.
However, unlike the agreement’s rebel signatories, which are militarily degraded following a string of defeats by Khartoum in 2015 and 2016, the two holdout groups have substantial strength on the ground. Both have resisted signing the agreement and are unlikely to do so out of discomfort with the security forces’ continued dominance in the transitional government and their insistence on a credible national dialogue as a precursor to an inclusive peace deal, among others.
Source: Sudan Tribune