Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni addressing the press with his
counterpart Salva Kiir of South Sudan at State House in Juba on December
22, 2016. PHOTO | PPU
The catastrophic conditions that confronts war-torn South Sudan will likely worsen in coming months in the face of government intransigence and ineffective regional peace-making efforts, United Nations monitors have warned.
“Absent
a change in the current conflict dynamics, the coming dry season will
see further fighting and civilian suffering, as the government continues
to pursue military victory over political compromise,” UN investigators
said on Monday.
The UN panel also accused government
forces of impeding humanitarian and peacekeeping operations. This, they
said, cut-off food supplies to Bagari in the northwestern Upper Nile
state.
At least 164 children and elderly people died
from hunger and disease in that area between January and September this
year, they said. Further, the UN panel said armed forces were using food
aid as a weapon of war to target civilians.
Uganda
In
a 35-page report to the Security Council, the UN monitors cited Uganda
as abetting President Salva Kiir administration's refusal to end the
war.
In addition to allowing arms to reach government forces, Uganda
serves as the destination for teak and gold extracted from South Sudan,
the panel said. These resources, as well as oil, are sold to finance
military operations and enrich South Sudanese elites, the report stated.
Divisions
among neighbouring countries, particularly competition between Uganda
and Ethiopia for “regional hegemony,” are also causing peace initiatives
to flounder, the monitors said.
Uganda's President
Yoweri Museveni is said to be more invested in the Kampala-led attempt
to reunify three factions of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement
(SPLM) than in moves by the regional bloc the Intergovernmental
Authority on Development to revitalise the peace agreement.
These
parallel processes are “neither complementary nor mutually reinforcing
initiatives, despite assertions to the contrary,” the report stated.
Kenya
Kenya,
despite its “significant financial interests in South Sudan,” has been
sidelined from the peacebuilding efforts due to Nairobi's preoccupation
with the presidential elections, the monitors said.
Kenya's
banking and real-estate sectors, along with those of Uganda, “are key
destinations for financial assets and laundered funds from South Sudan,”
the report noted.
The Kenyan government has additional
reasons to remain actively engaged in efforts to end the nearly
four-year-long civil war in South Sudan, the monitors suggested.
They
cited mounting insecurity in Eastern Equatoria on Kenya's border, which
could accelerate an influx of refugees. The panel also pointed to “the
continued possibility of armed groups attacking and looting poorly
secured Kenyan banks in South Sudan.”
Rebels
South
Sudan opposition “has become increasingly diverse and widespread as the
conflict has expanded to different parts of the country,” the report
said.
But the armed rebels are splintered and comparatively weak, the monitors added.
They
said exiled opposition leader Riek Machar continues to maintain overall
command of the main faction of rebel forces, “although his isolation in
South Africa has limited to some degree his day-to-day oversight.”
Machar's
grip is being further loosened by military gains made by government
forces, defections by some of his troops to other opposition groups and
“the apparent continued lack of significant military resupply to
opposition forces.”
Weaponry
Further,
the report said South Sudan opposition fighters seem unable to obtain
large-scale weapons supplies other than by capturing government
arsenals.
The country's army, however, has been resupplied via transhipments of arms through Uganda, the monitors said.
According
to “documentary evidence” obtained by the panel, a cargo flight
containing 31 tonnes of weapons arrived in Entebbe, Uganda, on August
29.
Kampala-based Bosasy Logistics is listed as the
consignee for this shipment, reportedly from Bulgaria, that includes
AK-47 rifles, spare magazines, bayonets and ammunition, they said.
“Panel sources claim that these weapons were destined for onward shipment to Juba,” the report said.
South Sudan plunged into war in December 2013 when Kiir accused Machar, his former deputy, of plotting a coup.
Tens of thousands have died in the fighting and nearly four million have fled their homes.
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