MAJOR JOHNSON GUCH of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) sits outside a grass hut at the edge of Nasir, a missionary post in Nuerland that in time became a dismal town (see map). Dressed in a tracksuit, he gives the air of a local warlord. A Nuer himself, Mr Guch is commander of a joint integrated unit (JIU) of southern and northern Sudanese soldiers mandated to keep the peace in Nasir. He says he has 150 southern soldiers, each with a small tin of bullets. But he is dismissive of the northern soldiers. He does not know how many there are. He says he does not care. It is not, in any sense of the word, a joint command.
The commander of the northern troops, Captain Osman Mustafa, is more gracious, but also more disingenuous. His tent is a walk across a black wasteland pocked by the twisted wreckage of vehicles blown up in the war and little piles of human faeces left by the locals, who eschew latrines. A Muslim from the Nuba mountains, Mr Mustafa says he has 300 soldiers, enough guns and, of course, very good relations with the southerners.
Together with a hopelessly inactive UN peacekeeping force dug in on the other side of Nasir, the JIU stood by and did nothing when one group of Nuer attacked another last month, slaughtering 71 people in the nearby village of Torkej. The Lou-Nuer targeted a cattle camp tended by women and children from the Jikany. Those sleeping outside under mosquito nets were shot point blank. The Lou sprayed the huts with bullets. They drove older children into the river, where they drowned. The Lou took the cattle and Torkej’s other meagre possessions. Fifty seven wounded were taken to a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital.
The Jikany insist it is unheard of for cattle raiders to target women and children. They are furious that they had no guns to defend themselves. Under South Sudan’s patchy disarmament programme, the Jikany gave up their guns, the Lou kept theirs. Jikany elders say the Lou are working for the northern government of President Omar al-Bashir in Khartoum. They believe the north supplied at least 1,000 machineguns to the Lou in recent months. They say the Lou have been attacking their neighbours on all sides, including the Murle to the south, at the behest of Mr Bashir’s government. For their part, the Lou say it is the Murle who are proxies of the northern regime.
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