9 the Third Phase of the Genocide in Equatoria 2015–17

9 THE THIRD PHASE OF THE GENOCIDE IN EQUATORIA 2015–17 The rippling effects of the second genocidal phase in Unity state contributed to launch the third phase in Central Equatoria. All three phases illustrated a trans- ference phenomenon from one phase to the next—not just in triggering violence in the next location but also in repeating acts of genocidal violence (such as forced anthropophagy, genocidal gang-rapes, or killing checkpoints meant to sort out non-Dinka civilians, to name but a few). But while the second phase was largely subcontracted, the perpetrators of the third were overwhelming Dinka, as this chapter shows. This chapter explores the articulation of the Dinka supremacist ideology in this third genocidal phase and how it justified the perpetrators’ genocidal conquest. Its components became especially evident when the government was not able to subcontract genocidal violence to local co-opted armed groups. This exclusionary ideology was not new. But Dinka perpetrators grew emboldened in the Equatoria region in 2015, before the start of the third genocidal phase in 2016. Until then, the Equatorians had mostly stayed out of this war. But they were not simple bystanders either. The Equatorians in the Beginning of the Third Civil War At the beginning of the conflict, some Equatorian civilians had welcomed the fleeing Nuer into their homes, and some Equatorian SPLA soldiers had tried to 187 188 CHAPTER 9 FIGURE 9.1. Bodies of civilians killed during the July 2016 battle of Juba lie wrapped in plastic bags for burial. Photo taken on July 16, 2016, on Yei Road, near Checkpoint Market, by Jason Patinkin. stand between their Dinka peers and Nuer civilians. “In Juba already in Decem- ber 2013, and Yei and Kajo Keji, already IO had sympathizers,” explained a Kakwa civil society member from Yei, “because the Equatorians saw killings and mas- sacres.”1 The Equatorians, although reluctant to get involved, felt much more sympathy for the Nuer than for the Dinka. They had grievances rooted in the past war’s Dinka protoconquest cemented after 2005. Besides, the Juba massacre and its resounding effect in other towns made it clear to other minority groups that killing non-Dinka civilians was deemed acceptable and even encouraged by the violent Dinka state. It was incredibly swift, which suggested planning for at least a military confrontation, and it set a precedent for the systematic state killing of non-Dinka people. Yet Equatorians understood the mounting tensions culminating into the third war to have been caused not so much by greed but rather by the ancient ethnic hatred and political competition between the Dinka and the Nuer. There were, in the beginning, very few Equatorians among the IO.2 Most of the Equatorians wanted to be left out of the violent competition with Kiir’s faction. “As time went on, we were looking at Dinka and Nuer as one and the same, and we were buying time and looking for an ally,” a Kakwa civil society member said.3 States’ borders (2011–2015) . Secondary towns .. State capitals 050 100200 300 Sudan Kilometers Abyei. UNITY UPPER NILE . Malakal ABYEI . Bentiu. NORTHERN . Guit. BAHR .Aweil EL GHAZAL. 2 Koch. .Kwajok . Leer. WARRAP Ethiopia .Wau . JONGLEI WESTERN BAHR EL GHAZAL LAKES ..Rumbek Bor WESTERN EQUATORIA .. CENTRAL Central African Republic EQUATORIA Mundri. EASTERN EQUATORIA Maridi . 3 . 1 Yambio .Juba .. Wonduruba. .Lobonok . Yei .Torit Kenya .Lanya Democratic Republic . Kajo Keji of the Congo .. Uganda FIGURE 9.2. Map of the three genocidal phases. 190 CHAPTER 9 The Equatorians, who had seen it all play out before with the 1991 split, were hoping to collect the crumbs of whatever would be left once the Dinka and Nuer had fought it out. In other words, this was not their war. Yet they also were victims of the state. The Equatorians were at the very bottom of the Dinka ethnic ranking because they were not considered a threat by the Dinka and as such they were not worth accommodating. The Equatorians would be drawn into the conflict, whether they wanted it or not. As soon as the conflict exploded in Juba in December 2013, the Dinka elite brought its cattle and cattle herders from Lakes to the south, into Western Equatoria. This created tensions and increased state violence against non-Dinka civilians perceived as potential dissenters.4 It only got worse with the repercus- sions of massive cattle looting in Unity state, when the SPLA and the Dinka elite’s cattle herders and their families brought the looted cattle into Western and then Central Equatoria. This marked the beginning of the expansion of the Dinka conquest into Equatoria. Aware of Equatorian sympathies for the Nuer and of increased frustration with Dinka cattle herders, the SPLA leadership wanted to take no risk. So it rotated the Equatorian soldiers of SPLA Division 2 very quickly to the front lines of the Greater Upper Nile region in 2014 and accelerated this movement in September 2015—right when the situation was becoming untenable in Western Equatoria.5 A Pojulu trader lamented that the “Yei youth was taken to Unity state to be in the SPLA—75 percent of the youth in 2014. There was big fighting there and we don’t know if our boys are alive.”6 Ethnic ranking in the SPLA continued on the front lines, just as it had in the decades since 1983. This meant, in the words of an Equatorian SPLA soldier who defected from Upper Nile, that “the majority of Dinka have higher ranks and so they’re all relatives and they don’t send them to the front lines.”7 The wife of an Equatorian SPLA soldier explained that her husband and his ethnic comrades “complain about being in front of the other Dinka, so they die first. So there is a lot of loss of life in the greater Upper Nile region for Equatorians.”8 By rotating Equatorian soldiers, the SPLA leadership meant to prevent IO from gaining ground in the region. It also wanted to decapitate any serious armed rebellion trying to defend Equatorian land from the conquering SPLA troops and Dinka herders. The Equatorian soldier’s wife explained of her husband’s comrades, “Most of them are located in the greater Upper Nile region because other- wise they will turn away from the SPLA if they’re located in Equatoria . There are very few desertions because the sites Bentiu and Malakal are very risky to escape, and it’s difficult to reach out to Equatoria.”9 “This was a policy,” believed the Pojulu man, “because we didn’t have youth to protect us.”10 THE THIRD PHASE OF THE GENOCIDE IN EQUATORIA 191 The rotation of these Equatorian SPLA soldiers into this region was likely intended to free up space for a third genocidal phase. Indeed, while the Equato- rian soldiers were assigned to the Greater Upper Nile region, fighting a war they did not consider was theirs against the Nuer, they were told that they would be next.11 Equatorian civilians who stayed in Yei were told the same thing.12 Sev- eral factors contributed to launch this third genocidal phase—most notably the July 2016 fighting in Juba between IO and the SPLA. But the bottom line is that the very conceptualization of this third genocidal phase was already there among Dinka SPLA troops in early 2014, to the extent that some low-level Dinka soldiers communicated it to other low-level Equatorian SPLA soldiers on the front lines.13 Western and Central Equatoria in 2015 Of course, in 2014, this third phase was still just an idea, and waging genocidal violence at the same time in both Unity and Equatoria was not a good idea, nor was it feasible—or necessary—yet. Yet in 2015, violence took on genocidal attri- butes in Western and Central Equatoria. It started in May 2015 in Mundri and in June in Maridi, when local inhabitants started joining local rebel groups (includ- ing the well-known local militia of the Arrow Boys, subcontracted by the SPLA to defend territory against LRA incursions in 2010) out of frustration with having their land trampled on by the SPLA and its cattle.14 The SPLA, a mix of Tiger, Commando, and Division 6, retaliated violently.15 “They already started burning houses in the morning (on June 8, 2015) and shooting any person non-Dinka,” explained civilians who fled.16 The perpetrators deployed the Dinka supremacist ideology they later used in Central Equatoria (explored more at length later). A civilian from Mundri, who protested having the Dinka herders’ cattle trample his land, related, “They said: ‘It’s us who fought with the Arabs to lead South Sudan’ . ‘Don’t talk, we’re the ones to be your leaders, not you. You’re not to lead us.’ ”17 The key elements of the perpetrators’ Dinka supremacist ideology were thus already articulated in 2015 in Western Equatoria. Dinka group legitimacy, strengthened in 2005–13, culminated in extreme group Dinka entitlement. This justified conquest through the denationalization of non-Dinka groups and the myth of a Dinka “master race”: “They say the Equatorians have no land, that we’re from Uganda. They say that the land of Equatoria is not mine—it’s theirs. They say South Sudan is for them, that I’m not South Sudanese.”18 At the time, the replacement and imprisonment of the popular Western Equa- toria state governor (Joseph Bakassoro) by Salva Kiir in July–August 2015 created further resentment, and accelerated recruitment into the local militia of the 192 CHAPTER 9 Arrow Boys in Western Equatoria, who declared allegiance to IO.19 Men from Western Equatoria were now caught in the same bind as their peers in Unity state: they either joined the opposition or faced government violence.

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