South Sudan: What if Uganda hadn’t intervened?

___________

OPINION

By Amb. Henry Mayega

It is the most tantalising “what if” Uganda hadn’t intervened to stop the most recent falling out between President Salva Kiir of South Sudan and his vice-president, Riek Machar. Africa’s and the world’s youngest country has, over the years, been engulfed in bouts of unrest; the years 2013, 2014 and 2018 exemplify that turmoil.

Some with a cognitive deficit, most especially from the recessing opposition political canvass — and they fit the bill, have rebutted Uganda’s most recent intervention in South Sudan which, if, it wasn’t for Yoweri Museveni’s proven and uncompromising security credentials and safe pair of hands, that country’s political blisters would badly fester.

First, when the British colonisers and their Egyptian collaborators granted self-rule to Sudan in 1956, that duo bequeathed to the Sudanese rulers a fractious country torn between the rich, Muslim and mainly Arabic north and the poor, Christian and animist south.

That divide would later lead to the Anyanya wars of the 1950s-1972 and 1983 2005. Uganda, given that it shared a long common border with the original Sudan, suffered the brunt of constant refugee inflows, which, simultaneously, posed security risks because the Sudanese always yearned to, belligerently, go home.

Secondly, when the south divorced and became independent from Sudan in 2011, that cured one portion of the problem, but not the other: which is the acrimony betwixt, majorly, Sudan’s biggest tribes; the Dinka (two fifths of the population) and the Nuer (one fifth of the population).

Sudan’s other smaller tribes include the Zande, Bari, Shilluk, Murle, Anuak, Acholi, Kuku, Kakwa, Bviri, Dungatona, Ndogom Linda, Baka, among others.

That divisiveness has, in the long haul, debilitated the young state’s democracy that South Sudan is since 2011 henceforth sparking political manoeuvring and paddy-power’s bets; which is why in the spirit of galvanising Pan-Africanism and “East-Africanism,” the Yoweri Museveni administration has relentlessly, unlike its predecessors, sought to resolve the South Sudan political question since 1986.

Thirdly, Sudan, further to the north, has had its fair share of anarchy since the separation; there’s a disquietude that the debilitating civil war pitting two antagonists, generals Abdul Fattah Al Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo against each other could have ripple effects in South Sudan henceforth opening up a wider regional hot-bath area of conflict with far reaching reverberations.

It would have been an egregious dereliction of duty if Museveni, Uganda’s best President since independence, didn’t expeditiously intervene in the most recent falling out in South Sudan; that exertion on his part stopped another unpleasant bout of refugee inflow into Uganda which is already glutted with over 1.7m refugees — our country’s choicest refugee policy notwithstanding.

Fourthly, folks need to, also, understand that as one of the guarantors of peace in South Sudan, Uganda is duty-bound to intervene in case of any tumult in the world’s youngest country. We didn’t invade our neighbour as some with a penchant against the President and the UPDF have imputed; we were mutually invited to extinguish the smouldering political embers; metaphorically, the UPDF’s professionalism, unlike its predecessors namely the UA and UNLA, has severally passed the litmus test regarding peace enforcement and keeping; that vanguard of peace has commendably done a splendid job in Somalia, the DRC and the CAR and lately in South Sudan.

Fifthly, Uganda and South Sudan share an elongated common border of over 435km, meaning that any dereliction of duty on the part of Uganda by shrugging off vulnerabilities in that neighbourhood would most probably subject our country to the ignominy of cross-border insecurity spill-overs.

Apart from the DRC, Uganda shares the longest common border with South Sudan in the EAC region; we can’t, therefore, afford the luxury of glossing over our mutual security concerns.

The naysayers in our midst should also know involuntarily that warring in South Sudan can potentially disrupt cross-border trade. About 150,000 Ugandans are currently doing business in South Sudan.

Uganda has also been exporting goods and services to our northern neighbour, worth $546.4m annually. Those exports have been fledgling at an annual rate of 12.2% for the last five years. There are, in addition, a lot of ongoing infrastructural development contracts plus, and there are plans to construct a game-changing railway line between the two countries.

Lastly, but not least, fostering in particular regional integration and in general, Pan Africanism, requires tested leadership like Yoweri Museveni’s; his administration has, in a protracted fashion exhibited equality to the job; the less sagacious in our midst have had their optics exclusively focused on taking power without due regard to economic dynamics.

Essentially, Museveni is miles ahead of them because when he actively pacifies neighbourhoods, including South Sudan, that simultaneously ensures the growth of gargantuan regional markets and those in the yonder for the benefit of Uganda’s wealth creators.

The writer is a diplomat