{"id":3551,"date":"2020-10-12T10:38:05","date_gmt":"2020-10-12T10:38:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onecitizendaily.com\/?p=3551"},"modified":"2020-10-12T10:40:45","modified_gmt":"2020-10-12T10:40:45","slug":"arms-embargo-delays-graduation-of-unified-forces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/2020\/10\/12\/arms-embargo-delays-graduation-of-unified-forces\/","title":{"rendered":"Arms embargo delays graduation of unified forces"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
SSPDF spokesperson Maj. Gen. Lul Ruai Koang inside his office in Bilpham (Photo: Kiden Stela Mandela)<\/strong> <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By Kiden Stela Mandela<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

South Sudan People\u2019s Defense Forces (SSPDF) said the arms\nembargo imposed by the United Nation Security Council has delayed the\ngraduation of the unified forces as they were unable to buy ammunition for the\nforces. The training of the unified forces commenced early this year, but their\ngraduation was delayed several times due to financial constraints. The forces\nare required by the 2018 revitalized peace agreement to form the first\nprofessional national army which will consist of 83,000 soldiers drawn from the\nrival South Sudan parties and the SSPDF. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maj. Gen. Lul Ruai Koang, the SSPDF\u2019s spokesperson told No.1\nCitizen Daily Newspaper on Thursday  8th<\/sup>\nOctober 2020, that the U.S arms embargo was a major setback in the reunification\nand graduation of the forces. The U.N. Security Council approved a resolution\nin May this year extending a year arms embargo on South Sudan and a travel ban\nand financial sanctions for targeted individuals. The arms embargo would run\nuntil May next year. \u201cThe biggest problems we have is lack of resources, the\nnecessary financial resources needed for their graduation to be facilitated and\nthe other major issue that we are also experiencing is that we do not have\nability to give them arms, you know once you are a solider the best thing that\nyou get is the right tool, fire arms is needed,\u201d Maj Gen. Lul said. \u201cWe are not\nable to arm them because the country is under sanctions and the government is\nunable to purchase arms so that we give them to work fully. As forces, this is\nthe biggest challenge as for now we cannot have soldiers expecting them to\nprovide security without fire arms,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maj Gen. Lul stressed that the government was also facing\nsome difficulties generally caused by the global pandemic of COVID-19 that has\naffected the oil production. He said oil was subjected to number of factors\nincluding the drop in oil prices, capacity to produce maximum barrels of oil\nper day as some oil fields had been affected by the war and some facilities got\ndamaged. He said it requires financial support that is when they would be in\nposition to graduate the unified forces. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Col. Lam Paul Gabriel, Deputy Military Spokesperson\nof Sudan People\u2019s Liberation Army in Opposition SPLM\/A-IO disagreed saying the\nimportant thing was to have unified forces under one command whether there were\narms or not it would be discussed later. \u201cIssue of the graduation is causing a\nlot of panic. We are really focused no matter what it will take us, we are\nstanding firm and we are not ready to go back to war,\u201d he said. \u201cThe other\ntechnical issue that delays the graduation of this forces is that command\nunified structures that was formed beginning from national security, military and\nhad been taken for approval to the President,\u201d Col. Lam added. He stressed that\nwhat seems to be relaxed behind was the President to approve the concept of\ncommand unified structure to make sure that the command moves forward. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Col. Lam said the international communities would understand\nthat they were moving forward then later they would be able to get guns as long\nas they were in the right direction. He argued that once command unified\nstructure is approved by the President, they would immediately have unified\nforces that include the national security, military and the organized forces.\n\u201cSo that when they come out, they are under one command not any how\u201d Col. Lam\nremarked. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He stressed that once the forces graduate they will be under\none command, but said until now the command council has not been given the\nnecessary help beginning from the Chief of Defense Forces to the military. One\nof the female officers from Gorom training center who came to Juba to buy some\nfood items said, \u201cWe are suffering from hunger, sickness, and even no clean\ndrinking water some time some of us have been attacked by unknown gunmen soon\nwe will disappear from here because since our leaders are not minding about us\neverything is hard\u201d she said. She said if one month elapses without them being\ngraduated, some of them were likely to quit the Centre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Kiden Stela Mandela South Sudan People\u2019s Defense Forces (SSPDF) said the arms embargo imposed by the United Nation Security Council has delayed the graduation of the unified forces as they were unable to buy ammunition for the forces. The training of the unified forces commenced early this year, but[Read More…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3551"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3553,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3551\/revisions\/3553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}