By: Igihe.com
Gen. SALVA KIIR MAYARDIT(President of Republic of South Sudan)
This is a Dinka name; according to Dinka custom, this person properly should be referred to by the name “Kiir”, not “Mayardit”.
Salva Kiir Mayardit (born 1951) is the first President of the Republic of South Sudan.
LIFE AND CAREER
Gen. Kiir is a Dinka, though of a different clan than former Southern Sudan president John Garang. In the late 1960s, Gen.Kiir joined the Anyanya in the First Sudanese Civil War. By the time of the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement, he was a low-ranking officer.
In 1983, when Garang joined an army mutiny he had been sent to put down, Gen.Kiir and other Southern leaders joined the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement(SPLM) in the second civil war.
Garang had little military field experience and relied upon the more experienced Anyanya veterans, including Gen.Kiir, to actually carry out the ground war. Gen.Kiir eventually rose to head the SPLA’s military wing.
Most of SPLA operation successes in the field during the war were attributed directly to Gen.Kiir, who controlled the movement’s army.
An attempt to remove Gen.Kiir from his post as SPLA chief of staff in 2004 nearly caused the organization to split. Following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement formally ending the war in January 2005, which he had helped start, he was appointed Vice President of Southern Sudan.
After the death of Garang in a helicopter crash of 30 July 2005, he was chosen to succeed to the post of First Vice President of Sudan and President of Southern Sudan. He is popular among the military wing of the SPLM for his battlefield victories and among the populace for his unambiguous pro-secession stance.
Gen. Kiir in October 2009 comments that the independence referendum was a choice between being “a second class in your own country” or “a free person in your independent state” were expected to further strain political tensions.
Gen.Kiir has an unenviable task to balance the rival and heavily armed ethnic groups in the vast and grossly underdeveloped swamps, jungles and grasslands of the southern Sudan.
Some members of other groups, especially the Nuer, the second most numerous in the south, resent the perceived Dinka dominance. The two groups sometimes battled each other during the civil war, as well as fighting together against northerners.
ORIGIN OF CONFLICT
According to intelligence notes, the origins of the civil war in the south date back to the 1950s. On August 18, 1955, the Equatoria Corps, a military unit composed of southerners, mutinied at Torit. Rather than surrender to Sudanese government authorities, many mutineers disappeared into hiding with their weapons, marking the beginning of the first war in southern Sudan.
By the late 1960s, the war had resulted in the deaths of about 500,000 people. Several hundred thousand more southerners hid in the forests or escaped to refugee camps in neighboring countries.
By 1969 the rebels had developed foreign contacts to obtain weapons and supplies. Israel, for example, trained Anya Nya recruits and shipped weapons via Ethiopia and Uganda to the rebels.
Anya Nya also purchased arms from Congolese rebels. Government operations against the rebels declined after the 1969 coup, and ended with the Addis Ababa accords of 1972 which guaranteed autonomy for the southern region.
The civil war resumed in 1983 when President Nimeiri imposed Shari’a law, and has resulted in the death of more than 1.5 million Sudanese since through 1997. The principal insurgent faction is the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), a body created by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).
The SPLA was formed in 1983 when Lieutenant Colonel John Garang of the SPAF was sent to quell a mutiny in Bor of 500 southern troops who were resisting orders to be rotated to the north.
Instead of ending the mutiny, Garang encouraged mutinies in other garrisons and set himself at the head of the rebellion against the Khartoum government.
Garang, a Dinka born into a Christian family, had studied at Grinnell College, Iowa, and later returned to the United States to take a company commanders’ course at Fort Benning, Georgia, and again to earn advanced economics degrees at Iowa State University.
By 1986 the SPLA was estimated to have 12,500 adherents organized into twelve battalions and equipped with small arms and a few mortars. By 1989 the SPLA’s strength had reached 20,000 to 30,000; by 1991 it was estimated at 50,000 to 60,000.
ABYEI–The oil rich province
The dispute over the province of Abyei flared into open fighting between northern and southern forces, although there is now agreement to bring in an Ethiopian peacekeeping force. There is no agreement, however, on the referendum that was promised for the province but never held.
Abyei`s permanent population is Christian by religion and `southern` in their loyalty. The north, however, insists that the Misseriya, Arabic-speaking Muslim nomads who bring their herds of cattle into Abyei to graze during the dry season, also have the right to vote in the referendum. So, there is deadlock.
Such ethnic quarrels will persist and proliferate: at least five rebel groups are fighting the new southern government, and Bashir`s regime faces big rebellions in Darfur, South Kordofan and Nile Province.
Bashir`s immediate problem is economic. The deal to split the oil revenue equally between north and south lapsed with South Sudan`s independence, and he is bringing in harsh austerity measures.
LATEST
On 14 July 2011, South Sudan became a United Nations member state. The country is not yet a member of the African Union, but membership is expected soon. South Sudan has also applied to join the Commonwealth of Nations, the East African Community,the International Monetary Fund,and the World Bank.
The country was declared eligible to apply for membership in the Arab League as well.
What is now South Sudan was part of the British and Egyptian condominium of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and became part of the Republic of the Sudan when independence was achieved in 1956. Following the First Sudanese Civil War, the Southern Sudan Autonomous Region was formed in 1972 and lasted until 1983.
A second Sudanese civil war soon developed and ended with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005. Later that year, southern autonomy was restored when an Autonomous Government of Southern Sudan was formed.
South Sudan became an independent state on 9 July 2011 at midnight (00:00) local time following a referendum held in January 2011 in which nearly 99% of voters opted for independence from the rest of Sudan.
MEDIA. There is a printing press and a score of publications and online media,TV and radio.unrestricted access for journalists to the country.
LITERACY: only 15% of the population of the southern sudan is literate
POLITICAL VIEWS: Homosexuality is condemned and Gen. Kiir considers homosexuality as a mental illness.
RELIGION: Christians and other indigenous traditional African religions.
POPULATION: The 2008 census conducted by Kharotoum government shows 8.26Million. However, this was been rejected by Gen. Kiir.
SPORTS: southern sudan has a national football team
AVIATION:Juba international airport
TERRITORY
