The wars in December 2013 started in Juba and not in the Bilnyang, yet people from Bilnyang were significant in the numbers that perpetuated and experienced violence, and among those who commanded it. Perceptions of peace, the social power of the dead and the need for revenge are not normative ideas that are decided in a moment but are naturalised social habits that have social force over decades. Those social norms that had been remade at ‘home’ near the Bilnyang and in other similar rural areas, now shaped the normative contestations and violent wars in Juba.
The wars to the west of the Bilnyang
Young men from Gogrial and Tonj who implemented violence in Juba in December 2013 had a complex range of reasons to fight, but revenge was part of these reasons. It is reasonable to assume that the moral contestations of Gogrial still had resonance among the young men who formed the Mathiang Anyoor. Those recruited into the Mathiang Anyoor itself had recently fought against those from Mayendit, Koch and Mayom, including in the 2012 conflict with Peter Gadet. These young men had childhood memories and family histories of large-scale losses in the toc during the 1990s. In these histories, at this juncture, the Nuer had broken the earth. Commanders and Kiir explicitly frame the conflict in Nuer-Dinka terms.
Fighting between the armed opposition and the government never took place in the areas immediately to the west of the Bilnyang and connected rivers, but the war created ongoing demands for militarised labour, as well as economic hardship and new contestations over public authority. In the post-CPA period, commanders in Bahr el Ghazal conducted significant, sometimes forced, recruitment in Warrap State. This recruitment was initially for a force that became the Mathiang Anyoor, and commanders justified it in terms of Bahr el Ghazal needing a border defence against northern Sudan.
1 Boswell, ‘Insecure Power and Violence’. In 2012, these forces fought significant battles against the Sudan Armed Forces. In Greater Gogrial, this recruitment was already causing concerns and push-back against the government. Yet concerns escalated as these recruits were taken to Juba and then other parts of South Sudan to fight for the government. Many of these young soldiers would not return or be heard of again.
The wars to the east of the Bilnyang
Initially, fighting between the government and defecting SPLA in Unity State was focused on Bentiu and the oilfields. In the first months of 2014, there was still a hopeful naivety that the wars might remain in Bentiu and not move south. Thousands of people fled from Bentiu to Mayendit and Ler.
2 Conversation with SSRC officer in Mayendit, 26 December 2020. The local government actively registered them as internally displaced persons (IDPs) imagining that this would remain a place of safety.
In the end, the counties of Koch, Mayendit and Ler became some of the deadliest places in South Sudan in the wars that followed from 2013.
3 Checci et al., ‘Estimates of Crisis-attributable Mortality in South Sudan’. Government-backed forces repeatedly carried out offensives that violated humanitarian norms, killing civilians, burning homes and displacing tens of thousands.
4 Skye Wheeler and Samer Muscati, ‘“They Burned It All”: Destruction of Villages, Killings, and Sexual Violence in Unity State South Sudan’ (Human Rights Watch, 2015). As they had in the 1990s and 2000s, people from these counties fought on all sides of the civil war and families were again divided between warring sides.
These rural areas had historic sympathies and relations with the armed opposition and the leadership of Riek Machar. The armed cattle guard also started to support the soldiers who had rebelled against the government. The emerging SPLA-IO tried to co-opt the cattle guard and gave them the name ‘
gojam’, a term that vaguely references an Arabic word for army division. The
gojam started using army-like ranks, yet they remained attached to their communities and local public authorities, as opposed to the army command.
5 Naomi Pendle, ‘Competing Authorities and Norms of Restraint: Governing Community-Embedded Armed Groups in South Sudan’, International Interactions 47:5 (2021), 873–897. After the government retook Bentiu, and as areas to the south became opposition strongholds, government forces attacked from Bentiu into Koch, Mayendit and Ler. Large attacks occurred annually over the following years, and these areas saw extreme violations of humanitarian norms as children were killed, people raped and property burnt.
6 Wheeler and Muscati, ‘“They Burned It All”’. Thousands were directly killed, tens of thousands were displaced, and tens of thousands died of hunger-related illnesses and vulnerabilities.
7 Checchi et al., ‘Estimates of Crisis-attributable Mortality in South Sudan’. Over time, the government captured control of more areas and mobilised local fighting forces. UN reports document how the violence was inescapable, brutal and often seemingly arbitrary.
8 Wheeler and Muscati, ‘“They Burned It All”’. The
hakuma was raining destruction with impunity.
When James Koang defected in December 2013, the then governor (Monytuil) fled to Mayom. With Taban Deng joining the armed opposition with Riek Machar, the divisions in the politics of Unity State pushed Monytuil and others from Mayom towards Kiir.
9 Joshua Craze, Jérôme Tubiana and Claudio Gramizzi, ‘A State of Disunity: Conflict Dynamics in Unity State, South Sudan, 2013–15’, HSBA Working Paper 42 (Small Arms Survey, 2016). In the early years of the conflict the South Sudan Liberation Army in Mayom acted as a pro-government militia who gained financially from Kiir’s support. Yet, even commanders from Mayom were not unified in favour of the government. As pro-government forces in Mayom were organising to defend Bentiu and the Unity State oilfields, another senior commander from Mayom – Peter Gadet – had already rebelled against the government with his soldiers in Bor. He later commanded the SPLA-IO forces in Unity State.
Even brothers ended up fighting on different sides of the war. For example, until 2022, the government offensives into Koch, Ler and Mayendit never achieved total control of these areas but they did allow the government to seize pockets of control in urban centres. When the government had captured Ler, they installed a pro-government commissioner to govern what was effectively an SPLA barracks in the town of Ler. The government commissioner of Ler was the brother of one of the most senior commanders in the SPLA-IO. In 2016, when Taban Deng claimed leadership of the SPLA-IO and was recognised as Vice President by President Kiir, further fragmentation took place. Those from Mayom, who had long rivalries with Taban, became more cautious about alliances with government. Opposition-controlled areas also divided.
For those living in Unity State, the years after December 2013 were another enactment of the god-like nature of the hakuma for South Sudanese through their experience of arbitrary violence. The wars involved brutal, deadly violence implemented by all parties in the conflict, and inflicted on soldiers and civilians. The hakuma in a broad sense continued to rein destruction and war, and people lost lives, homes and livelihoods.