Kampala - Fighting is likely to continue in South Sudan without the
deployment of an east African regional force to pressure both sides to
respect a ceasefire, Uganda's army chief said Tuesday.
Uganda already has troops in South Sudan fighting alongside government
forces loyal to President Salva Kiir against rebel leader Riek Machar, but
the country's army chief said a larger regional force was needed to halt the
five-month-old civil war.
"Is the ceasefire holding? It would need an IGAD intervention force to be in
place," General Katumba Wamala told a briefing at the army headquarters.
"If IGAD forces are not deployed to compel the two parties to respect the
ceasefire, there is a possibility of the clashes happening again," he added.
Two ceasefire deals
The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) is a regional bloc
that has been brokering peace talks between South Sudan's government and
rebels, but two ceasefire deals - one signed in January and the other
earlier this month - were quickly violated.
IGAD leaders have called for the deployment of a force to protect ceasefire
monitors, but no date has yet been set for putting such a force in place.
General Wamala said that when an IGAD force is deployed and "there is no
vacuum, we shall pull back to our borders" - but did not rule out taking
part in an IGAD mission.
South Sudan's government has been at war with rebel groups since 15
December, when a clash between troops loyal to President Kiir and those
loyal to Machar, who was sacked as vice president, escalated into full-scale
fighting.
Oslo - More than a third of South Sudan's population, four million people,
will be on the edge of starvation by the end of the year as fighting rages
on in the world's newest country, UN officials said on Tuesday.
Clashes between rebels and government forces have wrecked food markets and
forced people to abandon their livestock and land, the aid experts added.
"We are losing time. Farmers should be planting their crops right now,"
Valerie Amos, the United Nations' aid chief, told a donors' conference in
Oslo.
"If they don't, and if livestock herders are not able to migrate to grazing
areas, people will run out of food."
Violence erupted in the oil-producing country in December following a long
power struggle between President Salva Kiir and his sacked deputy Riek
Machar.
Thousands have died in the increasingly ethnic violence, often pitting
Kiir's Dinka people against Machar's Nuer. The two men, under regional and
Western pressure to end the conflict, signed a ceasefire earlier this month.
But it quickly broke down and World Food Programme's assistant executive
director Elisabeth Rasmusson told Reuters she had reports fresh clashes
broke out in the town of Malakal on Monday night.
"We think that by the end of the year, 1.5 million will be internally
displaced, 850 000 will be refugees and four million on the edge of
starvation," Toby Lanzer, UN humanitarian co-ordinator in South Sudan, told
Reuters on the sidelines of the conference.
Planting disrupted
South Sudan only became independent from Sudan in 2011. The fighting has
curbed oil production, vital for its economy.
UN officials in Oslo said the needed $1.8bn in aid, up from their previous
figure of $1.3bn.
On Tuesday, donors including the United States, Britain and Norway, agreed
to give more than $600m, on top of the $536m already pledged.
The violence has disrupted planting of sorghum, maize, and ground nuts and
forced herders to abandon their animals or lead them to areas with poor
grazing, said the officials.
"All this puts tremendous pressure on livelihoods," said Lanzer. "The
biggest message I am getting from South Sudanese is 'give me one month of
peace so I can plant and I could look after my livestock'," he said.
Ethiopian, Kenyan and Ugandan traders responsible for a large proportion of
trade in markets, have also fled, he said.