News Article by AP on February 01, 2000 at 20:17:10:
South Sudanese group forms new movement in Upper Nile region
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- A group from southern Sudan announced
Tuesday the formation of a new movement aimed at unifying the
ethnically fractured Upper Nile region to better assist the 17-year
struggle for southern autonomy.
The South Sudan Liberation Movement supports the main objectives
of the south's rebellion, group Chairman Wal Duany said.
Close to 2 million people have died in Sudan since the rebellion
began in 1983, pitting rebels from the mostly Christian or animist
south against the government in the Arab and Muslim north.
The main rebel group, the Sudan People's Liberation Army has
dominated the rebellion since its beginnings. But political and
tribal struggles have led to splinter rebel groups and separate
factions vying for power in the war-torn south.
Ethnic struggles have been particularly distracting in the Upper
Nile region, where tribal and factional in-fighting has left the
region devoid of cohesive leadership over the last nine years,
Duany said.
Representing the three main tribes in the Upper Nile, Dinka Bor,
Nuer and Shuluk, Duany and two other SSLM leaders at Tuesday's news
conference promised to unify the region.
SPLA leader John Gurang, of the Dinka Bor tribe, is also from
the Upper Nile, as are his chief southern rebel rivals, from the
Nuer and Shuluk tribes.
"The idea is to bring peace and reconciliation within the Upper
Nile," Duany said. "Because they are all the time fighting among
themselves, they have forgotten who the real enemy is."
Meanwhile, struggles have also erupted between the different
southern Sudan regions, the Upper Nile in the northeast, Bahr el
Ghazal in the west, and Equatoria in the south.
The unity of the people of southern Sudan is a "prerequisite
for the success of the liberation struggle," an SSLM statement
said.
Like the SPLA, the group supports continuing the armed struggle
while backing a peace process under the auspices of the regional
Inter-governmental Authority on Development, or IGAD, Duany said.
Duany said the SSLM would work closely with the SPLA to attain
their goals for both self-determination from the south and for
religious pluralism, which has been prohibited under the Islamic
government in Khartoum. Duany and his colleagues are not well
known, and it is not clear how much support they enjoy on the
ground.