The National Transitional Committee (NTC) on Wednesday kick-started the long-awaited deployment of the Necessary Unified Forces (NUF) by sending 1,000 of the troops to Upper Nile State.
The first batch of the 52,000 NUF graduated in August last year and has since not been deployed due to disagreements among parties to the revitalized peace agreement about the composition of the mid-level command structure.
Speaking during the flagging off of the forces at the Luri Army Base northwest of Juba, SSPDF Chief of Defense Forces Gen. Santino Deng Wol said the first batch of the soldiers will be sent to Malakal where they will join the army’s Second Division.
“You are going to Malakal where there is Division 2. You are not going as a different force, you are going as part of the forces of Division 2 and you will take orders from the commander of Division 2 who receives orders from the SSPDF headquarters here in Juba,” he said. “You do not have any relationship with politics and you do not have any relationship with political parties. No army belongs to political parties and you are soldiers of the country. With effect from today, no one among you should desert the army to go and practice politics.”
Gen. Deng revealed that the first batch of the unified force from the Equatoria Region will be deployed to Upper Nile and other forces from Bahr el Ghazal will be deployed in Upper Nile and Equatoria region.
For his part, Thomson Fontaine, the Deputy Chief of Strategy at the Reconstituted Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (RJMEC), said the deployment of the forces was a task that was supposed to be done in the pre-transitional period and is long overdue.
He said the deployed unified army will play a critical role in the future of the country by building the foundation for stability, prosperity, and a strong South Sudan.
“As you are deployed today and in the days ahead, we expect that you will be firm. We expect that you will carry out your duties in a manner that will make your country proud. It is important that you are part of a unified force and you are not an individual that belongs to any party. Your allegiance should be to South Sudan,” he counseled. “It has been five years since the signing of the peace agreement and I know that many people have been impatient, thinking that it has been slow. The next big step is towards elections and you have a critical role to play in this process. We expect that you will provide the necessary security for the people of South Sudan in every single state as you move towards choosing your leaders.”
“The people will be looking towards you to maintain the peace and to make sure that peace reigns in South Sudan,” Fontaine stressed.
Under the 2018 revitalized peace agreement, the transitional government is supposed to train and deploy 83,000 unified forces consisting of police, wildlife, prisons, intelligence, and military officers.