A militia mobilized by Boma State Governor Baba Medan is responsible for the looting carried out in Pibor town late last month, according to Murle citizens, traders and other sources interviewed by Radio Tamazuj.

Pibor was ransacked shortly after the designation of the town as capital of the new 'Boma State' and following the elevation of Baba Medan into the position of governor.

Fighting broke out on 23 February after the arrival to Pibor of armed youths from Baba's home area of Likuangole. But Baba himself denies that his militia looted the town and blames the SSDM-Cobra Faction, a group that had governed Pibor since 2013 under the terms of a peace deal with the Juba government.

Khalid Boutros, the head of the integration committee for the Cobra Faction, says the allegation is ridiculous: “Our forces have been staying in Pibor and its surroundings since a long time ago and there has not been any thefts, any looting, any problem.”

The senior Cobra Faction commander added, “A group of youths – not SPLA – a group of youths from the village of the governor came and carried out looting of the market and MSF.”

Two local sources likewise blamed Baba Medan for the mass looting, including a citizen who fled to the UN base in Pibor during the fighting in late February and a trader whose shop was looted. Asked who perpetrated the looting, the Sudanese trader referred to “the people of Baba himself.”

“The supporters of Baba are the ones who destroyed the market and looted the things, they stopped us from visiting the market in the morning while they were destroying the market,” said the trader.

Compounds belonging to a number of international aid and development organizations were also looted, including Doctors Without Borders, INTERSOS, Vétérinaires Sans Frontières and AECOM, Polish Humanitarian Action, Finnish Church Aid and UNOPS.

A fourth source, a worker at one of the international organizations operating in the area, blamed SPLA forces for most of the looting, but he also blamed Baba Medan for starting the violence.

“Baba precipitated it by sending his guys into Pibor to join the SPLA in order to overwhelm Cobra and take the town by force. This then set the stage for a battle in the town and all the NGO workers fled to the UNMISS that left the town open for anyone to do as he likes,” he said.

Ismail Konyi, a Murle community leader in Juba, also blamed Baba Medan's forces for attacking Pibor and for the looting.

“The majority of the people are rejecting the new governor and they don't want him. So the governor went to a county called Likuangole north of Pibor and he formed his government there... armed people from Likuangole then went and entered Pibor. And Yau Yau's people [Cobra Faction] were there inside Pibor,” he explained.

The chief explained that the Cobra Faction forces were driven out of Pibor during the fighting.

Konyi said the gunmen from Likuangole loyal to Baba Medan were not organized forces. "Those are just ordinary citizens," he said.

Attack premeditated

Khalid Boutros, who was appointed as Baba Medan's minister of physical infrastructure but stepped down last month, says that the new governor planned beforehand to enter Pibor by force and rejected advice that he should seek to do so peacefully.

Speaking to Radio Tamazuj on Monday, the former Pibor official said that he advised Baba to hold dialogue with the groups that were rejecting his appointment as governor “until we achieved enough confidence so that the governor could enter Pibor peacefully, so that the governor could start his work without any problems.”

“But the governor rejected this... and he even said to me that 'I have a plan to enter Pibor', and I understood that the plan to enter Pibor was the way that it was done now,” he explained.

Khaled added, “So I decided that I could not particiapte in the government when there would be problems and killings like this.” He resigned from his position last month.

Baba accuses Cobra Faction of incitement

For his part, Boma State Governor Baba Medan accused leaders of the SSDM/A-Cobra Faction of inciting citizens to reject his leadership in the newly established state.

“Those who say that they reject the governor are military forces and a certain group,” said Baba in an interview with Radio Tamazuj on Monday, denying that he is unpopular in the state.

“It is only a demand of people from Cobra Faction, it is a result of incitement, and it is an incitement from their leaders that we don’t want Baba.”

The appointed governor also accused the SSDM/A-Cobra Faction of looting the market and government vehicles in Pibor. But now, he said, the security situation has returned to normal after clashes in which most of the civil population either fled to the bush or to the UN peacekeepers' compound.

UN peacekeepers 'did nothing'

Relief workers and about two thousand civilians in Pibor took shelter at the UN base in the town during the outbreak of fighting from 23 to 25 February, before Cobra Faction soldiers were driven out of the town. 

According to a staff of an international organization operating in the town, however, the peacekeepers did nothing to try to stop the looting in the town, “despite having tanks, and soldiers and APCs and anything needed to either try and block it or be there while it is happening to try and convince them not to.”

The acting spokesperson of the UN Mission in South Sudan did not yet respond to emailed questions about the factors that prevented them from intervening to protect humanitarian assets in Pibor.

Baba deflects blame to SPLA

Separately, Baba Medan is reported to have told a gathering in Juba that SPLA officers are responsible for illegally collecting money from traders in Pibor.

Speaking last Sunday during funeral prayers for the former Pochalla South County Commissioner Omot Achaw who died in Khartoum last week, Baba said that some SPLA officers in Pibor have illegally been collecting money from commercial trucks and traders, citing high illiteracy among the armed men in Pibor.

“If you give guns into the hands of the illiterate they will misuse them,” he told mourners in Juba, according to a source who attended the event.

The Boma State governor also said that armed men tried to shoot down an airplane marked with a logo of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) thinking it was the plane that was bringing him to Pibor.

Greater Pibor Administration 'defunct'

This latest bout of violence in Pibor follows significant political changes in the area, including the removal of Cobra Faction leader David Yau Yau from the top leadership post in the Greater Pibor (Boma State) area.

The Greater Pibor Area Administration (GPAA) had been governing Pibor under the terms of a 2013 peace deal between the Cobra Faction and the South Sudanese government, until President Salva Kiir in December 2015 declared the GPAA 'defunct' along with the country's ten state governments.

Akot Lual Areech, presidential envoy on Pibor affairs, said in an interview on 31 December that Kiir's decision to remove Yau Yau and replace the Greater Pibor Administration with 'Boma State' was not a violation of the peace deal signed by the Cobra Faction and the government in 2013.

He defended the move to create the new state, pointing out that this had been a longstanding demand of the Cobra Faction, while also claiming that Kiir had consulted Yau Yau before dissolving all institutions in the GPAA and replacing Yau Yau with Baba Medan as Boma State governor.

“The people of greater Pibor were demanding a creation of a state of their own and this has been fulfilled. They now have a state of their own,” said Akot. “The agreement which the government signed with Cobra Faction was a means to achieving the vision of a new state. It was what people wanted and they have gotten it.”

Baba Medan does not belong to the Cobra Faction. He served previously in Bor as deputy Jonglei State governor. According to Khalid Boutros, the governor's militia is currently about 500 strong.

Although earlier reports suggested that Baba's forces were backed by SPLA during the February clashes, Khalid Boutros downplayed this: “SPLA were not a main part of the clashes, the main parties to the conflict were our forces [Cobra Faction] and a group of youths that had come from Likuangole.”

“I know well that neither our forces nor SPLA were responsible for the looting in Likuangole,” said the Cobra Faction commander.

Photo (above): Pibor's market was looted in late February 2016

Photo: (below): Boma State Governor Baba Medan

Related:

Photos: Doctors Without Borders clinic looted in Pibor (5 March)

Photos: Looting in Pibor town, South Sudan (3 March)