Lt. General Peter Cirillo, a former commander of the Anyanya and governor of Equatoria region in the 1980s has died aged 83 in Nairobi. He suffered from Alzheimer’s and other health complications and has been in and out of hospital for a lengthy period, family members said.

A former prisons officer in Khartoum, Gen. Cirillo joined the Anyanya in 1965 following a pogrom of educated Southerners in the town of Yambio.

His death, on October 30, 2019, robs South Sudan of the few remaining and aging senior Anyanya officers in the country. He is survived by 11 children and 14 grandchildren.

As one of the few Southerners in the Anyanya with formal military training (he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the prisons services in 1954 in Port Sudan), Gen. Cirillo rapidly rose through the ranks, where he initially trained new recruits.

He was sent to Israel for training in 1968 and later served as an intelligence officer and conducted mobilization campaigns for the Anyanya in Rumbek, where he spent six months training recruits. Assigned to the Central Equatoria Command, Gen. Cirillo held his position until the signing of the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972.

In his memoirs "Sudan: Odyssey Through a State, from Ruin to Hope," Joseph Lagu, former leader of the Anyanya, writes that Cirillo was assigned command of the first Anyanya troops to enter Juba following the signing of the peace agreement.

Absorbed as a Lieutenant Colonel into the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), Cirillo underwent further military training at the Pakistan Military Academy in 1977 and the Nassir Military Academy in Cairo in 1982-84.

From the latter, he completed the PSC military course, graduating with a master’s degree. After a stint commanding the 11th Brigade in 1978, Cirillo was promoted to the rank of Major General in 1984 and took over from James Loro as commander of the Southern Command in Juba.

The birth of the SPLA was a period in which many of Gen. Cirillo’s Anyanya comrades joined the newly established movement, a fact that pitted former comrades-in-arms against each other.

In this respect, Gen. Cirillo knew many of the SPLA cadres. The journalist Arop Madut Arop once interviewed John Garang for the Khartoum-based Heritage newspaper in 1987. Recounting the last days before he defected to join the Bor mutineers, Garang said the following about Gen. Cirillo:

“When I reached Juba on the 9th of May I put up with Peter Cirillo, who was Deputy to Siddiq el Banna, Commander of the Southern Command, of course, when you are planning illegal or underground activities it is always best to be close to the Authority.”

Other accounts, however, say Garang stayed at Gen. James Loro’s house before he travelled to Bor in the countdown to May 16, 1983.

After the demise of the Nimeri regime in 1985, the Transitional Military Council led by Gen. Abdelrahman Siwar El Dahab, appointed Gen. Cirillo as military governor of Equatoria.

The end of the TMC reign following the advent of democracy in Sudan in 1986 saw Gen. Cirillo joining the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), founded by the late Elioba James Surur.

Gen. Cirillo held on to the governor’s seat on the PPP ticket until 1988. The former American ambassador to Sudan, G. Norman Anderson said in his book “Sudan: The Failure of Democracy,” that Gen. Cirillo ruled Equatoria like a fiefdom.

After Kokora, the South was weakened economically; some questioned the viability of the three regions as separate entities. During his tenure as governor, Gen. Cirillo was determined that the economy of Equatoria would not collapse. He vowed to make the region self-sufficient in food production, stressing that Equatoria would not import dura from Khartoum.

He devoted his energy into encouraging the expansion and diversification of the agricultural sector by reviving major schemes such as the Project Development Unit in Yei and the Nzara Multipurpose project. Within one year of his term in office, the region exported surplus maize to the North and neighboring countries. He also paid particular attention to developing coffee farming and encouraged farmers to set up cooperative societies.

His agricultural policies and strong anti-corruption stance garnered him admiration from many and he was known as a popular governor. In equal measure, his determination garnered him many critics in Equatoria. Among his achievements as governor, Gen. Cirillo cites the establishment of the Equatoria Commercial Bank, the first of its kind during that era. However, the bank floundered because of lack of support from the government. 

Described as a man of integrity with lots of self-confidence, Gen. Cirillo was fearless and deeply respected in the military, including in Northern Sudan.

In a pique of anger, he once broke his walking stick after Sadiq Al Mahdi’s advisor for Southern affairs asked him when he would shut down the Equatoria Coordination Office in Khartoum, shouting back to the advisor “Who are you to ask me that question?” Gen. Cirillo, who was waiting to talk to Al Mahdi, immediately cancelled the meeting and told his aides to get out of the prime minister’s office.

With roots in the Anyanya liberation forces, Gen. Cirillo was known as a die-hard secessionist among many circles in Equatoria and South Sudan. He reportedly met Garang secretly in London while he was governor.

However, in the early stages of the war, he maintained an anti-SPLA posture. His reign as governor coincided with the expansion of the SPLA war effort in Equatoria.

In response, the Sudan government scaled up efforts to counter the SPLA onslaught. The Liwa al raida convoy, commanded by the SAF Colonel Muhammed Alamin Khalifa arrived in Juba in 1987 to support the government’s counter-insurgency strategy against the SPLA. Also, during this period, the SPLA destroyed the Yormouk convey dispatched to break the siege on Torit in 1988. Thereafter, the SPLA laid siege to Juba, precipitating the Juba famine of October 1988.

Nevertheless, in the late 1980s, Gen. Cirillo changed tact and closely collaborated with the SPLA. In late 1991, he was aware of the SPLA’s coordination with South Sudanese officers in the SAF inside Juba. Following Captain Thomas Cirillo and Major Augustino Jadallah’s defection to the SPLA, his support grew firmer. His vocal support resulted in his betrayal and subsequent incarceration by the Bashir regime in the early 1990s.

After his release, Gen. Cirillo dabbled in politics, joining the United Sudan African Party (USAP). Party members elected him deputy chair in 1997.

There are lingering questions and an unresolved mystery surrounding Gen. Cirillo’s relationship with the SPLA and Garang in particular. In the eyes of some South Sudanese, especially from Upper Nile and Bahr el Ghazal, he was a Kokora enthusiast. In Equatoria, some (maybe a majority) viewed his acts and anti-SPLA stance as redeeming. On aggregate, the tempo and tempest of Southern politics in the early 1980s was polarizing and every politically exposed Southerner had a stance.

Eventually, politics evolved and Gen. Cirillo changed his stance, which almost claimed his life. As Patti Davis, President Ronald Reagan’s daughter put it when describing her father's life in 2018, “legacies are complicated and for the people to be judged fairly, the entire landscape of life has to be looked at.” Public life is a morass of paradoxes and no public figure should be judged at a half-journey of life.

References:

South Sudan: The Notable Firsts, by Kuyok Abol Kuyok

Sudan: Odyssey Through a State, from Ruin to Hope by Joseph Lagu

Sudan: The Failure of Democracy, by G. Norman Anderson.

Heritage newspaper, 1987.

Interviews: former aides, scholars, and family.

October 31, 2019.