A top security official in Unity State says that since the recapture of the capital Bentiu more than 700 defectors have left the ranks of the insurgency and returned to their various military and police units.
Col. John Malok, state security advisor, told Radio Tamazuj on Monday that the situation in the state capital was fine and hundreds of soldiers who joined the mutiny led by the SPLA 4th Division Commander James Koang last month were returning to their units.
Bentiu was razed during fighting earlier this month. It was recaptured midday on 10 January after widespread looting in the city carried out by fleeing mutineers. Essentially the entire population fled or took refuge at UN bases before the city was retaken, but some people have since come back, including some civil authorities.
“The situation here is fine, there is no problem. The propaganda that the people of Taban (the former governor) were making, saying the security is bad, that is all completely untrue. Now the citizens are going around, the employees are working, there is no problem up to now,” explained Malok.
The state security official added that opposition forces are not close to the city but rather are staying far away in different parts of the bush.
“Every day people are coming back” to Bentiu, he said. Also he claimed the returning soldiers would not face any consequences for their defection because they had been deceived by the rebel leaders, ex-vice president Riek Machar and the ex-governor Taban Deng.
Col. Malok specified that on Saturday 370 members of the army (SPLA) returned to their units, and by Monday morning also 410 police had come back. These figures could not be independently verified. He said the forces would be paid their salaries.
Civilians leaving UN base
About seven thousand internally displaced people seeking refuge in the UN compounds in Bentiu have left to return to their homes, according to the spokesperson of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), Ariane Quentier.
Quentier told the Juba-based Eye Radio that in the last two weeks the number of people under UN protection at bases in Bentiu went from 8,800 down to about 2,000 people.
“So we had in less than three weeks to two weeks, we had something like 6,000 to almost close to 7,000 persons who have left the protection site of UNMISS,” she said.
The figures she provided appeared to conflict with the latest data from the Camp Coordination and Camp Management Cluster, a newly established humanitarian mechanism, which said in an operational update on Sunday that 6,107 IDPs were still registered in Bentiu as of Saturday,
According to the same document, some displaced people in Bentiu are not at the UN base but have taken up residence on the grounds of the State Legislative Assembly, where there were 1,631 displaced people registered so far by aid workers.
Related coverage: Government assessing massive damage in Bentiu, says situation ‘very bad’ (14 Jan.)
Photo: Soldiers in Bentiu, 12 January 2014 (AP/Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin)
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