Riek Machar

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Riek Machar

Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon (* 1952 in Leer ) is a South Sudanese politician . He was Vice President of South Sudan from 2005 to July 23, 2013 and was again from April 26, 2016 until his dismissal by President Salva Kiir Mayardit on July 25, 2016. Before that, he was a warlord in the Civil War . He belongs to the Dok- Nuer people .

Riek Machar was born as the 26th son of a tribal leader in Leer in the state of Unity . Machar is Presbyterian . He studied engineering at Khartoum University and obtained a Ph.D. Degree from the University of Bradford , England.

Civil war

After returning to Sudan, Machar was one of the earliest members of the SPLA under John Garang , which began the second civil war against the Sudanese government in 1983 with the uprising in Bur . Machar was first in command of his home province and then became vice-commander of the SPLA. In August 1991, together with Lam Akol, he split the SPLA-Nasir faction (named after the group's headquarters in the city of Nasir , also SPLA-United ) from the SPLA and wanted to overthrow Garang. Garang's combat force was now called SPLA-Torit after the place Torit to distinguish it . The alleged reason for the split was the anti-authoritarian Garang's claim to democratic reforms. The difference between the two in terms of political objectives: Garang wanted Sudan to be united under a new government, while Machar demanded autonomy for the south. Both leaders use old ethnic conflicts between the respective ethnic groups of Dinka and Nuer for their power struggle . Riek Machar stylized himself as a religious savior by abusing a popular belief about the Nuer prophet Ngundeng, and justified the theft of cattle from the Dinka estate as a fair compensation for earlier theft of cattle by the Dinka on the Nuer. Dinka areas bordering on Nuer Land were devastated, people were killed, and women and children were kidnapped. Machar took away his people's scruples and fear of prosecution in criminal offenses by claiming that there are two types of war: This is a "government war" in which the opposing injured and dead would not pose a legal problem and social risk. In contrast, in a “war for the homeland”, injured or killed enemies have traditionally been paid for in blood money. He absolved all Nuer of the personal responsibility of their actions.

Many Nuer defected to the Nasir faction not because of their basic program, but solely because they were Nuer. Machar lost credibility among his own people when more and more civilians died in the struggle on a personal level between himself and Garang. Until an externally brokered peace agreement in 1998, the fighting between various SPLA factions was often more cruel and costly than the attacks by the northern Sudanese army . Riek Machar is held responsible for the "Bor massacre" of 2,000 Dinka civilians in Bor in 1991, during which his troops were armed with weapons from Khartoum. Thousands of Dinka then fled to the province of Eastern Equatoria .

In 1992, Machar separated from Akol. The latter kept the name SPLA-Nasir for his group. Machar founded another splinter group, the South Sudan Independence Movement / Army (SSIM / A). With her, Riek Machar had become a direct ally of the Sudanese government. In another split, members of the SSIM from southern Equatoria left Machar to form the Equatoria Defense Force (EDF) organization . In a joint declaration of intent, SLA-Nasir, SSIM and EDF came together on the part of Khartoum. In 1997 Machar and the groups mentioned signed a peace agreement (Khartoum Peace Agreement, KPA) with the government in Khartoum, thereby formalizing his relations. The agreement contained rules on the distribution of power and the obligation to hold a referendum on self-government in South Sudan. Garang declared the KPA illegitimate and declared himself the sole representative of the South. Afterwards, Riek Machar led the South Sudan Defense Force (SSDF ), allied with the government, the National Islamic Front (NIF), which mainly fought in 1997/1998 in the state of al-Wahda with the Nuer warlord Paulino, who was also supported by the government Matiep, former Vice-Commander of the SPLA, delivered. The fighting and assaults by these groups contributed significantly to starvation among civilians in the region. After Riek Machar fled to Nairobi and founded another armed opposition group there called the Sudan People's Democratic Front , his groups reunited in 2002 on the side of the original SPLA and in the fight against the northern Sudanese.

Life

Machar's first wife was Angelina Mang, a Nuer. In his headquarters in the village of Ketbek, five kilometers from Nasir near the Ethiopian border, Machar married the British humanitarian worker Emma McCune in June 1991 and thus lived in polygamy . McCune had come to Sudan for the Canadian project Street Kids International as part of Operation Lifeline Sudan , but was fired as a result of her marriage.

After the fall of the Ethiopian government at the time , 100,000 Sudanese refugees had to leave the Gambela region in Ethiopia and were driven to the Sudanese war zone, which led to a famine there. Through his relationship with McCune, Machar gained access to information from the charities, which gave him advantages. He also declared his marriage to McCune as the fulfillment of a prophecy by the Prophet Ngundeng. An unnamed left-handed Nuer would marry a white woman, the prophet is said to have said, according to Machar.

McCune, who was pregnant at the time, died in November 1993 at the age of 29 in a car accident in Nairobi. Angelina Mang became Minister of State for Energy at the 2005 peace agreement.

Since 2006, Riek Machar, as South Sudanese Vice President, mediated peace talks in Juba with little success between the Ugandan government and the rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army . On July 23, 2013, he was dismissed by President Salva Kiir Mayardit .

In December 2013, Machar failed a coup against Salva Kiir Mayardit , which started the civil war in South Sudan . On February 12, 2016, Machar was reappointed first vice-president and replaced by Taban Deng Gai on August 25, 2016.

The Sentry Project, funded by George Clooney and human rights activist John Prendergast, showed through anonymous sources in 2016 that Machar and other dignitaries of the country enriched themselves with the natural resources while they were living in their homes, for example. B. had relocated to Nairobi so as not to be affected by the effects of the civil war. The Sentry also complains that the sanctions passed last year would not affect the country's elite.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ SPLM-IO says Machar's illegal dismissal a conspiracy to destroy peace. Sudan Tribune, July 26, 2016
  2. ↑ Sudan SPLM leadership Bio-data and profiled. Sudan Tribune, December 26, 2005 ( Memento of January 29, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Naglaa Elhag: A Tale of two Wars: The Militarization of Dinka and Nuer. Identities in South Sudan. In: John Abbink and André van Dokkum (Eds.): Dilemmas of development: conflicts of interest and their resolutions in modernizing Africa. African Studies Center 2008, pp. 164–188 ( Memento of the original dated December 22, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / bibis.ihe.nl
  4. ^ John Young: Emerging North-South Tensions and Prospects for a Return to War. Small Arms Survey, Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva 2007, p. 16f  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.ecosonline.org  
  5. ^ ASAP: The South Sudan Defense Force (SSDF): A challenge to the Sudan Peace Process. Institute for Security Studies, April 8, 2004 ( Memento of the original from July 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 96 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.iss.org.za
  6. ↑ Deborah Scroggins: Emma's War. Random House, New York 2004, p. 294. The title of the book alludes to McCune's involvement in the civil war between Machar and Garang. German: The white warrior. A fate in Africa. Construction Publishing House, Berlin 2006
  7. ↑ Machar's wife escapes assassination attempt in South Sudan. Sudan Tribune, December 31, 2008
  8. ^ LRA dissatisfied with Southern Sudanese Vice-President Riek Machar. African Press International, January 28, 2007
  9. ↑ Riek Machar Teny | Riak Machar Teny. Sudan Tribune, July 2013
  10. ^ South Sudan Sudan's President Kiir appoints arch-rival Machar as deputy time, February 12, 2016
  11. ↑ The Sentry: War Crimes Shouldn't Pay. (PDF) Stopping the looting and destruction in South Sudan. In: The Sentry.org. September 15, 2016, accessed on September 16, 2016 .
  12. ↑ Christoph Titz: The villas of the warlords. In: Spiegel Online. September 15, 2016, accessed September 16, 2016 .
  13. ↑ Rick Gladstone: South Sudan Leaders Amass Great Wealth as Nation Suffers, Report Says. In: New York Times. September 16, 2016, accessed on September 16, 2016 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Machar, Riek
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Machar Teny Dhurgon, Riek
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Sudanese politician
DATE OF BIRTH 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Leer, al-Wahda , Sudan