Anyanya combatants in an early morning parde (1967)

Joseph H. Oduho & Gen. Emideo Tafeng Inspecting Anyanya Guard of Honour (1967-8)

Oduho right-centre & Gen. Tafeng left-centre

President Kiir and VP Machar Campaign Rally in Bor, Jonglei, is Historic

BY: Mawut Guarak , NEW YORK , USA

Articles and Analysies – Sudanese Online 

…This is not the first time Dr. Riek went to Bor since returning to the SPLM/A in 2002. He first went to Bor, Panyagor to be specific, in 2004 for the House of Nationalities Conference and he was very well welcomed and appreciated. He talked to the inhabitants of Panyagor and explained his past action…In 2007, he went to the city of Bor and he was personally welcomed by Kuol Manyang Juuk, the same man who chased him out of Panyagor in 1993. For those who may not be aware, Kuol was the commanding officer deputized by Bior Ajang Duot when Riek forces were attacked and uprooted from Panyagor in the same battle Uncle (Joseph) Oduho was killed…

http://www.sudaneseonline.com/en216/publish/Articles_and_Analysies_12/President_Kiir_and_VP_Machar_campaign_rally_in_Bor_Jonglei_is_historic_BY_Mawut_Guarak_NEW_YORK_USA_printer.shtml

The Opposing Paradigms of Self-Determination for Southern Sudan

Excerpts from Stephen Par Kuol’s Analysis on Unity With North Sudan - Gurtong Website

 

They also pray for peace and reconciliation among themselves, but not with the North. In truth, Southern Sudanese see the current unity with the North as a curse from God. Yes, this bad unity will be given another chance for six years, but in their hearts of hearts, southerners know that it is a formality that does not stand a glimmer of chance for permanence as quarter of century in protracted war has confirmed the word of late Joseph Oduho that "we can live in peace with the north only as separate nations." 

http://www.gurtong.org/ResourceCenter/documents/pressreleases/eurpoe_press06.html

‘Leaving Bitterness Behind’

Excerpts Form: http://rain.org.za/leaving-bitterness-behind/

Lagu’s counterpart at the time, the head of the movement’s political wing, was a man named Joseph Oduho, and it was the late Oduho who introduced Lagu to the Israeli ambassador and political attache in Kampala, Uganda, where there was a growing Israeli presence in the late 1960s. “We have a common concern, and that is fighting the Arabs,” Lagu wrote in the letter he gave the attache, asking him to pass it on up through the ranks.

The commander went on to offer a deal: If Israel would support Anyanya, Lagu promised to tie down the northern Sudanese armies so as to prevent them from joining the Egyptians and other Arabs from attacking Israel in the future.

“I waited for a response, but the problem was that Eshkol died. He never even saw that letter,” says Lagu. “But luckily, he was followed by a woman who must have found that very letter and she contacted me. They were interested in the part where I said we would tie down the north, and believed we might even manage to tie up some of the Egyptian forces who would come to the north’s assistance.”

Golda Meir summoned Lagu to Israel, “practically smuggling him in,” as he tells it. And during that first two-week trip to the country and the territories – in between tours to military bases around the country, from the Golan Heights to the Sinai and the West Bank – the Sudanese commander met with the prime minister in her Jerusalem office. They spoke about religion, and Lagu told her how, he recalls, “the Christian southerners considered Jews as the cousins of Christ.” They talked arms. And then shook hands on a deal.

Short-lived relationship

Soon after, a shipment of weapons reached Juba from Israel – mainly two- and three-inch mortars, anti-tank missiles and light machine guns taken from enemy Arab countries during the 1967 war.

“They did not give us new weapons, or ones that were manufactured in Israel,” Lagu explains, “as they did not want to be publicly known to be helping us.”

Later, three Israeli advisors arrived and joined the rebels in the bush: a military advisor, a technician and a doctor. While other arms were coming in from Congolese rebels and international arms dealers, the Israeli assistance, Lagu explains, was what tipped the scales: “This helped transform my movement, and we became a force to be reckoned with. We began to make a real impact in the fighting against Khartoum.”

http://rain.org.za/leaving-bitterness-behind/

Human Rights Abuses Within the SPLA

Excerpts from Briefing Paper No. 2, May 1998

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...It perhaps follows on from Garang’s association with totalitarian politics that democracy and debate within the SPLA was clamped down upon very firmly. This intolerance dates back to the earliest days of the organisation. African Rights records, for example, that the initial political leadership of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) was made up of Southern politicians and former ministers such as Akuot Atem, Martin Maijer, Samuel Gai Tut and Joseph Oduho. 

John Garang was named the head of the military wing, the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army. Samuel Gai Tut and Akuot Atem subsequently withdrew from the SPLM in the wake of attempts to interfere with democratic decisions and transferred their allegiance to a rival Southern opposition group: Samuel Gai Tut was subsequently killed by SPLA forces. Garang then took for himself the chairmanship of the SPLM as well as being the SPLA commander-in-chief. African Rights summed up the intolerance within the SPLA: 

 “It is hard to see how the SPLA could have become more authoritarian than it was in the 1980s”. African Rights records some of institutionalised human rights abuses: Southern intellectuals and politicians who wanted to join the SPLM were subordinated to the military… some of them were arrested and detained without trial...According to a liberal-democratic view, they were victims of human rights abuses because they challenged autocratic leadership. The shadow of these early violations still hangs over the Movement. Further abuses followed: Political discussion within the SPLA was curtailed. The two remaining civilian politicians on the SPLM’s original Provisional Executive Committee (PEC) - Joseph Oduho and Martin Majier - were imprisoned from 1985 to 1992… The PEC was turned into a ‘Political-Military High Command’ (PMHC) composed only of soldiers. Two of the five original members of the PMHC (Kerubino Kuanyin and Arok Thon) were then incarcerated because they acted independently of Garang.

Joseph Oduho, a respected, long-standing southern Sudanese political figure, was released and then murdered by the SPLA. Martin Majier, a judge and politician with considerable standing among the southern Bor Dinka, was also subsequently murdered by the SPLA. The SPLA claim he was shot while trying to escape. Other rival Southern opposition leaders were dealt with equally ruthlessly. Kawac Makuei was imprisoned in appalling circumstances from 1984 to 1992. Lakurnyang Lado, the chairman of the Front for the Liberation of South Sudan, was detained and publicly killed by the SPLA. African Rights also talks of “many allegations of other extra-judicial killings”. Southern Sudan had few enough political leaders of any substance and integrity. It is a simple matter of fact that the SPLA murdered most of them...

http://www.espac.org/pdf/Spla%20human%20rights.pdf

Attack on the Sobat River: Oduho Writes to Egyptian Ambassador to Kenya

R.O. Collins reproduces a short extract from his forthcoming book Jonolei: A History of the

Hydro-politics of the Nile describing the attack on Sobat Camp on February 10^th, 1984 by the

Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army (SPLA)

Official Newsletter of the Sudan Studies Society of the United Kingdom,

Number 4 April 1988

On 30th November Joseph Oduho wrote to the Egyptian ambassador to Kenya in which he gave specific reasons for Garang’s decision to have the SPLA terminate the excavation of Jonglei. The abrogation of the Add is Ababa agreement was the cause for the resumption of the civil war, but the stoppage of work on the canal was the result of the unkept promises to the Southern Sudanese, and the failure to install the pipes for drinking and irrigation water led the list.

Work on the canal must remain stopped until these and other grievances - the failure to build schools, dispensaries, and bridges- were satisfied otherwise no work need take place till our control of the Sudan is complete (Joseph Oduho, Chairman of the Political and Foreign Affairs Committee of the SPLA to H.E. Ambassador of the Arab Republic of Egypt, Kenya, 30th November 1983). On 7th December he prepared a second letter to Chevron, Total Oil Company, and CCI (the French Company responsible for excavating the canal) demanding that CCI cease operations  immediately, assuring the company ‘that it (SPLA/SPLM) had no grudges and had no intentions to renegotiate agreements to replace CCI.

“Although we are aware that your firm was only hired to excavate the canal, you will however realise that there are parts of the agreement that deal with the welfare of the people whose life would be affected by the canal as well as the wildlife of this region of our country.” These issues had not been resolved.

“In the meantime agricultural projects, hospitals, towns and model villages that were to be carried out in the Canal Zone will only remain in the text of the agreement never to be executed after you have completed your works on the canal. You can therefore see our determination to see in to it that the work on the canal stops.” (Joseph Oduho to Chevron, Total, and CCI companies, 7th December 1983).

http://www.sssuk.org/SS/SS4.pdf