Armed clashes recently erupted between the African state’s soldiers and the guards of its spy chief, whom President Salva Kiir has dismissed FILE PHOTO: President of South Sudan Salva Kiir. © Global Look Press / imago stock&people / Thomas Koehler
South Sudanese President Salva Kiir has fired the country’s military and police chiefs, as well as the central bank governor. The decision, announced late Monday, follows recent tensions within the East African nation’s security institutions.
In a decree in October last year, when Garang, an International Monetary Fund (IMF) adviser, assumed control.
The presidential decrees did not specify the reasons for the dismissals, but Reuters cited security sources as saying that the restructuring could have been sparked by discontent within the army ranks, including over unpaid salaries for about a year.
The East African nation’s economy has been in decline since the end of a five-year civil war that began in 2013 over a feud between President Kiir and his former vice president, Riek Machar. According to the UN, it forced nearly 2.32 million people to flee to neighboring countries, reducing South Sudan’s oil production – once the primary driver of its economy. In August 2018, the warring factions reached a power-sharing agreement, bringing the fighting to an end. However, the landlocked state has remained volatile.
The transitional government, which in September postponed long-delayed general elections scheduled for December, has also, according to Bloomberg, been struggling to address a cash crisis after an oil pipeline that accounts for over 90% of its revenue ruptured inside neighboring war-torn Sudan.
This week’s changes come less than a month after heavy gunfire erupted in the capital, Juba, between the army and the guards of former national intelligence agency chief Akol Koor Kuc. Gen. Koor Kuc had led the intelligence service since the country’s independence from Sudan in 2011, but President Kiir fired him in early October, reportedly placing him under house arrest.
The two officials named to the new security positions are said to be from Kiir’s home state of Warrap in the Bahr el Ghazal region. (RT)
