Warning: include_once(/home/geghna/ethiopianism.net/wp-content/mu-plugins/cl-smart-advice.php): Failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/geghna/ethiopianism.net/wp-settings.php on line 442

Warning: include_once(): Failed opening '/home/geghna/ethiopianism.net/wp-content/mu-plugins/cl-smart-advice.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/opt/cpanel/ea-php82/root/usr/share/pear') in /home/geghna/ethiopianism.net/wp-settings.php on line 442

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property YourChannel_Updater::$name_key is deprecated in /home/geghna/ethiopianism.net/wp-content/plugins/yourchannel/YourChannel.php on line 848

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property YourChannel_Updater::$version is deprecated in /home/geghna/ethiopianism.net/wp-content/plugins/yourchannel/YourChannel.php on line 851

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property YourChannel_Updater::$name is deprecated in /home/geghna/ethiopianism.net/wp-content/plugins/yourchannel/YourChannel.php on line 853

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/geghna/ethiopianism.net/wp-settings.php:442) in /home/geghna/ethiopianism.net/wp-includes/rest-api/class-wp-rest-server.php on line 1831

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/geghna/ethiopianism.net/wp-settings.php:442) in /home/geghna/ethiopianism.net/wp-includes/rest-api/class-wp-rest-server.php on line 1831

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/geghna/ethiopianism.net/wp-settings.php:442) in /home/geghna/ethiopianism.net/wp-includes/rest-api/class-wp-rest-server.php on line 1831

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/geghna/ethiopianism.net/wp-settings.php:442) in /home/geghna/ethiopianism.net/wp-includes/rest-api/class-wp-rest-server.php on line 1831

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/geghna/ethiopianism.net/wp-settings.php:442) in /home/geghna/ethiopianism.net/wp-includes/rest-api/class-wp-rest-server.php on line 1831

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/geghna/ethiopianism.net/wp-settings.php:442) in /home/geghna/ethiopianism.net/wp-includes/rest-api/class-wp-rest-server.php on line 1831

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/geghna/ethiopianism.net/wp-settings.php:442) in /home/geghna/ethiopianism.net/wp-includes/rest-api/class-wp-rest-server.php on line 1831

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/geghna/ethiopianism.net/wp-settings.php:442) in /home/geghna/ethiopianism.net/wp-includes/rest-api/class-wp-rest-server.php on line 1831
{"id":27799,"date":"2016-04-25T15:37:44","date_gmt":"2016-04-25T13:37:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/?p=27799"},"modified":"2016-04-25T15:37:44","modified_gmt":"2016-04-25T13:37:44","slug":"radio-tamazuj-claims-south-sudans-government-on-gabella-raid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/27799\/radio-tamazuj-claims-south-sudans-government-on-gabella-raid\/","title":{"rendered":"Radio tamazuj claims South Sudan’s government on Gabella raid"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/iframe><\/p>\n<h1 class=\"title\"><\/h1>\n<div class=\"field field-type-filefield field-field-main-image\">\n<div class=\"field-items\">\n<div class=\"field-item odd\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"imagecache imagecache-main-image imagecache-default imagecache-main-image_default\" title=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/radiotamazuj.org\/sites\/default\/files\/imagecache\/main-image\/images\/meeting-with-david-yau-yau_1_9.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"540\" height=\"216\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nYau Yau says Baba Medan armed Gambella massacre attackers\u00a0The former head of the SSDM\/A-Cobra Faction David Yau Yau said the militia responsible for the Gambella massacre came from Lekuangole county of the proposed Boma state and were armed by appointed governor Baba Medan.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"content\">\nA deadly cross-border raid from South Sudan into Ethiopia’s western Gambella Region last Friday has left scores dead and prompted the Ethiopian government to declare two days of national mourning. Officially, the Ethiopian government says 13 villages were attacked, leaving 182 civilians dead along with 60 attackers.<\/p>\nEthiopian authorities have blamed the attack on Murle gunmen\u00a0and reported that the victims were Ethiopians belonging to the Nuer tribe, which straddles the border with South Sudan and is one of that country’s two largest tribes.<\/p>\nNews reports have described the raid as ethnic fighting and as a cattle raid \u2013\u2013 but it also represents a spillover of South Sudan’s broader crisis into Ethiopia. Radio Tamazuj today takes a look at some questions that remain outstanding after the raid:<\/p>\n1. Where did the attackers come from?<\/strong><\/p>\nVillages affected by the raid are located in the Nuer-inhabited districts of Jikaw and Lare of the Gambella Region. This area does not directly border the Murle; in order to reach it from Murle territory, raiders would need to have passed through other Nuer or Anyuak districts of Gambella Region, possibly making use of passage through part of the Gambela National Park to ease the journey unnoticed.<\/p>\nMurle raiders are unlikely to have crossed the South Sudanese border directly from the west or north because to do so would have required them to have crossed through the Nuer-inhabited Akobo and Ulang counties, where they would not have been welcomed and potentially could have been resisted by the well-armed SPLA-IO.<\/p>\nThe Anyuak and Nuer districts of Gambella, on the other hand, were reportedly less secure because Ethiopia’s government had recently withdrawn regional special police owing to inter-communal tensions within these forces in February. \u201cNo Ethiopian military or Federal Police have filled this vacuum,\u201d reported one journalist account.<\/p>\nIt is unclear where exactly the raiders crossed into Ethiopia, but according to a South Sudanese official from eastern Jonglei who is familiar with territory on both sides of the border, they would have had trouble crossing through Pochalla South because of conflict among Anyuak in that area. He said they could have crossed via Likuangole, the home area of the new Boma State governor Baba Medan. If this is true, it would mean that the raiders most likely crossed the Akobo River into Ethiopia somewhere between Pochalla town and Akobo town, an area lying closest to the Murle of Likuangole.<\/p>\nA good deal of planning and reconnaissance would have been necessary for a large group of attackers to make a journey of this kind through wilderness and crossing territory of at least two tribes to reach their target.<\/p>\n2. Who gave the attackers their weapons?<\/strong><\/p>\nThe raiders in the recent Gambella attack were armed with Kalashnikov rifles of good quality with plentiful ammunition. They also wore military-style uniforms and many were seen to have the same model of\u00a0plastic white shoe.\u00a0Pastoralist communities in South Sudan are known to commonly position such munitions, and uniforms are also not hard to come by, but the scale of this attack indicates that these attackers were unusually well-armed.\u00a0Ammunition is frequently in short supply among community militias in South Sudan, so reports of plentiful ammunition are significant.<\/p>\nHallelujah Lulie, an analyst with the Institute for Security Studies in Addis Ababa, told the Washington Post cattle rustling and kidnapping have long been common in the region but never on such a scale. \u201cIt is the magnitude of the attack we are still trying to understand. We still don\u2019t have the full picture,\u201d he said.<\/p>\nThe provenance of the weapons used in the Gambella attack has not yet been determined. Some armed groups in South Sudan have secured weapons by capturing them from government forces, some have been supplied by outside actors, while others rely on weapons left over from previous conflicts. Additionally, a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.securitycouncilreport.org\/atf\/cf\/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D\/s_2016_70.pdf\">recent report<\/a> by the UN Panel of Experts on South Sudan points to a central role by certain security services in South Sudan in encouraging rather than curbing illicit flows of arms to civilians.<\/p>\nAn <a href=\"https:\/\/radiotamazuj.org\/en\/article\/baba-medan-blamed-looting-pibor-town\">attack<\/a> on Pibor in February by armed gunmen from Likuangole, the home area of Boma State Governor Baba Medan, points to the possibility that this group has been recently rearmed. Supporters of the Cobra Faction, another armed group in the area, blame Baba’s militia for recent instability in the Pibor area and perceive him as a puppet of the Juba government whose support base among the Murle is limited to his home area of Likuangole only.<\/p>\n3. Are we sure the attackers were ‘Murle tribesmen’?<\/strong><\/p>\nMost witness reports identify the attackers in the Gambella raid as Murle tribesmen. Distinctive Murle scarification seen on attackers slain in the raid corroborates these witness reports.<\/p>\nHowever, the Murle are not a single entity \u2013 there are several ethnic sub-divisions \u2013 and members of the tribe are serving in several different armed groups.<\/p>\nMeanwhile, some survivors also reported seeing corpses with the scarification unique to the ethnic Dinka among the slain attackers, according to at least two reports from journalists who interviewed survivors. If the survivor accounts are true and not rumor, this would be unusual because Murle and Dinka tribesmen have never been known to raid together, and because the Dinka do not share any border with Gambella. The New York Times <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/04\/18\/world\/africa\/deadly-attacks-in-ethiopia-leave-victims-wondering-why.html?_r=0\">reported<\/a>that victims who related this \u201cexpressed surprise\u201d at seeing gunmen from the two tribes together.<\/p>\nHowever, no photographs have been published to corroborate these reports.<\/p>\n4. How may people were killed and wounded in the attack?<\/strong><\/p>\nThe official civilian death toll from the Ethiopian government appears to be 182. In an address\u00a0on Sunday, Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn said 208 \u201cmothers and children\u201d were killed by Murle tribesman. However, the Ethiopia\u2019s foreign affairs ministry<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mfa.gov.et\/web\/guest\/-\/government-expressed-deep-sorrow-over-the-killing-of-208-civilians\">clarified online<\/a> that the 208 figure included those killed \u201clast month,” and that 182 died remained the death toll for the April 15 attack. Ethiopia\u2019s state media refers to 182 dead as it begins two days national mourning\u00a0on Wednesday.\u00a0The New York Times also initially quoted a \u201csecurity affairs officer with the regional government,\u201d Othow Okoth, with an estimate of 182 victims killed.<\/p>\nThe Ethiopian government also claims its forces killed about 60 of the attackers, who abducted 102 children and over 2000 cattle.<\/p>\nThe Gambella hospital received 80 wounded in the two days following the attack. Although wounded casualties typically outnumber those killed, this particular attack could prove an exception. Survivor accounts tell of surrounded villages, significantly outgunned, with attackers chasing villagers into the bush. In addition, the wide and remote area of the attack likely posed challenges for locating all the wounded.<\/p>\n5. Who is governing the area from which the attack was launched?<\/strong><\/p>\nUntil December last year, the homeland of the Murle tribe was governed by the Greater Pibor Area Administration under the terms of a 2013 peace deal between the national government and the Cobra Faction, an armed group of predominantly ethnic Murle led by David Yau Yau. The peace deal gave the Cobra Faction control of the Greater Pibor Area Administration and made the group’s leader the chief administrator of the area, a position equivalent by protocol to that of governor.<\/p>\nPresident Salva Kiir in a set of decrees in December 2015 removed Yau Yau, renamed the Greater Pibor Administrative Area ‘Boma State,’ effectively dissolved the entire existing administration of David Yau Yau, and appointed Baba Medan as governor of the newly designated state. Baba is a Murle but he was not a Cobra Faction member. Until his appointment, he had also been making his home in Bor, homeland of the Dinka Bor, not in Pibor. Some members of the Cobra Faction rejected the appointment of Baba as governor, considering it an abrogation of the peace deal, but Yau Yau accepted his removal and said he would wait for appointment to another position in the government.<\/p>\nThis situation ultimately led to violence between Cobra Faction soldiers and Baba Medan’s supporters in Pibor in February this year, leading to the looting of the new state capital Pibor. Partly because of this, the new governor has yet to establish his administration in Pibor, and the area remains unstable. Thousands of people have fled from the town into the bush, many relief services have been suspended, and the area is suffering widespread hunger. \u201cThe area of Boma State is suffering from a government vacuum,\u201d said Yau Yau in an interview with Radio Tamazuj\u00a0on Monday.<\/p>\nWith instability in Pibor and a dysfunctional government, areas bordering the Murle near to Ethiopia have also recently seen increased conflict. Jie and Murle communities in the Jebel Boma area of eastern Boma State <a href=\"https:\/\/radiotamazuj.org\/en\/article\/thousands-displaced-violence-boma\">clashed<\/a> within the last week, leaving at least five people dead and thousands displaced, a local official told Radio Tamazuj\u00a0on Tuesday.<\/p>\nMeanwhile, in the Pochalla area to the north of Boma, and also bordering Ethiopia, the army’s military intelligence is reported to have taken a heavy hand in the affairs of the local government, <a href=\"https:\/\/radiotamazuj.org\/en\/article\/pochalla-south-officials-held-spla-detention\">arresting<\/a> virtually the entire county administration last week. The attackers would have likely passed through Pochalla county to cross into Ethiopia.<\/p>\nAltogether, the security vacuum on both sides of the border presented an opportunity to a well-armed and well-organized group, and local insecurity driven by political power struggles has likely further militarized groups recently on the ground.<\/p>\n6. What was the motive for the raid?<\/strong><\/p>\nAttackers took plunder in the form of cattle and abducted children and women, according to news reports. Promise of reward of this kind could have been enough to motivate rank-and-file fighters to take up arms and risk their lives on such a long-distance raid. But survivors also wonder at the brutality of the attack. \u201cIf they had come just to take our livestock, why all the killing?\u201d Asked Bol Chuol, 26, whose child was kidnapped in the attack. \u201cThey kept following people and killing them even after they had all the cattle,\u201d he added, as quoted by The New York Times.<\/p>\n\u201cThese kinds of raids have happened before, but never in so many villages like this,\u201d said Gatbel Guek, 26, who suffered a fracture when a bullet hit his left arm.<\/p>\nThe attack primarily targeted the Gajaak, a sub-group of the Jikany Nuer. The Jikany Nuer do not border the Murle. Raids between the Murle and neighboring Lou Nuer, however, are common and frequently very violent.<\/p>\nEthiopian officials have denied that the attackers were connected to the South Sudanese government and have also downplayed the timing of the attack, which coincided with the planned travel of SPLM-IO Chairman Riek Machar to Gambella en route to Juba. Yesterday, however, SPLM-IO spokesman Mabior Garang said in a press statement that the security situation in the Gambella Region was \u201csuspicious<\/em>,\u201d without elaborating further.<\/p>\nPagak, the base of SPLM-IO, sits on the border with the Lare district, although it is not clear how close the attackers came to the Pagak area. Machar was to travel by road from Pagak through Lare district to Gambella to fly to Juba.<\/p>\nVictims of the raid openly wondered \u201cwhether South Sudan\u2019s government had sanctioned the killings,\u201d according to the New York Times report, pointing to a political motive for the targeting of the Gambella Region. On the other hand, the vulnerability of the villages may have been reason enough for raiders from an impoverished area whose other neighbors are too well-armed to carry out attacks without fear of serious reprisals.<\/p>\nSurvivors reported that some local militia from the targeted communities fought back, killing some of the attackers, but that the defenders were outgunned, since Ethiopian authorities don’t generally allow citizens to have weapons. A journalist who interviewed survivors also reported that some regional police and military guarding a road construction project nearby responded to the attack, but that there was no large-scale response operation in response to the attack.<\/p>\n7. What will happen if Ethiopia pursues the attackers?<\/strong><\/p>\nEthiopia’s government has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/ethiopia-vows-to-pursue-south-sudan-gunmen-who-killed-200-in-cross-border-raid\/2016\/04\/18\/5b074bb4-0565-11e6-bfed-ef65dff5970d_story.html\">vowed<\/a> to pursue the attackers into South Sudan if necessary, possibly as part of a joint operation with South Sudan’s army. But this raises questions about whether and how the pursuers would be able to identify the actual perpetrators rather than targeting the Murle tribe indiscriminately for reprisals. Operating on unfamiliar ground, the Ethiopian military would be potentially vulnerable to false tip-offs and manipulation, dragging it into local conflict dynamics and score settling between national actors, especially if joint operations with the SPLA target ex-Cobra factions or other opponents of the Juba-appointed Governor Baba Medan.<\/p>\nThe area is already heavily conflict-affected, with poor roads and communications infrastructure, magnifying the difficulty of working with civilian populations to identify the perpetrators of the Gambella raid. In previous conflicts with the Lou Nuer tribe of Jonglei and during the Cobra Faction war with the SPLA, Murle civilians fled from towns into rural areas, wilderness and swamps, avoiding contact with the military. Many are still displaced as a result of recent conflict in the area.<\/p>\nMap (above): Map of Gambella Region of Ethiopia including the Lare and Jikaw districts where attacks took place.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\nMap (below):\u00a0<\/em>Approximate territories of the Murle, Anyuak and Nuer in areas near to Ethiopia.<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"field field-type-filefield field-field-gallery\">\n<div class=\"field-label\">Gallery:<\/div>\n<div class=\"field-items\">\n<div class=\"field-item odd\"><a class=\"imagefield imagefield-lightbox2 imagefield-lightbox2-teaser imagefield-field_gallery imagecache imagecache-field_gallery imagecache-teaser imagecache-field_gallery-teaser lightbox-processed\" href=\"https:\/\/radiotamazuj.org\/sites\/default\/files\/imagecache\/slideshow\/Pagak%20indicator.png\" rel=\"lightshow[field_gallery_43948][7 questions about the Gambella raid in Ethiopia]\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/radiotamazuj.org\/sites\/default\/files\/imagecache\/teaser\/Pagak%20indicator.png\" alt=\"7 questions about the Gambella raid in Ethiopia\" width=\"260\" height=\"104\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yau Yau says Baba Medan armed Gambella massacre attackers\u00a0The former head of the SSDM\/A-Cobra Faction David Yau Yau said the militia responsible for the Gambella massacre came from Lekuangole county of the proposed Boma state and were armed by appointed governor Baba Medan. A deadly cross-border raid from South Sudan into Ethiopia’s western Gambella Region […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,4360],"tags":[3489],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27799"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/54"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27799\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianism.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}