South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir has sacked his army chief, a military spokesman said, replacing him with a loyalist from his own ethnic group as the country’s four-month conflict shows signs of being increasingly fought along tribal lines.Kiir also replaced his head of intelligence, days after government troops were routed from a major oil hub by rebels loyal to Kiir’s former deputy Riek Machar, and hundreds of civilians were massacred.
Army spokesman Philip Aguer said Gen. Paul Malong, a stalwart of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, had replaced army chief Gen. James Hoth Mai.
The violence in the central African state, the size of France, has mainly pitted Kiir’s Dinka people against Machar’s Nuer. Thousands have been killed, and more than 1 million people uprooted from their homes.
“Malong is a Kiir loyalist and a Dinka hard-liner,” said one analyst, who did not wish to be identified.
Mai was the most prominent Nuer within the SPLA, a former guerrilla force that became the national army of the south after the end of the civil war with Sudan in 2005.
He had been seen as an emblem of Dinka-Nuer cooperation within the military, and his removal was unexpected, said Jonah Leff, an Africa analyst with Conflict Armament Research.
The SPLA has been riven by defections since fighting broke out in December. Many former Nuer militia fighters who were incorporated into the SPLA after independence from Sudan in 2011 have defected to join Machar’s ranks...
Source: News in Hindi
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