The guns that had gone silent for about one year in South Sudan have once again roared to life, claiming about 200 lives in just four days of raging exchange of fire.
South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, was due to celebrate its 5th Independence Anniversary on July 11, but the day instead turned into one of fighting as troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and his First Vice President Dr Riek Machar, started shooting at each other on Thursday following a ‘minor’ disagreement.
The implementation of the peace process is one of the pillars that will help ensure the return of normalcy in South Sudan, and the two men should be made to understand this unconditionally since it seems dialogue is not the pill that will help solve the crisis.
This therefore, means that Kiir, Machar and any other parties that are participating in the current mayhem should be held responsible for the renewed fighting and one of the measures to bring to a halt their misadventures is to effect sanctions including an arms embargo and travel restrictions.
Indeed, the UN Security Council has discussed these measures before and this should be the time to act before the blood of more innocent South Sudanese souls is lost.
Meanwhile, in the foregoing, it is worth noting that that all the stakeholders like the African Union (AU); the Inter-governmental Agency for Development (Igad) and the ‘troika’ of the US, UK and Norway that supported the peace process have come up, condemned the fighting and also called for dialogue between the belligerent factions.
