JUBA (Reuters) – A disaffected South Sudanese army general who quit his position last month announced on Monday that he had formed a new anti-government rebel group, underscoring mounting resistance to the rule of incumbent president Salva Kiir
Lieutenant General Thomas Cirillo Swaka, formerly deputy head of logistics, resigned after he accused Kiir of turning the country’s military into a “tribal army.”
The military, police and other security branches, he said, heavily recruited from among the Dinka, Kiir’s tribe.
Swaka was one of three top military officials who quit in February amid accusations of tribalism, nepotism, corruption and other abuses levelled against Kiir’s government.
In a statement on Monday, Swaka said his new rebel group, The National Salvation Front (NSF) “is convinced that to restore sanity and normalcy in our country, Kiir must go; he must vacate office.”
NSF would “fight to eradicate the malady that has badly tarnished the image of South Sudan,” he said.
Oil producing South Sudan, Africa’s youngest nation, was plunged into its first war in 2013 after Kiir sacked his then deputy and political rival, Riek Machar.
An ensuing two-year conflict was ended by a peace pact in 2015 and Machar, who had left the capital Juba at the start of the war, returned in April last year and was handed the same position. Continued…
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