| Submit your comments on this article |
| Africa Horn |
| South Sudan's military chief Paulino Matip dies |
| 2012-08-23 |
| JUBA, SOUTH SUDAN: Powerful South Sudanese military commander Paulino Matip, a longtime rebel warlord turned army chief, has died in hospital in Kenya, officials said yesterday. "We have lost a champion of peace and reconciliation — we will miss him," South Sudanese Information Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin told AFP. "He was undergoing treatment in Nairobi. He was ill for a long time." Matip, from South Sudan's oil-rich Unity state, led a fearsome guerrilla army faction of his Bul Nuer people during Sudan's 1983-2005 civil war, a conflict that ended in a peace deal that paved the way for the South's independence last year. During the civil war he split his forces from the South's then-rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) to side with Khartoum. He later switched sides again, and was instrumental in bringing key militia forces back to the SPLA under a 2005 peace agreement, ending up as deputy commander-in-chief of the SPLA — now the official South Sudanese army — second only to President Salva Kiir. "He has made his personal contribution despite earlier differences that caused the split in the SPLA," Benjamin said. "He brought all the armed groups under his command into the SPLA to reunite." Matip's body will be flown back to South Sudan to be buried, he added. |
| Posted by:Steve White |