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On South Sudan highways, truck drivers face the ‘Wild West’
Saturday April 10 2021
Cargo trucks await clearance at the Malaba border. The Kenyan government has warned its drivers about dangerous highways in South Sudan, following a fatal attack. Photo | File | NMG
Summary
Juba-Nimule Highway connects the capital of South Sudan to the border with Uganda, the main route Kenyan drivers use to ferry transit goods to South Sudan.
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Kenyan truck drivers say thugs mounting illegal roadblocks on South Sudan’s main highway give them nightmares every time they have an assignment in that country.
The thugs, often gunmen, have been looting, maiming or killing drivers, and sometimes burning their vehicles. The excuse used to be the lawlessness created by the country’s enduring war since 2013 but after it formed a government of national unity last year, the question of the cause of the violence remains.
Timeline
1955 – Prior to Sudan’s independence, conflict breaks out between Muslim Arabs in the north and Christian/Animist Africans in the south.
January 1, 1956 – Sudan gains its independence after an agreement between the United Kingdom and Egypt.
1972 – Seventeen years of civil war end with the signing of the Addis Ababa Agreement between the north and the south.
1977 – Oil is discovered in southwestern Sudan. Civil war in the 1980s and 1990s prevents much exploration or development of the oil deposits.
1980s –
Prolonged droughts put pressure on water and farming resources.
1983 – Col. John Garang de Mabior leads a mutiny of army soldiers, reigniting the civil war.