General Olony tells Henry Odwar to fight his own war

JUBA – South Sudan main armed opposition commander, Gen. Johnson Olony Thabo, has said that the SPLA-IO Kitgwang faction led by ex-SPLA-IO military chief Gen. Simon Gatwech Dual is not for war with President Salva Kiir Mayardit urging senior opposition politician and chairman of the SPLM-IO Political Wing Henry Odwar to fight his own war with Kiir.

Gen. Olony said they have made it very clear during their declaration that they don’t want politicians in their camp and said they don’t want anyone such as Paul Malong, Pagan Amum, Thomas Cirilo and others in the main armed opposition faction saying they are fighting for positions unlike them.

“The whole leadership of Kit Gwang and our interim chairman Simon Gatwech Dual, met and told them that since the beginning of the declaration, we have made it clear that we are a military group. We don’t want politicians to speak our military language,” Gen. Olony added.

“We told our chairman yesterday that this conference should be suspended and we follow the route of peace implementation. We don’t want to engage Malong, Thomas, or anybody else. These individuals are fighting for the seat of the president. We only need the full implementation of the security arrangements and we form a national army and all of us will become SPLA (SSPDF). We don’t want to look back again,” he added.

The controversial opposition commander further said if General Malong and others including Henry Odwar would want to fight the government of President Salva Kiir, they should do that separately and launch their own war, but not to join their group which he said is for the implementation of the revitalized peace agreement.

“If Malong wanted to continue to fight Salva, let him go to Bahr El Ghazal, there is IO there. If Thomas Cirillo wanted to fight with Kiir, let him go to Central Equatoria, the same applied to Henry Odwar, let him go to Imatong and fight the president,” Olony said.

“But we don’t want to see any renewed fighting in the Shilluk Kingdom. We will agree with the government because we don’t want to keep on creating insecurity every now and then,” he added.