New rebel faction emerges in South Sudan as NAS splinters

JUBA – A dispute within the National Salvation Front (NAS) has erupted into the open, with a breakaway faction forming a new rebel group called the National Salvation Front United Forces (NASUF).

Major General Kohn Kenyi Lotio, formerly NAS’s deputy chief of staff for training, said in a statement extended to Sudans Post yesterday that he had abandoned the group along with supporters, citing “poor leadership” under NAS leader, General Thomas Cirilo Swaka.

Lotio accused Cirilo of divisive policies that had caused “frustrations, defections, hatred, mistrust and factional divisions among officers” since joining NAS in 2018.

“I Gen. John Kenyi Lotio (Loburong), together with the forces loyal to me in the National Salvation Front NAS do hereby declare to operate independently as National Salvation United Forces free from the National Salvation Front command of General Thomas Cirillo Swaka with the aim to bring along and to unite the freedom fighters who have left the movement as results of bad polices perpetuated by the NAS leadership of Thomas Cirillo Swaka,” Lotio’s statement dated June 20, declared.

He elaborated on his reasons for leaving the group, stating that he had defected from the main armed opposition group, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army in Opposition (SPLA-IO), led by First Vice President Riek Machar Teny, in 2017 due to “deception, tribalism, nepotism, lies and unfulfilled promises.”

Lotio expressed his initial hope for a better situation under Cirilo but claimed to have encountered an even worse leader.

“I quit Riak Machar SPLM- IO because of bad policies of deception, tribalism, Nepotism, lies and unfulfilled promises with the hope that things may improve better under Gen. Thomas Cirilo Swaka, however to the contrary I met the worst,” Lotio said.

He further criticized Cirilo’s leadership style, accusing him of becoming a “dictator” who “forgot the mission, goals and the underlined principles set to achieve the desired outcome.”

Lotio added that Cirilo resided abroad and had never interacted with field commanders or participated in burials of fallen NAS fighters.

“Gen. Thomas founded the NAS movement in the Diaspora, he continues living in the diaspora up to the moment. He has never seen or interacted with his field commanders one single day, He has not paraded or witnessed the burial of those who fell in the NAS battles in the bushes of South Sudan. He tries to control the movement from his briefcase in western Europe,” Lotio stated.

General Lotio was the overall military commander for the SPLA-IO’s Central Equatoria command when he defected to NAS in July 2017, a year after the collapse of the agreement for the resolution of conflict in South Sudan, also known as the ARCSS.

Brig. Gen. Joseph Taban, a senior NAS official who identified himself as the group’s former military operation commander in Yei River County, has pledged allegiance to the newly formed NASUF and claimed to have “also command hundreds of fighters who have left [Cirilo’s] dictatorship.”