As countries are striving for better times in conjunction with one another like in the recent Blue Economy forum that brought together many states to fight for and encourage more exploitation of water ecosystem, apparently there are countries in togetherness to facilitate war.
It has been revealed that Uganda helped funnel European arms and ammunition to South Sudan at the height of its civil war, circumventing a European Union arms embargo on the East African country, a weapons monitoring group said on Thursday.
British-based Conflict Armament Research (CAR) said South Sudan arranged for the Ugandan government to provide end-user assurances for purchases of weapons and ammunition from Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia.
The weaponry, delivered to Uganda in 2014 and 2015, was then transferred to neighbouring South Sudan, CAR said in a report based on four years of research.
The report documented hundreds of weapons and over 200,000 rounds of ammunition used in the conflict across South Sudan.
“We have a paper trail from point of manufacture, through export to Uganda, through diversion to South Sudan, and to the recovery of the weapons on the battlefield,” said James Bevan, head of CAR.
Uganda’s military spokesman declined to comment on the accusations until he had read the report. South Sudan’s government spokesman declined requests to comment by phone and email.
The report documented how senior South Sudanese military officials were involved in this process from beginning to end.
The Ugandan government openly provided arms and troops in support of the South Sudanese military in the war that began in 2013. But Uganda’s role in the transferring of these weapons has not previously been documented in such detail, Bevan said.
More than a third of South Sudan’s 12 million people have been uprooted by the conflict, which erupted two years after South Sudan gained independence in 2011.
The report also documented secret shipments of Sudanese and Chinese-manufactured weapons from Sudan to opposition fighters in South Sudan by air and land from 2014 until at least mid-2015.
Since 1994, the European Union has maintained an arms embargo on Sudan. It extended the ban to cover South Sudan when it split from Sudan seven years ago.
CAR, which identifies and tracks weapons and ammunitions in war zones, said there was no suggestion that the European countries exporting arms to Uganda were complicit or even aware the arms were diverted to South Sudan.
The civil war’s death toll has long been unknown, with estimates in the tens of thousands.
South Sudan’s civil war has caused nearly 400,000 “excess deaths” since fighting erupted in late 2013, a report funded by the U.S State Department said after years of uncertainty.
The report by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine estimated “violent injuries” caused about half of those 382,900 deaths. Increased risk of disease and reduced access to health care contributed to others, it said.
Do you believe the details of the report regarding purchase of ammunition and weapons for south Sudan?