It was in Torit, now the capital of Eastern Equatoria state, that the first Sudanese civil war (1955–72) began. Shortly before Sudan became independent in 1956, Equatorian soldiers rose up in protest against a government that had not yet taken office. The end of the ensuing war failed to assuage Equatorian discontent. The peoples of the Equatorias suspected that the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement would enable the Dinka—southern Sudan’s largest minority—to marginalize them politically. These fears intensified during the second civil war (1983–2005). While the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) under John Garang claimed to be fighting for a ‘New Sudan’, Equatorians suspected that the rebel movement would attempt to control their region.
The beginning of Sudan’s second civil war saw Louis Lobong Lojore in charge of a militia force in Kapoeta allied to the government in Khartoum. After the SPLA first took the town in 1988, Garang pressured Lobong to join the rebel movement.[1] Lobong agreed and soon became the coordinator of SPLM/A humanitarian operations in the area. Many Equatorians remained suspicious of the SPLA, which they perceived as an occupying army.
After 2005 and the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), Eastern Equatoria was oneof three states carved out of the Equatoria region. The CPA period (2005–11) saw a gradually worsening relationship between the SPLA and the Equatorian peoples, who complained of harassment and land grabbing by Dinka troops. Lobong flourished during this period. First appointed the head of intelligence operations in the Equatorias, in 2010 he became the governor of Eastern Equatoria, a position he has retained ever since, making him the longest-serving governor in South Sudan.[2] For the first two years of South Sudan’s civil war (2013–18), Eastern Equatoria remained relatively peaceful. The state’s elite struggled to position itself in relation to the two principal belligerent parties, the SPLA and Sudan People’s Liberation Army-in-Opposition (SPLA-IO). In 2014, during the first stages of peace talks, the South Sudanese government objected to the participation of an Equatorian delegation (Boswell, 2021). The lesson for the Equatorias was clear: only military force would guarantee the region a seat at the negotiating table.
The civil war widened to include the Equatorias after the collapse of the Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (ARCSS) in 2016. As Riek Machar, the leader of the SPLM/A-IO, fled south from Juba, he attempted to organize the opposition in Equatoria (Boswell, 2017). Machar did not give the Equatorian SPLA-IO sufficient military resources to defend its territory, however, and by the end of 2017, the opposition was in disarray and the region devastated. Thomas Cirillo, formerly a high-ranking SPLA officer, formed another opposition group, the National Salvation Front (NAS). By the beginning of 2018, the Equatorian opposition was split between the two groups.
Since the signing of the R-ARCSS in 2018, both the NAS and the SPLM/A-IO have suffered military defections to Kiir’s regime. Despite such opposition weakness, Lobong’s reign in Eastern Equatoria is built on shaky foundations. His support base in the state is largely constituted by elites who have profited from his time in office, while the people of Eastern Equatoria have experienced incursions from both the UPDF and Dinka cattle guards from Jonglei.
[1] The SPLA ceded control of Kapoeta in 1991, before recapturing it in 2003.
[2] During the period in which South Sudan was composed of 28—and then 32—states, Lobong retained the governorship of Kapoeta state (2015–20), only to reclaim the governorship of Eastern Equatoria when South Sudan returned to a 10-state administrative system in 2020.
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