A former senior SSDF commander hailing from South Sudan’s Equatoria region met with associates in Kampala last week and allegedly also has approached Ugandan government contacts for arms, a source said Sunday.

South Sudan Defense Forces (SSDF) was an umbrella group of South Sudanese militias aligned with the Sudanese government prior to the signing of a 2006 integration agreement with SPLA.

Prominent commanders belonging to the SSDF coalition included Gordon Kong, Martin Kenyi, Clement Wani – the current governor of Central Equatoria State – and the late Paulino Matip.

A source close to the former Equatorian commander told Radio Tamazuj on Sunday that the group met secretly in Kampala last Tuesday night. Two SPLA (Juba faction) commanders allegedly took part in the meeting, though this is unconfirmed.

Unlike Equatorian politician Henry Odwar who recently defected to the SPLM-IO faction, the Equatorian group that met in Kampala last week apparently has decided not to join SPLM-IO.

Separately, a source within SPLM-IO confirmed that the Kampala group initially approached them but later decided to form a separate movement.

The group is not interested in SPLM-IO’s bid for national power but instead is preparing to adopt a political programme focused more narrowly on the Equatoria region, according to the two sources.

“Most of our people are victims of death simply because they resist about land grabbing. We cannot continue waiting like that, we have to go and free ourselves from this tyrannical rule,” said the source close to the former SSDF commander.

The group has also approached Ugandan government officials to lobby them to supply them with arms, according to the same insider.

Uganda’s government has a record of supporting South Sudan’s ruling SPLA-Juba faction but recently allowed the rival SPLA-IO faction to open an office in Kampala and also hosted the dissident SPLM-G10 faction for a meeting at State House Entebbe.

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