March 2026: Month of Succumbing to the Winds of Insecurity and Massacres!
By DENGDIT AYOK
Wednesday, April 01, 2026
The month of March 2026, arrived with heavy burdens, just as the year itself had brought tragedies and catastrophes that held our breath and weighed heavily on our hearts, beginning in Waat area of Jonglei State late last year.
The month of March came to us as a curse, as it began with the shedding of innocent blood in Abiemnom at the dawn of Sunday, March 01, 2026, in an attack that resulted in the killing of (213) souls, and left a painful impact on ourselves, and made the homeland shroud in sadness and complain with the moaning resulting from deep wounds that refuse to heal immediately, as they require honest work that contributes to achieving peace.
In March, I saw bodies being buried in a mass grave in Abiemnom. Oh! How long will we continue to witness massacres and the burial of bodies in mass graves on such a massive scale?
And before the tears of the people of Abiemnom had even dried, the curse of violence struck cruelly the people of Gogrial East on Tuesday, March 24, 2026, and nearly 30 people fell victim to the winds of insecurity that blow across every corner of our wounded nation.
In March, the disastrous month, violence quickly spread to “Khor Kaltan”, the mountain that is called “Jebel Iraq,” by mistake and whose real name is “Kuli Papa” or “Mount Geri”, located in Gangi Payam of the beloved Central Equatoria State, on Saturday, March 28, 2026. The barbaric attack, perpetrated by opposition forces, resulted in the deaths of between 73 and 86 innocent civilians who were working in the gold mines.
Gold mines anywhere in the world, especially in Africa, represent both a blessing and a curse. They are a blessing because they represent wealth that creates a turning point in people’s lives, lifting them from abject poverty to a world of affluence. They are a curse because the wealth of natural resources is at the heart of the human struggle for resources and social status.
In this context, the Sudanese novelist Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin tells a striking story about the curse of searching for gold in the ancient Nubian graves in his novel (Manefesto Adik Al Nubi), “Manifesto of the Nubian Rooster”. How many young Sudanese lives have been lost in the gold mines along the border between Sudan and Egypt?
Gold mining operations must be accompanied by a permanent security plan to ensure the safety of the workers; otherwise, repercussions are inevitable.
Although similar gold mining ventures occur in many locations around the world, the events in Kuli Papa and Mount Geri differ in their details. Conflicting information has emerged regarding the presence of gold mining companies in the area, with some claiming they are government-owned and that the workers killed in Saturday’s massacre were employed by these companies. However, survivors of the massacre confirmed to this writer that they were working independently in the area, not under any company’s sponsorship.
They also confirmed the presence of government soldiers in the area, but noted that these soldiers disappeared during the shooting. The fundamental question remains: how could these young men embark on gold mining in an area outside the capital, isolated by distance and easily targeted, in a country waging war against itself and its own people?
This is a serious adventure. But economic hardship drove them there.
In March, I saw bodies again being buried in a mass grave in Kuli Papa. For how long will we continue to witness massacres and mass graves?
It is deeply regrettable that we lose young men, a vital force for the nation, so easily. No explanation, however compelling, will ever satisfy our grief. The primary reason for this massacre is negligence and a lack of concern for security.
These young victims, who left their families and went to the mines to work and earn a living amidst harsh economic conditions that plague people daily, cannot be blamed. Continuing to work in the mines after this massacre raises countless questions.
It is noteworthy that most of the victims of the massacre were from Northern Bahr el Ghazal and Warrap states, as well as other states. This has led people to believe that the targeting was based on ethnicity, given the well-known details of the chronic political conflict that has plagued the country for over thirteen years.
The opposition, as we know from political literature, is a potential or alternative government. Therefore, the perpetration of such a massacre by the opposition reveals that the opposition in South Sudan is driven by hatred. An opposition that considers itself to represent the people’s cause cannot be driven by hatred and target innocent civilians; hatred cannot and will not build a nation.
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