12/10/2025
'Red Belt' .
Gulu, Uganda Oct 2025 – In a land hungry for infrastructure, the government's October 2022 mandate to the African Resources Corporation Ltd. (ARC), led by the formidable Benjamin Bol Mel, seemed like a blessing.
The task: to continue carving a path from Bor to Gadiang, with ambitious tentacles reaching Akobo, Uror, Ayod, Malakal, and Renk. This wasn't just road building; it was nation-building, or so the official line went.
But behind the roar of the bulldozers and the promise of tarmac, a spectacular, hilarious, and frankly terrifying internal drama was unfolding—a soap opera involving power grabs, phantom HR departments, and an armed youth group that would come to be known, in hushed tones, as the "Red Belt."
Our investigation peels back the layers of this corporate-cum-communal chaos, charting the improbable trajectory of Simon Akuei Deng, then the Senior Coordinator for Eastern Nile projects, from community liaison to alleged militia financier and the unintended progenitor of a private security force.
The Coordinator Who Hated Coordination.
At the heart of the crisis was Simon Akuei Deng, a man whose official ARC title was "Senior Coordinator," a role primarily focused on community engagement and liaison with local authorities. "Coordination," for the uninitiated, means talking nicely and shaking hands. For Mr. Akuei, a man we're told is from Nyarweng, it meant something else entirely: Absolute Power over Personnel.
"Simon, bless his soul, saw 'Coordinator' and read 'Kingmaker'," chuckled, a Civil engineer currently working on an ARC project in a distant state, speaking to us anonymously over a crackly satellite phone. "The Juba HR office? He treated them like a bad smell.
Suddenly, he's building a whole parallel HR field office. It was like he decided the road needed two steering wheels."
The central, glorious conflict erupted over the appointment of the Project Manager. Akuei wanted control, but his lack of an engineering degree—or frankly, any discernible background in structural integrity—put him at loggerheads with the actual, qualified Project Manager. Bol Mel, the ARC boss, sided with the qualified engineer. Shocking, we know.
"I remember when he tried to overrule the concrete mix for a culvert," sighed 'Ms. Atong', a site administrator, eyes rolling in our imaginary Juba café interview. "He was holding a measuring tape like it was a scepter and insisting that 'river sand is faster.' The real PM just pointed to the specification manual. Simon then declared the manual 'biased against local knowledge.' It was magnificent. A comedy of bureaucratic errors!"
From Memos to Mayhem
When Mr. Akuei's attempts to manipulate the hiring process and play engineer failed, the story takes a dark, yet bizarrely cinematic, turn. Stripped of his organizational powers and, critically, his NSS security es**rt, Simon Akuei Deng resorted to a pressure tactic straight out of a low-budget action thriller: armed intimidation on the critical supply route.
He allegedly assembled a crack team of roughly 20 armed youths—all, investigators later determined, from his home county of Duk—and deployed them to threaten travelers and contractors along the Gadiang-Bor route. The goal? To scare staff and contractors into quitting, allowing him to step in, assemble his own loyal team, and finally build his faster, river-sand roads.
"We first thought it was just bandits," offered 'Engineer' "Then we heard a rumor that they only asked travelers if they were working for ARC. If you said 'No,' they'd wave you through. If you said 'Yes,' they’d just... stare at you menacingly. No one was actually hurt, but the morale? Gone. It was the most passive-aggressive armed rebellion in history."
The financing of this 'shadow security detail' was initially a mystery. Our thorough, investigation found that Mr. Akuei was the alleged benefactor, using proxies to funnel funds to the group of Duk youths.
"I saw Simon driving a new Toyota Land Cruiser that month," recalled ‘Mr. K**l’, a former logistics officer, wiping sweat from his brow. "He had eight guys in the back, all looking extremely serious, wearing matching cheap sunglasses. It was eight bodyguards! You lose one HR post, and you buy eight bodyguards. I joked that his personal security budget was now bigger than the road's gravel budget. He didn't laugh."
Professionalizing the Protection Racket.
The story, however, doesn't end with Mr. Akuei being relegated to a frustrated former coordinator. In a twist of classic South Sudanese political fate, Mr. Akuei was soon appointed Commissioner General of the Revenue Authority by the President.
This new, immensely powerful position provided the ultimate cover for his burgeoning private army. The group of eight home-county bodyguards, plus the twenty from the road-ambush phase, now had a new mission: professionalization.
"This is the funny part," said 'Ms. Atong', throwing her hands up in mock exasperation. "He wasn't training them to collect taxes! He was training them to be a 'conventional army' to protect him from the capital, should he ever be removed from the Revenue post! It's the South Sudan cycle of life: start a job, get upset, buy a private army."
The name 'Red Belt' is rumored to have originated from the group’s initial uniform: inexpensive, green brightly coloured tactical gear, featuring prominent red belts for high visibility on the dusty road.
What began as a petty internal ARC disagreement over who gets to hire a cleaner or approve a blueprint has evolved into a highly-trained, privately-financed, politically-sanctioned security apparatus.
The Genesis of the Red Belt group, therefore, is not a tale of national liberation or ideological warfare. It is a tale of corporate ego run amok, where a coordinator who couldn't hire his preferred staff ended up accidentally establishing his own, politically powerful personal army. And all because, perhaps, he was tired of coordinating.
As ' Civil Engineer' summarized: "You think you're signing a contract to build a road. Turns out, you're signing a contract to fund a small military coup. You just have to laugh, or you'd cry."
The author is an investigative journalist at large and can be reached at [email protected]. The content of this reporting has nothing to do with NILE TV .
