19/10/2025
The Neglected Peacekeepers of South Sudan, Anyuak is an epitome of peacefulness yet the community remains one of the most tormented
By D Santos Athian
A community that once sheltered the liberation struggle is now left to suffer in silence
At the eastern margin of South Sudan and the edge of Jonglei triangle is Pochalla county where lives a community that should be celebrated as a model of peace in South Sudan. The Anyuak people, by all accounts and aspects, embody the virtues of coexistence and simplicity. Their police cells are empty, their local courts rarely open, and their villages (Obwodi, Okadi, Ajwara, Batagela, Nyium, Obwong, Otallo, Omilla just to mention a few) remain free of gangs and violent disorder. Families rise each day to work their fields or forage from nature, guided by a life of restraint, dignity, and communal solidarity.
And yet, paradoxically, this most peaceful community stand as one of the most tormented a country where an individual is accorded swerving protection not necessarily from any danger but rather to ensure a buffer between themselves and those whom they perceive and classify to be less important. The suffering Anyuak does not come from within but from their regional cohabitants, oftentimes the Murle community whose choices and practices are incommodious to the entire neighborhood.
For generations, the Murle have been accused of raiding children from neighboring groups, a practice that many construe as their alternative to compensate for low birth rates, but they have their own narrative for it (perhaps justified as culture). Negative and primitive on the face of Anyuak, what begins as an act of abduction ends in cultural erasure, as children are violently assimilated and raised as Murle. This barbaric practice continues to haunt families in Pochalla. The Anyuak, powerless in their isolation, watch helplessly as their sons and daughters vanish, transformed into strangers under coercion and fear.
What makes this tragedy even more unbearable is the deafening silence of the state. The Anyuak are a forgotten people, abandoned by the very institutions that were created to protect them. South Sudan is full of institutions that claim to uphold justice and human rights, yet when an entire community cries out against abduction and impunity, these institutions look away.
The result is a bitter irony: the community that lives most peacefully within South Sudan is forced to endure one of its darkest injustices. Families already struggling to feed themselves also bear the unimaginable pain of producing children who are stolen and repurposed to grow another community.
The Anyuak narrative carries a deeper historical wound; one tied to South Sudan’s own liberation.
During the long and brutal struggle for independence, the Anyuak community stood among the few who wholeheartedly and affectionately hosted the SPLA/SPLM forces. While many communities along that corridor resented the movement’s presence, the Anyuak opened their homes, shared their food, and offered safe passage. Their land became both a haven and a logistical backbone for the liberation fighters.
Today, some of those fighters now seated in air-conditioned offices, holding titles of power and prestige speak fondly of the Anyuak land, recalling the warmth and loyalty they once received there. They tell nostalgic stories of those years of struggle, but those memories now echo against the cold reality of neglect. The very land that once nurtured their cause is abandoned, its people left exposed, and its children unprotected.
Such a tragedy that the caregivers of the liberation are now the casualties of its yields.
Superficially this appear like Anyuak are just suffering from the wrath of their neighbors but deeply, it is not just an Anyuak problem. It is a national shortcoming. It exposes the fragility of South Sudan’s institutions and the hollowness of our promises of justice. If peace-loving communities cannot be protected, what future does the nation truly hold?
In a century where the world’s battles have shifted beyond the basics of human survival, the Anyuak remain trapped in an archaic nightmare; one where children are still commodities of conflict. Whether to blame the Murle or not, is just a rhetoric; The brobdingnagian question is why Nation continues to tolerate such impunity.
Alas, the oppressed (Anyuak) have been further place under the auspices of the aggressor (Murle) who have seemingly earned the administrative trust of GPAA
The Anyuak deserve better, protection, recognition, and above all, justice. Until the state takes responsibility, the silence will continue to echo louder than the cries of the abductees. And history will record that one of South Sudan’s most peaceful and patriotic communities was left to suffer in solitude.
