Attachments
Situation overview
The security situation in Koch has been deteriorating since mid Januarry 2021 up date. This followed the cattle raid carried out by the youth of Koch at the Rubkona County. The local sources reported that thousands of heads of cattle were raided from Rubkona County on the 11th of January 2021. In return, Rubkona youth were mobilizing themselves in big number to revenge. However, Koch authority were quick to take a decision to recover some of these cattle raided and returned to the youths of Rubkona. This effort only yielded a few hundreds of cattle and the youth of Rubkona expressed dissatisfaction. The government forces intervene to recover more cows through use of force against the youths of Jahjah of Koch County. On 09 February 2021, SSPDF forces clashed with local armed youth from Logat, Jajah, Jaak, Tongadol, Lablabni and Guor villages. This action resulted into fight between the government soldiers and armed civilians. The clash led into 9 government soldiers been killed, 4 wounded and one fatality from the side of armed civilians. The loss of the soldiers caused further retaliation by the SSPDF forces by carrying out massive cattle mobilization for compensation of the deaths, setting ablaze households in villages like Jahjah, Kurwai, Logat and Jaak including looting of CARE SS facilities such as the nutrition center and Women and girls friendly space (WGFS). On 15 February 2021, SSPDF soldiers retaliated by arrest of families’ members and relatives of families whose youth participated in the clashes that resulted to death and wounded SSPDF soldiers and a number of people were apprehended including NGO employees who were detained in Rier until they pay required number of cattle for the compensation of SSPDF soldier that died during the clashes between armed youth and soldiers. On 20 February 202, a retaliation attacks by SSPDF forces to villages and families of youths that were believed to have involved in the arm clashes in Logat, Jajah, jaak and Kurwai north of Koch town. These villages suffered burning and looting. In Jahjah, of the 60 HH, 9 were burnt, Lolgat has 64 HH and 58 HH were burnt, Jaak has 102 HH and 54 HH were burnt. It was only Kurwai with 35 HH which wasn’t burnt but it equally suffered looting. Sudan facilities are situated. During the key informant, the respondents expressed that Lolgat village is where the facilities of CARE South Sudan are situated. The population also reported gender based violence such as raping, physical beating, burning of the food stuff including cows. In Koch market, the soldiers also carried out surprise attacks by arresting any suspected person to be from Jahjah community. During the focus group discussion, the respondents expressed they are in dire need of food assistance, NFI such as cooking pots, blankets, water containers, tarpaulin/ plastic sheet and mosquito nets. There are also protection needs as the GBV survivors don’t have access to response services like case management and MHPSS. Women and girls are more prone and affected as they remained at the households for domestic activities and they became the first victims. At the time of attack, most of the men and boys were hiding in the bushes are they were the most targeted. This prompted the women and girls to attack with an aim to reveal where their husband was hiding.
Since the incident happened, the humanitarian agencies don’t have access to Jahjah and the Koch RRC advised the partners to desisting from reaching the location due to hostility along Koch-Jahjah road.