The Tinderbox of South Sudan
Africa
by <
http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/author/scottmonje/> Scott Monje |
on January 17th, 2014 |
<
http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2014/01/13/the-tinderbox-of-south-sudan/#comm
ents> 0 comments
South Sudan, the world's youngest state, faces a serious prospect of ethnic
civil war. When it gained independence from Sudan in July 2011, after
decades of war between north and south, the world's attention was focused on
the disputed territory of Abyei. A declining oil-producing region Inhabited
by southern farmers and visited regularly by northern nomads watering their
herds, Abyei was seen as a potential trigger for renewed warfare between
north and south. Instead, both north and south have been the scenes of
internal fighting. Yet, while internal war was not the focus of attention,
the deck was always stacked against South Sudan in this regard.
<
http://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2014/01/06/the-worlds-newest-war-in-t
he-worlds-newest-state/> Civil war is common in new states, especially those
born of long and bloody wars of independence. South Sudan also shows how the
solution to one problem can set the stage for the next one.
The main challenge facing South Sudan is a common dilemma in new African
states. Political scientist Philip Roessler calls it "
<
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2013/12/24/why-south-sud
an-has-exploded-in-violence/> the coup-civil war trap." This occurs in
states where institutions are weakly developed-replaced, in essence, by
personalistic rulers-and national identity is weak to nonexistent, but
ethnic identity is strong and local politics tends to be organized in terms
of ethnic groups or their subsets, such as tribes or clans. National elites
realize that war between the ethnic groups is a potential threat and that
the most effective way to prevent it is for the rulers to coopt their
rivals, that is, to bring all the major groups' leaders within the system
and give them a stake in sustaining it. Unfortunately, they also realize
that bringing political rivals into the system increases their power and
their ability to seize control from within. Hence the dilemma: bringing
rivals within the ruling coalition raises the top leader's fear that they
could use their new-found power against him; excluding them from the
coalition raises their fear that the top leader has ulterior motives and may
plan to eliminate them and their groups altogether, raising the risk of
civil war. In either situation, the side that sees itself as threatened
could feel pressure to preempt.
The background of ethnic violence is long and deep. Most of unified Sudan's
independent history was taken up by two civil wars between the Arabized,
Muslim north and the African, animist/Christian south. The second civil war
began in 1983, after a ten-year cease-fire, yet between 1991 and 2002, most
of the fighting occurred between southern ethnic-based factions. On one side
was the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), led by John Garang of the
Dinka people; on the other was a breakaway group of the SPLA led by Riek
Machar of the Nuer people.* In 2002, however, the two sides reconciled and
reunited into the SPLA. The SPLA, while not particularly effective in a
strategic sense, ultimately convinced the national government in Khartoum
that the north could not prevail. In 2005 the warring parties signed the
Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). Also encouraging in terms of avoiding
civil war, in 2006 the late Garang's successor, Salva Kiir, also of the
Dinka, reconciled with the
<
http://www.smallarmssurveysudan.org/fileadmin/docs/working-papers/HSBA-WP-0
1-SSDF.pdf> South Sudan Defense Forces (SSDF), a southern force that had
sided with Khartoum against the secessionists, and incorporated them into
the SPLA. Likewise, the South Sudan Liberation Army was incorporated into
the SPLA in 2011. (As you see, the frequent assertion that the South
Sudanese had been "unified only by their common antipathy toward the north"
is not true; they were not unified then either.) Then, in July 2011, after a
referendum in accordance with the CPA, South Sudan was granted independence
with Salva Kiir as president, Riek Machar as vice president, and the leader
of the SSDF as deputy chief of the army (still called the SPLA).
Yet much of life and politics and administration, including army units,
remained
<
http://africanarguments.org/2013/12/24/what-is-tribalism-and-why-does-it-ma
tter-in-south-sudan-by-andreas-hirblinger-and-sara-de-simone/> organized
along ethnic lines. Despite the overwhelming problems of poverty,
illiteracy, and virtually nonexistent infrastructure, the majority of the
state budget went to salaries in the expanded military, to assure stability
not by force but by the cooptation of armed forces. The success in coopting
rivals also contributed to
<
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/140617/alex-de-waal-and-abdul-mohamm
ed/breakdown-in-south-sudan> paralysis in decision making. Factions differed
over multiple issues, such as the distribution of power and wealth and
whether to confront Sudan over unfulfilled promises or to cooperate with it
to assure the free export of South Sudanese oil through a Sudanese pipeline
and port. Kiir increasingly bypassed formal meetings of supposedly ruling
institutions and restricted the circle of effective participants in decision
making. Machar made known his expectation that he would be the party's
presidential candidate in the next election in 2015.
In July 2013, Kiir dismissed Machar and most of his cabinet. In December a
shootout occurred between ethnically based units of the presidential guard.
Kiir declared that Machar had attempted a coup, which Machar denied. The
army began to unravel along ethnic lines, and fighting spread. Civilians of
the rival ethnic groups began to attack each other's communities. To be
sure, neither side had appealed to their co-ethnics to take up arms against
the others, yet each side freely accused the other of doing just that in an
environment in which tensions were high, competition for scarce resources
was keen, and ethnicity was salient.
A number of African leaders are sponsoring peace talks in Ethiopia between
the warring South Sudanese factions. It is possible, if not particularly
likely, that the fighting can be stopped before it spreads too far. The
curious thing is that it is not at all clear-from the limited evidence
available to date-that either side even sought this war. The case of South
Sudan shows how easily a political dispute between mutually suspicious rival
leaders can escalate into open warfare given a certain set of historical,
social, and political circumstances.
*The name of the Sudan People's Liberation Army reflects an earlier ambition
to rule the entire country even though it was always based in the south. It
later became a southern secessionist movement. Officially, it was the armed
wing of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM). Although the SPLM had
little existence apart from the army, it later became the ruling party. The
terms are sometimes used interchangeably or in combination (SPLA/M or
SPLM/A), especially when referring to the preindependence period.
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Received on Fri Jan 17 2014 - 17:24:47 EST