What's behind the violence in South Sudan?
Lee Wengraf provides the background to understand
the crisis gripping South Sudan.
January 6, 2014
SOUTH SUDAN is hovering on the brink of civil war
and humanitarian crisis.
Fighting broke out on December 15 in Juba, the
capital of this newest African nation, which split from Sudan following a 2011
referendum [1].
The violence spilled over from a simmering conflict
between South Sudan President Salva Kiir and his former Vice President Riek
Machar, who was removed from power in July along with the rest of the cabinet.
It began with skirmishes between sections of the Presidential Guard and quickly
reverberated beyond.
Kiir claims Machar attempted to stage a coup, which
Machar denies. Earlier in the month, Machar accused Kiir of dictatorship. Fears abound that the conflict will
descend into ethnic warfare between followers of Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, and
Machar's Nuer supporters. Those fears were dramatized by a massacre of 2,000 Nuer in Juba [2]. Retaliatory killings of Dinka in
areas controlled by Machar's forces have likewise been reported.
Fighting between the national army, the Sudan
People's Liberation Army (SPLA), and supporters of Machar spread northward from
Juba to the towns of Bor and Bentiu, located in the strategically critical
oil-producing region near the border with Sudan. A buildup of SPLA troops outside rebel-held cities threatens to
unleash a full-blown civil war [3] as the government attempts to regain control.
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ADDING TO the instability is the fragmentation of
military forces that existed in years before the referendum establishing South
Sudan. As the Guardian wrote[4]:
While demobilization and disarmament schemes were
announced, for much of the time between 2005 and the referendum, governing
consisted of farming out oil and aid money to civil war-era military commanders
in order to keep the peace. Little
was done to break up old units and forge a truly national army. The
SPLA had become a big tent into which armed ethnic militias with no uniform,
training or shared identity had wandered in order to get paid.
Thus, the current mobilizations on the basis of
ethnicity are underpinned by the crumbling of weak multiethnic national
institutions. As Sudan experts Adreas Hirblinger and
Sara de Simone wrote in late December [5]:
Attempts to create a decentralized system of
governance based on democratic principles have in many places created tensions
between different ethnic communities, which perceive access to government
services as well as political representation at the local level of government
more often than not through an ethnic lens.... The threat of ethnic conflict is used by both sides as a strategy to
legitimize the crackdown on the alleged perpetrators of violence.
On January 3, President Obama announced the
evacuation of U.S. personnel and suspension of all consular services in the
country. Several dozen recently arrived Marines currently guard the U.S.
Embassy in Juba.
Last month, three U.S. aircraft came under fire
during an aborted attempt to airlift U.S. citizens out of the country. Four
Navy SEALs were wounded, prompting a stern warning from the Obama
administration. "Any effort to seize power through the use of military
force will result in the end of longstanding support from the United States and
the international community," the White House said in a statement [6]. More than 100 Marines were moved
into position nearby for a potentially rapid deployment.
The Obama administration played a key role in
supporting South Sudan's 2011 secession from the north. Its goal was to secure a friendly government in an oil-rich area.
The possible breakup of the state threatens U.S. attempts to build its
influence in the region.
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HUNDREDS OF thousands of South Sudanese face a
humanitarian disaster. The United Nations reports that 1,000 people have been
killed--the real number is probably higher.
An estimated 200,000 people have been
displaced.
Tens of thousands have sought shelter in UN camps, and aid organizations are
struggling to gain access to those in need. Approximately 75,000 refugees have
gathered across the Nile River from Bor in makeshift camps, threatening a
deterioration of deadly health conditions.
In neighboring Uganda, Mohamed Adar, the
representative of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in the country, described the unfolding crisis [7]: "It's a very fast-moving and
dynamic situation. We are experiencing significant spike of refugees fleeing
the fighting in South Sudan. We are now receiving about 1,000 people per day.
We expect to surpass 10,000 by [early January]."
"There is no clean drinking water," David Nash of the medical charity Medicins Sans
Frontiers (MSF) told the BBC [8]. "People are drinking water
straight out of the river Nile. And there are no latrines, so open defecation
is happening. Conditions for an outbreak of watery diarrhea are perfect."
South Sudan already suffered massive
poverty before the latest fighting broke out. In the state of Unity, the leading oil
producer among the country's 10 states, almost half of all children are
malnourished. Just 2 percent of
households have water on the premises. Some 80 percent of the population is
illiterate, and more than 50 percent live below the poverty line.
These living conditions for the vast majority are a
stark contrast to the untapped oil wealth that lies beneath the ground. South Sudan is thought to have Africa's
third-largest oil reserves, after Angola and Nigeria. Oil revenues account for 98 percent
of South Sudan's budget [9], making it arguably the most oil-dependent
country in the world.
Disputes over access to oil drove the two-decade
civil war in the formerly united Sudan: Most
of the oil lies in the South, but the refineries and pipelines to transport it
out of the landlocked country flow through Sudan. This conflict
continued to drive fighting, even after independence.
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A CIVIL war in South Sudan threatens to drag the
country's East African neighbors into the conflict--another reason for the heightened
concern of U.S. officials.
Looking to shore up its buffer zone with Sudan,
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, a close ally of the U.S., announced his country's decision to
send troops into South Sudan [10] in mid-December.
To the north of South Sudan, Sudan has its own fears about
disruption in the oilfields of the region [11]. Sudan faces an internal crisis
resulting from continued rebellions in Darfur and the oil states of Blue Nile
and Kordofan. Rebel forces in these conflicts have
ties to both South Sudan and Uganda [12]. Tens of thousands of refugees,
mainly Dinka, have poured into South Sudan as a consequence of these conflicts.
South Sudan's secession created a
massive economic crisis in the north by taking away 75 percent of Sudanese oil,
the country's main source of foreign currency. As East Africa expert Alex De Waal
described [13], this "required the
[Sudanese] government to undertake painful austerity measures. Shut off from
access to the IMF and other international concessionary finance by U.S.
financial sanctions, and encumbered by more than $40 billion in international
debt, Sudan had to face this economic crunch alone."
Moreover, Sudan's problems have been reinforced by
the factional conflict in newly independent South Sudan. According to the think
tank Stratfor in mid-December:
Cooperation in the oil sector is the only sustainable
option for both [South Sudan and Sudan] to guarantee meaningful and ongoing
revenues...In the past, [Sudanese President Omar al] Bashir has accused South
Sudan of supporting Sudanese rebel groups, leading to a dispute over oil
exports. At the time, there was some speculation that Machar and others had in
fact been supporting the rebel groups to undermine Kiir's authority as well as
his ability to placate Bashir and get oil production back online. Continued
competition between these separate factions in South Sudan could lead to a
repeat of these events.
Until this new crisis erupted, international
engagement was focused on the border issues with Sudan and encouraging Kiir to
reconcile with his former enemy, President al-Bashir of Sudan. The unintended
consequence of this strategy was to increase internal tensions within the party
of government in South Sudan, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement.
On top of the external pressure from Uganda and
South Sudan, Sudan is dealing with the consequences of a massive diversion of
the Nile River when Ethiopia completed a new dam in May--this threatens to
disrupt water supplies in both Sudan and Egypt.
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MUCH IS at stake for Obama in the South Sudan
conflict. South Sudan's independence was seen as one of the few visible
successes of the administration's policy in Africa [15].
Pressure is mounting for Obama to do
something before South Sudan becomes the next failed African state. "Humanitarian hawk" Samantha
Power, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, has been lobbying behind the
scenes for an increase in UN troops deployed to the region.
On January 3, the administration pledged an
additional $49.8 million in humanitarian aid to assist the refugee crisis. The
emergency aid, however, pales in comparison to the hundreds of millions spent
on military assistance.
Understanding the importance of South Sudan for the
U.S. requires recognizing the growing value of the region and the continent for
American foreign policy overall. East
Africa is geostrategically critical, both with regards to competition over oil
resources and to the Obama administration's anti-terror agenda.
Uganda under Museveni is a lynchpin to
U.S. aims in the region. It has been a willing supplier of African Union
troops to back up a U.S.-supported government in Somalia. The U.S. also
provides large amounts of military aid to Kenya and Ethiopia, the location of a
drone base.
Vast tracts of oil have been discovered in Uganda,
but they have not been procured. Thus, South Sudan's importance is that much
greater, especially with Washington's imperial arch-rival, China, leading the
way in South Sudan's oil production. In addition to China's National Petroleum Corp. [16], India's ONGC Videsh and
Malaysia's Petronas are the other main firms running the oilfields, although
the French multinational Total has exploration concessions in the area.
According to the International Crisis Group:
South Sudan is very much "open for
business", actively seeking foreign direct investment from West, East, and
everywhere in between. Historical ties may be strongest with the West, but Juba
has made clear that if the Chinese are first to come and partner in developing
the new nation, they will not hesitate to welcome them.
Thus, the U.S. faces a delicate balancing act with
South Sudan, as former Africa Action executive
director Nii Akuetteh explained on the Pambazuka website [17]:
The U.S. would love to get rid of
Bashir and get some more compliant person in Khartoum, and...they definitely
would like it if they were the big recipient of the oil instead of the Chinese. [T]he other thing that is important to
the U.S. is to build up South Sudan as a strong, self-reliant, rich country
because it has a lot of oil. The U.S.
has a number of dictators in the region that are its friends--Ethiopia, Rwanda,
Uganda, and even the Kenyans. So it doesn't sound credible or smart to
me that the Obama administration's policy would be to destabilize the area,
because if they do, the country that they support, South Sudan, is likely to
lose that war.
The intensifying rivalries between international
and regional powers explains the presence of U.S. troops in Uganda, Congo, the
Central African Republic and South Sudan and Washington's rapidly expanding
network of bases. Together, these represent a major escalation of the U.S.
military presence on the continent. According to Nick Turse writing at TomDispatch [18], "[R]ecent U.S. military
involvement [entails] no fewer than 49 African nations...While AFRICOM
commander David Rodriguez maintains that the U.S. has only a 'small footprint'
on the continent, following those small footprints across the continent can be
a breathtaking task."
AFRICOM's funding has skyrocketed in
recent years, reaching $836 million between 2010 and 2012. As Turse wrote for Huffington Post [19], "After 10 years of U.S.
operations to promote stability by military means, the results have been the
opposite. Africa has become blowback central."
With this escalating militarization of
the region, it's clear that U.S. and Western actions are driven by strategic
interests--while ordinary people in the region pay the price.
Thus, fears run high about the threat of further
violence and suffering. As 51-year old Nuer refugee Peter Bey
told the Guardian [20], "We see from history that
the UN has left people behind before in Rwanda. They put their own people on
helicopters and left the people who died."
Over the weekend, U.S. and UN officials were
overseeing peace talks in Ethiopia, but reported little progress. But whether
or not a negotiated settlement is reached in this round, the long-term
prospects for renewed fighting and perpetual nightmare for the South Sudanese
will remain as long as the drive for control over oil resources and
geopolitical rivalries continue.
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Published by the
International Socialist Organization.
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Material on this Web site is licensed by SocialistWorker.org, under a Creative Commons (by-nc-nd 3.0) [21] license, except for articles that are republished with permission. Readers are welcome to share and use material belonging to this site for non-commercial purposes, as long as they are attributed to the author and SocialistWorker.org.
13.
[13]
http://africanarguments.org/2013/10/16/making-sense-of-the-protests-in-khartoum-by-alex-de-waal