Failing South Sudan: First as Tragedy, Then as Farce
Posted on October 4, 2016 by William Davison
International mediators have repeatedly made the same mistake of
treating disgraced leaders as if they’re respectable statesmen, of
treating the problem like it’s the solution.
Festus Mogae, chair of the international body overseeing the
implementation of the peace agreement answers questions. Credit:
UNMISS.
Festus Mogae, chair of the international body overseeing the
implementation of the peace agreement answers questions. Credit:
UNMISS.
It was the end of yet another South Sudan crisis summit at the
sumptuous Sheraton Addis for Africa’s leaders and the usual coterie of
Western diplomats, journalists, and assorted hangers-on in Ethiopia’s
capital.
As usual for the media, confusion reigned about the outcome of the
high-level private discussions – that is until Mahboub Maalim, the
executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development
(IGAD), a grouping of eight East African nations, stepped into the
glare of the cameras.
At stake on 29 July was whether South Sudan’s three-month-old
transitional government would reverse its position and accept a
Regional Protection Force (RPF) into a United Nations mission. The
idea behind this proposal was that the force would provide extra
security in the capital Juba and get the power-sharing deal back on
track. Three weeks before, the militarised city had exploded into
violence again, as President Salva Kiir’s helicopter gunships and
tanks drove his deputy and erstwhile rival Riek Machar and his
outgunned troops into the bush once more.
“The Government of South Sudan accepted [the force]….there’s no
conditions,” Maalim pronounced, after being pushed by journalists on
Juba’s position.
News wire headlines flashed around the world that the international
community had struck its latest deal with South Sudan’s elites. That
meant the resuscitation of a vision of an inclusive, reforming
government in the world’s newest country. But like most of the
diplomacy that’s accompanied almost three years of brutal civil war
for control of the state fought mainly between the two most powerful
ethnic groups, the Dinka and the Nuer, it was, at best, wishful
thinking and, at worst, complete fantasy.
The official fallacy underpinning the RPF proposal was the notion that
President Kiir’s Dinka-dominated faction, which had recently gained
military and political ascendancy against Machar’s largely Nuer
fighters, would allow a third force to redress the balance. This
naiveté mirrored the international approach to peace-making during the
conflict that began in December 2013. In that situation, the peace
agreement that officially brought the war to an end treated the
disgraced leaders Kiir and Machar as respectable statesmen and saw the
same figures responsible for the nation’s stillbirth sharing power
once again. Blinded by hostility to Sudan’s Islamist regime, the US
and others had made a similar mistake in the build up to South Sudan’s
2011 independence by glossing over the myriad failings of the former
fighters who had inherited the nationhood project.
By reapplying a failed formula, the power-sharing strategy reflected a
superficial analysis of South Sudan’s elite problem combined with the
need to find a solution that interested outsiders could agree upon.
Instead of pushing for fundamental reform to make the political system
inclusive, as IGAD initially intended, the final outcome suggested the
rival camps of the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM)
would work together to right their wrongs.
This July’s outrageous violence in the capital not only rubbished that
notion and derailed the transitional government, but also suggested
strongly that South Sudan’s rulers never intended to follow the
peace-making prescriptions of outsiders.
Indeed, there never has been any reason to think the nation is a
template liberal democracy ready to be tweaked into shape by
politicians in the capital – let alone by the soldier-politicians who
had proved their venality over previous decades. South Sudan remains a
deeply troubled, terribly governed, untamed territory where a nascent
battle for state power is violent and ethnic, reflecting decades of
oppression, internal conflict and marginalisation. The continuing
failure to have this explicitly reflected in the world’s dealings with
it risks prolonging the turmoil and costing even more lives and
dollars.
Meaningless truces
South Sudan formally achieved statehood in 2011 after southerners
voted overwhelmingly to secede from Sudan. The referendum was the
result of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended one
of Africa’s longest civil wars in which the SPLM and its armed wing,
the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), battled the regime in
Khartoum and other rival southern groups, some of them Nuer.
While South Sudan had the strong backing of the US and the
international community at independence, it remained ethnically
divided, had virtually no infrastructure, was heavily militarised, and
suffered from a fantastically corrupt and fractious elite prone to
using tribal warfare as a political tactic. It also had large oil
reserves, which intensified competition for control of the state and
lubricated bribes and patronage.
Sure enough, chaos ensued. Machar, the deputy president, was sacked in
July 2013, and SPLM opponents of Kiir soon challenged him, arguing
that the government was increasingly authoritarian. Kiir’s subsequent
attempt to eliminate his rivals led to war. In December, members of
Kiir’s presidential guards attempted to disarm Nuer colleagues loyal
to Machar. Fighting broke out and Kiir accused, with no evidence,
rivals of plotting to topple him. Dinka soldiers ran amok in Juba,
massacring Nuer civilians, while Machar escaped the bombardment of his
house and fled. Mainly Nuer divisions of the military rebelled, as
they had done from the SPLA during the struggle against Khartoum, and
Machar became the head of a resistance movement that was as fractious
and fragile as the nation.
The IGAD nations quickly stepped in to bring the two sides to the
negotiating table. During the next two and a half years of war, the
Sheraton Addis did a roaring trade, mainly at the expense of the West,
as South Sudan’s leaders took regular breaks from battlefield
manoeuvring. Virtually meaningless truces were agreed, violated, and
then recommitted to, as diplomats praised allegedly incremental
progress during every step of a gullible process.
Back in the oil-producing Greater Upper Nile region, where the
fighting was focused, Machar and fellow rebel leaders coaxed Nuer
militias to lay waste to enemy towns − including Bor, which Machar’s
forces first devastated as long ago as 1991 − spurred on by a
narrative of the December 2013 “Juba genocide” against their tribe.
Both sides committed multiple atrocities in a war that mostly involved
armed groups massacring and raping civilians.
Back to Juba
In August 2015, after making significant military gains, Kiir accepted
for Machar to return as his deputy. At the same time, he took the
unusual step of formally listing his reservations about the deal, but
still, diplomats seemed sanguine.
After Kiir defied the peace process by unilaterally reorganising the
country into 28 states amid allegations of pro-Dinka gerrymandering (a
powerless Machar made a similar pro-Nuer proposal to his rebel
coalition the year before), the transitional government formed
belatedly in April 2016 when Machar was persuaded to return to Juba
with a lightly armed protection force.
[Splitting South Sudan into 28 states: right move, wrong time?]
But quarrels soon arose. His chief negotiator Taban Deng – a former
governor of oil-pumping Unity State who’s believed to have partly
bankrolled the rebellion – quit a key mediating forum, allegedly
because he was upset at not becoming Petroleum Minister. Machar
himself was peeved as he didn’t get adequate office space. And the
rival camps had a spat over who would nominate the speaker of
parliament.
On 7 July, real politics resumed. Although the origin of the spark is
disputed, the flame that engulfed Juba for the second time is not.
Following an initial battle outside the presidential palace, Kiir’s
faction used tanks, helicopter gunships and ground troops to kill or
drive Machar’s forces out of town. After the victory, government
soldiers fired into the air; the media reported they were celebrating
a ceasefire. As part of those celebrations, Nuer women were raped at
checkpoints en masse and there were targeted killings of Nuer men in
the capital, according to the United Nations, in a replay of December
2013. Dinka soldiers also invaded an international compound, gang
raping foreign workers and executing a Nuer journalist.
With the transitional government in tatters, the blood-soaked circus
returned to the Sheraton Addis, with Taban Deng now leading the
government delegation. Alongside Deng, who replaced Machar as First
Vice President, was another defector: Machar’s former chief-of-staff
Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth. The day after the crisis summit and Maalim’s
headline-making soundbite, the government’s position crystalised as it
explained that it had only accepted the new force “in principle” and
that all details were still to be negotiated.
[The African Union can and must intervene to prevent atrocities in South Sudan]
Out of keeping with the bland public statements, a Western diplomat
explained privately that the government’s bait and switch tactics were
“straight out of the warlord’s playbook” as he compared South Sudanese
politics to power struggles in medieval Britain. The point was that
while the mediators and the media were drip-fed enough information to
file reports about progress, the government hadn’t actually committed
to anything.
The US tried to exploit the minimal concession through a tough UN
Security Council resolution, but Juba slowed the process as the
political reality on the ground shifted. In the intervening weeks, the
government prevaricated further over the RPF, and the coopted Deng
consolidated his position by acquiring international support. Three
weeks after the summit, US Secretary of State John Kerry admitted
Machar’s return was no longer vital for the power sharing agreement.
[Down but not out: What Machar’s absence means for South Sudan’s peace process]
“Riek Machar is an idiot,” snorted one Ethiopian official, well aware
of the Machiavellian games being played. “He allowed himself to get
played by a shepherd from Bahr El Ghazal.”
The shepherd with 80 wives
Western and Northern Bahr el Ghazal are Dinka-dominated states in
South Sudan’s northwest, and the “shepherd” the official was referring
to is Paul Malong, the SPLA’s chief-of-staff. He is an influential
Dinka hardliner widely believed to have been against the deal that
legitimised Machar and his followers. When George Clooney’s Sentry
project released a report on war profiteering this month, Malong
featured and was described as owning mansions in Nairobi and Kampala
as well as having around 80 wives, which means countless cattle for
dowries.
Malong directed the July offensive to remove Machar and end the latest
bout of power sharing, according to a close observer. “The core attack
that happened around the Jebel [area of Juba] seems to have been
loyalist elements in SPLA led by Malong basically trying to eliminate
Machar,” said the source. The Dinka leadership is seen acting in
accordance with the wishes of the influential ethnic advisory group,
the Jieng Council of Elders.
[Who’s behind South Sudan’s return to fighting?]
In essence, the Dinka have won the power struggle and coopted Nuer
such as Taban Deng who have given up on the fight and been rewarded.
The question now is what new form Nuer resistance will take and what
ethnic communities from the south, collectively known as Equatorians,
as well as the powerful Shilluk and other groups – including
marginalised Dinka officers – will do about the clique’s domination of
an increasingly authoritarian government.
The current outcome is not that dissimilar to the one favoured by
Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, another enemy of Machar, who sent
his army to protect Kiir’s government in 2013. By contrast, the
international community has tried to even-handedly solve the war
through formulaic conflict resolution that culminated in nothing more
than a classic elite stitch up. This wide-eyed approach is not due to
ignorance – international actors within the peace process know the
nature and intricacies of South Sudanese politics – but due to an
institutional bias towards quick fixes and a lack of consensus on more
sustainable remedies, which has meant that knowledge is routinely
side-lined in favour of leaps of faith in the failed leaders.
African solutions for African problems
The structure of conflict resolution in Africa puts continental actors
at the forefront. Broadly, this results in regional blocs, in this
case IGAD, taking the lead and reporting to the African Union (AU),
whose stance is generally backed by the United Nations Security
Council. Powerful actors like the US have an important consultative
and cajoling role, but the region leads the way.
As the pre-eminent power within IGAD, Ethiopia assumed control of the
South Sudan mediation and applied a framework from the 2005
Comprehensive Peace Agreement. But leading actors in the mediation
were not South Sudan experts and struggled to handle the country’s
disingenuous politicians. That played into the hands of Juba’s elite,
who were happy to wine and dine at the Sheraton while pretending to be
accommodating towards their opponents. By appealing for humanitarian
access and getting paper truces signed, the world repeatedly fooled
itself that it was making progress.
Part of the problem with IGAD trying to foster democracy in South
Sudan is that the IGAD region is not very democratic. There was never
any appetite from IGAD states to take on a government that was still
the sovereign, and applying strong sanctions was hardly a natural
recourse for regional leaders that have had two of their members
charged with crimes against humanity and genocide by the International
Criminal Court in recent years.
Furthermore, the region was divided, with Sudan seen to be supporting
Machar’s Nuer rebels due to past ties, a lingering interest in South
Sudan’s destabilisation, and a rivalry between President Omar al
Bashir and Museveni. Respecting – or hiding behind – the mantra of
“African solutions for African problems”, the rest of the
international community didn’t intervene to alter these fundamental
flaws. Any more aggressive moves, such as a concerted effort to impose
an arms embargo or freeze the assets of leading protagonists, would
have required the cooperation of IGAD allies, particularly Kenya and
Uganda, as well as international backing from the likes of Russia and
China.
A history of splintering
While critiquing failed peace-making is easy, offering solutions is
harder, partly because South Sudan has a recent history that matches
its tragic present. The united Sudan achieved independence in 1956
after being run by the British through Egyptian governors since 1899.
The British generally ruled the country as two unequal territories:
the governing north and the subjected south.
Southerners, realising that northern domination would continue, took
up arms a year before independence. That rebellion lasted until 1972
when autonomy was promised. After an increasingly Islamic regime in
Khartoum reneged on that offer, a second Nuer-dominated insurgency
broke out in 1978, with John Garang’s Dinka-heavy SPLM/A, formed in
1983, eventually becoming the dominant insurgent group.
South Sudan’s liberation was far from neat. The SPLM under Garang, a
Dinka from Bor, set out to overthrow the Sudanese regime and
democratise the county. Yet his vision was not matched by his
movement, which was brutal and exploited the population it was
purporting to liberate. That contributed to its first major split in
1991 when Machar and Lam Akol made the Nasir Declaration, accusing
Garang of authoritarianism; a precursor of the 2013 charge against
Kiir.
It was thus a history of splintering and reuniting rebellions that
coalesced into South Sudan’s government in 2011. The national military
was in actuality a patchwork of ethnic militias loyal to their
commanders. For example, the Khartoum-linked South Sudan Defense
Forces had been bought into the fold of the SPLA in 2007, but full
reintegration was never achieved. Its former commanders formed the
bulk of those who defected in December 2013.
Fixing the country
In 1999, Edward N. Luttwak argued that in some cases, it can be the
right thing to ‘Give War a Chance’. His thinking was that if there are
fundamental disputes being fought over, such as the composition of the
state and who controls it, their only partial resolution would likely
mean the reoccurrence of conflict in the future. One could make this
argument in reference to South Sudan. However, given the character of
the civil war, allowing the fighting to run its course would likely
mean the tacit approval of genocide.
Another big idea to address the country’s woes is some form of
international administration until South Sudan is in a suitable
condition for independent statehood. Versions of the approach have
been promoted by Ugandan academic Mahmood Mamdani, who studied the
crisis for an African Union commission; Pagan Amum, the former
secretary-general of the SPLM; and Princeton Lyman, the former US
envoy to the region.
Ever since IGAD resumed its role as mediator, John Young, an
experienced Canadian researcher and author of The Fate of Sudans has
been aghast at the process. He immediately pointed out that IGAD was
making all the same mistakes it did with its stewardship of the 2005
CPA, right down to enlisting the same Kenyan mediator Lazarus
Sumbeiywo.
Like almost all informed observers, Young saw no logic in pursuing the
SPLM power-sharing deal when SPLM leadership was the major cause of
the problem. Now, begrudgingly, given his contempt for the conceits of
the US-led liberal world order, he believes that the option of a
neutral caretaker government needs at least serious discussion for a
crisis he thinks could go on for decades. “As soon as the war
started, I wrote a paper for the US government that strongly advocated
some kind of notion of international trusteeship,” Young says. “I
didn’t have some kind of ideological or philosophical commitment to
that idea, but I wanted to get outside of this narrow box and debate
it to see how realistic it was.”
However, while there’s some logic to the trusteeship suggestion, such
an overtly neo-colonial approach is unimaginable in the age of African
solutions for African problems. It also fails the pragmatism test:
it’s not apparent how armed opponents of the move would be
neutralised, while there are few reasons to think that temporary UN or
AU administration would be anything other than a costly, hubristic
disaster.
Peter Biar Ajak, a former political and economic advisor to the
government and now director of the International Growth Center for
South Sudan, was also dismayed when it became obvious that IGAD’s
plan hinged on an effort to coerce Machar and Kiir into sharing power.
“In basically diagnosing the conflict as simply a power struggle
between these two individuals that can be resolved by sharing power
between them, I think it boxed the mediation into a very narrow room,”
he says.
[Why elections may be the only answer for South Sudan]
Ajak too sees parallels with the 2005 CPA, which accorded the SPLM a
monopoly on political power while failing to recognise the movement’s
lack of interest in issues such as public service delivery, taxation,
and institution building, as well as a history of infighting,
brutality and corruption.
Post-2005, the SPLM used its “blanket authority” to grow a “bloated
and dysfunctional” government with ministries ethnically defined and
the military a patchwork of militias, he says. “When the power
struggle happened, [competition for control of the state] was only one
element of it, not the main thing, as on all the issues of corruption
and grievances from the past, nothing has been done − there was no
justice, or accountability. So all this just exploded and reinforced
the grievances that have roots in the civil war,” Ajak says.
He thinks there was an opportunity at the conflict’s outset to pursue
an aggressive effort to shun the SPLM’s warlords and focus on peace,
justice, reconciliation and accountability. Instead, IGAD and
partners entrenched Machar and Kiir’s networks, making the problem
even more intractable.
Regardless, Ajak now favours an orthodox approach and is adamant that
the power struggle cannot be sustainably solved through warfare. Ajak
believes a renewed effort to transform the nation’s ethnic-based armed
groups into a professional military could alter South Sudan’s
downwards trajectory.
Whether that is the case or not, what is apparent is that the
international approach to South Sudan needs to be underpinned by a
more thorough and honest assessment of the deep-rooted, age-old
problems bedevilling the young country. Until policy is directed by an
understanding that South Sudanese elites are unscrupulously battling
for control of an under-formed nation state – as groups have done
across the world – then the remedies proposed will be insufficient.
More piecemeal pragmatism that amounts to little more than feel-good
churn will do a further disservice to the long-suffering South
Sudanese people, though it promises much for the owner of the Sheraton
Addis.
William Davison is a freelance journalist based in Ethiopia. Follow
him on twitter at @wdavison10.
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This entry was posted in African Politics Now, Making Sense of the
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3 thoughts on “Failing South Sudan: First as Tragedy, Then as Farce”
Monte McMurchy says:
October 4, 2016 at 6:06 pm
Gangsters and despots including those in Leadership who abuse
their fiduciary responsibility to their peoples must be held to
account as criminals.
Henry says:
October 5, 2016 at 6:55 am
Its tragic to assume that solutions that have not worked in the
past will work now. I worked in South Sudan briefly after the signing
of the CPA and establishment of Government of South Sudan; there was
then opportunity to build a nation by South Sudan or a new united
Sudan but the north squandered the chance and made no effort to make
“unity attractive”
While the rhetoric of Africa solutions to Africa problems have
been bandied around, it is becoming increasingly clear that the AU and
regional economic blocs such as IGAD have neither the inclination nor
capacity resolve continental conflicts; from botched up elections in
Gabon, to killing of protestors in Ethiopia and massacres in Central
Africa Republic, it is becoming increasingly evident that Africa
solutions to Africa problems is a hollow rhetoric. Interestingly, this
phrase is often repeated alongside appeals for help from foreign
(northern governments)
The idea of trusteeship needs to be considered seriously; this
coupled with the disbanding and disarming of the armed forces to allow
for building of a professional army that will not interfere in
politics, building institutions for delivery of services will be a
precursor to a stable and secure South Sudan
Tyler says:
October 7, 2016 at 12:31 am
A good article, but one would expect it to close with a stronger
recommendation. Although, I sympathize – I think the reality is that
nothing will happen in South Sudan. It seems no side can kill enough
civilians to make outsiders do anything. IGAD and AU are too paranoid
about the violation of sovereignty or are otherwise too involved.
Outside of Africa, nobody knows enough to care. The situation is
complicated – too many people need to be replaced (government,
opposition). Hopefully they will muddle forward, rather than backward.
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