Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 18:31:21 +0200
Analysis: The Bentiu massacre is South Sudan in microcosm
* Simon Allison
* Africa <http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/section/africa/>
* 23 Apr 2014 10:45 (South Africa)
Last week, South Sudanese rebels seized control of Bentiu, a dusty,
ramshackle town near the Sudanese border, from the government. In the
process, more than 200 civilians were butchered - some in a mosque, others
in a church, still others by the side of the road. The extremely graphic
pictures emerging from Bentiu bring to mind images of the Rwandan genocide:
dozens of bodies casually strewn on the ground, forming a carpet of corpses
so thick that the bulldozers had to be called in to clear them.
The rebels, led by long-time militia leader and former Vice-President Riek
Machar, deny responsibility. They know nothing about the deaths, Machar told
<http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2014/04/s-sudan-rebel-leader-rejects-m
assacre-claims-201442123304826564.html> Al Jazeera. "I contacted the field
military commander in Bentiu who told me that such accusation is false.
First of all we respect our people, and the majority of the forces are from
the region and we can't kill our citizens."
Yeah, right.
The United Nations puts the blame squarely on the rebels. A report by UN
investigators said that the rebel militants "searched a number of places
where hundreds of South Sudanese and foreign civilians had taken refuge and
killed hundreds of the civilians after determining their ethnicity or
nationality". This was, the UN concluded, an ethnically motivated atrocity,
complete with radio exhortations to kill the men and rape the women from
other ethnic communities.
The identity of the dead lends credence to the idea of rebel culpability.
Ethnic targeting has been a feature of the current bout of internecine
violence in South Sudan, with Dinkas perceived to be aligned with President
Salva Kiir (himself a Dinka) and the Nuers with Riek Machar (a Nuer).
Initial reports from Bentiu suggest that many of the dead were Dinka, killed
only because of their tribal identification; others targeted included Nuers
who refused to cheer the rebel entry into the city, and some of Bentiu's
large Darfuri population (rebels from Darfur, in Sudan proper, are allegedly
supporting Kiir).
In some ways, although killing on such scale is always shocking, it's no
surprise that such an atrocity happened in Bentiu - a town that sits astride
so many of South Sudan's major faultlines.
The first of these is oil, of course. Unity State, of which Bentiu is the
capital, is one of just two oil-producing states in South Sudan. Oil
provides 98% of the new country's revenue - its importance is impossible to
overstate. Unity State, in good times, produces nearly 100,000 barrels of
the stuff every day. It's been a while since the good times, however;
production has been on hold since the fighting began in December. Since
then, Bentiu has changed hands between the government and the rebels several
times, both aware of the town's incalculable strategic importance.
Another faultline is the Bentiu's proximity to Sudan proper. The border is
just 40 kilometres away, and it means that there is plenty of movement
between the two countries that, not so long ago, were just one. Bentiu is
full of Sudanese, even though they enjoy few rights in South Sudan (some,
such as many of the Darfuris, enjoy even fewer rights in Sudan). It also
means that the town is permanently on edge, nervously watching for any sign
of Sudanese Armed Forces activity that might indicate the end of the fragile
stalemate. Indeed, unconfirmed reports suggest that a Sudanese aircraft had
bombed the town in advance of the rebel attack, killing five civilians,
allegedly in coordination with the rebels.
Yet another is Bentiu's near-complete lack of government services, a state
of affairs it shares with the rest of the country. Power comes from
generators, sewage flows onto the streets, roads are just muddy tracks,
largely impassable in the rainy season. Oil aside, it's not much of a prize.
The same might be said of South Sudan.
The Daily Maverick's Richard Poplak visited Bentiu in November 2012. He was
not impressed.
"Bentiu is a grim, electricity-less, water-less, undeveloped flat, marshy,
hellhole of a town. Shortly before our arrival, it had been dumb-bombed by
the Sudanese when the dispute over oil revenues had turned nasty. In fact,
we toured the disputed pipeline, walking along its length for a few hundred
metres - it looked like a nicely graded mountain bike trail. But make no
mistake, the town is as strategically important as any in the country,
perched on the borderlands with the north, rich in oil, with the massive
Chinese-built oil plant nearby.
"We sat up nights in a hotel with members of civil society institutions,
mostly Lost Boys returned from America trying to make a difference. Their
education and experience counted for nothing, because they had no
connections and could not get work nor access to leaders. When we were
there, the governor of Unity State, of which Bentiu is the capital, had
buzzed in for a quicker visit, but was too afraid to spend in time in town,
and was thus spirited off to his bush hideaway. When we asked a Lost Boy if
the governor - an ex-warlord - was corrupt, he laughed and said, "he is the
most corrupt man in Africa."
"I'm sure there are worse places on earth than Bentiu. It's just that right
now I can't think of one," Poplak concluded.
Since Poplak visited, little has changed. Add a few dozen rotting corpses to
his impressions and you've got a pretty decent picture of what the town is
like today: violent, rudderless and hopelessly poor, a helpless victim of
the petty power games of the Big Men who would rule it. Pretty much the same
can be said for South Sudan on the whole. DM
<http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2014-04-22-analysis-the-bentiu-massa
cre-is-south-sudan-in-microcosm/> simon-bentiu-subbedm.jpg
There are 200 bodies rotting in the streets of Bentiu, a horrible little
frontier town in South Sudan, put there by rebels who claim to be saving the
place. At stake is oil, and power, and the egos of Big Men who sacrifice
others in pursuit of their own petty ambitions. In many ways, the town is a
gruesome metaphor of all that is wrong with the world's newest nation. By
SIMON ALLISON.
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