South Sudan: Stalemate in South Sudan - Violent Leaders, Clueless Mediators
Analysis
By Tongun Lo Loyuong
10 September 2014
South Sudan's internecine civil war broke out almost 9 months ago and has
already claimed tens of thousands of lives, displaced nearly two million
people and left nearly five million at the mercy of impending famine. It
shows no sign of abating any time soon. In part, this is due to a series of
failures by South Sudanese leaders and the international community.
The Intergovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD), the East African
regional body mediating in South Sudan, seems paralysed and out of ideas.
They have extended the deadline for the warring parties to reach a peace
deal, having earlier threatened to levy heavy punitive measures on those
derailing the peace process.
A consensus is fast developing that IGAD may be unable to deliver on its own
promise of taking the peace spoilers, rights abusers and perpetrators of
heinous civilian massacres to task, never mind swiftly brokering a lasting
peace deal in South Sudan.
Most South Sudanese are now convinced that at best IGAD will reinvent the
status quo that culminated in the violent outbreak in the first place. This
is a short-cut to 'peace' arrangement that will see South Sudan's
irresponsible political elites yet again loosely patched back in a
power-sharing framework as an 'African solution' to this 'African problem.'
In the meantime, the fighting continues. The fact that there are few
examples of civil wars around the world that have ended in decisive military
victories means a military solution in South Sudan is highly unlikely. So
why the violent intransigence and the arms stockpiling to sustain it, when
all indications suggest a clear military victory can never be achieved, let
alone that such a means can lead to a conclusive end to the current
political and violent inter-communal crisis in South Sudan?
The millions of ordinary South Sudanese citizens are by now resigned to the
fact that their fate is unfortunately being determined by a ruling clique
embroiled in violent power struggle, who perceive South Sudan and its people
as a wild game - a kill that must be violently scrambled upon to secure a
lion's share. These so-called leaders are clearly more prone to violence
with a view to securing political office, and less concerned with the
already dire humanitarian situation of their own kith and kin created by
their own irresponsible decisions and actions.
There are several complicating factors to South Sudan's stalemate that also
sustain the insatiable thirst for violence of South Sudan's warring parties.
First, there is the culture of violence, death and revenge - part of some
South Sudanese cultural traditions, and exacerbated by decades of civil wars
and fratricidal South-on-South atrocious inter-communal conflicts.
One only needs to examine the repeated invocation of past violent incidents
used to justify the triggering and perpetuation of the current cultural and
political rivalry, to appreciate why the warring parties remain stuck to
their violent course, despite the devastation it has already inflicted on
the innocent and vulnerable members of the community. Revenge is the key
word, in addition to greed and ambition to gain or retain political power.
As the uncompromising prosecution of the current civil war illustrates, the
mindset of some groups in South Sudan, and not least the leadership of the
warring groups, is shaped by the culture of revenge and prolonged exposure
to violent practices, political or otherwise.
The culture of revenge is not only sustained by a vicious and
self-perpetuating cycle at the expense of genuine search for peaceful means
to resolve differences, but also by the inflated egos of its perpetrators.
This leaves most members of both warring camps and their support bases
suffering from what can be characterized as 'superiority complex syndrome' -
a condition that leaves one's psyche disposed to some imagined notion of
birth right and entitlement to rule and a self-perception of being first
among equals.
The struggle for exclusive and undisputed securing of this status, primarily
pursued through violent means, also mistakenly perceived as 'courage', is at
the center of this rivalry and a core complicating factor to the persistence
of the civil war in South Sudan. It is a clash of the titans of egos,
sugarcoated with political rhetoric of a purported struggle between federal
democracy and reform on the one hand, and the preservation of a status quo
ante of a democratically elected and decentralized system of governance on
the other.
Second, there seems to be little appreciation of these violent cultural
dynamics or South Sudan's socio-cultural dynamics, more generally, in the
manner in which the civil war has been handled by South Sudan's regional and
international peace mediators and guarantors thus far. These actors seem to
express little sense of urgency in "seeking to resolve" the political crisis
in South Sudan.
The recent invitation of one of the heads of the principal parties to the
civil war to the US-African summit is one example where South Sudan's
socio-cultural dynamics is under-appreciated.
A grave error of judgment was committed by the Obama administration. That
invitation, which came at a time when egregious human rights violations and
civilian massacres were being committed under Salva Kiir's watch in South
Sudan, not only implicitly endorses Mr. Kiir's poor governance performance
in South Sudan, but also contributes to the derailment of the Addis peace
talks.
After the summit, Kiir understandably came back to South Sudan with all guns
blazing and was emboldened to redraw more of his famous 'red lines', adding
to the obstacles thrown in the way of the peace process. This culminated in
the failure to sign a final peace deal and form the transitional government
of national unity
Third, the IGAD member states and Secretariat have equally displayed their
lack of a genuine grasp of South Sudanese socio-cultural dynamics. They have
also lacked any sense of urgency to speedily arrest the civil war from
deepening the humanitarian crisis and contributing to plunging the entire
East African region into a deeper mess.
IGAD should have immediately held the parties to the conflict accountable
for missing the August 10th deadline to conclude a peace deal and form a
transitional government of national unity. Instead, IGAD has not only set a
bad precedent by extending the deadline, but also thrust its credibility on
the line. It may lead to IGAD losing the respect of both the warring parties
and the people of South Sudan.
If any sustainable peace is to be achieved, and a meaningful transitional
government to restore normalcy and spearhead a national healing and
reconciliation process in South Sudan is to be formed, it must be without
Kiir and Machar and the former detainees.
The transitional government must be a government of technocrats that is
accountable to the people. But that seems highly unlikely considering IGAD's
position of seeking to manage rather than resolve the crisis by maintaining
Kiir, restoring Machar and including the remaining parties accountable for
the current bloody mess in South Sudan in a transitional arrangement.
In short the international community and IGAD are part of the complicating
factors to South Sudan's civil war. They seem to fail to appreciate that
South Sudan is composed of more than 64 ethnic groups and hundreds of tribes
and must not be encouraged to be held ransom by any single one of them.
There are also individuals in these ethnic groups, including in the tribes
from which the overwhelming majority of the belligerents in the current
conflict hail, who are not parties to the conflict, nor intoxicated by the
revenge culture and boast rich technical expertise and experience.
Such individuals are the islands of hope and civility and zones of peace who
provide better chance for a lasting peace and must, therefore be identified
by IGAD and the international community, empowered and entrusted with the
transitional government of national unity.
Moreover, any willingness on the part of IGAD and the international
community to overlook justice for the civilian victims of South Sudan's
civil war will not only fail to resolve the conflict, but would also be
counterproductive. It would exacerbate the conflict in the long run. In a
culture dominated by revenge and violence, this is a sure recipe for future
resumption of fighting, and a stumbling block to achieving lasting peace in
South Sudan.
It is still possible for IGAD and the international community to help the
people of South Sudan find lasting peace with justice and reconciliation.
But it begins by holding current culprits of civilian atrocities and peace
spoilers accountable, to break the vicious cycle of revenge and violence
once and for all, and to foster sustainable peace in South Sudan.
Tongun Lo Loyuong is a South Sudanese peace researcher. He studied at the
University of Notre Dame in Indiana and is currently pursuing a PhD in the
UK. He is reachable at: tloloyuong_at_gmail.com or:
http://tloloyuong.wordpress.com/.
Received on Wed Sep 10 2014 - 10:08:57 EDT