A senior official from southern Sudan traveled to Washington this week to get American support and money for a brutal new peace agreement aimed at ending the country's five-year civil war. In the past, billions of US dollars flowed into the new nation, along with many American attention. But the mood in Washington is now very different.

This time, the Americans chose the visitor, Taban Deng Gai, the first South Sudan leader, and he tried to ensure that the new peace plan would remain.

By its own abuse and corruption – and after only seven years of existence – South Sudan has gone from a poor but hopeful nation to something close to a failed state led by & # 39; a corrupt, oppressive military elite.

Deng has a group of nearly two dozen current and former US officials at a closed door event this week characterized by tense exchange and deviations. He was there to sell Washington on a peace plan signed last month to end the violence that broke the country since 2013 two years after becoming independent of Sudan.

This is the last of more than a dozen weapons or peace plans in recent years, which all collapsed.

"We believe that this peace is not perfect, but of course it is better than [the] alternative, which is war," Deng said openly skeptical officials at the Atlantic Council meeting, a Washington- based think tank said.

Some of Deng's allegations – that his country developed legal rules, had corrupted, and that it was civilians, not the army, committed brutal atrocities against the people of the country – is a mixture of gaspels, muted laughter, and eyelids by those who attend.

When Deng denied that his government security forces carried out these attacks and insisted it was civilians who committed the atrocities. One participant whispered under his breath: "Are you fucking joking?"

State Department and US Agency for International Development, as well as senior congress staff and former senior officials, took part in the event. Some of them spent decades of their careers working in South Sudan. Foreign Policy was also present.

"There have been people who worked South Sudan for many years," said Joshua Meservey, an African expert at the Heritage Foundation. "They poured out their professional lives in the Sudan and Southern Sudan conflict, and South Sudan independence was seen as this extraordinarily hopeful moment. Because it was so spectacularly so fast a very disturbing moment for this people. "

Cameron Hudson, a former National Security Council and official of the Department of State attending the event, then FP said that it was easy to frustrate the room feel. "What you saw around that room was literally hundreds of years' worth of American blood, sweat and tears to support these people," he said. "Therefore, the sentiment and emotion … [were] so charged."

Kate Almquist Knopf, the director of the African Center for Strategic Studies, told Deng that the United States has spent only $ 14 billion on South Sudan since 2005 to help shepherd his independence and speak the emerging humanitarian crisis. Deng's reaction, which made US aid guilty of the strike of the conflict, has obeyed: "This $ 14 billion, if used properly, might not be South Sudan today in the war." He then said he would receive more financial assistance from the US government.

Another member of Deng's delegation brushed the dollar figure and said the statistics were manipulated and biased.

"It is somewhat offensive to all of us who have been supporting South Sudan people for years to say that the numbers are not reliable numbers," said a visibly frustrated Linda Thomas-Greenfield, former US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs from 2013 to 2017. "Americans who support South Sudan deserve us more and I think South Sudan people deserve more."

The sparring, full of emotion and frustration, underlined how far South Sudan is in the eyes of many current and former US policy makers who helped to organize the country's independence from Sudan.

South Sudan is a rare test case of United States aging of a country that tries to help create a new democracy. from the beginning. When the country was independent for seven years ago, after five decades of a bloody guerrilla battle with Sudan, it was received with a stir of optimism. Perhaps there was nowhere outside South Sudan so much optimism than in Washington, where US officials have developed over three presidential administrations over the decades of relationships with South Sudanese figures, fighting for independence.

"Today is a reminder that after the darkness of the war, the light of a new dawn is possible," President Barack Obama said on July 9, 2011 that South Sudan was formally independent was.

This optimism crumbled in 2013 after political clashes between President Salva Kiir and former Deputy President Riek Machar in a violent uprising. It results in two years of political struggle, economic misery and little or any progress on development in spite of billions of dollars in foreign aid, partially robbed by state corruption.

What separates South Sudan from other humanitarian crises, Hudson says, it's American officials for decades have tied up closely with Sudanese rebels-alleged freedom-fought-forced government officials and adds an emotional investment from the US allowing other conflicts to be lacking.

Kiir, the president, still carries a brand-cowboy hat after being given to him by President George W. Bush in 2006 – a small symbol of South Sudan's long-standing attachment to the United States .

New estimates have set the death rate in South Sudan more than 380,000 proportionally higher death rates than the conflict in Syria, based on the two countries' populations. Currently, there are about 2.5 million South Sudanese refugees who fled the conflict to six neighboring countries, including Sudan, the country that has saved South Sudan for decades to gain independence.

According to Peter Pham, director of the Atlantic Council's Africa Center, nearly 63 percent of the country's population is experiencing food insecurity in conditions near to famine.

The conflict is also characterized by atrocities by both state security and opposition forces, including executions, torture, gang rape and sexual slavery, according to the Government Department's 2017 Human Rights Report on South Sudan and studies by international human rights groups.

Last month, Kiir, Machar-now, the head of the premier rebel group and other fellow factions, used the latest attempt to follow a peace agreement after collapsing in 2015. Deng, who speaks in Washington, insisted that his country learned lessons from the last collapsing peace agreement.

Under the terms of the new peace agreement, South Sudan will have five vice presidents and expand its parliament to 550 to include members of all the competitive factions. Deng said the peace agreement emphasized inclusiveness among all parties, something that failed the last peace agreement. Critics say the plan will only strengthen tribal and ethnic divisions without addressing the main causes of the conflict.

"Do not attack it. Do not understand the state of a Western or American state of mind," Deng said. "We are still a Bedouin society where accommodation is also important. Accommodation also brings peace."

The United States Government, in a joint statement with the United Kingdom and Norway which issued last month, said it remains committed to peace in southern Sudan, but skeptical, it will continue with continued violence and block access to humanitarian aid. "[I] An order to be convinced of the parties' commitment, we will have to see a significant change in their approach," the governments said.

Deng's insurance did not look as if someone had placed in the room. Everyone asked him whether the country would release political prisoners, how it would go to abandon war criminals if peace be kept and how it would address corruption and management issues, as well as becoming increasingly dissatisfied and indignant with Deng's answers.

Transparency International, an organization that monitors corruption, classified South Sudan 179 out of 180 countries in its corruption index. investigated which in March by the Enough Project, a non-profit organization holding South Sudan, found that South Sudanese government officials and elites landed the country's oil- plundered wealth to bankroll forces who carried out atrocities against civilians. [19659002] "The reality of the regime is that anyone in any position of authority will almost certainly be deeply corrupt," Meservey, the expert of the Heritage Foundation said.

After the event, Deng got up and walked away, some sighed and headed while another brush crossed the South Sudanese delegation without saying goodbye to a & # 39; s leader in & # 39; a country that helped them themselves.

"It was just incredible," one participant attendance said who refused to speak on record. "I've come to see if they take this peace agreement seriously if they take the USA seriously and it's clear they are not. It's so sad."

"The veracity of this visit and its messages was quite over the pale, "Hudson, former US official, said. "It's not like Syria. It's not like Yemen." We've invested in this relationship for decades. And after all these deposits have been made of political, social and economic goodwill, that's what we left : & # 39; failed state. "