A War Called Peace

As one of the poorest nations on Earth, South Sudan suffers from extreme destitution. 

The South Sudanese are eager to learn and to work hard. Like millions more in our world, they need peace so they may farm the land and produce the food their families need to survive.

Religious communities of Sisters, including SSND, Brothers and Priests around the world collaborated to respond to urgent needs in South Sudan. As a member of Solidarity with South Sudan, I lived in South Sudan 2008-20.

On July 9, 2009, southern Sudan celebrated independence to become South Sudan. Although a peace accord had been signed, there were still many battles in Malakal where we had Solidarity Teacher Training College. 

At the end of 2013, tribal factions started a severe civil war to gain control of the country. Four hundred thousand people were killed. Two million people fled as refugees. Almost another one million people took refuge in UN Civilian Protection Camps. Still, two hundred people died every week of malaria. 

In 2021, in a war that is called peace, starvation, rape, and murder continue to be crimes against humanity without an end. Violence, rampant disease, floods, and famine have led the people to plead for international intervention.

KURON PEACE VILLAGE, SOUTH SUDAN

Peace Program                                                                JUNE, 2021 SUCCESS STORY.

It is approaching the 3rd month now since Peace agreement between the 4 waring communities of the Toposa, Jie, Murle and the Kachipo was reached. Committed to ensure that this peace lasts, the concerned communities enjoy fruits of peaceful interactions and relationship through inter-community trade. Since June 2021, the youths from the Kauto and Boma communities have visited each other in Morukomod, Kessengor, Boma, Lorumute and Meun and exchanged goats and cows for materials like sauce pans, tarpaulins, bed sheets and others. This act has rarely been experienced in the past encounters of these communities. However, with the scattered population in the corridor, it is inevitable that peace spoilers do exist but with the laid down mechanisms to mitigate such happenings, such cases have been minimized and solved.
In June, 15 cows were stolen by 4 Toposa criminals in Kessengor but in a space of three days, the Peace Village peace team, Peace committees, the youth and leaders managed to intercept and recover the cows back to Kessengor. 49 Toposa youth drove the cows on foot and were led by 3 peace committees and in return about 20 Jie youths accompanied them back to the Toposa in Morukomod as a sign of peace and acceptance to stay in good relationship. The Jie youths spent 10 days in the kraals unharmed and made friends and gifted with cattle and goats and went back safe to Kessengor after their visit an act which has never been possible in the past due to the enmity that existed among the 2 communities. In early July also, a few youths from Nawoyapak sneaked into Murle area and stole 8 calves. With the help of the Chiefs and the Peace committees, the calves were collected from the criminals and were driven to Boma by the Peace committees. There was joy and true acknowledgement of the peace agreement by the Murle in Boma. The calves were handed over ceremoniously to the owners in the presence of the Acting Commissioner of Boma and members of the South Sudan organized forces living in Boma. While there is already good hope of these communities living together peacefully, there is also fear that if this is not strengthened, it might still fall back to a violent relationship. The Peace village through the Peace department will carry out various intra/inter peace meetings, games and sports for the youth, and local leaders’ meetings to ensure that the peace agreement is reinforced and become sustainable.

Report by Lokii Lokwaar Eliah, Peace Building Coordinator-HTPVK.

UN Protection of Civilians Camps in Juba lack clean drinking water and adequate toilets.

Oct. 11, 2021 Early last month, the World Food Program (WFP) announced plans to stop food distribution to internally displaced persons living in three UN Protections of Civilian Sites in Juba, Bor, and Wau due to a shortage of funding. Presently, they face a crisis without clean water and toilets. PoCs in Juba are homes for at least 37,000 South Sudanese, predominantly Nuer.

Reference: Radio Tamazuj, a reliable, concise source of News from South Sudan. htpps://radiotamazuj.org

BY CARL ODERA - 12 OCT 2021

Western Equatoria: Nodding disease stumps villages and doctors. Several years after it was first reported, a debilitating neurological disease with unknown etiology continues to shake communities in South Sudan’s Western Equatoria state and still has the medical community stumped. 

Prior to its classification, a baffling mix of symptoms, including repetitive nodding of the head and impaired motor functions, inexplicably kept children out of schools to waste away slowly to their death. 

The cases usually clustered around riverbanks, later identified as breeding grounds for the suspected diseases carrier, a species of blackfly. 

The diseases, first documented in the United Republic of Tanzania in the 1960s, then later in Sudan in the 1990s and in northern Uganda in 2007, was in recent times termed Nodding Syndrome. 

Dr. Andrew Marayan – a clinician at the Nodding Syndrome Alliance clinic, a consortium that proposed and currently implements a project aimed at responding to the specific health, food security, education, and livelihood needs of the people with epilepsy and Nodding Syndrome, led by Amref Health Africa – claims that the Maridi County Hospital, where the consortium operates, hosts 1,158 patients.

“We have treated over 400 Nodding Syndrome patients as well as about 700 people diagnosed with epilepsy, since we started the clinic”, reveals Dr. Marayan.

INTERVIEW WITH JOHN GRISHAM (SEE BELOW) IS STILL ACCESSIBLE

Here is the link to the video (edited from the Zoom recording) on Vimeo:
https://vimeo.com/644871928

A generous donor is matching donations flowing from the webinar. So share this widely with friends and family. Donations can be made on our website. https://solidarityfriends.org/donate/

Oct. 22, 2021 A new comment directly from South Sudan, “If you speak of Human Rights here, you disappear . . .”

Oct. 24, 2021 Gripping, tragic news of a coup in Khartoum. Sudan military dissolves transitional government in apparent coup https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2021/1025/1255711-sudan/

Dec. Flooding during the last two- three years throughout two vast states, Jonglei and Unity, South Sudan

The world's newest nation, South Sudan, is both drying up and drowning
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/06/africa/south-sudan-floods-climate-cmd-intl/index.html

Two very significant articles born of the wisdom of tribal life in South Sudan. These insights offer practical ways forward to real peace.

The first was written by Gregor Schmidt, Comboni Missionary, November 2021 

Contact: gregor.bogdong@gmail.com

I have lived in South Sudan among pastoralists for the last 13 years (3 years among the Mundari and 10 years among the Nuer). It is my recommendation for outsiders NOT to look at South Sudan as a nation-state. That was an imposition from the international community. The local people accepted it in order to reach independence from Khartoum. Consider the 64 ethnic groups like autonomous entities that need to find a mutual agreement like the sovereign states of the European Union need to collaborate with respect and diplomacy in order to move in the same direction. Membership in the EU is voluntary and the example of Brexit shows that the Union is fragile because none of the member states can be forced to submit to agreements against their convictions. In the same way, the ethnic groups in South Sudan won’t accept to be forced to submit to a corrupt government and rather fight for their interests and rights. Because there is no exit-paragraph in the South Sudanese constitution (like the EU offers an orderly exit) people fight with weapons for their interests and survival. 

If we analyze what keeps European countries willing to cooperate for their mutual benefit, we might find the key to a model of a peaceful, multi-ethnic nation in South Sudan. A solution of the diverging interests can only be found if we abandon the concept of a nation-state where there is a central government that would care for all its citizens equally. “One person, one vote” does not work, as I will explain below. Instead of keeping the illusion that elections could express the will of the people and that there could be a “neutral” administration serving its citizens indiscriminately, one should rather focus on how the various ethnic groups can have a just representation in the running of this country and have a fair share in the distribution of wealth and development. 

These are my recommendations that I will back up with facts on the ground. 

Ethnic Affiliation and the Absence of a Functional State 

In the media one often hears that the current conflict stems primarily from a power struggle within the ruling SPLM party where politicians are “utilizing” the ethnic affiliation for their goals. It is the wish of the international community that this be the case, because it allows observers to distinguish between “bad” politicians and “innocent” civilians. While the political power struggle certainly is to blame, I will rather show in this analysis that ethnic conflicts have always been there and that they come to the surface also in the way politics is being done. Instead of commenting on recent events, my aim is to explain how and why the ethnic affiliation plays such an important role in the lives of the people here and why there are no “innocent civilians”. Ethnic affiliation is based on language because the cultures of various pastoralist groups in South Sudan are quite similar. (In this report, I only refer to pastoralists, not to the more peaceful sedentary population.) The categories “tribe” or “ethnic group” are problematic definitions given by outsiders to create taxonomies. For example, the Dinka and Nuer originate from one group. 

Before describing ethnic affiliations in South Sudan, let’s look at the Western model of society. All of us have the need for safety and a functioning judiciary. The modern secular state provides the framework in which every citizen has access to safety and justice – at least in principle. If we criticize the state, we speak against distortions or abuses within the system, but rarely the state in its entirety, because in general most people benefit from the services the state provides. And this is the legitimacy of its existence: that the state serves its citizens. But let us not forget that it took centuries of painful social and political upheavals in Europe until the modern state has become able to provide for the basic needs which, in former times, were fulfilled by one’s clan (extended family) or tribe. So, why can’t people in African countries forget their ethnic identities and just live as citizens? Because, in many places, the state is not a reliable institution and has never been. 

In South Sudan, the state always has been an intruder. First came the British colonialists, then the Arabs who treated blacks as second-class citizens or enslaved them. The current government has allowed it to happen that a third of the state revenues (or more?) went into private pockets of politicians since 2005. Almost no service that one can expect to receive from one’s government is offered (e.g. infrastructure, health care). Or, if it is offered, it is implemented poorly (e.g. education). The Arabs never hid their malicious intentions, so there didn’t arise false expectations. In the current situation, however, the people are disappointed with the newly founded state because it hasn’t kept its promises. Instead of receiving reliable services, the people need to fear unpaid soldiers and criminal gangs who extort or threaten. They also don’t understand why to pay taxes if that money is used for an administration that doesn’t function. 

Because people cannot trust the state institutions, they rely on family and clan to survive since time immemorial. The traditional pastoralist society works like this: Security and access to wealth (resources) are provided by a clan system and alliances which are formed through marriages. There is an African proverb: Because we are, I am. This refers to the immediate relationships that support an individual. It ensures survival in a hostile environment. In Europe, relationships and friendships are optional. It even happens that a person may severe contact with the parents and siblings because it is possible to care for oneself in the modern state. Let me describe the reality among the Nuer where I live, but it also applies to the Dinka and other pastoralists: a man cannot rely on anything except that his brothers and grown-up sons will defend him and his possessions with their very lives. Furthermore, only the clan will look after him in old age. Therefore, a Nuer will always support his brother, not matter whether this brother is right or wrong. He will also defend his clan without compromise against other clans. This is also the reason why so many Nuer wish that Riek Machar is successful, regardless of his rightness or wrongness. What people agree on is that through him the Nuer will have a voice and access to the nation’s revenues. 

For almost all people in South Sudan, the ethnic affiliation is more important than the national identity. It is a relational network which is difficult to leave, even if one wishes to. The pressure of the relatives is extremely intense. When someone earns money, there are many relatives asking for a share. How will a politician who manages state funds react in this context? When it comes down to it, he will rather betray the State than betray his clan. That, which is generally characterized as corruption and nepotism, is the way through which the various ethnic groups ensure that their members are taken care of. The preference for one’s own group and the resulting conflicts – that has always been around. This pattern of behavior continues to be exhibited when one becomes a politician or administrator. Politicians do not “abuse” their power; they simply do not have an idea of the concept of a NEUTRAL state composed of EQUAL citizens because of their background, which is for most South Sudanese the pastoralist culture of time immemorial and half a century of guerrilla war. Therefore, I disagree when the UN or BBC claim that the conflict stems primarily from a power struggle of greedy politicians and generals, and not from an ethnic struggle. On one hand, it is true that the escalation of events was caused by decisions made by certain politicians and other influential people. On the other hand, these individuals are fully rooted in their ethnic groups. Individual actions arise not just from desire for power; they follow an “ethnic” logic. 3 

The Difficulty of a Democratic Reform 

When we hear the word „democratic“, we associate it with a social system in which citizens act as individuals and take informed decisions based on policy options (e.g. different party programs). In South Sudan most people have a collective world view. The clan and unwritten traditions are defining instances, not the personal opinion. An institutional political reform won’t amount to much when politicians and voters are encased in their traditional mindset. 

During the elections in 2010, I was living among the Mundari in Tali. There, the elders decided for all the registered voters what they should vote for. Because 98% of the people are illiterate in that region, an assistant was in the ballot box to mark the ballots for each voter. The result was that all Mundari in Tali voted the same. Later, the elections were recognized by the international community as valid and representing the will of the people. 

A functional democracy needs the idea of the individual person as political subject as well as a certain level of education. Otherwise it’s all a farce, since a political decision-making process cannot take place. In South Sudan only one in four people can read. Women have even less access to education. It is three times more likely that a teenage girl will get pregnant and die due to complications during child birth than that she finishes school. Regardless of any political reform, the perspective of women won’t be present in politics for years to come. 

Because the establishment of a functional democracy lies far ahead in the future, I propose to focus now on the rights of ethnic groups and protection of their interests. Let the EU be a potential political model for the multi-ethnic society in South Sudan. The EU works because its president has limited power. A fair representation of all countries is guaranteed in the legislative and the executive. Every EU country has veto-power. Furthermore, money is channeled from richer regions to poorer ones. Let us imagine that the EU would follow South Sudanese politics: The German chancellor – from the largest “tribe” – would govern the EU by decree and ignore the Legislative. He/she would not coordinate with the parliament in Brussels, but follow the advice of a German “council of elders” (in South Sudan the “Jieng Council” of the Dinka). Germans would take key positions in the EU; other Europeans could only become ministers when the Germans allow it. The German chancellor as leader of the EU would appoint the heads of state in other European countries (in South Sudan, the president appoints governors). Funds would be channeled to Germany, particularly to regions where the politicians come from. How long would this Union hold together? 

It does not work to create a state according to Western standards with a secular constitution and a democratic voting system (each adult one vote) as long as the people think and act along tribal lines. This is not a complaint. People simply don’t know any differently. In this situation, it is more relevant to ensure fair representation of ethnic groups, rather than believing that the individual votes of adult citizens for the next president would make this country “democratic”. 

Eight Behavioral Patterns on the Local Level which Fuel the National Conflict 

If you examine clan behavior of pastoralists at the local level and transfer it to the national level, the dynamics of the conflict become comprehensible. I present them in 8 points: 

1. People trust a person more, the closer they are related to him/her. This fact has been explained above in this report. 

2. The obligation to provide exclusively for your own clan and close relatives. Outside observers complain that politicians steal from their citizens whom they are supposed to lead and protect. But as insiders, it makes perfect sense since the mindset of the tradition – the duty to provide for one’s family – overrides the modern mindset of being impartial administrators for the common good of society. In the traditional culture, there was NO communal system (at least not among Nuer and Dinka) by which the leaders collected taxes and did something with that income to benefit the public. Local chiefs were NOT responsible for distributive justice or investments; they were mediators of conflict between autonomous clans who were self-sustaining and self-reliant. Each clan took care of itself. 

The grand theft on the national level fits in the context of a traditional culture which treats oil revenues as a “hunted gazelle” which is shared only among one's own clan members. Others are left out, unless one needs to bribe or silence them. The state institutions are run as a clan enterprise and kleptocracy. The President is controlled by the Dinka Jieng Council and told by them how to fasten the power grip over the other ethnic groups. 

3. The social status of a man rises by having more cows/wives/children. In the traditional culture, there is no relevant social distinction between men, except the number of cows, women and children. It is accepted and even expected that a chief or a leader distinguishes himself by having more of cows, women and children than the average man. Today, the leading elite are the politicians, generals and war heroes, and it is logical to them and their followers that they must own more than the rest of the population, including wives (e.g. General Paul Malong has over 100 wives; General Gabriel Tang-Ginye had accumulated 19 wives until he was killed). 

One can observe this behavior even with men who are employed by an NGO. One might think that they have adopted a modern value system, especially because NGOs constantly talk about gender equality and women’s rights. But the NGO salaries in Fangak County are mainly invested in marrying as many women as possible. 

4. Traditionally, there is no moral evil in killing cattle-keepers from another ethnic group during a cattle raid. Just don't get caught. The shepherds are killed so that they don’t sound the alarm. Our concept of universal human rights which apply equally to each human being is an intellectual construct. You could come close to that concept by believing in a god who sets the standard. But the traditional religion does not have advice that goes beyond one's own group. Harmony is sought within. With outsiders, people establish strategic alliances. Hospitality for guests/foreigners, though, is of high value. But universal human rights are a foreign concept. 

5. Any man can legitimately be killed as a representative of his group. In the case of revenge-killings, there is no need to find the perpetrator. Any male relative or member of the tribe is good enough to be killed. 

At our Comboni Mission in Tali (Terakekka County among the Mundari), there was a soldier’s battalion with mixed members before the civil war. When war broke out, the Nuer soldiers attempted a mutiny and planned to kill the Dinka soldiers. But the plan was discovered and the Nuer soldiers were executed for treason. They had their wives and families with them living in Tail. The Dinka soldiers wanted to kill all the boys of the Nuer, too, because it is Nuer and Dinka tradition that a son has to revenge the killing of his father (for whatever reason), which means that in 20 years those boys will all kill unknown Dinka men in compensation for their loss. The Dinka soldiers knew this because they would act in the same way. In the end, the Mundari elders were able to save those boys from being killed, because the soldiers were not in their homeland. This episode illustrates well how Dinka and Nuer look at each other not as individuals but as representatives of a different, potentially hostile group. 5 

There are courageous individuals of the Dinka, the Nuer and other ethnic groups who reach out to rival groups (both inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic) to work for peace and reconciliation. But often, they are attacked by their own people and accused of being with the other side. Unfortunately, individual voices hardly change the direction of current events in South Sudan. Hopefully, they will be remembered as men and women of peace in the future. 

6. The tit-for-tat killings. A revenge killing in South Sudan is a Tit for a Tat. One life for one life among clans. If you cannot count the dead anymore – like in this civil war – the thirst for revenge and restitution is unlimited. That was clearly the dynamic of 2014: On the order of the government, security forces killed thousands of Nuer civilians in Juba in December 2013. As a “tat”, the IO attacked Malakal in December and Bor in January. As a “tit”, the government let Leer, the birth town of Riek Machar, be attacked in February by the JEM from Dafur. As a “tat”, the IO attacked Bentiu in April, massacring the Dafurian traders to take revenge on the JEM (compare with point 5). As a “tit”, the government attacked the Nuer IDP camp outside Bor in June. As a “tat”, the IO attacked an IDP camp near Akobo in July where there were Dinka hiding from the Nuer. After that, the war became chaotic. In all these instances, BBC claimed that each attack was “without cause/reason”. But it was a logical chain of events. 

In each instance, when the Nuer forces had a victory in 2014, the people in Old Fangak cheered as in a football match when one’s team scores a goal. The sub-tribe of the president (Warrap State) did the same when the government had the upper hand. 

There is a disturbing observation: While traditional tit-for-tat killings follow a code of conduct (e.g. only men are killed, enemies are not attacked while sleeping at night, etc.), the current conflict manifests a new level of violence and atrocities not known to traditional conflicts. It now includes killing women and children, mass rape, mutilating and sexually molesting dead bodies, refusal to allow to bury the bodies of the dead, hate speech and incitement on social media, etc. 

Another point to remember for the future: The massacre of thousands of Nuer in Juba in December 2013 was a revenge for 1991 when Riek Machar’s troops killed about 2000 Dinka in Bor. That was 22 years before. The Nuer can also wait for 22 years to hit back. And they will when they feel strong enough. The international community will say that the future massacre is without cause. But it has a cause, which is the humiliation of the Nuer in this current war. 

7. Written agreements and laws don’t count much. South Sudan is 75% illiterate, in my region over 95% of the local population. The traditional oral culture is bound together by an unwritten code of behavior that people understand by intuition. This is what people follow. A signature under a document means only something as long as they agree to it. When it becomes a disadvantage, an official document, even a law, might be ignored, unless the other party of the contract has power to back up its claims by force. This does NOT mean that people are not reliable. It only means that binding consensus is not found the way Western culture works (laws, written statements and signatures) but through sincere negotiation, group consensus and the slaughter of an animal. The shedding of blood is the binding element and the witness. If that happens, a Nuer or Dinka will be absolutely loyal to his word. 

The international community has tried several times to create peace in South Sudan by letting the parties sign documents. The agreements are not worth the paper they were signed on. For the government and IO it was and it is mainly about TACTICS to appease the donor community and make outsiders BELIEVE that there is progress. But if there were true progress, it would show itself not only in their signatures. Progress would occur, for example, if the government would restitute confiscated land and property to people from other ethnic groups who have been displaced (in particular Greater Equatoria Region), which has not happened until today. 6 

Progress would occur, if the training of private security forces on the president’s farm in Luri would stop. You would know that Dinka and Nuer are truly reconciled when they slaughter a bull publicly, following a traditional rite of reconciliation. As long as this has not happened, it is all about tactics following the script of “Game of Thrones”, buying time for revenge. South Sudanese leaders are very good in deceiving the foreigners. In my observation, they play with the ignorance of the international community. 

There are several examples of successful inter-ethnic reconciliation among pastoralists that we can learn from, e.g. the Holy Trinity Peace Village in Kuron, Eastern Equatoria, an initiative of Bishop Paride Taban, and the People to People Peace Process in Wunlit, organized by the churches in the late 1990s. These examples show that pastoralists need to engage in peace-making and reconciliation mechanisms which are found in their traditions, not a script of international diplomacy that pushes with a carrot (financial aid) and a stick (sanctions) and ignores the specific historical and cultural reality of South Sudanese people. Co-existence and sharing are possible if it is done in a way that people can follow. 

8. The lack of sustainable planning among pastoralists (semi-nomads). Cattle-keepers take and use what they find – what nature provides – without thinking of the future. They move where the grass grows and leave a place when the grass is eaten. The last giraffe was seen in Old Fangak about 20 years ago. Instead of preserving rare wild life, the people slaughtered it immediately – as they do with any big animal – not considering that they might never see a giraffe again. In the same way, state funds are misused as if there was no tomorrow. The government diverts international donor money. If this stream dries up, they will look for another source as they look for new grazing land. The last thing they would do is to build up an income-generating economy and a national production sector that sustains itself without international help. 

I think the government's manoeuvre with the peace agreement is a trick to keep the money of the UN and its aid agencies flowing into the country for as long as possible. Hundreds of millions of dollars in aid are being flushed into South Sudan, of which more than half are getting lost in the system. The government knows the Western countries have a “helper syndrome”, and it knows how to “milk the cow”. The aid system is a bottomless pit that will only create dependencies and a kleptocracy for decades to come. 

Conclusion and Recommendation 

I don’t want to be pessimistic with this report. Instead, my aim is to prevent the international community from assisting in a “stillbirth” by applying an inappropriate methodology of nation-building. 

My application of local clan behavior of pastoralists explains many aspects of the national conflict. I wanted to disprove with my report the narrative that "bad" politicians have mislead a "peace-minded, civilian" population. The South Sudanese are all in this together, all in the same boat. It is important to understand and accept the violent pastoralist culture, which exists since biblical times, in its own right. Otherwise, international institutions will propose something that does not work. 

The BBC denied for the first 2 years of the conflict that it was ethnic, and later spoke of a political power struggle with "ethnic undertones". My point is that the dynamic of the conflict (not the particular events or decisions) becomes predictable because of the "cultural DNA" which is so deeply embedded in the hearts of all persons that the parties of the conflict and individuals cannot escape this mechanism. If outsiders come with concepts of "human rights" or "civilians" or "South Sudanese citizens" or "accountability" or “democratic reform” or whatever other NGO-talk, and ignore how deep a person is embedded in his mindset of clan and (sub-)tribe loyalty, they behave like Martians who attempt to judge the terrestrial population by extra-terrestrial standards. 

My personal experience and expertise are about the Nuer and their relationship with the Dinka. This is the focus of my report. The other ethnic groups, in particular the Greater Equatoria Region, have their own view on this conflict and probably their own ways of conflict solving. Their voices need to be heard and their position has to be understood because they perceive both, Dinka and Nuer, as a threat. Historically, conflicts between Equatorians and pastoralists were worse than those between different pastoralist groups. 

Generally, I think we could learn from multi-national institutions like the EU. What makes it possible that sovereign nations cooperate in peace? If you agree that the Polish and the Dutch cannot be ruled by a German chancellor, but Poland, the Netherlands and Germany can forge a union, reflect what that implies for the ethnic groups in South Sudan where the president has enormous power. As European nation-states enter freely in cooperation on equal terms and reap mutual benefits in the EU, only in this way the South Sudanese people will find unity and prosperity. 

I believe that, for the time being, it is the first priority to ensure that ethnic groups are represented fairly at all levels of decision making in South Sudan on issues which affect them directly. Let leadership and power sharing within each ethnic group be organized according to traditional customs of forming a group consensus. It is my assessment that the international community wastes time to follow a script of nation-building using as a standard Western democracies with an educated population. Administrations of Western states have an obligation to serve their citizens. We have internalized this state-citizen-relationship. It is an illusion to believe that a central government in South Sudan would do that in the near future. Therefore, wherever reasonable, state funds should NOT be administered by the central government but locally, where there is an interest to invest and the possibility to control administrators and politicians. The ethnics groups (or sub-tribes) should be responsible for distributive justice for their members. Within these groups, there might occur corruption, too. But people of an ethnic group or sub-tribe are better prepared to hold their local leaders accountable compared to the current situation where the ruling elite is far removed from the control of the people. 

My approach fortifies the ethnic order for the time being. But this type of thinking or acting cannot be overcome by denying it. Instead, the problems that go along with it should be addressed openly. No one should be made to feel ashamed that his/her actions are influenced by one’s ethnicity. Anything else would be hypocrisy. In so far the state reliably fulfils the basic needs of its citizens in the future, and when cultural attitudes have changed through access to general education, the importance of one’s ethnic background will lessen on its own. But it will take several generations. 

That is my conclusion of living almost 13 years in this country. 

The second article is “Death by Peace: How South Sudan’s Peace Agreement Ate the Grassroots”

"It is the peace agreement that is the problem... The reality is that
the current disorder is the state that the peace agreement has built.
It is not an aberration. Kiir’s regime has created a stable form of
disorder: a type of centralized fragmentation that will prove to be a
durable and disastrous way of ruling South Sudan... No one believes in
this peace agreement; it is simply that the diplomats lack the
imagination and the political will to look beyond it.

By Joshua Craze and Ferenc David Marko January 6, 2022
African Arguments

From Washington DC to Juba, South Sudan’s capital, diplomats fret
about the unimplemented parts of a peace agreement that was signed in
2018, and which should have ended conflict in the country. A national
unified army remains to be formed, and the legislative and
constitutional work that would be needed before prospective elections
in 2023 has barely begun. Never mind that in many parts of the
country, violence has actually increased since the signing of the
Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the
Republic of South Sudan (R-ARCSS) – an acronym as unpronounceable as
its clauses are unimplementable. For diplomats, it’s the only game in
town. In November 2021, one Juba-based ambassador told us that “the
peace agreement is our Bible,” and held his hands up, clutching at the
air.

The peace agreement is not a roadmap to a flourishing South Sudan. Far
from it. It is the peace agreement that is the problem. Its partial
implementation has largely destroyed whatever popular legitimacy the
South Sudanese political system once had, undermined grassroots
institutions, and intensified a process that began in 2005: the
creation of a wealthy class of military and political leaders in Juba,
atop a rentier economy, dependent on shrinking oil reserves and
humanitarian resources, which uses violence as a tool of population
management in the rest of the country.

Let us explain.
Horse-trading in the capital.
While the international community tends to imagine the R-ARCSS as a
means to return to the situation prior to the outbreak of civil war in
2013, with a political system that includes elements of federalized
government and empowered South Sudanese state administrations, the
peace agreement has instead created a behemoth: a centralized regime
that appoints not only state governors, but even county commissioners,
according to a political calculus determined in Juba.

The power-sharing arrangement contained in the peace agreement means
that all positions are given out on the basis of party affiliation.
For instance, five deputy ministerial portfolios are given to the
incumbent regime, with three going to the main opposition group, the
Sudan People’s Liberation in Opposition (SPLA-IO), and another to that
contingent coalition of fortune-seekers, the South Sudan Opposition
Alliance (SSOA). Such apportioning continues all the way down the
chain, with a “responsibility sharing ratio” allotted for state and
local government positions: 55% to the incumbent regime, 27% to the
SPLA-IO, 10% to SSOA, and 8% to another opposition coalition, the
appositely monikered OPP, or Opposition Political Parties (R-ARCSS,
Clause 1.6. and passim).

This power-sharing arrangement has created new forms of political
algebra. The two-year delay between the signing of the R-ARCSS and the
appointment of state and local government officials is partly
attributable to the horse-trading in Juba that resulted from their
creation. The incumbent regime successfully fractured opposition
forces – tempting them with offers of power and money – to increase
its representation in the transitional government, even though many of
the government apparatchiks so created belong, at least in theory, to
opposition parties.

That many of the ”parties” included within the R-ARCSS are merely
political vehicles for the advancement of the careers of briefcase
rebels is the beginning of the problem. Neither the OPP nor the SSOA
have any real content – neither shared constituency nor ideology –
except for a shared interest in power and money: the very interests
that allow both parties to be easily fractured by regime intercession.

Take the hapless governor of Jonglei state, Denay Chagor, who is hated
in his home payam of Dengjok, and without either armed forces or a
supportive local constituency. While he is provisionally a member of
the SSOA, Chagor is in effect a creature of South Sudanese President
Salva Kiir, who supported him during internal struggles within the
opposition coalition. Chagor is substantively a government appointee
though formally a member of the opposition. He is exemplary of Kiir’s
modus operandi: the government – with money and power on its side –
manipulates the logic of the peace agreement to prise away candidates
from groups like the SPLA-IO and the SSOA, fracturing the opposition.
With such low-hanging fruit in his hands, Kiir then appoints weak
candidates, plucked from the opposition, who are dependent on his
largesse and without local constituencies. In Chagor’s case, this
allows Kiir to check the influence of powerful Bor Dinka and Lou Nuer
politicians in Jonglei state. Sometimes, a government politician told
us delightedly at the beginning of December 2021, a pawn can block a
queen!

South Sudan is full of Chagors.
If the po-faced diplomats gathered around the pool at the EU residency
in Juba can pretend to take seriously the idea that Bapiny Monytuil,
the brother of the Kiir-backed governor of Unity state, Nguen
Monytuil, represents a separate faction within the SSOA, and thus
receives a separate appointment within the logic of the peace
agreement, the people of Unity state are under no illusions about the
real unity of the two brothers. Across the country, the real political
factions spread themselves across the putative divisions of the peace
agreement, changing names and alliances to accommodate themselves to
the fantasies of R-ARCSS, and so maximizing their power within the
power-sharing arrangement.

The problems with the peace agreement, however, do not end with the
briefcase generals that the government uses to maximize the number of
positions under its control. The real problem with the agreement lies
in the logic of power-sharing itself. It’s a feature, not a bug.

In 2010, during gubernatorial elections around the country, the real
democratic process occurred not during voting (generally a fait
accompli), but prior to it, within the machinery of the ruling party,
the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), as it discussed who the
candidates should be for the elections. It was during these
discussions that local factions were able to negotiate amongst
themselves.

The power-sharing formulas of the peace agreement, in contrast, mean
that all over the country, the SPLM is bypassed by a centralized
despotism that is focused on the Offices of the President and First
Vice President (whence the vast majority of political appointments
issue). Nowhere in the country is the SPLM a viable political
organism. Nowhere does the peace agreement allow for genuine
discussions between political constituencies. All decisions are made
in Juba, according to a political calculus foreign – and often hostile
– to local interests.

While diplomats in Juba may agonize over the prospects of holding
elections in a one-party state dominated by the SPLM, the reality is
more ominous.

South Sudan is a no party state.
The apparent divisions between the ruling regime, the SPLA-IO, and the
SSOA are less important than the fact that the political elite in Juba
make almost all political appointments in the country by manipulating
the power-sharing formulas of the agreement, undercutting any
possibility for state-based or party-based accountability.

Everything flows down
In Warrap state, Kiir’s homeland, which remained steadfastly loyal to
the government during the war, one can now witness the spectacle of
life-long SPLM politicians ”joining” the SPLA-IO so as to take up
positions in the state administration or as county commissioners, as
per the power-sharing ratio. They sacrifice whatever local legitimacy
they might have had as they do so.

The county commissioners so appointed often remain in Juba, and lack
any ability to influence events on the ground. Over the last three
months, all too often we have arrived in Warrap or Upper Nile only to
be told that all the local politicians are in the capital.

In Juba, there are politicians and the peace agreement; on the ground,
the almost total withdrawal of government from any sort of legitimate
rule.

For SPLA-IO appointments, the situation is accentuated by the steadily
weakening position of Riek Machar, the first vice-president of South
Sudan, and the movement’s leader. His appointments are entirely drawn
from his family and a narrow coterie of courtiers who are trusted only
in Juba.

Sometimes, there is sufficient local strength to resist. In Mayendit
county, Unity state, Machar’s appointment of one of his bodyguards as
county commissioner was greeted with local disquiet, and the
commissioner was told he should remain in Juba. In the end, a choice
more palatable to local interests was agreed upon. Successful
contestations of such appointees remain rare, however. Power resides
in the capital.

The centralization of power in Juba has created two worlds in many of
South Sudan’s states. Deputy governors were previously appointed by
the governor (as were the county commissioners). This allowed
governors to build state administrations in their image. Under the
peace agreement, however, the deputy governors are selected, as per
the power-sharing ratio, by an opposition group. This formula has
created parallel structures of governance across the country. In much
of Unity state, the extant systems of local control (county
commissioners and paramount chiefs) were loyal to the SPLA-IO. The
governor, Nguen Monytuil, has attempted to create his own rival
political structures, by appointing new chiefs, for instance, but the
SPLA-IO deputy governor, Tor Tungwar, has resisted, effectively
creating two rival governments in the state. This has led to a
fragmentation of power in Unity, and the dilution of institutions of
local legitimacy, as chiefs proliferate, instrumentalized and beholden
to either the incumbent regime or the SPLA-IO.

Despite international claims at the beginning of the South Sudanese
state that the country was a tabula rasa, without legitimate political
institutions (which international consultants would need to create),
the reality is that South Sudan was, at its base, an immensely
democratic society, full of institutions that had popular legitimacy.
There were diverse vernacular democratic systems in the country. In
many places, villages and neighbourhoods chose their chiefs, who then
elected representatives at the boma level (the small administrative
unit in South Sudan). These chiefs often then selected officials at
the payam level (representative of several bomas). Such officials
chose paramount chiefs at a county level. While there were attempts at
political interference in this process in the past, they cannot
compare to the current situation. Power flowed up.

Under the current peace agreement, power flows down. The continued
fragmentation of chiefly institutions is exemplary. In Warrap state,
as elsewhere, chiefs are now arrested and dismissed by the state
government. In places where the chief is too powerful to dismiss, the
government tries another tactic, and appoints further chiefs, loyal to
the regime, in an attempt to dilute traditional authority.

Such moves are explicable because the search for power is shifting
down. If the peace agreement has created a situation in which power is
centralized in the Office of the President and the Office of the
Vice-President, who appoint state and county-level positions, then
state governors, who now lack the ability to appoint their own staff,
effectively try and “jump levels” and regain some of their lost power
by appointing loyalists at the boma or payam level, dismissing chiefs,
and politicizing civil service positions. The result is a total
fragmentation of the political landscape, largely along ethnic and
sub-ethnic lines. As we stated in the title of this piece: the peace
agreement ate the grassroots. Rather than representing local concerns,
grassroots institutions are now politicized according to the
power-sharing logic one finds in the peace agreement.

Centralized fragmentation
This is the world that the peace agreement has made. A world of at
least 3,000 politicians, of which some 2,400 are directly appointed
from Juba, and who lack almost any popular legitimacy. The diplomats
may respond that this situation is only temporary: a holding pattern
before elections. What this claim elides is that R-ARCSS, now three
years old, has transformed the logic of government in the country, and
it is unclear that there is any way back. As the refugees and
internally displaced people (IDPs) of South Sudan know only too well,
the temporary often has a way of becoming permanent.

South Sudan is part of what Magdi el-Gizouli and Eddie Thomas, in an
earlier piece on Sudan for African Arguments, term “the neoliberal
chaos zone that stretches from Afghanistan to the Congo.” What
characterizes Kiir’s regime, along with many countries in the chaos
zone, is what we term “centralized fragmentation.” This is the
permanent condition created by the peace agreement. Under conditions
of austerity, violence is the central tool of population management,
and local actors are kept weak and instrumentalized, the better to be
controlled from the centre. It is in Juba that power is increasingly
centralized, both thanks to the mechanisms of the peace agreement
explored in this essay, and through the control of flows of
international capital – via IMF loans and income from oil – that
remain firmly under the control of the Office of the President.

Elsewhere in the country, the exploitation of resources – such as gold
and timber – is outsourced to security services and private companies.
Such companies remain firmly under the control of the Juba elite,
albeit outside of any mechanisms of accountability. The country is
ruled by a hydra-like set of security services that are not only the
most powerful military actors in the country, but – as in Sudan – also
the most significant economic players. These services are at once part
of the government, and absolutely private: their income is nowhere to
be found in the account books handed over to the IMF, just as the
assassinations and torture that remain their modus operandi are not
mentioned by the UN bureaucrats eager to assist a government that is
“on the cusp” of creating a “peaceful, stable country.”

The centralization of power in the government is consolidated by
fragmentation at the local level. The deliberate disruption of the
SPLM party machinery and the multiplication of forms of customary
authority erodes possible sources of opposition. The deliberate
appointment of weak figures – such as Denay Chagor – to state and
county level positions means that local politicians remain dependent
on Juba, unaccountable to the communities they putatively represent,
and, thankfully for Kiir, unable to mobilize effective resistance.

Strength in weakness
Centralized fragmentation has created a form of government that is
simultaneously weak and strong. Let us deal with the weakness first.

Kiir’s regime has entirely withdrawn from service provision in South
Sudan. Populations are not considered as constituencies with needs,
but rather as resources, to be predated upon, or else instrumentalized
as foot soldiers in wars of position in the capital. The regime does
not depend on popular legitimacy, unless it is its own legitimacy
amongst the diplomats in Juba.

Since 2005, and the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA)
that brought an end to Sudan’s second civil war (1983–2005) and
created the southern regional government that became the South
Sudanese state, service provision was never a priority. Yet many saw
the Sudan’s second civil war as a struggle to remedy the racialized
unequal development put in place by Khartoum, and with the war’s end,
there was hope for a developmental state in the south. That hope has
ended. More people are now dependent on humanitarian assistance in
South Sudan than ever before. This is the essential drip-feed that
both sustains the patient and enables the hospitalization to continue.
The government’s withdrawal from service provision is enabled by the
humanitarian sector’s provision of services.

The government’s withdrawal from service provision has, since the
beginning of the South Sudanese civil war, been paralleled by its
withdrawal from wage provision.

During Sudan’s civil war, southern Sudan became increasingly reliant
on markets for basic necessities, and thus wage labour to get access
to those markets. During the CPA period (2005–11) prior to South
Sudanese independence, this reliance was assuaged by a massive
increase in employment in the security sector, thanks to donor funds
and oil revenues. There was no developmental state in South Sudan
during this period. Instead, via security sector expansion, the South
Sudanese state became a militarized rentier political economy. Since
the beginning of the civil war, the nature of this state has changed.
The collapse in oil prices and drawdown of development income
following the 2012 oil shut-down and subsequent civil war necessitated
a state that rules not only by withdrawing from service provision, but
also from wage provision.

The state that once distributed wages now distributes licences. County
commissioners are not paid by the state, but are effectively allowed
to become neoliberal entrepreneurs, encouraged to predate on their own
populations, levy taxes, and attempt to control resources and
humanitarians, in exchange for the government getting a cut of the
proceeds. This is governance as violent resource extraction.

The people left in the wake of this withdrawal find themselves in the
paradoxical situation of being simultaneously more reliant on markets
and wages, and yet with ever fewer wages to be had. In November 2021,
civil servants and soldiers in Wau, Western Bahr el Ghazal, recounted
that after eight months of non-payment of wages, they had finally
received a single month’s salary, “in time for Christmas.” For a
private soldier, that’s $8, a huge devaluation of the $200 a month
that soldiers made back in 2011, when South Sudan became independent.

The paltry sums received as wages, and the irregularity of their
payment, make it impossible to live a viable life on a government
salary. Every state employee must find other ways to make ends meet,
and so bribes, checkpoints, and hardship everywhere flourish. As a
recent report showed, checkpoint taxes have increased by 300% since
independence, and humanitarian organizations pay millions of dollars
in illicit bribes. The only real wages that now exist in South Sudan
are for those lucky enough to be employed by NGOs and UN agencies:
just as the humanitarian sector has provided the minimal services that
assuage the government withdrawal from service provision, so the
sector also provides the wages that effectively function as a social
security net for entire families. In Malakal, NGO employees told us
that a single humanitarian salary can provide for as many as twenty
people.

In a final turn of the screw, not only has the government withdrawn
from service and wage provision, but also from the provision of
security. In Warrap state, on the road to the homeland of Akol Koor
Kuc, the director-general of the country’s powerful National Security
Service (NSS), the villages of his own section have been burnt down,
while his forces look out from armoured personnel carriers at the
destroyed landscape. The wars being fought in South Sudan are waged by
militias and hastily conjured ”self-defence” forces. To be sure, these
forces are armed and funded by politicians vying for influence in
Juba, but the form this conflict takes is not a war between
belligerent parties. This too is thanks to the peace agreement. In
order to maintain the pretence that the country is at peace, conflict
must take another form, so that IMF funds can continue to flow into
the country (and pay for the NSS), and the World Bank can continue its
”development” schemes. War thus takes on the appearance of
”inter-communal violence” or ”ethnic conflict,” which enables the
international community to maintain that there has been a reduction in
political violence in the country – between belligerent parties – and
call for further government intervention to prevent such conflict. In
such a reading, the violence scarring South Sudan is the result of the
anarchy created by the absence of the state, and an indication of the
compelling need for a bigger state.

Au contraire: Such violence is the result of the South Sudanese state.
This is clear everywhere in the country. Last November, sitting
outside Warrap town in the gathering dusk, few of the young men to
whom we spoke seemed convinced of the international community’s
reasoning. “It’s the politicians in Juba,” one young man told us,
“that are causing all the problems here.” In Western Equatoria, Azande
militias supported by the government fought SPLA-IO backed Balanda
“community defence forces” throughout the second half of 2021. In
October, one of the Balanda militia members fighting in Tombura only a
week earlier said: “No reconciliation between the communities is
possible, even if we were fighting each other, as long as the big
bosses in Juba do not agree.” Current international efforts to create
community-level peace processes are ways of eliding the fundamentally
political nature of this violence.

So the state is weak. It provides neither services nor wages, and far
from providing security, it is the main motor of violence. But it is
not a failed state. This violence is the state at work.

The constant invocation of the international community is that the
state should man up and do its job. In this fantasy, the current
period is an interregnum, a pause, before the state assumes its
responsibilities. The reality is that the current disorder is the
state that the peace agreement has built. It is not an aberration.
Kiir’s regime has created a stable form of disorder: a type of
centralized fragmentation that will prove to be a durable and
disastrous way of ruling South Sudan.

For as much as the state is weak, it is fundamentally strong, and we
must see these two paradoxical tendencies together. Via predation and
displacement, it has effected an enormous wealth transfer from the
peripheries to the capital. The population is exhausted, emaciated,
and any institutions of local legitimacy have been largely destroyed.
There are almost no alternative sources of power outside the
spider-like reach of the Juba elite.

The village has come to the town
Almost forty years ago, the SPLM’s founders spoke about taking “the
town to village.” After decades of unequal development in Sudan, in
which rural peripheries were used for resource extraction and little
else, the rebel dream was to generalize development, and bring the
services of the cities to the rural villages of the country. Ten years
after South Sudanese independence, the village has come to the town.
There is no rural service provision outside of the ministrations of a
humanitarian sector exhausted by government exploitation and its own
funding shortfalls. Following waves of violent displacement, people
have increasingly flocked to urban environments. The United Nations
High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) may pretend – with government
encouragement – that widespread returns are possible for these
displaced populations, but the reality is quite otherwise. People lack
the resources to go back and establish lives in areas that government
forces intentionally despoiled. Given increasing dependence on
humanitarian wages and service provision, the enormous IDP camp in
Bentiu is not temporary, but the reality of a future South Sudan.
Village life is becoming impossible.

The village has come to the town in other ways, too. Power has not
been democratized or federalized in South Sudan. Instead, it has
become almost entirely centralized in Juba: locally powerful actors
have homes in Gudele, or else compete for hotel rooms on their trips
to the capital, hoping to curry favour with figures higher up the food
chain.

All of this has nightmarish echoes of Sudan in the 1980s and 1990s.
Under a crushing international debt burden, Bashir’s regime pioneered
a new form of neoliberal governance. It withdrew from whatever minimal
service provision it provided in the peripheries of the country, used
militias as a tool of violent population management, often by
militarizing ethnic leaders, committed the government to austerity,
and used a proliferating set of security agencies to effectively
privatize the state in the hands of government actors, but outside any
form of accountability.

Sadly, South Sudan has become a low-grade version of its northern
neighbour. Independence, after a twenty-two-year struggle against
Khartoum, has created its mirror image. Once again, militias are used
as a tool of violent population management; once again, security
services are the actors controlling resource extraction, and once
again, the government has withdrawn from any provision of services. In
some ways, the situation is even worse. Civil society in Juba is
either depoliticized or entirely politically captured, the trade
unions are weak where they even exist, and there is little in the way
of professional associations that would be able to stand up to the
government.

The Sudanese revolution is unimaginable in Juba. South Sudan is a
slimmed down Khartoum, fit for a century of austerity and climate
crisis, with the humanitarian sector administering the band aids that
prevent the situation being one of palliative care, and thus also
assuaging popular discontent. Since 2018, there has been no comparable
round of internationally-backed state-building to match the
post-independence-period. Instead, humanitarians attend to a permanent
emergency, ministering to the millions who are hungry and homeless,
while sending millions into the pockets of those immiserating their
own people, thanks to the compounds the humanitarian sector rents from
the elite, the workshops it holds in their hotels, the logistical
companies it hires that belong to them, and the burgeoning checkpoints
that demand cash from every humanitarian convoy. This is the heavenly
damnation of the humanitarian class: They get to be angels, but only
on the condition that they contribute to hell.

The Satanic Verses
When the South Sudanese state is viewed properly, the Biblical verses
of the peace agreement appear not just Satanic, but also ridiculous.
High on the list of diplomatic priorities for the future is the full
implementation of the Chapter II Security Sector accords – a
bureaucratic fantasy on a par with the power-sharing agreement. In
theory, these accords would involve a unified command for a unified
army, and regularized military forces. There are a number of reasons
this fantasy is misplaced:

Chapter II of the R-ARCSS is not consonant with the military reality
of the country. Leave aside the fact that the bean-counting measures
of the peace agreement allowed the SPLA-IO, destroyed by 2018, to try
and reconstruct its military base by going on a mass recruitment
drive. The reality is that the major military forces in the country
have never been included with the security sector reform (SSR)
process. The NSS recruited an entire division in 2020, in Warrap
state, which has now dispersed around the country. The SSPDF has
recruited an entirely new division, Division 11. Military Intelligence
and the Commando division have also been strengthened. None of these
forces are even vaguely included with Chapter II in a substantive way.
The forces active in conflict in South Sudan are composed of militia
forces, often recently recruited. None of these forces are included
within the SSR process of the R-ARCSS. The completion of Chapter II
would not change the violent reality on the ground in South Sudan.
The incompletion of Chapter II of the R-ARCSS is strategically useful
for the government. The non-implementation of the peace agreement is a
master class in what Magdi el-Gizouli and Alex de Waal term the
”politics of tajility,” the politics of delay. At present, Riek
Machar, the SPLA-IO leader, is utterly weak: dependent on Kiir’s
largesse, and with an attendant group of friendly security service
personnel following his every move, he is effectively imprisoned in
the capital. His weakness has not gone unnoticed, and has been
followed by a raft of defections from his military command to the
government. At present Machar is a bloodied body, strung on the rack
of the peace agreement, and the government is content to let the red
flow of defections drip into their bucket, as the opposition becomes
weaker and weaker, more and more fragmented. In an irony even the
diplomats might appreciate, the “Necessary Unified Force” that the SSR
process is supposed to create will be the consequence of defections
from the SPLA-IO to the SSPDF, rather than due to the unification of
the two armies. At present, there is no political reason for Kiir to
implement Chapter II.
Chapter II of the R-ARCSS will happen. And it doesn’t matter. Politics
occurs in time. Once the SPLA-IO has been entirely shattered, its
commanders bought off by the government, and its remaining soldiers
ill and disillusioned, eking out hardscrabble lives growing crops at
the edges of the cantonment sites, then integration will happen. All
the actual military power in the country, however, will be elsewhere,
and those oppositions troops finally integrated into the army will
become agricultural labourers at security-service backed farms,
working the land from which their people were displaced. The diplomats
will declare the peace agreement a success, and the war will continue.

The really real opposition
The peace agreement has created a static picture of South Sudan. It
has locked groups that have no legitimacy, such as the Nairobi or
Khartoum-based politicians of the OPP and the SSOA, into positions of
political power. It has falsely created an image of the SPLA-IO and
SPLM as equal partners in power and distended the reality of power
across South Sudan. Insofar as it has done so, the peace agreement is
an engine, not a camera. The fantasy it has made in Juba has had real
effects across the country.

Nevertheless, the idea that the SPLA-IO is a plausible military actor
in South Sudan is a lie only credible in the meetings of the well-paid
international consultants overseeing the peace agreement. Outside of
an elite SPLA-IO force, recruited in 2019 in southern Upper Nile, and
now stationed north of Juba, and some remaining loyalists in central
and southern Unity, the SPLA-IO has no credible military forces in the
country. The major military forces putatively loyal to the movement,
such as the forces under Abdullah Ujang in Western Bahr el Ghazal,
have taken the moniker of the opposition group only as a flag of
convenience, thanks to a peace agreement that has calcified a false
image of the country, and in which one must be part of one group or
another to get a seat at the negotiating table. While diplomats may
worry about the SPLA-IO and the SPLM as opposing forces, the reality
is that they form part of a single system, fractitious and
quarrelling, but unified in their form of rule: a centralized
despotism, dependent on fragmenting the country and fighting wars in
the periphery.

There is a real opposition in South Sudan, though its presence can be
found nowhere in the hallowed pages of the peace agreement. While Kiir
may have successfully peeled off the SPLA-IO commanders of the Eastern
Nuer, the loyalty of the ground troops remains substantively with
Simon Gatwich Dual, a Lou Nuer commander who split from Riek Machar
earlier in the year. His message remains attractive to Nuer across the
political spectrum: Machar has used this peace deal to enrich himself;
and there is no dividend from this peace agreement for the young men
of South Sudan.

Yet Gatwich remains entrapped within the logic of R-ARCSS. His initial
negotiating position – dismissed by the government – was to argue for
a share of the SPLA-IO’s positions in government. He wanted his own
slice of the pie, rather than to bake another cake. Like so many rebel
commanders before him, bought off by the government, his absorption
into the peace agreement would only make clear the inability of the
current rentier politics at play in South Sudan to offer anything like
a reasonable political settlement for its people.

It’s elsewhere we must look for signs of hope. As the government
withdraws from the provision of security in much of the country, it is
the ethnically organized defence forces – from the Gojam of Akobo to
the Gelweng of Tonj to the Monyomiji of Torit – that now defend
communities, and which are the only military forces that have a shred
of popular legitimacy. The development of these forces is a two-sided
coin: as easily instrumentalized by politicians as foot soldiers as
they are a form of resistance to the political class. Nevertheless,
they represent, in their increasing strength and distance from the
government, the realization that the state is the problem in South
Sudan, rather than the solution.

Across the country, displacement and government contraction have
created a class of surplus young women and men that are unable to
create flourishing lives for themselves, and so while away their hours
in tea shops, or try to survive by working as migrant labourers, in
the security services, or else selling supplies in the markets of
South Sudan. This class of young men and women is the true opposition
to the political class in Juba, which rules thanks to the immiseration
and fragmentation of the population.

Recent youth protests throughout Greater Upper Nile and the Equatorias
against the labour conditions at humanitarian agencies are an
indication of the impasse in which this emaciated class of young men
and women finds itself. Amid government withdrawal, aid agency jobs
have become the locus for the dreams and aspirations of the young
people of South Sudan. Wages from such jobs often function as a social
security net for dozens of people, and are thought far more important
than the services such NGOs provide. Such services, are, in any event,
not determined locally, but by the priorities of donors far from South
Sudan. Strikes against such agencies must be understood as an attempt
to take popular control of the resources that actually circulate in
South Sudanese communities. They are a demand for democratic ownership
of decision-making processes about the labour market and the
distribution of resources that are currently determined in Juba and
Western capitals.

Yet even here, we reach an impasse. While these protests are
everywhere the same, they are also everywhere particular, and premised
on the ideas that jobs with NGOs should go to a narrowly defined local
constituency. These claims are indicative of South Sudan’s drastically
reduced social compact. Such claims are consonant with the logic of
the South Sudanese government: a process of fragmentation in which the
centre manipulates the rest of the country by turning everything –
from services to jobs to people themselves – into resources, to be
fought over by particular ethnic and inter-ethnic groups.

What these protests amount to, nevertheless, is a growing
clarification of the structure of South Sudan’s political economy.
They are pockets of resistance to an increasingly despotic,
centralized state, which rules in accordance with the bureaucratic
platitudes of the peace agreement, through the complicity of the
humanitarian sector, and via forms of violent population management
throughout the country. Despite our Biblical diplomats, it is the
peace agreement that has brought about this situation, and it is the
government that is the problem, not the solution.

A secular faith
Of course, seasoned diplomats in Juba are cognisant of all of this. If
in 2016, there was some residual hope, especially amongst the
Americans, that Kiir’s regime represented a viable route to stability
in South Sudan, such pipedreams are now exhausted. The 2018 peace
agreement, it is widely – albeit privately – acknowledged, was a
negotiated surrender by the SPLA-IO. Just as widely, and as just as
privately, diplomats acknowledge that the peace agreement is also
their abandonment of any real imaginative commitment to South Sudan.

The peace agreement, everyone agrees, is not working. It will not
bring a sustainable peace to the country, nor will it enable the
country’s flourishing. To envision alternatives to the peace
agreement, however, would require a level of political, economic, and
intellectual investment in South Sudan that none of the diplomats’
home-governments are willing to consider.

So while the diplomats continue to mouth the Satanic Verses and harp
on the importance of the security sector reform process, they are not
true believers. If, however, the diplomats continue to hold up the
Bible of the peace agreement, their evangelism hides a more dismal,
secular rationality. No one believes in this peace agreement; it is
simply that the diplomats lack the imagination and the political will
to look beyond it.

https://africanarguments.org/2022/01/death-by-peace-how-south-sudans-peace-agreement-ate-the-grassroots/