As the world's youngest nation, South Sudan, marks two years of bloodshed, the only light of hope comes from its resilient and patient citizens, and its churches. The international community must assist them; and at the same time our diplomats must draw lessons from South Sudan's descent into horror if a path forward is to be found, and if we are to stop repeating our mistakes.
The worst aspects of African misrule and international meddling come together in South Sudan. Now, it is up to poorly-resourced faith groups and civil society to repair the nation, village by village, while the kleptomaniac elite displays breath-taking indifference to the misery it has unleashed.
Briefly, the current conflict began two years ago with a power struggle between the president, Salva Kiir, and the vice-president whom he fired, Riek Machar . Both politicians manipulated residual tensions to turn their spat into ethnically-aligned violence. Tens of thousands are dead, two million are displaced, and famine threatens a nation that should be Africa's bread basket, if it were efficiently farmed.
The elite has little incentive to make a peace deal brokered in August work because war is so profitable: political and ethnic cronies enrich themselves with state assets, oil revenues and currency speculation. Again and again, the international community has pulled back from personally sanctioning those responsible, leaving them to draw the obvious conclusions: we lack the attention span to follow through on our threats.
Where did the International community go wrong, and what can we learn? Diplomats had unrealistic expectations when South Sudan gained independence from its long-time persecutors in Sudan in 2011. Those who negotiated the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement were so keen to get home after months of tedious talks, they left unresolved some of the most thorny aspects of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between Sudan and South Sudan . Predictably, arguments about the border, disputed territories and oil revenue allocation erupted almost immediately. The West always underestimated its strength: the government of Sudan was better at bluffing, but they could have been pushed for more concessions. Diplomats also assumed the southern rebels, the Sudan People's Liberation Army, would magically morph into a unified political force, prepared to govern for all South Sudanese, despite a history of division and mistrust.
The second lesson, applicable further afield than South Sudan, is that throwing aid money at a country does not transform it into Finland. Instead of building desperately needed infrastructure or creating durable institutions, those in charge trousered billions, leaving the majority of their citizens, especially those in rural areas, deeply impoverished. This was apparent to anyone going beyond the capital Juba, or to any consumer of its endangered free media.
On December 10th, testifying to the US Senate Committee of Foreign Affairs, Sudan expert John Prendergast contended that South Sudan's leaders were never invested in building credible state institutions because it did not want to be accountable to them - something that the international community should have been sensitive to.
"In South Sudan, competing factions of the ruling party have used state institutions and deadly force to finance and fortify networks aimed at self-enrichment and brutal repression of dissent," Prendergast stated.
At the same hearing, former US envoy Princeton Lyman warned that without reforming the army and the ruling party, any peace deal was likely to fail - another observation made by Sudan specialists, and ignored by diplomats, in the run up to independence.
South Sudan's leaders rule a nation that is traditional and largely rural, where powerless, uneducated people are deferential to authority, and vulnerable to attack by those with guns. Educated, urban civil society and media are also being intimidated, on occasion killed, and in the case of the dean of Juba University, detailed without charge as recently as December 7th . As the Anglican House of Bishops put it in a November statement, "Our people are denied peace by their own leaders."
In the past the church has shown it can rise above tribalism and traditional power structures that demand respect for malevolent or self-enriching leaders. The South Sudan Council of Churches is a unifying factor in a country with dozens of rebel militia and ethnic groups. It has integrity and a presence in almost every village. It has been quietly laying the groundwork at a local level for neutral forums where issues can be discussed in an atmosphere that build trust rather than polarization. When all sides get a chance to tell their story, there is realization that everyone suffered, and that the community itself must take responsibility for what happened. The church is also well placed to facilitate the symbolic gestures necessary for traditional forms of reconciliation. But John Ashworth, an advisor to the church and long-time resident, warns this people-to-people approach requires months if not years to mobilize and raise awareness, working with chiefs, elders, women and youth groups. And before this can work there must be a ceasefire. Otherwise it is hard to advocate a change of narrative from war to peace .
This brings the onus back to the international community. Since the war-mongers are motive by personal greed, it seems logical to hit them where it hurts, freezing and seizing their personal assets, preventing them from travelling for shopping trips in Paris or medical treatment in London. The oil revenues and profits from currency speculation are also a lever with which to encourage a change in behaviour (as opposed to the international community's discredited regime change option).
We have the technology to apply such a smart-targeted financial squeeze. All that is required is the political will to stay focused on this troubled but potentially wealthy corner of Africa.