“We have waited for this day for 56 years. It is a dream come true.” Salva Kiir’s words chimed with the celebratory mood which dominated South Sudan’s independence ceremonies. Throughout our own media, the creation of the world’s newest nation state prompted plenty of comment and discussion. Simple stories made for eye catching headlines, creating a superficial narrative of Muslim against Christian in the preceding civil war. The West congratulated itself, having helped an oppressed group to achieve self-determination. This was balanced by a smattering of negative predictions for the future of the infant state. Yet despite the divergence of opinion, the fanfare and the hyperbole, South Sudan has slipped out of our newspapers.
The past six months have not been uneventful. All of the issues heralded upon South Sudan’s independence remain critical. The relationship with the North remains fraught with tensions. Oil management remains unresolved – while the South has the majority of the oil it can only be exported through the North and there has been no agreement on remuneration. Control of the borderland region of Abyei remains disputed. Infrastructure is non-existent and basic services are almost completely lacking.
Moreover the SPLA (Sudan People’s Liberation Army) has found the transition from a guerrilla movement to government predictably difficult. Salva Kiir, the current President, may have been an astute military leader, but he has excluded the powerful and dissatisfied Nuer ethnic group from his Cabinet, which he has instead stuffed with old SPLA soldiers. Accusers maintain that he has turned a blind eye to widespread cabinet corruption. Yet beyond these general issues two new crises represent a particular threat to the new nation.
If South Sudan did make a brief return to our consciousness, it was over the explosion of violence in Jonglei province. While the SPLA had faced an insurgency by ex-Lt. General George Athor, the violence in Jonglei represented the most serious challenge yet to its authority and ability to maintain peace. Local disputes, mostly between the Lou-Nuer and Murle ethnic groups, erupted into a broader conflict. In the words of young Lou-Nuer fighters, they intended to “invade Murleland and wipe out the entire Murle tribe on the face of the earth”. So far, roaming bands of up to 8000 armed
youths have killed 3000 people, displaced another 140000 and stolen 80,000 cattle. UNMISS, the UN mission in the field, has deployed around half its combat-ready force in collaboration with the South Sudanese government. Recent weeks have seen a quieting of the situation, but tensions remain high. While the UN and Government response has been comparatively decisive and relatively successful, these disturbances in South Sudan’s largest and most populous state highlight its instability. In a way, Jonglei represents a microcosm for the new state. Without animosity to North Sudan to unify them, the South Sudanese now have to turn their attention to renegotiating their relationships within a new nation state.
The other news from the country was the announcement that South Sudan was halting oil production until a settlement over payments with the North could be reached. Talks are ongoing but production remains shut down. While this prompted more sustained interest from the media, a later development was much more unexpected. South Sudan and Sudan signed a “Non Aggression Pact” on 11th February in Addis Ababa. This promised to respect each other’s territorial integrity, though its sincerity might be doubted over contentious area such as Abyei. Some commentators have suggested that this agreement might be a precedent to greater economic unity, ironic given the South’s long struggle to be free.
Yet they may be right. Greater economic integration could make the South economically viable in a way it is currently not. Nonetheless, all of this speculation seems premature. By the 16th February the South was accusing the North of breaking the “Non Aggression Pact” by bombing border towns. This hardly bodes well for the long term seriousness of the pact. It is possible that the agreement does represent both parties’ desire not to pursue outright conflict. But conflict needn’t be overt, and might be pursued through proxy actors; existing secessionist movements in Darfur and the Nile, for the South. Meanwhile the North can renew its cooperation with the LRA in South Sudan. Yet this does not mean that conflict will end. A stable and successful South Sudan represents a threat to North Sudan’s continued territorial integrity due to the encouragement it gives to other secessionist movements around the Sudan. The ongoing low level conflict between South and North has a profoundly negative impact on the South’s ability to focus on its pressing domestic issues.
Six months on from independence the storm clouds of conflict continue to threaten South Sudan, both domestically and internationally. Many of the challenges to Sudan remain identical to those that plagued it six months ago. In one sense this is not surprising, given the magnitude of the difficulties facing the new state. South Sudan’s response to these challenges will have profound consequences for the region. What can be said with certainty is that the military struggle waged for independence by the SPLA from 1983 to 2005 has been the easy part of building South Sudan. All that has become clear over the last six months is the scale of the challenge facing the new nation.
