Amid a growing humanitarian crisis, global powers press warring South Sudanese sides to forge lasting peace deal
After five years of sectarian-fueled civil war, competing factions in South Sudan are on the cusp of signing an internationally-brokered peace deal to end a conflict that has killed an estimated 50,000 people; displaced one third of the country’s 12 million inhabitants; and created one of the most acute humanitarian crises in the world.
South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in a 2011 referendum that split the majority-Muslim north from the predominantly-Christian south. Disagreements in the newborn country over how to divide local oil reserves, the third-largest on the continent, immediately led to tensions, and, not soon after, South Sudan descended into bitter ethnic fighting; pitting forces loyal to President Salva Kiir, a member of the Dinka group, which makes up about 35 percent of the total population, against those of his former vice president Riek Machar, a member of the Nuer people, who comprise some 15% of the population.
The tribal culture is one of, if not the, primary organizing forces in South Sudan, a reality that many analysts contend is widely misunderstood and, as a result, has hindered past attempts to solve the conflict. In this respect, at least eight previous peace/ceasefire agreements collapsed in their infancy, the most recent falling apart in 2015 after just months.
The current peace accord was brokered by the Inter-governmental Authority on Development, whose website describes its vision “to be the premier regional organization for achieving peace, prosperity and regional integration.” Crucially, the initiative has received the robust support of African superpowers.
“At the moment everyone is hopeful because the prime minister of Ethiopia and the leader of Sudan are backing [the deal] strongly and publicly and are using their own weight to make it work,” Dr. Haim Koren, Israel’s first-ever ambassador to South Sudan, told The Media Line.
Indeed, the involvement of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has served to make this round of talks more credible, given his recent success in achieving peace with neighboring Eritrea; this, twenty years after the initial conflict between the two countries broke out. Moreover, a United Nations arms embargo imposed on South Sudan this month has upped the pressure on both Kiir and Machar to end the civil war.
Nevertheless, many analysts remain skeptical, highlighting the prospective deal’s lack of substantive detail on crucial issues.
“The agreement is devoid of any real specifics about the important issues of power-sharing, governance and arrangements concerning a future national defense force,” George Ott, an Economist at the South Africa-based NKC African Economics research institute, told the Media Line. “The most important part [of the text] centers around granting Sudan access to oil fields in the South, which suggests that this is more about serving elite interests than actually facilitating a successful peace deal,” he concluded.
In order to succeed this time around, both Dr. Koren and Ott believe that regional countries must be invested and active in the agreement’s implementation and, thereafter, need to ensure, through close monitoring, that both sides are abiding by their obligations.
“It is not enough to simply sign the peace accord,” Dr. Irit Back, a Research Fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, stressed to The Media Line. The deal must be strictly enforced as “the collapse of South Sudan [would] affect the other states around [it].”
(Jinitzail Hernandez is a Student Intern in The Media Line’s Press and Policy Student Program)