{UAH} Standard Digital News - Kenya : Five questions about South Sudan answered

http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/?articleID=2000101362&story_title=five-questions-about-south-sudan-answered

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Standard Digital News - Kenya : Five questions about South Sudan answered

By Max Fisher

South Sudan's crisis began just two weeks ago, on December 15, and it already has observers warning that it could lead to civil war. Fighting has killed an estimated 1,000 people and sent 121,600 fleeing from their homes.

Here, then, are the most basic answers to your most basic questions. This is not an exhaustive or definitive account of South Sudan and its history – just some background.

1. What is South Sudan?

South Sudan is the world's newest country, about the size of (the US State of) Texas, and has 11 million people, about as many people as Ohio (another US State). South Sudan is one of the poorest countries in the world, has a 27 per cent literacy rate and is so under-developed that it has only about 35 miles of paved road. Its economy is driven by oil exports.

South Sudan declared independence from the rest of Sudan on July 9, 2011. At the time, it was considered a huge success for the world.

2. Why are people in South Sudan killing each other?

The violence started on December 15, when troops in the presidential guard started fighting against one another. That fighting quickly spread and is now engulfing entire swaths of the country.

In July, the President of South Sudan, Salva Kiir, fired his vice president, Riek Machar. The two were more rivals than partners; Kiir thought that Machar was gunning for his job. They are from different ethnic groups. Kiir is ethnic Dinka, the largest of South Sudan's many ethnic groups. Machar is Nuer, the country's second-largest group.

Tension between the Dinka and the Nuer goes way back in South Sudan, and the political rivalry between the groups' two most powerful members, Kiir and Machar, always had the potential to become an ethnic conflict.

It did on December 15, when members of the presidential guard who are Dinka tried to disarm members of the guard who are Nuer, maybe because they feared the Nuer would try to stage a coup. (Kiir later said the fighting had started because Machar had tried to stage a coup, but evidence for this is thin.)

The fighting between Dinka and Nuer presidential guards very quickly spread across the country. The main antagonists are rebels, often ethnic Nuer, including a group called the White Army. (Some reports say the group got its name because fighters smeared themselves with white ash to protect themselves from insects.) The rebels have seized territory, including some oil-producing land, and may or may not be marching on the city of Bor.

3. How could that one little incident spark such a big conflict?

When fighting spread from a few presidential guards to entire areas of South Sudan, we saw something that has happened before in sub-Saharan Africa. Political leaders and grass roots militants alike defaulted from their national identity to their ethnic identity.

4. I thought giving South Sudan independence was supposed to stop ethnic fighting. Why didn't it?

When the south's ethnic groups were fighting on the same side, against the north, they mostly got along okay. But, in 1991, the SPLM split along ethnic lines. Some fighters who were ethnic Nuer formed their own semi-official breakaway group, the White Army, which attacked Dinka civilians in the city of Bor, killing 2,000.

That fighting stopped, but the White Army has stuck around, in part because some Nuer fear they will not be treated fairly by the Dinka, who are more numerous, and who hold the country's presidency. Today, rebels took up arms in the apparent belief that Kiir's government was turning against the Nuer, and perhaps also because they saw Kiir going after Machar, who does not lead the White Army but has long been associated with it.

And Kiir has called Machar, the country's most important Nuer, a traitor. It was almost inevitable that when Kiir turned against Machar many Nuer would think that he was seeking to marginalise their entire tribe.

5. What happens next?

It's not clear how long this conflict will go; as it becomes more decentralised, it gets more dangerous and tougher to end. The South Sudanese government has agreed to meet for peace talks.

But the really important thing isn't this latest conflict but South Sudan's deeper issues. A power-sharing formula could become just another division of the spoils, and elections could become another exercise in ethnic division.

The writer is The Washington Post's foreign affairs blogger. He has a master's degree in security studies from Johns Hopkins University. Copyright: The Washington Post