South Sudan’s civil war
Located in east-central Africa, South Sudan is one of the world’s youngest countries. You might remember it made news in 2011 by acquiring independence from Sudan , but you likely haven’t heard much about it since. And that’s a shame as the infant country was recently embroiled in an utterly brutal civil war punctuated by a sad, cruel irony.
Since this blog post isn’t exactly cheery or funny, there’ll be a reward for you if you make it to the end. Trust me, it’s worth it.
A little background
Upon Sudanese independence in 1956, Sudan’s previously independent and southernmost province, Equatoria, did not agree to merging with the north. This is because the regular Sudan has been constantly plagued by deep, complex ethnic tensions and conflicts. Equatoria was promised full participation within the new political system, however the Sudanese government reneged. Civil war, and not the fun Avengers kind, between the mainly Muslim north and mainly Christian Equatoria began in 1956. The war lasted for an astonishing 50 years with an 11 year ceasefire from 1972 to 1983 in the middle. They must’ve been taking a break to watch MASH. Anyway, when the conflict finally ceased in 2005 the conflict had claimed over 2.5 million lives, most of them civilians.
In January 2011, 98 percent of the Equatoria population voted for independence. On June 9, South Sudan was born from a country victimized by an overlong, ethnically tinged civil war.
South Sudan is a landlocked, rural agrarian country slightly smaller than Texas. It also contains numerous ethnicities. Dinka is the largest ethnic group comprising 36 percent of the country’s 12 million people, and Nuer is the second largest at 16 percent.
Civil war breaks out again
The independence honeymoon ended in December 2013 when a civil war broke out. President Salva Kiir, ethnic Dinka, accused his VP Riek Machar, an ethnic Nuer, of attempting a coup. Whether there was actually a coup or not is debatable, but irrelevant. What started as a political squabble quickly turned into a violent, ethnic based conflict throughout the country.
The civil war is over two years old now. Many attempts at peace have been made with all of them failing. A recent ceasefire attempt made last August showed potential, however President Kiira has recently thrown it into jeopardy through failing to comply with certain political conditions of the agreement. However, as I type this the war has somewhat subsided for the time being. But how long will it last?
The cost of war on society
Freedom of expression and of press is long gone, as dissident journalists have been assassinated. Food production in the country wasn’t great before the war, and has since been devastated by it. In 2014 the UN declared South Sudan was suffering from the worst food crisis in the world as a third of the country is in danger of starvation. Over 50,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed during the war and one in five people have become displaced. Looting, destruction of property and ethnic killing is wide spread. But this isn’t even the worst part.
The horror
The UN has condemned President Kiir and his forces, and Machar and his forces to a lesser extent, for committing systematic sexual violence on a mass scale. In what has to be the worst kind of license in the history of the universe, Kiir’s soldiers are given a license to rape in lieu of receiving wages due to money shortages. During a five month long UN study, over 1300 rapes in one of South Sudan’s 10 states alone were reported. Just think about those numbers for a second. In a single province over five months, 1300 rapes were reported. Who knows how many incidents weren’t reported?… There are also reports of some women being taken as wives and kept in barracks for sexual slavery. Perhaps unsurprisingly, women who get pregnant from rape are shunned by society.
Forty five percent of South Sudan’s population is aged 14 years or less, and this demographic has also been brutalized. The UN claims children have been maimed, killed and recruited for combat purposes. It documented 702 cases of sexual violence against children including gang rape victims as young as nine years old. One woman reported being tied to a post and forced to watch a dozen soldiers rape her 15 year old daughter before being raped herself.
Cruel irony
South Sudan fought through decades of ethnically tinged civil war for their independence and they finally got it. Yet the young country is already defined by the ethnically tainted violence and human rights atrocities it obtained independence to avoid.
Africa is a distant continent with perpetual conflict and human rights violations. In our daily lives we have ISIS and an Oompa Loompa advocating war crimes and running for US president to worry about. Therefore it’s understandable why western media hasn’t given South Sudan much attention.
That being said, a vast majority of South Sudan’s civilian casualties have been victims of deliberate attacks by government forces, and not of combat actions. Combine that with the scope and severity of human rights violations occurring, it’s an issue one would think our media should pay attention to. Do you agree something needs to be done in South Sudan or should it just be left on its own to figure itself out? Should there be some kind of external intervention? How’s a country and its citizens supposed to even have a chance at a half decent life when the government does what South Sudan’s government does? Or do you think the civil war is just something a young, undeveloped country needs to get out of its system so it can become more prosperous later? I’m curious what people think.
Sorry for going all Bono on you dear reader, but if you’ve stuck around this long, here’s your reward as promised. The rest of my blog posts won’t be as depressing as this one.
