Andrew Green
By Andrew Green
It will probably never be clear what triggered the December 15 firefight that broke out at a Juba military barracks and has now brought the world’s newest country to the brink of a civil war. In the hours after the barracks shoot-out, fighting spread rapidly across the city — leaving hundreds of people dead and tens of thousands displaced.
By the following afternoon, before the army could even launch its investigation, President Salva Kiir — in full military fatigues — appeared on a delayed state television broadcast to denounce the fighting as an attempted coup by his former deputy, Riek Machar, a gap-toothed mechanical engineer turned fighter in the Sudanese civil war. Hours later the police detained ten leading political figures.
Machar, who slipped out of Juba and into hiding around the time the other politicians were being rounded up, fired back in an interview with a local newspaper two days later. He called the fighting “a misunderstanding” between soldiers and accused Kiir of using the clash as a cover to remove his rivals. Whether coup or confusion, the incident has revealed just how fragile the coalitions that once held the country together really were. Independence has not come easy for South Sudan. After decades of war, a country the United States helped midwife into existence less than three years ago has come to the brink of war with Sudan and watched its economy crumble after it shut down oil production early last year over a refusal to pay grossly inflated transit fees the government in Khartoum was charging to use its pipeline. Meanwhile, rebel groups have continued to criss-cross vast swathes of the country, engaging soldiers and disrupting humanitarian efforts. But now South Sudan faces its most serious challenge: Unresolved political divisions have already caused hundreds of deaths and now threaten to split the country along ethnic lines. Four days later after the barracks attack, sporadic gunfire continues to disrupt Juba’s nights and a dusk-to-dawn curfew remains in place. And tension remains, as many people who were displaced by the fighting refuse to return home.
Meanwhile, one state capital, Bor, has fallen to a group of soldiers who defected from the army and officials are reporting fighting in some of the country’s northern oilfields — near the border with Sudan. On December 19, the United Nations announced that a base sheltering civilians in Bor had been overrun. Now, the country’s political leaders — under pressure from the international community — are trying desperately to prevent the country from splitting any further. They are stressing the political nature of the conflict, but in a country where the political often bleeds over into the ethnic, there is fear among citizens that what started as a shoot-out in a barracks could turn into widespread intercommunal conflict. The country’s political fissures have been growing ever since President Kiir sacked his entire cabinet in July. Officials at the time said the cabinet was too large and not enough was getting done. Instead of continuing to pacify rivals, Kiir wanted to bring in technocrats, who would create work plans and deliver results.
Jok Madut Jok, who heads a local think tank called The Sudd Institute said the key is to rein in the fighting as quickly as possible. But with every reported flare-up the forces loyal to the government get stretched even thinner. And thousands of people are not waiting to find out what happens if they snap. Hundreds of people are camping out at the airport waiting for spaces on the few available commercial flights. Seats on buses to Uganda are sold out four days in advance. And the American and British governments have evacuated their citizens. They do not want to stick around to see if South Sudan escapes from its latest challenge.
WP-BLOOMBERG
By Andrew Green
It will probably never be clear what triggered the December 15 firefight that broke out at a Juba military barracks and has now brought the world’s newest country to the brink of a civil war. In the hours after the barracks shoot-out, fighting spread rapidly across the city — leaving hundreds of people dead and tens of thousands displaced.
By the following afternoon, before the army could even launch its investigation, President Salva Kiir — in full military fatigues — appeared on a delayed state television broadcast to denounce the fighting as an attempted coup by his former deputy, Riek Machar, a gap-toothed mechanical engineer turned fighter in the Sudanese civil war. Hours later the police detained ten leading political figures.
Machar, who slipped out of Juba and into hiding around the time the other politicians were being rounded up, fired back in an interview with a local newspaper two days later. He called the fighting “a misunderstanding” between soldiers and accused Kiir of using the clash as a cover to remove his rivals. Whether coup or confusion, the incident has revealed just how fragile the coalitions that once held the country together really were. Independence has not come easy for South Sudan. After decades of war, a country the United States helped midwife into existence less than three years ago has come to the brink of war with Sudan and watched its economy crumble after it shut down oil production early last year over a refusal to pay grossly inflated transit fees the government in Khartoum was charging to use its pipeline. Meanwhile, rebel groups have continued to criss-cross vast swathes of the country, engaging soldiers and disrupting humanitarian efforts. But now South Sudan faces its most serious challenge: Unresolved political divisions have already caused hundreds of deaths and now threaten to split the country along ethnic lines. Four days later after the barracks attack, sporadic gunfire continues to disrupt Juba’s nights and a dusk-to-dawn curfew remains in place. And tension remains, as many people who were displaced by the fighting refuse to return home.
Meanwhile, one state capital, Bor, has fallen to a group of soldiers who defected from the army and officials are reporting fighting in some of the country’s northern oilfields — near the border with Sudan. On December 19, the United Nations announced that a base sheltering civilians in Bor had been overrun. Now, the country’s political leaders — under pressure from the international community — are trying desperately to prevent the country from splitting any further. They are stressing the political nature of the conflict, but in a country where the political often bleeds over into the ethnic, there is fear among citizens that what started as a shoot-out in a barracks could turn into widespread intercommunal conflict. The country’s political fissures have been growing ever since President Kiir sacked his entire cabinet in July. Officials at the time said the cabinet was too large and not enough was getting done. Instead of continuing to pacify rivals, Kiir wanted to bring in technocrats, who would create work plans and deliver results.
Jok Madut Jok, who heads a local think tank called The Sudd Institute said the key is to rein in the fighting as quickly as possible. But with every reported flare-up the forces loyal to the government get stretched even thinner. And thousands of people are not waiting to find out what happens if they snap. Hundreds of people are camping out at the airport waiting for spaces on the few available commercial flights. Seats on buses to Uganda are sold out four days in advance. And the American and British governments have evacuated their citizens. They do not want to stick around to see if South Sudan escapes from its latest challenge.
WP-BLOOMBERG
