African Politics for Beginners

Origin of the Current Crisis in South Sudan (Part 3): The Birth

2014-01-14T16:00:00.000-08:00

In the previous posts, we discussed the first calls for independence in South Sudan, the 2005 peace agreement that was the conception of independence (click here to read “The Origin of the Current Crisis (Part 1)”), and the January 2011 referendum that began the labor process before the birth of South Sudan (click here to read “The Origin of the Current Crisis (Part 2)”). This post will describe the actual birth of South Sudan.

After decades of fighting for independence, a few years of negotiations to reach a peace agreement, six years in limbo, and a nearly unanimous vote for independence, South Sudan became the world’s newest country on July 9, 2011. I had the honor of being in Juba in the weeks leading up to independence. I watched the fevered pitch of preparations for building a new country, which included everything from finishing the airport, to parade practice and parliamentary debate over the Transitional Constitution. I was lucky enough to stumble upon a parade practice for the Independence Day parade. First, can you imagine watching General George Washington and his troops practicing on June 30, 1776 for the July 4 Independence Day parade? This was the equivalent for me because I watched the practice and preparations for the celebration of the birth of a new country!

As I watched the army, navy, women's battalions, bands, and police march by, I was moved for another reason. I was watching the group I had been studying for the last four years, the Sudan People's Liberation Army, march by in triumph. This was the first time I’d laid eyes on them, and I couldn't have asked for a better introduction. To know I was watching people who had fought a bloody civil war for independence for 22 years, and that they were on the verge of successful secession gave me chills. To be sure, I am not promoting independence movements or secessionist groups (researcher objectivity blah blah blah [not that I believe such a thing even exists]), but you can't be human and not be caught up in the excitement of the moment. This is especially true if you think about South Sudanese citizens' hopes and dreams of a bright future.

I also experienced the excitement of watching South Sudan’s Parliament debate the details of its Transitional Constitution. Again, I felt like I was sitting in on the US Constitutional Convention of 1787. Though there were was definitely a lively debate, there was still an air of euphoria because we were only a few days away from independence. Despite the euphoria, however, my words from my blog that day acted as foreshadowing to the current crisis:

This is not to say that there will not be (or that there aren't already) problems in this nascent nation. There are struggles over what the new constitution should look like, whether there should be a federal or unitary political system, how many states there should be, how to include smaller ethnic groups in policy planning and implementation, etc.

Even with these struggles, though, it is important to remember that 99% of the population of South Sudan was willing to take its chances with independence than to continue living as part of Sudan. It is against the backdrop of this euphoria that I sat enjoying the Independence Day parade and ceremony surrounded by SPLA colonels and generals, and international dignitaries (don’t ask how I got the “hook up”).

Personal invitation to the Ceremony (again, don't ask!)

Independence Ceremony

There are not words to describe the jubilation felt by every South Sudanese citizen that day. The moment when they lowered the Sudanese flag and simultaneously raised the South Sudanese flag was unlike any other I’ve ever experienced. These hardened soldiers wept openly and congratulated each other, while telling me that they thought this day would never come. I've never experienced anything like it!

At the Independence Ceremony with the SPLA

Sooooooooooo, how do we go from that euphoria to the current crisis only 2 and a half years later? In the next post we will continue with our baby analogy and discuss the terrible twos (aka the current crisis). Stay tuned...

Origin of the Current Crisis in South Sudan (Part 2): Pregnancy and Labor

2014-01-10T11:30:00.000-08:00

In the previous post, we discussed the first calls for independence in South Sudan, along with the 2005 peace agreement that served as the conception of independence (click here to read the previous post). This post will fast forward through the pregnancy (as so many women wish they could do), and continue the baby analogy with a discussion of the labor process before the birth of South Sudan as an independent nation.

Okay, let’s think of the voting process as the beginning of labor. The vote was certainly laborious. It required voter education for a largely illiterate population most of whom had never voted. Remember, South Sudan has a literacy rate of roughly 27%. This does not mean that people are not intelligent (I guarantee that most of them know things about survival and their own history that we couldn’t comprehend), but that they are unable to read a ballot or written instructions on when, where, and how to vote. For this reason, the ballots included drawings to depict unity (meaning keeping South Sudan as part of Sudan) or separation (making South Sudan an independent country).

South Sudan referendum ballot

In addition to the literacy issues, there the referendum required logistical miracles for voting to take place in such a large region with few paved roads (36 miles in the entire country as of 2011). Even today, it is impossible to travel to most parts of South Sudan on the ground. This required there to be enough voting stations that citizens could get to relatively easily on foot. It also made it difficult to get ballots to and from these stations. Fortunately, the Government of South Sudan (GOSS), with vital assistance from the international community, provided the voter education and logistical support, and the vote took place. Though there were long lines, the people were happy for the opportunity to have their say and there were few incidents during the actual vote (despite dire predictions of violence and war). The result of the vote, which came as no surprise to anyone, was overwhelmingly in support of independence: 98.8%.

South Sudan referendum lines

Though the vote was the beginning of labor, the labor process lasted for 6 months. During this time, the government of the region, which was still part of Sudan at this time, began its final preparation for independence. This preparation included the drafting of a new interim constitution, and getting Juba (South Sudan’s capital) ready to host hundreds of international dignitaries for the independence ceremony. I had the opportunity to sit in on GOSS’s parliamentary debate on the draft constitution. There were heated exchanges and disagreements, but the Members of Parliament were able to agree to the constitution the first week of July, thus paving the way for independence.

In the next post, I will discuss Independence Day as part of the birth of South Sudan. Stay tuned…

Origin of the Current Crisis in South Sudan (Part 1): Conception

2014-01-06T17:16:00.000-08:00

Sudan People's Liberation Army

Okay, so let’s get started on the origins of the current crisis in South Sudan. To help you understand the relevant (and complex) history of South Sudan more easily, I’ll be using a pretty universal analogy: the birth of a baby. By the end of this series of posts, you’ll be sick to death of the analogy, but you should understand the crisis.

Let’s begin with the origin of the idea of an independent South Sudan. As you’ve already learned from the previous post, South Sudan is the world’s youngest country, and was born on July 9, 2011 when it officially separated from Sudan. This independence, however, didn’t come easily. The Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) fought the Sudanese government for independence from 1983 to 2005. Long before the emergence of the SPLA, however, the first civil war between Sudan and South Sudan began. For a variety of reasons, since Sudan’s independence from Egypt and Britain in 1956, the southern region has sought separation. The most often cited reasons include the racial and religious differences between the peoples of Sudan and South Sudan. Over 40% of Sudan’s population is Arab and Muslim, while South Sudan’s population is largely black, and Christian or animist (religions in which people believe spirits or souls live within animate objects). The fact that these differences exist is not, in and of itself, what aggrieved the people of South Sudan. Instead, the fact that the racial and religious differences were directly related to the distribution of power and wealth led to the desire for independence. Though the first civil war, which began in 1955, ended with a peace agreement in 1972, once the idea of independence was conceived, there was no turning back.

The SPLA began fighting for independence just 11 years after the first civil war ended. By the mid-1980s, the SPLA began to see military success against Sudan. In fact, by the late 1980’s the SPLA controlled a lot of territory in what is now South Sudan. Just when things were going well for the SPLA, however, in 1991 the group experienced a major internal problem: a splinter group. Splinter groups occur when one or more members of the original group decide they’re angry enough about something to leave and start their own group. The formation of splinter groups is a common feature of armed groups around the world, including one of the best known armed groups: the Irish Republican Army. The SPLA’s first splinter group was formed by Riek Machar (remember this name as it will be important later!). Machar left the SPLA for a few reasons (some of which only he knows). First, there was internal ethnic conflict within the SPLA between the Dinka, who make up 16% of the population of South Sudan, and the Nuer, who make up 6% of the population. Machar, a Nuer, argued that the Nuer and smaller ethnic groups had no voice in the SPLA, which is majority Dinka. He also argued that the SPLA’s leadership was dictatorial, and that decisions were made with no input from the group’s members. For these reasons, Machar, and later other SPLA members, left to form his own group.

Machar ran his own group separate from the SPLA for a decade. By the early 2000s, however, many of Machar’s supporters had left his group to rejoin the original SPLA, which had seen military success throughout the rest of the 1990s. In 2002, Machar himself rejoined the SPLA, and shortly thereafter the unified group began negotiating with the government of Sudan to reach an agreement to end the war that had raged for 19 years. Though the negotiations were long and difficult, the SPLA reached a peace agreement with Sudan in January 2005. This agreement ended the civil war for good, and all parties agreed to allow South Sudan to vote on whether it would become independent. Until the vote, which would take place in January 2011, the South would operate as a separate part of Sudan with its own government and rules. We can consider the peace agreement as the conception of independence, and the 6-year period between the agreement and the vote as the pregnancy (yes, I know this is a rather long pregnancy, but work with me).

The next post will discuss the pregnancy (the period between the peace agreement and the vote) and the labor (the voting process in which South Sudanese citizens voted on independence). Stay tuned…

South Sudan for Beginners

2014-01-06T07:37:00.000-08:00

If you read the last post, now you know what a South Sudan is. Awesome! Now you might want to know a little more about what happened in the past to get us to the current crisis in South Sudan. In the next couple of posts, I’ll take you back to the beginning of the independence movement in South Sudan, the war for independence, and the period leading up to South Sudan’s independence on July 9, 2011. As an introduction to this series of posts, this post will give you some basic facts to provide you with the necessary context for the crisis.

· Geography

o Size: Slightly smaller than Texas

o Capital: Juba

o 36 miles of paved roads (to put this in perspective, Texas has over 150,000 miles of paved roads)

o Very little clean water in the country

o Less than 1% of South Sudan’s citizens have access to electricity

· People

o Population: 11 million

o Ethnic Groups: Dinka- 16%, Nuer- 6%, about 60 other smaller ethnic groups- 78%

o Languages: English (official), Arabic (official), Dinka, Nuer

o Literacy: 27% (41% for men, 16% for women)

· Economics:

o 98% of government revenue comes from oil revenue

o 26^th largest oil exporter in the world, 6^th largest oil exporter in Africa

· Independence: July 9, 2011

· Crisis: Fighting began in Juba on December 15, 2013

o Causes: possible coup (government overthrow) attempt or internal ethnic conflict within the presidential guard (similar to our Secret Service and apparently just as prone to controversy)

o Escalation: armed conflict spread throughout the country

o Deaths: over 1000 people (in 3 weeks)

o Internally displaced persons (people made homeless by fighting): over 120,000 people

BBC News- Q&A: South Sudan Clashes

2014-01-04T11:22:00.000-08:00

If you keep hearing about the "Crisis in South Sudan" and you're all like, "What is a South Sudan?", check out the BBC's Q&A page about what's going on in the world's youngest country. The BBC's webpage will give you a brief overview of what is going on so you don't feel lost when watching the nightly news. I'll follow this post up with a more in-depth piece on South Sudan's recent history and the origins of the crisis.

BBC News- Q&A: South Sudan Clashes