The lay of the land - and a very interesting article

Hi. I want to give a kind of summary of the problems facing South Sudan today, but first - two of my contacts who are experts in Sudan sent me this article (almost simultaneously!) yesterday. I think it gives a very good idea of how ethnicity has been used and manipulated by rulers past and present, and how this has left the country polarized and subject to conflict in the present:

http://bostonreview.net/world/mahmood-mamdani-south-sudan-failed-transition

That said - here is a summary of some of the challenges I see facing South Sudan (where I am heading in about 14 hours!) today:

1.     As I noted before, a huge portion of the population (perhaps 20% or more) remains displaced, either internally or as refugees

2.     A half-century or more of violence has left an oversupply of weapons and a lack of social trust. In many parts of the country, skirmishes continue, and peace between neighbors is not guaranteed. The large numbers of young people (51% of South Sudan’s population is under 18) with doubtful economic prospects and easy access to firearms intensifies these tensions. For example, it seems that cattle raiding – which has apparently been a part of pastoralist life for a very long time; see the Edward Thomas book I cite in the previous post – has gotten significantly more dangerous lately, as economic distress makes stealing cattle more attractive, and the use of guns as weapons instead of the traditional sticks makes it more deadly.

3.     Although the country is gifted with natural resources and has abundant water supplies in at least some places, chronic neglect by central governments over decades has left it with virtually no infrastructure (300 miles of paved roads; no national electricity grid; compromised access to >60% of the population during the rainy season). So making use of its resources is not easy. To take one example, South Sudan is oil-rich (not that this has always been a blessing to developing countries, of course - http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/oil-made-venezuela-rich-and-now-its-making-it-poor/). But the pipeline it uses to deliver its oil to markets runs through the territory of its old nemesis, Sudan. This has already led to economy-threatening tensions, even in the brief time since independence.

4.     At the end of 2015, the World Food Program estimated that 2,800,000 South Sudanese – close to a quarter of the population – were “in urgent need of food assistance”; UNICEF says that 3 times that number will face “food insecurity” this year. This increases volatility and tension, while negatively impacting health. And, while an astonishing number of American politicians still don’t believe (or claim not to believe) in global warming, places like South Sudan are already feeling its effects. This threatens to destabilize the country’s food situation even further, in unpredictable ways.

5.     51% of South Sudan’s people live below the national poverty line; only 20 countries have higher poverty rates. Furthermore, the parts of the economy that go beyond subsistence agriculture and husbandry (which occupy 78% of the population) remain unbalanced and undeveloped. Of the 7,000 businesses in ten of South Sudan’s largest towns, 84% are restaurants or shops. Similarly, the government derives fully 98% its revenues from oil, which leaves it highly vulnerable to recent oil price declines.

6.     Literacy is extremely low – 40% for males and only 16% for females

7.     Major illnesses endemic to South Sudan include malaria, dengue fever, HIV, and TB. Other more “mundane” diseases, such as respiratory tract infections, diarrhea, and meningitis, are also prevalent and destructive. Most tropical parasitic diseases (including 90% of the world’s guinea worm infections) are found in South Sudan, and the country’s maternal mortality ratio – over 2,000 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births – may be the worst in the world. These conditions, threatening in their own right, interact with each other and with malnutrition to magnify the danger. For example, anemia is one of the most prominent effects of severe malaria – but in a population that is already anemic from poor nutrition, the effect is even greater. And pregnant women are even more susceptible to malaria than the population at large.

8.     Governance and accountability remain huge issues. Although the August 2015 peace deal has largely held, flash points abound. For example, in December 2015, after the treaty was signed, President Kiir unilaterally decided to re-divide South Sudan into 28 states rather than the original 10. This move appears to be in conflict with the terms of the peace deal, and some consider it a destabilizing power grab. More generally, as in Rwanda, Northern Ireland, and many other conflict zones, people find themselves living in close proximity with neighbors who until recently may have been trying to kill them. How to manage all this – with what mix of acceptance, punishment, accountability, forgiveness, peace, and justice – remains a fraught question.

This was highlighted recently – in a manner that might have been funny if the issues weren’t so serious – by a dust-up over an editorial in the New York Times. Published on June 8, it claimed to be jointly authored by Salva Kiir and Reik Machar, and called for de-emphasizing criminal prosecutions of post-independence violence in favor of South-Africa-style “Truth Commissions” (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/opinion/south-sudan-needs-truth-not-trials.html?_r=0). But the need for criminal accountability had been a key point in the August, 2015 peace agreement. Were the main parties to that agreement now backing away from it? Well, as it turned out – no. In fact, it appears that the editorial was not written by either Kiir or Machar, but by someone on Kiir’s staff, who somehow convinced the Times he had authority to speak for both leaders (http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/jun/10/south-sudan-leaders-controversial-new-york-times-article-aides-say-riek-machar). Machar quickly disowned the document; Kiir’s position on it is less clear to me. Luckily, as of now the error seems not to have touched off additional conflict, as it very well might have. But it does highlight how open the question remains of what to do to heal South Sudan’s wounds and begin to move forward.

So that is a brief – admittedly unbalanced and somber! – look at the history and events informing the place I will be working and affecting the people I will be working with. And with it, you know about as much as I do. I’ll give you a sense of how it looks on the ground – and a clearer view of what I will be doing there, how it may or may not be able to help, and my expectations and anxieties – over the next few days.