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African politics
Elki
get busyModerator, ClubPA Mod Emeritus
get busyModerator, ClubPA Mod Emeritus
Ignore the parts that fit into the middle east, we can let that other thread handle that. This thread could last for all of one post but I wanted to give it a shot, maybe there's someone else here who keeps up with this stuff. I want to talk about the bizarre disaster that happened this weekend in South Sudan.
So, the civil war in South Sudan has been going for a bit, despite a peace agreement. The leaders of the both side in the war (President Kiir and vice president Machar) were to meet this weekend in a show of solidarity for the media at the J1 presidential palace. What happened instead is that their bodyguards started a fight that left 100-150 people dead. I suppose if the dead are equally represented, that's some sort of solidarity. As far as staged events gone wrong, it's hard to top that. The incident is pretty similar to the fighting between bodyguards that kicked off the war in 2013.
Afterwards both leaders claimed they have no idea why the fighting occurred. I believe them.
Outside of the capital, it looks like there are many factions on both sides continuing to operate as if there's no peace agreement in place. And not necessarily because of a tacit agreement from their leaders; there are elements in both sides that just have no interest in the peace deal and continue to treat it as an irrelevant process.
What a shitshow.
So, the civil war in South Sudan has been going for a bit, despite a peace agreement. The leaders of the both side in the war (President Kiir and vice president Machar) were to meet this weekend in a show of solidarity for the media at the J1 presidential palace. What happened instead is that their bodyguards started a fight that left 100-150 people dead. I suppose if the dead are equally represented, that's some sort of solidarity. As far as staged events gone wrong, it's hard to top that. The incident is pretty similar to the fighting between bodyguards that kicked off the war in 2013.
BBC wrote:Gunfire broke out on Friday evening near the state house where President Salva Kiir was meeting his sometime rival, Vice-President Riek Machar.
Estimates of the death toll vary, but most accounts put the number over 100 - some as high as 150.
A 2015 peace deal to end a 20-month civil war has failed to quell unrest.
Juba is in lockdown as South Sudan, the world's newest country, marks the fifth anniversary of independence from neighbouring Sudan.
Friday's fighting was apparently sparked by a shootout between Mr Kiir's and Mr Machar's bodyguards . The two men met at the presidential palace on Friday.
The half-hour gun battle then escalated, with heavy weapons and artillery being used in several parts of the city.
In a speech marking independence, Mr Kiir said: "Making South Sudan glorious will only happen if we see ourselves as South Sudanese first rather than tribal or political groupings," Juba's Miraya FM station reported.
He added that everyone in South Sudan should "use our rich cultural diversity as the source of our unity".
On Saturday, a South Sudanese journalist told the BBC that other journalists stuck inside the state house counted at least 100 bodies, inside and outside the compound.
A hospital doctor told the Associated Press that scores of bodies had been brought in, while a military spokesman for the opposition - Mr Machar's faction - told Reuters 115 people had been killed.
Mr Kiir and Mr Machar described Friday's violence as "unfortunate".
Under a peace deal agreed last August, the two armed factions took up positions in Juba in April.
Tens of thousands died in the civil war and millions were forced from their homes.
South Sudan, the world's youngest nation, is so short of money that the authorities say no official anniversary celebrations will be held.
The streets of Juba were reported to be quiet on Saturday.
Roadblocks have been set up in the capital, with troops searching people for weapons.
Afterwards both leaders claimed they have no idea why the fighting occurred. I believe them.
Outside of the capital, it looks like there are many factions on both sides continuing to operate as if there's no peace agreement in place. And not necessarily because of a tacit agreement from their leaders; there are elements in both sides that just have no interest in the peace deal and continue to treat it as an irrelevant process.
What a shitshow.
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No one knows, really, when it comes to what sparked the war. The reports of the initial fighting in 2013 are sketchy. As far as anyone could tell in the aftermath, it was a big accident. Tensions were running high because early in 2013 Kiir sacked his cabinet because he thought they were plotting to oust him. Later in the year word got to some Nuer presidential guards that Machar has been arrested (Machar is a Nuer). He wasn't but that sparked fighting between Nuer and Dinka guards (Kiir is a Dinka), fighting spread to the rest of the city, Machar escaped out of the city and so did the fighting.
Let's go back a bit before the war. Cattle raiding was for a while a normalized part of relationships between the big tribes in South Sudan, and they have also been in a constant competition for grazing lands and water with a semi-nomadic existence providing for conflict opportunities (mostly low level). Cattle raiding for instance was something undertaken by a few young men as some kind of rite of passage. No one or just a few would die, some of the raiders can then get married, and in the long term it's all a wash because your tribe will also be a raid target. In 2005, after the peace agreement was reached ending the North-South civil war, the raiding escalates for reason I don't fully understand. You start seeing raids where hundreds of people are killed, and cattle is taken in the thousands. One theory to explain it is the SPLA kept order to some degree during that civil war, but devolved into power struggles in the aftermath. There were some successful attempts to de-escalate and resolve conflicts, but over the years they kind of fizzled. You could say that it's not an overriding priority for anyone. So the fuel was ready for a civil war in the right circumstances, and then an accident happened. Which they somehow managed to repeat.
South Sudan exited the Sudan with no infrastructure or much in the way of institutions. The wars utterly wrecked that place. There enough foreign sponsors to force Sudan to give South Sudan its independence, but none of them were willing or able provide it with the assistance necessary to become something other than a failed state; mostly the latter. In many respects, it's much worse than the typical post-colonial government situation.
There are a few conflicts on the continent that i'm curious about due to lack of updates: the CAR civil war and Mali civil wars which are basically done, and the AU's statebuilding adventure in Somalia which is actually supposed to be making some progress, though not outside of Mogadishu proper.