A woman living in a displacement site in Mingkaman, South Sudan, grinds grain that she received from humanitarian agencies during their monthly food distribution. More than 1.5 million people have been displaced by the fighting in South Sudan and many are now dependent on aid agencies for food, shelter and protection. Credit: Andrew Green/IPS

By Andrew Green
JUBA, South Sudan , Aug 14 2014 (IPS)

Another deadline has passed. But instead of bringing about peace, the leaders of South Sudan’s warring parties have allowed the country to continue its slide toward famine.

Sunday was the deadline for the delegations of President Salva Kiir and his former deputy turned rebel leader Riek Machar to present a final proposal for a unified transitional government that would end eight months of conflict.

Instead, the weekend brought more fighting.

Each new clash exacerbates the country’s already-desperate food security situation. The international community has warned that famine could arrive as early as December. At least 1.1 million people are facing emergency food shortages. And – until fighting actually stops – aid agencies do not have access to tens of thousands of people who need their help.“Attacks on civilians and destruction and pillage of civilian property lie at the heart of how this war has been fought.” -- Skye Wheeler, a researcher with Human Rights Watch

There are no indications from the field that the clashes will stop any time soon. On Tuesday, during a visit of the United Nations Security Council to South Sudan, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power shared reports they had received “of more arms being brought into this country in order to set the stage for another battle.”

Meanwhile, in early August, a local militia group operating outside the command of either of the two forces tracked down and executed six aid workers in Upper Nile state, near the country’s border with Sudan. They chose their targets based on ethnic affiliation, perpetuating the tribal divisions that are driving this conflict.

By the time the two sides finally get to work in Addis Ababa, they may be drafting a solution to a situation over which they no longer have any control.

The now eight-month conflict began as a political squabble between Kiir and Machar over who would control the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement party. But it quickly stoked ethnic tensions as it moved across the eastern half of the country. Human rights violations became one of the grim hallmarks of the violence.

“Attacks on civilians and destruction and pillage of civilian property lie at the heart of how this war has been fought,” Skye Wheeler, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, said in an interview with IPS. Patients have been shot in their hospital beds and people sheltering in a mosque and at U.N. bases have been massacred. At least 10,000 people have been killed and 1.5 million more displaced.

Even as violence has become the norm across large swathes of the country, the targeted killings of aid workers and other Nuers living in Upper Nile state’s Maban County may have marked the transition to a more volatile stage in South Sudan’s conflict.

Maban, which hosts tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees, had been relatively untouched by the fighting. But that did not stop a local militia, calling itself the Mabanese Defence Force and with no obvious alliance to either side, from executing the Nuer civilians.

The U.N. Mission in South Sudan warned in a press release that Maban was now at risk of an “ongoing descent into lawlessness” – a lawlessness that, in the absence of a legitimate peace deal, could easily spread to other areas of the country as communities decide to exact their own forms of justice.

“We’ve seen how abuse has driven further violence and more abuses during reprisal attacks directed against civilians,” Wheeler said. The weekend brought reports that another armed group was on the march in Maban, this one to exact revenge for the killings earlier in August.

The consequences of the Maban murders could be further reaching.

The people living in the conflict regions – as well as tens of thousands of displaced – are almost completely dependent on the U.N. and non-governmental organisations for food, shelter and protection.

Humanitarians were already dealing with access issues amid the ongoing fighting, as well as funding shortages. The U.N. estimates aid agencies will need 1.8 billion dollars to reach 3.8 million people before the end of the year. So far they have raised just over half.

And while the situation does not yet meet the technical criteria to be declared a famine, “there is extreme suffering,” Sue Lautze, the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organisation country director, told IPS.

If aid workers become targets, the suffering will get much worse.

In Maban, a team from Medair, a humanitarian group currently providing emergency services in South Sudan, is responsible for operating clean water stations and running other health and hygiene services for the 60,000 people, including Sudanese refugees who live in the Yusuf Batil Camp, as well as members of the surrounding communities. Country Director Anne Reitsema said in an interview with IPS the attacks showed a “total disrespect for humanitarian actors.”

Following the attack, Medair temporarily pulled some staff members out of Maban, though leaving enough people to continue their operations. It’s too early to say when they will return, but Reitsema cautioned that the attack “makes it very hard for us to do our work.” The problem is, there is no one else to do it.

All of this – the increasing violence, the possible famine and another missed deadline – can be used as points “to shame” the two parties into an agreement that finally sticks, according to Jok Madut Jok, an analyst with the Sudd Institute, a local think tank.

It’s already happening. During her visit to Juba, Power said, “We do not see the urgency that needs to be brought to these negotiations.” And the international community has raised the threat of economic sanctions once again.

It’s a strategy that has not yet worked – the United States and European Union have already sanctioned a military leader on each side of the conflict. But neither has anything else the local and international community has tried. Which is why Jok expects more deadlines may come and go without anything being accomplished.

“The peace talks are about what each one of them hopes to walk away with from the peace talks, rather than peace, itself,” he told IPS.

Edited by: Nalisha Adams

Thousands of displaced people camping under trees in Minkaman, northeastern South Sudan. They are among the hundreds of thousands of people who have fled during five months of fighting in the country. Credit: Andrew Green/IPS

By Andrew Green
JUBA, May 15 2014 (IPS)

It has not yet been a week, but South Sudan’s most recent ceasefire appears set to collapse, along with hopes that – after five months of fighting – the country might finally be on the path to recovery.

Late Friday, President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar met briefly in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, to recommit to the cessation of hostilities agreement their representatives originally reached in late January.

That earlier deal also fell apart within days and the fighting continued across much of the country’s northeast. Thousands of people have since been killed and hundreds of thousands scattered.

In the days before the Addis Ababa meeting, Deng Chioh was one of the many people in Juba unconvinced a new ceasefire agreement would work. He said the anger in the country runs too deep.

“If peace is to come to South Sudan, it’s going to take a very long time. It cannot be done while the current leader is the head of the state,” he told IPS.

South Sudan’s president Salva Kiir Mayardit (in black hat), and former vice-president Riek Machar (right), before the conflict began. Credit: UN Photo/Tim McKulka

Last week’s signing ceremony was the first time Kiir and Machar have met since their latent political rivalry broke wide open on Dec. 15 when the former vice president walked out on a meeting of the ruling party.

Hours later fighting broke out in a Juba military barracks and Kiir quickly accused his former vice president of mounting a coup. The veracity of the accusation was inconsequential as fighting spread rapidly – first across the capital, and then much of the country.

On the first two nights of the December fighting, Chioh suffered through frantic phone calls from relatives and neighbours as they attempted to triangulate where the killings were happening.

By the third day, exhausted with worry, he and nine family members moved to a the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) base.

The site, known as U.N. House, is on the outskirts of Juba, in the shadow of Jebel Mountain – one of the few interruptions to the capital’s dully flat landscape.

Chioh said that soon after they stopped hearing from a handful of relatives who decided to remain in their homes, and he can only assume they were killed.

The Addis Ababa reunion followed increased pressure from regional and international actors to end the violence. Last week, the United States issued sanctions against a military leader on each side of the conflict and warned more could be in the offing.

Under the revived deal, the two sides agreed not only to freeze their troops within 24 hours, but to give humanitarian groups access to thousands of civilians caught in combat zones. UNMISS announced within hours of the signing that they were standing by to begin deliveries of “life-saving aid” if the ceasefire took hold.

There was suddenly cause to consider, not whether South Sudan could be saved, but how this deeply-divided country could be repaired.

The depths of these divisions were revealed in the days before the meeting, when UNMISS released a report documenting “gross violations of human rights” by both sides during the ongoing clashes, including the targeted killing, rape and kidnapping of innocent civilians.

There has been an ethnic cast to the fighting from the start, pitting Kiir’s Dinka community against Machar’s Nuer, and the violence against civilians has deepened distrust between the country’s different groups.

In one of the many horrific episodes, the rebels stand accused of murdering more than 200 civilians hiding in a mosque in the northern town of Bentiu, capital of Unity state. Nearly 80,000 people have now taken refuge at UNMISS bases, behind the protection of U.N. peacekeepers.

More than 10,000 people have crowded into U.N. House, which also hosts blocks of U.N. offices. From their windows, U.N. staffers can now peer out over a vast makeshift campsite, built mostly of plastic sheets, scrap metal and wooden planks.

U.N. House holds some of the earliest victims of the crisis, mostly Nuer from the surrounding neighbourhoods. They fled to the base as security forces conducted house-to-house searches during the height of the Juba clashes.

A boat of women and children arrives in Mingkaman, Awerial County, Lakes State, South Sudan. In less than a month close to 84,000 fleeing the fighting in Bor have crossed the river Nile to Awerial. Credit: Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin/IPS

Among the testimonies UNMISS collected are stories of uniformed men storming through those communities, capturing and interrogating civilians in the Dinka language. “If a person questioned in this way admitted to being Nuer, could not speak Dinka or was able to speak Nuer, that person would be shot,” according to the report.

Members of the Dinka community harbour concerns about peace should Machar be invited back into any future government. There is no political solution that will salve all of the country’s wounds.

The only option is forgiveness, Reverend Bernard Oliya Suwa told IPS. And as soon as a ceasefire takes hold, it will be his task to convince Chioh – and countless others – to choose that path and attempt to reconstruct South Sudan. Suwa is the secretary general of the Committee for National Peace, Reconciliation and Healing.

The Committee pre-dates the conflict. Kiir created the body in April of last year and directed its five heads, culled from the country’s religious leadership, to address injustices committed during the southern rebels’ decades-long fight for independence from Khartoum.

Their plan, arrived at in early December, was to recruit county-level “peace mobilisers” to spend months in their communities gathering testimony and presenting it to local mediators. Grievances “of higher concern,” Suwa said, including complaints over resource allocation or large-scale atrocities, would be referred to state or national committees.

A mother and children walk amongst flooded shelters at the Tomping IDP camp. Credit: UN Photo/Isaac Billy

The committee’s plans have already been adapted to the recent violence. They would work with two other bodies, including a Parliamentary commission, to form a broader National Platform for Peace and Reconciliation. He acknowledges that after the recent fighting, “the level of mistrust in this country runs so deep,” but told IPS he believes the Committee members can help allay it. But only if there is peace. Which is why the renewed cessation of hostilities agreement “is a huge, huge relief. Knowing that we can go ahead and roll out our programmes.”

The ceasefire officially went into effect late Saturday night. It held less than seven hours. U.N. officials confirmed both sides spent Sunday morning trading fire in and around Bentiu.

By the time Kiir’s plane touched down in Juba later that afternoon to a crowd of people gathered to celebrate the peace deal, each camp was accusing the other of provoking the fighting. Those accusations have continued every day since.