{"id":261821,"date":"2024-05-06T12:00:49","date_gmt":"2024-05-06T11:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=261821"},"modified":"2024-05-05T05:53:29","modified_gmt":"2024-05-05T04:53:29","slug":"blame-south-sudans-civil-war-on-elites-not-ethnic-tensions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/05\/blame-south-sudans-civil-war-on-elites-not-ethnic-tensions\/","title":{"rendered":"Blame South Sudan\u2019s Civil War on Elites, Not \u201cEthnic Tensions\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Salva Kiir, the president of South Sudan, attends the meeting of the National Liberation Council at the Freedom Hall in Juba on 2 Dec 2022. (Samir Bol \/ AFP via Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

30 Apr 2024 – South Sudan\u2019s post-independence instability is often blamed on ethnic tensions. But exploitation by international companies and zero-sum competition over resources between local elites are the real causes of ongoing violence in the country.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In South Sudan, generals and politicians have siphoned<\/a> off the country\u2019s oil wealth (98 percent<\/a> of state revenue in 2013 alone), bolstered by a \u201cgun class<\/a>\u201d of government soldiers, community militias, cattle raiders, and private guards who then fight over cattle, mining, and timber industries. While public reporting and official narratives largely focus<\/a> on the ethnic nature of South Sudan\u2019s violence, an unrestricted race for wealth and power is what really undergirds this contest. South Sudan may be the world\u2019s youngest country, but the ongoing conflict is a process decades in the making. Since the 1950s, foreign governments and corporations have consistently legitimized the most predatory actors in the region.<\/p>\n

\n

Elite Conflicts<\/h3>\n

After two civil wars spanning virtually all of independent Sudan\u2019s history (1955\u201372, 1983\u20132005), South Sudan achieved independence by popular referendum in 2011. The conflicts were often framed<\/a> as \u201cArab\u201d Khartoum versus \u201cAfrican\u201d South Sudanese tribes, but struggles for oil wealth<\/a> and factional enrichment<\/a> were far better explainers. Indeed, some of the most brutal fighting<\/a>, including the massacre of two thousand people in Bor in 1991, was between South Sudanese factions.<\/p>\n

Accordingly, only two years after independence, coalitions under President Salva Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar (architect of the Bor bloodbath) came to blows<\/a> in the capital of Juba, initiating a civil war that engulfed much of the country. Parties to the conflict would employ systematic sexual and gender-based violence<\/a>, hate speech<\/a> and ethnic cleansing<\/a>, and starvation as a weapon of war<\/a>. Kiir\u2019s centralization of access to state oil revenues was important<\/a> to the war\u2019s initiation, and the oil fields of Unity State and Upper Nile became key battlegrounds<\/a>. Though the conflict technically ended with a peace deal<\/a> in 2018 and a power-sharing government in 2020, the parties have merely decentralized<\/a> their economic and political contests. Accordingly, violence against civilians<\/a> and between proxy forces and militias<\/a> persists.<\/p>\n