Then There Is South Sudan

The newest country to enter the UN was the country of South Sudan……a little history of world’s newest independent nation…..

Egypt attempted to colonize the region of southern Sudan by establishing the province of Equatoria in the 1870s. Islamic Mahdist revolutionaries overran the region in 1885, but in 1898 a British force was able to overthrow the Mahdist regime. An Anglo-Egyptian Sudan was established the following year with Equatoria being the southernmost of its eight provinces. The isolated region was largely left to itself over the following decades, but Christian missionaries converted much of the population and facilitated the spread of English. When Sudan gained its independence in 1956, it was with the understanding that the southerners would be able to participate fully in the political system. When the Arab Khartoum government reneged on its promises, a mutiny began that led to two prolonged periods of conflict (1955-1972 and 1983-2005) in which perhaps 2.5 million people died – mostly civilians – due to starvation and drought. Ongoing peace talks finally resulted in a Comprehensive Peace Agreement, signed in January 2005. As part of this agreement, the south was granted a six-year period of autonomy to be followed by a referendum on final status. The result of this referendum, held in January 2011, was a vote of 98% in favor of secession.

Since independence on 9 July 2011, South Sudan has struggled with good governance and nation building and has attempted to control opposition forces operating in its territory. Economic conditions have deteriorated since January 2012 when the government decided to shut down oil production following bilateral disagreements with Sudan. In December 2013, conflict between government and opposition forces killed tens of thousands and led to a dire humanitarian crisis with millions of South Sudanese displaced and food insecure. The warring parties signed a peace agreement in August 2015 that created a transitional government of national unity in April 2016. However, in July 2016, fighting broke out in Juba between the two principal signatories, plunging the country back into conflict.

Now you have a grip on the situation in South Sudan….there is a war going on within the borders ans no one cares especially the West……they give it a bit of lip service but that is as far as it goes…..

The accounts are horrific. A young girl strangled and gang-raped. Children burned alive as government soldiers blocked the door of their hut and set it aflame. These are some of the atrocities revealed in 14 reports, seen by the AP, that have not yet been released by the independent body charged with monitoring a failed cease-fire imposed in December in South Sudan, where civil war is now well into its fifth year, has killed tens of thousands, and has created Africa’s largest refugee crisis since the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The reports should have been released last month at a meeting led by the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission but South Sudan’s government did not attend, preventing the accounts of abuses from being made public because there was not a quorum.

The unpublished reports describe violations by both government and opposition forces but most of the accounts blame the former. One report describes a disabled woman who, unable to flee the fighting, was thrown into a burning house by government soldiers. The US, South Sudan’s largest aid donor, has increased pressure on the Juba government amid widespread allegations that its officials are profiting from the conflict instead of working to end it. Last week the UN Security Council adopted a US-sponsored resolution that warns of an arms embargo and sanctions against six high-ranking officials if the fighting doesn’t stop. The US and others, however, insist that the East African regional bloc, along with the African Union, should take the lead in finding peace and holding perpetrators of abuses accountable.