Obama, in Ethiopia, Plans to Address South Sudan Conflict

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — For President Obama^[1], the birth of South Sudan^[2] four years ago was the capstone of his Africa policy. He sent his United Nations ambassador, Susan E. Rice, for the independence celebration, and she took her 13-year-old son to stand in the joyous crowds of the new capital, Juba.

Four years later^[3], that triumph has degenerated into tragedy. The country is racked by a brutal civil war^[4] that has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced more than two million^[5] others and dashed Mr. Obama’s hopes of forging a brighter future for that corner of Africa.

Mr. Obama convened a meeting of the region’s leaders here on Monday to try to halt the conflict in South Sudan^[6], in his most direct personal intervention since the violence broke out more than 18 months ago. He and the other leaders agreed to press the combatants to agree to a peace agreement by Aug. 17, and threatened both sides with sanctions or other measures if they do not comply.

In a discussion of what to do if the rival forces fail to agree, one of the African leaders in the meeting even suggested regional military intervention to stop the fighting, according to American officials. Mr. Obama, though, was more focused on returning to the United Nations Security Council to secure international sanctions against individuals or organizations involved.

As fighting rages in South Sudan, thousands of residents from Malakal on the Upper Nile have fled their homes and sought refuge at the United Nations compound just outside the city. Credit Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

 

Mr. Obama used the nearly two-hour meeting to press two countries — Uganda, which has openly supported the government in South Sudan, and Sudan, which has tacitly backed the rebels — to force their allies to stand down. “The statements we heard, particularly from the Sudanese, were constructive,” said one of the American officials, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the closed session. Another official said there was a “resounding and collective loss of patience” with the warring parties, who were not represented at the table.

The situation in South Sudan has grown so grim that White House officials hold out little hope of success. Presidents rarely get involved in a diplomatic meeting unless an outcome is reasonably certain, and Mr. Obama’s aides do not usually talk about Plan B before Plan A has failed. But Mr. Obama’s advisers said he had little alternative but to give the regional meeting a try. He was coming to the region anyway to visit Kenya, his father’s home country, and Ethiopia^[7], where the executive branch of the African Union^[8] has its headquarters.

“As a consequence of this discussion, our hope is that we can actually bring about the kind of peace that the people of South Sudan so desperately need,” Mr. Obama said as he opened the meeting.

The frustration of Mr. Obama’s staff members, who invested so much in the creation of South Sudan, was palpable as Air Force One^[9] arrived here, with Ms. Rice now accompanying Mr. Obama as his national security adviser.

“This is a classic case of venal leaders squandering a huge opportunity that they themselves earned, that we all in the international community supported them to obtain,” a senior administration official told reporters on the flight during a briefing whose ground rules required anonymity. “So we can’t undo this for them,” the official said. “They’ve got to fix this.”

The session on South Sudan followed separate meetings with Ethiopia^[10]’s leaders as Mr. Obama became the first American president to visit the second-biggest country by population in Africa. While Ethiopia has been growing quickly, the governing party and its allies have smothered political opposition and the independent news media, arresting journalists and claiming 100 percent of the seats in Parliament in widely criticized elections in May^[11].

Mr. Obama met on Monday with President Mulatu Teshome and Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, and held a joint news conference later with Mr. Desalegn at which they discussed shared interests in economic development and the battle with Islamist extremists but skated lightly over human rights issues. On Tuesday, Mr. Obama will address the African Union^[12], the first American president to do so, at a time when he is encouraging Africans to do more to fight the Shabab terrorist group and to resolve other regional conflicts.

The meeting on South Sudan included Mr. Obama and Mr. Desalegn, as well as President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour of Sudan and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, chairwoman of the African Union. The challenge was to get regional players that are supporting different sides in the conflict to agree on a unified approach.

The conflict in South Sudan, which has become a deadly confrontation between the nation’s largest ethnic groups, began in a power struggle between two men with a bitter rivalry^[13] who had come together to forge a new nation. One of them, Salva Kiir, became president of the fledgling country and the other, Riek Machar, was named vice president.

The two come from South Sudan’s main ethnic groups, the Dinka and Nuer, which have fought over land and resources for years. The fragile détente unraveled in December 2013 when Mr. Kiir, a Dinka, accused Mr. Machar, a Nuer, of planning a coup^[14]. Their security details engaged in a gun battle and within days the nation was consumed by war.

In May 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to the region^[15] to broker a peace deal, but the cease-fire he negotiated lasted just days. More than half a dozen other peace plans have fallen apart since then. Mr. Obama’s special envoy, Donald E. Booth, and Ms. Rice have also been involved in trying to broker a resolution.

Fighting has been fiercest in the Upper Nile and Unity States, where the nation’s two major oil fields are found. With the onset of the rainy season, an already dire situation has grown worse.

“Tens of thousands of people are cut off from aid and medical care as fighting intensifies in South Sudan’s Upper Nile State,” Doctors Without Borders, the international humanitarian organization, said in a statement last week.

In Unity State, the devastation resulting from a recent government offensive into the town of Leer, Mr. Machar’s hometown, is just starting to come into focus. Human Rights Watch released a report last week detailing war crimes in chilling detail.

A woman from Koch County described how her two daughters had been raped and then one was tortured. “One man put a gun to the back of my head and said, ‘Watch how we will rape your daughter,’ ” the woman told the Human Rights Watch researcher.

She said they had beaten her with a stick, and, after the rapes, had held her older daughter in flames until she caught fire. “She was too injured from her burns, so we had to leave her in the bush when we fled,” the woman said, according to the rights group.

The fighting does not appear to be coming to a halt with the rainy season, as it has in the past. On a recent trip to South Sudan, a reporter from The New York Times saw what looked like amphibious assault vehicles being moved out of Juba on trailers. Since then, there have been reports of government forces using tanklike vehicles to hunt down and kill rebels and civilians as they have fled into the swamps.

The humanitarian disaster has only worsened. “I am deeply shocked by what I have seen,” Stephen O’Brien, the United Nations under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said as he concluded a four-day visit recently. The fighting has made South Sudan one of the deadliest conflicts in the world for aid workers, 27 of whom have been killed since the start of the war.

The United Nations’ head of peacekeeping, Hervé Ladsous, urged the Security Council this month to impose an arms embargo “because it is really completely questionable that the very meager resources that the country has go into buying more weapons.”

American officials said they had supported the threat of an arms embargo and might embrace such a measure if the current peace plan was not accepted. “But the thing is we have to find tools that affect the two parties equally,” the senior administration official said, “and the arms embargo is more one-sided than two-sided.”