Obama Is Impeding Peace in South Sudan

Even before British Major-General Charles "Chinese" Gordon and his followers were massacred in 1885, following the year long siege of Khartoum, Sudan and the nations that surround it have proven problematic to the West.

At one time those problems could be safely ignored. Now, though, speed of travel has shrunk vast distances into blocks of appreciable time, the need for increased energy and mineral exploration has even the most barren wastelands considered for development and, most of all, what is commonly held to be basic human decency means the West can no longer turn a blind eye to religious and tribal oppression, especially if and when it leads to genocide.

In the 1990's the world's attention focused on Sudan once again as civil war between the country's ethnic Africans in the south and the Arab-dominated government in the north produced such suffering and depravation it could not be ignored. After much arm-twisting by the United States and other global powers, a peace-accord was reached in 2005 that included a provision that the southerners would, in time, be given the opportunity to form an independent state of their own.

In January 2011 a referendum was held and, with 98.8 percent of the region voting in what is as free and fair an election as ever happens in that part of the world, a new nation, the Republic of South Sudan was born.

[GALLERY: Barack Obama Cartoons^[1]]

Things going forward from that point have not been easy, as is often the case when new nations develop. A political power grab pushed President Salva Kiir of the ruling SPLM/A party to dissolve his cabinet and dismiss his vice president, Riek Machar, from office.

To suggest this has proven disruptive to the foundations of the democratic process would be an understatement. And, as might be expected, the problems have been made worse as politics have been overlain with tribal divisions: The majority of Dinka, South Sudan's largest ethnic group, are backing Kiir; the Nuer, the second largest tribe, support Machar. Once again civil war rages, pushing more than 2 million people from their homes.

For all that, the biggest stumbling block to peace, however, may be the Obama administration. American envoys are pushing both sides to sign a peace accord that neither side yet appears to be committed to fulfilling.

As Brian Garst of the non-profit Center for Freedom and Prosperity writes in a new whitepaper, "Stumbling Toward Peace in South Sudan,"^[2] the United States and other global powers are attempting exert their influence in South Sudan, and they must be "mindful of the lessons learned to date and avoid ham-fisted efforts that prioritize smothering conflict over securing real stability."

His paper seeks to "identify where the international community may be doing more harm than good." It is an excellent primer on the situation that provides a solid critique of the process of getting to peace that is currently being led by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, an eight-country African trade bloc headquartered in Djibouti City.

[READ: Obama Shouldn't Coddle Congo's Denis Sassou Nguesso^[3]]

According to Garst's analysis, the principle criticism is that the Intergovernmental Authority on Development and other interveners are pushing all parties to reach a comprehensive agreement by August 17, 2015, a deadline that is entirely artificial. "This rigid approach limits opportunities for the parties to achieve small victories through piecemeal agreements and build trust over time," Garst writes. "Rather than putting areas of agreement 'in the bank,' it places the success of the entire effort at the mercy of whether the parties can quickly agree on the most contentious issues."

The United States is, unfortunately, helping to exert pressure. President Barack Obama has warned^[4] that if the deadline is missed "it's going to be necessary for us to move forward with a different plan and recognize that those leaders are incapable of creating the peace that is required." According to unnamed U.S. officials cited by the Wall Street Journal, the administration's "different plan" could include sanctions^[5] against individual leaders in the central government and among the rebels. Rather than lead to a lasting peace, this would only make things worse, as some in Washington are starting to realize.

To take an example from another former British colonial possession, India, the use of arbitrary deadlines to enforce deals that still have much left to be negotiated can provoke human misery as profound and extensive as anything it is intended to stop. The challenge is to stop the fighting and help the government reassemble itself in an enduring way. Picking a target date for a deal out of thin air and using threats to enforce it is wrong-headed and dangerous. Indeed, bring peace – but in a way that will not require additional interventions over the years to prevent even more bloodshed.

References

1. ^{^} Link: http://www.usnews.com/cartoons/barack-obama-cartoons (www.usnews.com)
2. ^{^} Link: http://freedomandprosperity.org/2015/publications/stumbling-toward-peace-in-south-sudan/ (freedomandprosperity.org)
3. ^{^} Link: http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-roff/2015/07/13/obama-shouldnt-coddle-congos-denis-sassou-nguesso (www.usnews.com)
4. ^{^} has warned (www.whitehouse.gov)
5. ^{^} Link: http://www.wsj.com/articles/obama-administration-weighs-new-sanctions-on-south-sudan-leaders-1437932166 (www.wsj.com)