U.S. has obligation to support struggling South Sudan, top diplomat says

The struggling government of South Sudan says the U.S. must do more to support the democracy it helped create in the nation four years ago, asserting that the Obama administration^[1] and the international community are unfairly blaming the leadership in Juba for dragging its feet on a peace deal with rebels in the country’s civil war.

Without clearer American leadership and backing, said Awan Riak^[2], a top adviser to South Sudanese President Salva Kiir Mayardit, the cycle of violence that has gripped the country since it achieved independence will only continue.

“We cannot make it alone, and we will not succeed alone,” Mr. Riak^[3] said in an interview with editors and reporters at The Washington Times on Thursday, suggesting that Washington^[4] has an obligation to intervene with resources that none of South Sudan’s neighbors can provide.

“If they see their child is perishing,” he said, “I do not think that the United States of America will just stand watching things.”

At the same time, however, Mr. Riak^[5] said the Obama administration^[6] and many others in the international community have unfairly portrayed the government as the aggressor in South Sudan’s internal strife and that U.S. officials are turning a blind eye to ongoing meddling by the government of Sudan to the north.

He said Mr. Kiir^[7] has ceded to pressure from the White House to sign a peace deal with Khartoum-backed rebels in recent weeks in the hope that the Obama administration^[8] would follow through with funding to ensure that the accord is implemented.

“There is a need for the [U.S.] to cooperate with our government,” he said, asserting that suggestions by administration officials that Mr. Kiir^[9] is to blame for the nation’s problems are “not helpful” and “not productive.”

The South Sudanese president and rebel leaders traded charges this week over who had violated a cease-fire as the two sides tried to implement the August peace accord. Mr. Kiir^[10] also faced skepticism from the United Nations when he participated by video hookup in a high-level summit this week on the country’s difficulties reaching a power-sharing accord.

“I hope you will not betray and disappoint us,” U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told Mr. Kiir^[11].

The South Sudanese president told the conference, “I know there are people who doubt my commitment. I will prove the doubting Thomases wrong.”

South Sudan’s plight, Mr. Riak^[12] said, has grown more precarious by fact that the price of oil — the war-torn African nation’s economic lifeline — has plummeted in the past year.

“We are not even meeting our budgetary obligations towards delivery of services to our people,” he said. “And now, with the [peace] agreement itself coming in as another process to be followed when we are having all these economic challenges, we find it difficult to move forward without [financial] support.”

Souring relationship

Although the Obama administration^[13] spent the initial years of South Sudan’s independence backing the Kiir government, the relationship began to sour when the South Sudanese president sacked his entire Cabinet — including Vice President Riek Machar, now the leader of the rebel forces — in 2013.

Story Continues →^[14]

References

1. ^{^} Obama administration (www.bing.com)
2. ^{^} Awan Riak (www.bing.com)
3. ^{^} Mr. Riak (www.bing.com)
4. ^{^} Washington (www.bing.com)
5. ^{^} Mr. Riak (www.bing.com)
6. ^{^} Obama administration (www.bing.com)
7. ^{^} Mr. Kiir (www.bing.com)
8. ^{^} Obama administration (www.bing.com)
9. ^{^} Mr. Kiir (www.bing.com)
10. ^{^} Mr. Kiir (www.bing.com)
11. ^{^} Mr. Kiir (www.bing.com)
12. ^{^} Mr. Riak (www.bing.com)
13. ^{^} Obama administration (www.bing.com)
14. ^{^} Story Continues → (www.bing.com)