Dominance of South Sudan's ruling elite is a threat to peace and stability

South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir with a delegation from the United Nations Security Council, including US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power (right) during a tour of South Sudan’s state house on September 4. [PHOTO: AFP]

There is no end in sight to South Sudan’s man-made apocalypse so long as its ruling “gunclass” runs the show.

These ethno-regional, sectarian warlords have benefited from the conflict through organised violence and plunder. On a number of occasions, they have organised pogroms against their own people on the grounds of ethnicity, political affiliation and social geography. The “gunclass” has tapped dangerously into sediments of age-old ethnic cleavages as a means of maintaining power, literally, by the barrel of the gun.

They consist of cliques of “former liberators” and former Khartoum-sponsored counter-insurgency warlords who fought on both sides of the civil war during the decade-long liberation movement for South Sudan. These individuals include the current President, Salva Kiir (a liberator), and his former deputy turned armed opposition leader, Riek Machar (once a liberator turned a COIN warlord).

MAIN ROADBLOCK

The combination of corruption, violence and intense ethnic mobilisation deployed by the “gunclass” on their own citizens has hijacked the nascent state and its future stability and prosperity. Irrespective of the side they are currently fighting on, their objectives remain the same – setting their country on a permanent trajectory of fragility and instability for their own personal gains.

In her recent book, former head of the UN Mission in South Sudan, Hilde Johnson, identified the transformation of the security sector as the main roadblock to state building. Indeed, the absence of political will among the ruling “gunclass” to reduce the number of soldiers and weapons in circulation or reform and professionalise the security sector is the wicked problem of peace and stability in South Sudan. In the words of Jeremy Astill-Brown, this is a military with a country and not a country with a military – and is, in fact, inching towards a country without a state.

Just this past July, the reckless high-stakes gambling of the “gunclass” reached unprecedented levels when these addicted-to-risk warlords slammed their foot on the accelerator of violence at the exact moment when they should have applied the brakes. For five days, between July 8 and 11, full-scale fighting returned to the capital city Juba and sent the newly-returned first vice president and armed opposition leader, Riek Machar, back into the bush, fleeing for his life. In his absence, President Kiir hand-picked a member of the opposition, Taban Deng Gai, to replace him, and effectively split the opposition into two in what has been described as Pax Salvatica.

Now that the peace agreement has been rendered useless, the government has sought to consolidate its power and has intensify brutal attacks against civilians, including sexual violence, criminality, and the closure of any public space for dissent, including the illegal detention of journalists under South Sudan’s own laws.

The US Special Envoy to South Sudan Donald Booth recently testified before Congress: “We are of course concerned about adherence to the terms and the spirit of the peace agreement, but at the same time it is not for us to tell South Sudan who its leaders should be. Now, given all that has happened, we do not believe it would be wise for Machar to return to his previous position in Juba. But this cannot become a justification for President Kiir to monopolise power and stifle dissenting political voices.”

The intransigence and sense of impunity of Juba’s “gunclass” has been emboldened by the lack of accountability for their actions. Despite recent visits to South Sudan and the region by top US diplomats John Kerry and Samantha Power, efforts to restore the status quo or hold leaders to account have failed. While it is true that the US and other great powers should not determine who South Sudan’s leaders should be, together with the UN, they have an obligation to the people of South Sudan to ensure those who perpetrate horrific atrocities are not simply allowed to remain in power with the full support and consent of the international community. So far, the “gunclass” has proven immune to diplomatic threats in the absence of concrete consequences for their actions.

FRACTURED DEAL

The reality at the moment is that South Sudan has already relapsed into civil war. The deployment of a regional protection force under the UN peacekeeping mission should be premised on allowing for the political re-engineering of the fractured deal under a new architecture of a caretaker administration agreed to by all stakeholders, including faith-based and civil society groups.