South Sudan is a new nation splitting apart

YAMBIO, South Sudan - Simon Burete was weeding his peanut field a few weeks ago when he saw smoke coming from his house. He ran as fast as he could.

He and his wife, Angelina, had enjoyed years of peace, he farming the fields, she selling the produce in the market. They were poor but welded to each other. Just that morning, they had talked about walking into town to buy their first mobile phones.

But as Simon Burete made it back to the house, he couldn't believe his eyes. His wife was lying on the floor, burned to death in a rampage by government forces.

South Sudan's war and its ugliness are engulfing previously peaceful areas of the nation, spelling horror for the victims and signifying something deeper: This country is cracking apart.

Yambio, a midsize town of wide dirt roads, used to be part of what was called a green state. This place was considered safe. It was not a red zone.

But now charred buildings and crushed huts line the roads leaving town. Bountiful fields lie untended during a desperate national food crisis.

South Sudan's conflict started as a power struggle between the country's political leaders before slipping into a broader feud between the two biggest ethnic groups, the Nuer and the Dinka.

But as it enters its fourth year, this war, Africa's worst, is rapidly sucking in many of the nation's other ethnic groups, including the Azande, the Shilluk, the Moru, the Kakwa and the Kuku. The conflict is imperiling nearly every pillar that this young country's future rested on: oil production, agriculture, education, transport and most especially unity, which seemed proudly on display six years ago when South Sudan was born.

Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed, and every major cease-fire that has been negotiated by African and Western officials has been violated.

On top of all this comes another calamity: famine.

U.N. officials said more than 1 million people could die.

One of the few shards of hope, analysts say, is that Riek Machar, the former vice president and powerful Nuer politician who led the rebellion against the president, has been relegated to exile. He has been blamed for stoking ethnic violence.

But the issue of Dinka domination remains. The president, Salva Kiir, is a Dinka.

Government officials admitted that some of their soldiers had committed abuses, but the government denies that it is trying to stir up an ethnically driven war.