How South Sudan Is Trying to Mitigate Its Diplomatic Isolation

In late April, Stephen Dhieu Dau, South Sudan’s finance minister, visited his counterpart in Turkey to sign a trade and cooperation agreement^[1]. As the young country’s civil war drags on^[2] and relations with the U.S. and other traditional backers remain tense, South Sudan’s officials are pursuing ties with new diplomatic partners. In an email interview, Brian Adeba, associate director of policy at the Enough Project, describes that outreach and explains why the U.S. is still in a position to exert pressure on South Sudan’s government.

WPR: How have relations between South Sudan and its traditional backers, especially the United States, evolved as the civil war has dragged on?

Adeba: Historically, South Sudan’s strongest supporter among its traditional backers was the United States, which invested a lot of diplomatic effort to bring about the birth of the world’s most recently independent country. For years, South Sudan enjoyed strong bipartisan support among policymakers in the U.S. This support started under former President George W. Bush, who reportedly directed staff on his second day in office to look into ways to resolve the conflict in what was then a unified Sudan.

The conflict formally ended with the signing of a peace deal in January 2005. This deal granted the area referred to as Southern Sudan the right to a referendum on self-determination, to be held in 2011. In the meantime, Southern Sudan became an autonomous region. During this period, extremely close relations developed between the U.S and Southern Sudan—relations so close that, today, the nation of South Sudan is often referred to as the United States’ baby. South Sudanese President Salva Kiir was warmly welcomed in the U.S. eight times by then-President Bush, who also gave Kiir his trademark cowboy hat as a present.

After former President Barack Obama assumed office, his administration also pursued close ties with South Sudan until around September 2011, when a marked deterioration began over Juba’s support for Sudanese rebels. The Obama administration called Kiir out^[3] for this support. Relations continued to falter as human rights abuses were documented in South Sudan and the democratic space in the country began to be constricted. The advent of war in December 2013 further damaged these formerly cordial ties, with the U.S recently seeking to impose an arms embargo^[4] on South Sudan at the U.N. Security Council. At the end of Obama’s second term, relations with South Sudan had dipped to their lowest point.

WPR: Has South Sudan been proactive in seeking out alternate sources of foreign support? Who has it worked to establish relations with?

Adeba: South Sudan’s economy is in dire straits as a result of the war. The South Sudanese pound has lost nearly 95 percent of its value, and inflation is skyrocketing as the country struggles to cope with shrinking oil revenues. In addition, atrocity crimes and suggestions that South Sudan’s army is engaging in genocide^[5] have served to isolate the country both regionally and among former key allies in the West, the U.S included.

Where possible, the government is trying to mitigate this isolation as well as seek new friends as sources of support. The visit in April by Stephen Dhieu Dau, the minister of finance, to Turkey, where he signed a trade and economic cooperation agreement, serves as both a means of making new friends as well as a way to attract much-needed cash for the country.

In other instances, regional dynamics have pushed countries into South Sudan’s arms. Egyptian officials, perhaps waking up to the realization that they had lost their regional influence as they focused on domestic priorities in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings, have recently begun reaching out to South Sudan. In January, President Kiir visited Egypt, where he received a warm welcome. Egypt’s president, Abdel-Fatah el-Sissi, pledged to continue supporting South Sudan at “all levels.”

In a similar move, Morocco, which was seeking regional support for its re-entry to the African Union, has identified South Sudan as a new ally. In February, King Mohammed VI visited Juba and established a field hospital managed by Moroccan doctors.

However, ties with Egypt and Morocco haven’t resulted in any significant financial dividends for the country.

WPR: If the conflict continues and Kiir remains in power, how might he work to reposition South Sudan diplomatically, and how durable is the country’s relationship with the U.S.?

Adeba: It would probably be quite difficult for Kiir to reposition South Sudan diplomatically and further scale back its already tense diplomatic relations with the U.S. without a fundamental change in the way he does business. Even in the Trump era, the U.S. continues to be somewhat concerned about the upholding of core values around human rights, free speech and democracy, as was evidenced by U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s scathing indictment^[6] of the Kiir administration in her speech to the Security Council in late April. This was the very first time anyone high up in the Trump administration had said anything about South Sudan.

Ties with the U.S. would improve if the war stopped and if Kiir took steps to restore the rule of law, the integrity of systems of accountability, respect for human rights, free expression and a semblance of democracy. At this point, however, such moves are still far-fetched. Kiir and his inner circle aren’t keen on ending the conflict in a peaceful manner, as there’s still a belief among his inner circle that a military solution is possible.

Rather than wait endlessly for Kiir to take these steps, the U.S. should take measures that may compel him and his inner circle to accelerate the revival of the country’s collapsed peace process. At its core, the government in South Sudan is a kleptocracy in which a small group of elites has hijacked the state and its means of production. These elites have to do business with the outside world, and therein rests their vulnerability. Their transactions are mostly conducted in U.S. dollars, and this gives the U.S the opportunity to take action. Applying targeted financial pressure that will hit these elites in the wallet and limit their ability to do business with the rest of the world is one way the U.S can take action unilaterally. On the multilateral front, the U.S should continue to pursue a binding resolution on an arms embargo at the Security Council that would inhibit the capacity of the government and others to wage war.

References

1. ^{^} sign a trade and cooperation agreement (radiotamazuj.org)
2. ^{^} drags on (www.washingtonpost.com)
3. ^{^} called Kiir out (www.reuters.com)
4. ^{^} seeking to impose an arms embargo (www.aljazeera.com)
5. ^{^} engaging in genocide (www.independent.co.uk)
6. ^{^} scathing indictment (www.aljazeera.com)