Experts warn of humanitarian aid abuse in troubled South Sudan

FILE - In this Friday, June 9, 2017 file photo, unaccompanied or separated children play and draw on the floor of a World Vision tent as they wait for child protection specialists to evaluate their situations at the Imvepi reception center, where newly arrived refugees are processed before being allocated plots of land in nearby Bidi Bidi refugee settlement, in northern Uganda. The latest report on human rights abuses in South Sudan's five-year civil war, released by a United Nations commission Friday, Feb. 23, 2018 says it has identified more than 40 senior military officials "who may bear individual responsibility for war crimes." (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)

South Sudan’s leaders are turning humanitarian aid and support into political weapons by blocking opponents from receiving aid and using innocent civilians as bait, international aid experts warn.

The humanitarian crisis in Africa’s youngest country, plagued by a vicious power struggle since obtaining independence from Sudan^[1] in 2011, has hit an all-time high. The United States, along with other governments and human rights organizations, has offered aid in an effort to combat corruption and broker a power-sharing peace deal.

“We have numerous human rights reports that document this [conflict] in grotesque and horrifying detail. This is virtually genocide. It’s ethnic cleansing. It’s clearing out populations,” said Kate Almquist Knopf, a director at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University, said last week.

President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, and rival Riek Machar, an ethnic Nuer, have been clashing over territory, power and energy virtually since the country was formed. A full-fledged civil war broke out in 2013 when Mr. Kiir fired Mr. Machar, then the country’s vice president, leading to tens of thousands of deaths.

The Trump administration and other international observers have expressed skepticism that a new power-sharing deal between the two will end the fighting, at a time when experts say the government has consistently exploited international generosity.

“They have a dangerous culture of dependency,” said former U.S. Ambassador to South Sudan Mary Phee during a forum organized last week by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The leaders of this country just look at American leadership and say, ‘Well, you’ve always provided us aid, and you have to continue to provide us aid.’”

The challenges were on dramatic display Monday, when angry South Sudanese protesters reportedly looted 10 humanitarian aid agency compounds and injured two staffers in the process. The raids come just days after Mr. Kiir announced that he was ready to negotiate yet another peace accord.

The French medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders, announced Tuesday it was suspending most of its activities in Maban, South Sudan, after an attack Monday, including a hospital in a refugee camp and primary health care services in a local hospital.

“As the safety of health care personnel and facilities cannot be guaranteed, we have no other choice but to suspend the rest of our activities, which will leave 88,000 people with limited access to much needed medical services,” said Samuel Theodore, the group’s head of mission in South Sudan, in a statement Tuesday.

The Trump administration has imposed an arms embargo on the country, as well as sanctions on a Sudanese official suspected of corruption.

And the White House said in a statement Sunday that it has little confidence in the “narrow” peace accord negotiated between South Sudan’s feuding leaders.

“A narrow agreement between elites will not solve the problems plaguing South Sudan. In fact, such an agreement may sow the seeds of another cycle of conflict,” said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

References

1. ^{^} Sudan (www.bing.com)
2. ^{^} Sudan (www.bing.com)
3. ^{^} Comment Policy (www.washingtontimes.com)