South Sudan: Ethnic Militias and the Shrinking State

analysis

Until early August, Maban county was mostly famous for the misery of others. Nearly 130,000 Sudanese refugees live - and sometimes die - in desperately difficult conditions in several makeshift camps in Maban, having fled the fighting in Blue Nile, over the border in Sudan. Their suffering has been a recurring news story over the last few years: Sudan's troubles exported to South Sudan.

On August 4 and 5, Maban's own problems made the headlines. At least five South Sudanese aid workers (some reports said six) were killed. They were singled out on the basis of their ethnicity. All were Nuer - the same ethnic group as the rebel leader Riek Machar, and the vast majority of his fighters. The UN and other bodies say the aid workers were entirely blameless.

The killings were pinned on a previously unknown group, the Maban Defence Force (MDF). The MDF had clashed with Nuer deserters from the SPLA, and subsequently allegedly targeted Nuers working with international aid organisations. More than two hundred aid workers had to be evacuated, with the UN hastily deploying peacekeepers to what had been considered a relatively calm part of the country.

So what exactly is the MDF? It's known by different names, including Maban (or Mabanese) Defence Force, the Maban White Army, Petroleum Defence Operations, and Community Policing. The name chosen often reflects to what extent the speaker approves of the militia.

Several officials from Maban have expressed their support for the MDF, either privately or in public. Locals suggest the new force, whatever it is called, is composed entirely of ethnic Mabanese, and could number as many as 5000 people, though such estimates are often unreliable. It was created as a direct result of the civil war that broke out in December 2013.

"We had a lot of crises in Jonglei, in Bentiu, in Malakal", explains Andrea Maya, the Assistant Commissioner for Refugee Affairs for Upper Nile state. "Civilians were killed in big numbers, properties were looted. Based on that, civilians all over South Sudan organised themselves to defend themselves" - including the Mabanese.

Maya thinks the MDF members already had weapons, as many ordinary people in South Sudan do, and says the group sprang up more or less independently to protect the community. Others are convinced the MDF was sponsored by the government in Juba, in part as a loyal barrier against any rebel "attack towards the Adar oil fields at Maban's western border", as one source in the area puts it. There are suggestions that eventually the MDF could be incorporated into the SPLA.

The creation of an ethnic force independent of the national army, and one which has killed in cold blood members of a supposed rival ethnic group, is a further sign of the self-flagellating trajectory the country has taken.

It is understandable why individuals in Maban county would feel the need to protect themselves, given the number of civilians that have been killed in this conflict. Indeed, there are apparently more than twenty community defence forces, often simply small-scale ethnic militias, scattered around South Sudan. Looked at from a national perspective, though, this is the surest route to the militarised balkanisation of the country.

Pibor county, Jonglei state, South Sudan, December 2011/January 2012

In the first couple of years after South Sudan declared its independence, before the current civil war broke out, South Sudan's biggest internal security threat was inter-ethnic violence in Jonglei state.