South Sudan: Stalemate - Violent Leaders, Clueless Mediators

analysis

South Sudan's internecine civil war broke out almost 9 months ago and has already claimed tens of thousands of lives, displaced nearly two million people and left nearly five million at the mercy of impending famine. It shows no sign of abating any time soon. In part, this is due to a series of failures by South Sudanese leaders and the international community.

The Intergovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD), the East African regional body mediating in South Sudan, seems paralysed and out of ideas. They have extended the deadline for the warring parties to reach a peace deal, having earlier threatened to levy heavy punitive measures on those derailing the peace process.

A consensus is fast developing that IGAD may be unable to deliver on its own promise of taking the peace spoilers, rights abusers and perpetrators of heinous civilian massacres to task, never mind swiftly brokering a lasting peace deal in South Sudan.

Most South Sudanese are now convinced that at best IGAD will reinvent the status quo that culminated in the violent outbreak in the first place. This is a short-cut to 'peace' arrangement that will see South Sudan's irresponsible political elites yet again loosely patched back in a power-sharing framework as an 'African solution' to this 'African problem.'

In the meantime, the fighting continues. The fact that there are few examples of civil wars around the world that have ended in decisive military victories means a military solution in South Sudan is highly unlikely. So why the violent intransigence and the arms stockpiling to sustain it, when all indications suggest a clear military victory can never be achieved, let alone that such a means can lead to a conclusive end to the current political and violent inter-communal crisis in South Sudan?

The millions of ordinary South Sudanese citizens are by now resigned to the fact that their fate is unfortunately being determined by a ruling clique embroiled in violent power struggle, who perceive South Sudan and its people as a wild game - a kill that must be violently scrambled upon to secure a lion's share. These so-called leaders are clearly more prone to violence with a view to securing political office, and less concerned with the already dire humanitarian situation of their own kith and kin created by their own irresponsible decisions and actions.

There are several complicating factors to South Sudan's stalemate that also sustain the insatiable thirst for violence of South Sudan's warring parties.

First, there is the culture of violence, death and revenge - part of some South Sudanese cultural traditions, and exacerbated by decades of civil wars and fratricidal South-on-South atrocious inter-communal conflicts.

One only needs to examine the repeated invocation of past violent incidents used to justify the triggering and perpetuation of the current cultural and political rivalry, to appreciate why the warring parties remain stuck to their violent course, despite the devastation it has already inflicted on the innocent and vulnerable members of the community. Revenge is the key word, in addition to greed and ambition to gain or retain political power.

As the uncompromising prosecution of the current civil war illustrates, the mindset of some groups in South Sudan, and not least the leadership of the warring groups, is shaped by the culture of revenge and prolonged exposure to violent practices, political or otherwise.

The culture of revenge is not only sustained by a vicious and self-perpetuating cycle at the expense of genuine search for peaceful means to resolve differences, but also by the inflated egos of its perpetrators. This leaves most members of both warring camps and their support bases suffering from what can be characterized as 'superiority complex syndrome' -  a condition that leaves one's psyche disposed to some imagined notion of birth right and entitlement to rule and a self-perception of being first among equals.