South Sudan #39;s year of civil war

More than 10,000 people have been killed and more than a million displaced. Successive attempts by regional mediators to end the bloodshed in South Sudan - backed up by pressure from the international community - have failed to produce any lasting impact. The fighting, which has a strong ethnic component, erupted 12 months ago amid allegations of a coup against President Kiir. For a comparison of the situation then and now, DW talked to peace and management consultant Martin Petry.

DW: Mr Petry, what is your impression of South Sudan today, one year after the alleged coup?

Martin Petry: Everybody had hoped there would be a ceasefire, an agreement to show the way forward. This has not happened. So everybody is now afraid that since an agreement was not reached in the period up to November, the hostilities will start up again, because everybody knows the two parties have been building up their weapons and their capacity to fight.

It has been also the experience of 40 years of civil war in South Sudan that the most intense fighting always takes place between December and April when it is logistically easier to fight and make war. The situation is tense; there is a lot of fear within the population. The majority of the population object to this war, they feel it is not their war. They want peace and they want leaders who are able to make peace.

What has changed since your last visit to South Sudan?

I have been in South Sudan three times this year. When I was there in June, there was still the hope that a round of negotiations would start at the end of August and they even reached the point where they agreed on a roadmap, but in the end there was a dispute over whether the documents had been signed or not. People really thought this was ridiculous. So in June there was still hope, but in September and later in November, a lot of people had lost hope that there would be any progress in the negotiations.

On a more optimistic note, however, there are initiatives from various countries such as the intra-SPLM (Sudan People's Liberation Movement) dialogue, which is mediated by Tanzania. Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni, who for some time was only backing South Sudan's President Salva Kiir is now opening up for discussion with the SPLA (Sudan People's Liberation Army) in opposition.

You work for a peace and management consultancy. How do you see your role in all of this?

One of the lessons I have learnt as a consultant is that we should face up to the complexity of this conflict and that means that there is no recipe. There are many, many problems and there is no recipe which says 'this is what a reconciliation process should look like' or 'this is the way negotiation results could be produced' or 'federalism is the solution for South Sudan.' If you support initiatives for South Sudan in an honest and genuine way, then you must also admit that as an outsider you don't know what is best for South Sudan, you can only accompany, support, strengthen, make partnerships crisis-proof, give them flexible funding and help them to learn from their own experiences, so that in the end we have a South Sudanese solution and a South Sudanese transformation process.

What is your assessment of the political climate in South Sudan?

The country is at war and the government feels strongly under pressure both from within and without. It responds to this by reducing the space available to civil society. That is very unfortunate. You would expect a country that is under pressure to be open and do something to improve the relations between the state and society, but the opposite is happening. There are discussing an NGO bill which is restrictive and looks as if it has been copy-pasted from Sudan. Another inspiration from Sudan is a security bill which would give the South Sudanese regime opportunities to be repressive. The media are also under heavy pressure.

With all the other crises going on in the world - Syria, for instance - do you get the impression that the people of South Sudan have been forgotten?

Yes. If you talk to the South Sudanese, that's what they feel. The news is dominated by Syria, Ukraine, even though in South Sudan you would have something to report on more or less every day. International attention on South Sudan is not what it should be - in my opinion and in the opinion of many South Sudanese.

Martin Petry is a peace and management consultant with the Peace Resources Group.

Interview: Asumpta Lattus