The Language of Crisis: Re-framing the Conflict in South Sudan
by Arielle Gordon
The phrases “South Sudan” and “on the brink of war” have seemed awfully too familiar in the past few years. Why does South Sudan increasingly appear as if it is about to spontaneously combust from the inside out? Since the country’s formation in July 9, 2011, commentators and politicians have anticipated war at the border of Sudan and South Sudan, where agricultural necessities, oil politics, and religious anxieties have complicated and aggravated the inauspiciously-drawn line between the two.(i) Yet, in December, when ethnicity-based violence erupted in Juba (the country’s capital), the “war” question shifted from one between the North and the South to an issue of civil war that pitted the country’s political camps, military factions, and civilians against each other, and divided them along tribal lines. While the current conflict poses a harsh mirror to South Sudan’s internal problems, it may be the ultimate test for the survival of this new nation. A close examination of its own cultural, social, national, and political discourses may provide an opportunity to rethink how the newly formed country has constituted its own nationhood.
Violence came to head on December 15, 2013, after President Kiir accused former Vice President Riek Machar of attempting a coup; from the start it was laced with distinctly ethnic undertones. Within days, reports that Dinka soldiers (the largest ethnic group in South Sudan) were conducting mass killings of Nuer youth (the second largest ethnic group) in the cities of Juba, Akobo, and Bor had surfaced. These accounts prompted speculations that the political tensions between President Kiir (ethnically Dinka) and former Vice President Machar (ethnically Nuer) had incited a civil war in the new state.(ii) As of January 2014, up to 10,000 people had been reported killed in the fighting(iii) with 200,000 people internally displaced.(iv)
However, the roots of this conflict extend far more deeply than the conclusion that this is just a case of an African country still dwelling in primitive tribal squabbles. The origins of this conflict can be attributed to a variety of significant factors configured by political and national issues than inherently tribal ones. Firstly, the flawed formation of political and military institutions could not sustain the political rift between Kiir and Machar; it thus produced a conflict that erupted along tribal fractures.(v) Secondly, the political dispute over relations with Khartoum has prevented South Sudan from conceiving its own autonomous identity; the failure to imagine the nation of South Sudan distinctly and separately from its scarred past with the North has rendered it unable to construct any national discourse of its own. Thus (due to the lack of a constitutive discourse of South Sudan’s own) ethnic violence, formed along the tribal fissures that inform political logic, has come to be the language of political and social crisis in South Sudan.
From the start, South Sudan has been plagued with weak political institutions and a history of internal political divide. The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), South Sudan’s leading political party, began in the 1980s with very little political agenda: as a militaristic group, their only goal was regime change in Khartoum – they did not even conduct their first congress until 1994.(vi) Yet soon, with the party’s gradual politicization, the leaders within it began to envision divergent futures: Salva Kiir, allied with John Garang, supported Southern autonomy within a united Sudan, while Riek Machar advocated complete independence. The division led to conflict in 1991 when Machar (Nuer) instigated a massacre of thousands of Dinka civilians (the ethnicity of both Kiir and Garang, Machar’s opponents) in the village of Bor. In its aftermath, the party survived as a “profoundly dysfunctional coalition that papered over deep cracks.”(vii) With this incident, the party became distinctively ethnitized, thus weaving ethnic tension into the very fabrics of the SPLM’s (and subsequently South Sudan’s) political identity. The 1991 split and the violence that succeeded it had pronounced tribal identities to such a degree that ethnicity became one of the only ways to understand one’s own political identity within the party. The 1991 incident initiated a precedent that the SPLM has since followed: to play out its political disputes along its ethnic fractures.
Currently, the political divide stems from differing views on how to conduct relations with Khartoum, as well as accusations of Kiir’s “dictatorial tendencies”.(viii) Kiir has wanted to maintain a good relationship with Sudan to secure oil revenue,(ix) as oil production comprises 98% of South Sudan’s state. revenue.(x) When oil-rich South Sudan gained independence, it took with it 75% of formerly united Sudan’s multi-billion dollar oil industry(xi) (which creates its own tensions between Khartoum and Juba); however, it still relies on a pipeline through Sudan and the Red Sea for oil transport. Yet, Kiir’s economically-motivated desire to maintain relations with Khartoum sits uneasily with the majority of South Sudanese citizens who are not so willing to forgive Khartoum for the atrocities committed against them by Khartoum since the 1960s. Machar opposes such relations with Sudan, and rejects these continuing relations. Because of this, in March, Machar criticized Kiir’s centralization of power over the past two years, and challenged his presidency for the 2015 election. In response, Kiir fred Machar and ordered the arrest of 11 SPLM members in July, endangering the already fragile and precarious balance of power.(xii)
The fighting that has occurred since the December rift has played right into the hands of Khartoum, the established antagonist in the South Sudan narrative. Khartoum has a history of instigating disorder in South Sudan – they have armed a variety of renegade militia groups (RMGs) in the south since 2011, both as proxy militias for itself and to merely disrupt the order within the state.(xiii) Khartoum has now intervened in South Sudan’s political landscape once more, offering Kiir to send northern military to protect South Sudan’s oil fields during the current fighting – which Kiir has prudently rejected as the oil fields have been a prominent site of consternation between Khartoum and Juba.(xiv) Yet Machar has responded by declaring his intention to strike his own deal with Khartoum, thus turning both political factions into mere pawns of Khartoum.(xv)
The question of constituting a distinct “South Sudan identity” is very relevant when understanding why South Sudan appears to be merely repeating its northern neighbor’s mistakes. Indeed, the nation’s very formation stemmed from sectarian and religious conflict between northern Arab Muslims and southern non-Arab Christians in formerly united Sudan (fighting which has occurred since the 1960s). Because South Sudan was formed from these very sectarian fractures, it is not surprising that their own political and national discourse continues along this vein. Because South Sudan was formed directly because of its conflict with the north, it has never really defined its own national discourse apart from defining itself as “against-the-north”. This has produced a confused identity politics within the military and the government. Indeed, there are many South Sudanese military men who still are unsure whether to call themselves “northern rebels” or “southern soldiers,” revealing the unclearness of South Sudan’s distinct national identity.(xvi) In the face of such identity ambiguity and mimetic national discourse, it is not surprising that the way South Sudanese understand their own identity is through such ethnic loyalties. Nor is it surprising that political power bases (such as military blocs) are mobilized along such ethnic defnitions.(xvii)
It seems, then, that the current strife is not an intrinsically ethnic conflict, but rather that ethnic violence and its accompanying rhetoric has become the language of political crisis in South Sudan. Indeed, warnings against ethnic violence are employed as a rhetorical weapon and used to legitimize crackdowns against Kiir’s political opponents. In a statement on Machar’s “attempted coup” on December 16, Kiir warned against a repetition of the 1991 Bor Massacre, stating: “My government is not and will not allow the incidents of 1991 to repeat themselves again.”(xviii) Kiir’s citing of this example is especially poignant when referring to Machar, as Machar was one of the main leaders who initiated the Bor Massacre. Through Kiir’s statement, it becomes evident that anti-tribalist rhetoric is used to legitimize political antics. In their essay on the conflict, Andreas Harblinger and Sara de Simone explain: “By accusing the respective antagonists of inciting or committing ethnic violence, ethnicity informs current strategies of violence in a much more subtle manner.”(xix)
By understanding how ethnic discourse has framed our understanding of the complexity in South Sudan, it becomes evident that the significance of this conflict extends far beyond the current peace talks. No matter how many peacekeepers the UN deploys to assuage the conflict, in order to de-ethnitize the violence in South Sudan, the country must rethink its own political and national discourse beyond the postcolonial language that frames its current political understandings. Recycled institutions from its ethnically-framed past will only produce a cyclical violence that the nation will be unable to escape.xx Currently, it seems that there is very little political will to do the hard work of nation-building in South Sudan; yet in order to repair these nationwide fractures, it is crucial that South Sudan be imagined differently from its broken history.
i. Tubiana, Jerome. “Sudan and South Sudan Inch toward War: Letter from the Borderlands.” Foreign Afairs. October 8, 2013.
ii. “South Sudan Sees ‘Mass Ethnic Killings.’” BBC News: Africa. December 24, 2013.
iii. Nicholas Kulish, Isma’il Kushkush. “African Leaders Press for Peace in South Sudan.” The New York Times. December 26, 2013.
iv. “UN Peacekeepers Reinforcing Presence in South Sudan amid Continued Fighting.” UN News Centre. January 4, 2013.
v. Alex de Waal, Abdul Mohammed. “Breakdown in South Sudan: What Went Wrong – and How to Fix It.” Foreign Afairs. January 1, 2014.
vi. Ibid.
vii. Ibid.
viii. Tanza, John. “South Sudan: Machar Aims to ‘Liberate Nation from Dictatorship.’” AllAfrica. February 6, 2014.
ix. Alex de Waal, Abdul Mohammed. “Breakdown in South Sudan.”
x. “South Sudan.” African Economic Outlook. June 9, 2013.
xi. “South Sudan Profle.” BBC News. January 8, 2014.
xii. Natsios, Andrew. “Save South Sudan From Itself.” New York Times. December 25, 2013.
xiii. Reeves, Eric. “Te Arming of Rebels in Sudan and South Sudan: What is the Evidence?” The Sudan Tribune: Plural News and Views on Sudan. June 18, 2013.
xiv. Natsios, Andrew. “Save South Sudan From Itself.”
xv. Ibid.
xvi. Tubiana, Jerome. “Sudan and South Sudan Inch Toward War.”
xvii. Alex de Waal, Abdul Mohammed. “Breakdown in South Sudan.”
xviii. “Full Statement by President Salva Kiir on Attempted Coup.” Gurtong. December 16, 2013.
xix. Andreas Hirblinger, Sara de Simone. “What is ‘Tribalism’ and Why Does it Matter in South Sudan?” African Arguments. December 24, 2013.
xx. Idris, Amir. “What It Takes to Save South Sudan From Itself.” The Sudan Tribune. January 12, 2014.
by Arielle Gordon
The phrases “South Sudan” and “on the brink of war” have seemed awfully too familiar in the past few years. Why does South Sudan increasingly appear as if it is about to spontaneously combust from the inside out? Since the country’s formation in July 9, 2011, commentators and politicians have anticipated war at the border of Sudan and South Sudan, where agricultural necessities, oil politics, and religious anxieties have complicated and aggravated the inauspiciously-drawn line between the two.(i) Yet, in December, when ethnicity-based violence erupted in Juba (the country’s capital), the “war” question shifted from one between the North and the South to an issue of civil war that pitted the country’s political camps, military factions, and civilians against each other, and divided them along tribal lines. While the current conflict poses a harsh mirror to South Sudan’s internal problems, it may be the ultimate test for the survival of this new nation. A close examination of its own cultural, social, national, and political discourses may provide an opportunity to rethink how the newly formed country has constituted its own nationhood.
Violence came to head on December 15, 2013, after President Kiir accused former Vice President Riek Machar of attempting a coup; from the start it was laced with distinctly ethnic undertones. Within days, reports that Dinka soldiers (the largest ethnic group in South Sudan) were conducting mass killings of Nuer youth (the second largest ethnic group) in the cities of Juba, Akobo, and Bor had surfaced. These accounts prompted speculations that the political tensions between President Kiir (ethnically Dinka) and former Vice President Machar (ethnically Nuer) had incited a civil war in the new state.(ii) As of January 2014, up to 10,000 people had been reported killed in the fighting(iii) with 200,000 people internally displaced.(iv)
However, the roots of this conflict extend far more deeply than the conclusion that this is just a case of an African country still dwelling in primitive tribal squabbles. The origins of this conflict can be attributed to a variety of significant factors configured by political and national issues than inherently tribal ones. Firstly, the flawed formation of political and military institutions could not sustain the political rift between Kiir and Machar; it thus produced a conflict that erupted along tribal fractures.(v) Secondly, the political dispute over relations with Khartoum has prevented South Sudan from conceiving its own autonomous identity; the failure to imagine the nation of South Sudan distinctly and separately from its scarred past with the North has rendered it unable to construct any national discourse of its own. Thus (due to the lack of a constitutive discourse of South Sudan’s own) ethnic violence, formed along the tribal fissures that inform political logic, has come to be the language of political and social crisis in South Sudan.
From the start, South Sudan has been plagued with weak political institutions and a history of internal political divide. The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), South Sudan’s leading political party, began in the 1980s with very little political agenda: as a militaristic group, their only goal was regime change in Khartoum – they did not even conduct their first congress until 1994.(vi) Yet soon, with the party’s gradual politicization, the leaders within it began to envision divergent futures: Salva Kiir, allied with John Garang, supported Southern autonomy within a united Sudan, while Riek Machar advocated complete independence. The division led to conflict in 1991 when Machar (Nuer) instigated a massacre of thousands of Dinka civilians (the ethnicity of both Kiir and Garang, Machar’s opponents) in the village of Bor. In its aftermath, the party survived as a “profoundly dysfunctional coalition that papered over deep cracks.”(vii) With this incident, the party became distinctively ethnitized, thus weaving ethnic tension into the very fabrics of the SPLM’s (and subsequently South Sudan’s) political identity. The 1991 split and the violence that succeeded it had pronounced tribal identities to such a degree that ethnicity became one of the only ways to understand one’s own political identity within the party. The 1991 incident initiated a precedent that the SPLM has since followed: to play out its political disputes along its ethnic fractures.
Currently, the political divide stems from differing views on how to conduct relations with Khartoum, as well as accusations of Kiir’s “dictatorial tendencies”.(viii) Kiir has wanted to maintain a good relationship with Sudan to secure oil revenue,(ix) as oil production comprises 98% of South Sudan’s state. revenue.(x) When oil-rich South Sudan gained independence, it took with it 75% of formerly united Sudan’s multi-billion dollar oil industry(xi) (which creates its own tensions between Khartoum and Juba); however, it still relies on a pipeline through Sudan and the Red Sea for oil transport. Yet, Kiir’s economically-motivated desire to maintain relations with Khartoum sits uneasily with the majority of South Sudanese citizens who are not so willing to forgive Khartoum for the atrocities committed against them by Khartoum since the 1960s. Machar opposes such relations with Sudan, and rejects these continuing relations. Because of this, in March, Machar criticized Kiir’s centralization of power over the past two years, and challenged his presidency for the 2015 election. In response, Kiir fred Machar and ordered the arrest of 11 SPLM members in July, endangering the already fragile and precarious balance of power.(xii)
The fighting that has occurred since the December rift has played right into the hands of Khartoum, the established antagonist in the South Sudan narrative. Khartoum has a history of instigating disorder in South Sudan – they have armed a variety of renegade militia groups (RMGs) in the south since 2011, both as proxy militias for itself and to merely disrupt the order within the state.(xiii) Khartoum has now intervened in South Sudan’s political landscape once more, offering Kiir to send northern military to protect South Sudan’s oil fields during the current fighting – which Kiir has prudently rejected as the oil fields have been a prominent site of consternation between Khartoum and Juba.(xiv) Yet Machar has responded by declaring his intention to strike his own deal with Khartoum, thus turning both political factions into mere pawns of Khartoum.(xv)
The question of constituting a distinct “South Sudan identity” is very relevant when understanding why South Sudan appears to be merely repeating its northern neighbor’s mistakes. Indeed, the nation’s very formation stemmed from sectarian and religious conflict between northern Arab Muslims and southern non-Arab Christians in formerly united Sudan (fighting which has occurred since the 1960s). Because South Sudan was formed from these very sectarian fractures, it is not surprising that their own political and national discourse continues along this vein. Because South Sudan was formed directly because of its conflict with the north, it has never really defined its own national discourse apart from defining itself as “against-the-north”. This has produced a confused identity politics within the military and the government. Indeed, there are many South Sudanese military men who still are unsure whether to call themselves “northern rebels” or “southern soldiers,” revealing the unclearness of South Sudan’s distinct national identity.(xvi) In the face of such identity ambiguity and mimetic national discourse, it is not surprising that the way South Sudanese understand their own identity is through such ethnic loyalties. Nor is it surprising that political power bases (such as military blocs) are mobilized along such ethnic defnitions.(xvii)
It seems, then, that the current strife is not an intrinsically ethnic conflict, but rather that ethnic violence and its accompanying rhetoric has become the language of political crisis in South Sudan. Indeed, warnings against ethnic violence are employed as a rhetorical weapon and used to legitimize crackdowns against Kiir’s political opponents. In a statement on Machar’s “attempted coup” on December 16, Kiir warned against a repetition of the 1991 Bor Massacre, stating: “My government is not and will not allow the incidents of 1991 to repeat themselves again.”(xviii) Kiir’s citing of this example is especially poignant when referring to Machar, as Machar was one of the main leaders who initiated the Bor Massacre. Through Kiir’s statement, it becomes evident that anti-tribalist rhetoric is used to legitimize political antics. In their essay on the conflict, Andreas Harblinger and Sara de Simone explain: “By accusing the respective antagonists of inciting or committing ethnic violence, ethnicity informs current strategies of violence in a much more subtle manner.”(xix)
By understanding how ethnic discourse has framed our understanding of the complexity in South Sudan, it becomes evident that the significance of this conflict extends far beyond the current peace talks. No matter how many peacekeepers the UN deploys to assuage the conflict, in order to de-ethnitize the violence in South Sudan, the country must rethink its own political and national discourse beyond the postcolonial language that frames its current political understandings. Recycled institutions from its ethnically-framed past will only produce a cyclical violence that the nation will be unable to escape.xx Currently, it seems that there is very little political will to do the hard work of nation-building in South Sudan; yet in order to repair these nationwide fractures, it is crucial that South Sudan be imagined differently from its broken history.
i. Tubiana, Jerome. “Sudan and South Sudan Inch toward War: Letter from the Borderlands.” Foreign Afairs. October 8, 2013.
ii. “South Sudan Sees ‘Mass Ethnic Killings.’” BBC News: Africa. December 24, 2013.
iii. Nicholas Kulish, Isma’il Kushkush. “African Leaders Press for Peace in South Sudan.” The New York Times. December 26, 2013.
iv. “UN Peacekeepers Reinforcing Presence in South Sudan amid Continued Fighting.” UN News Centre. January 4, 2013.
v. Alex de Waal, Abdul Mohammed. “Breakdown in South Sudan: What Went Wrong – and How to Fix It.” Foreign Afairs. January 1, 2014.
vi. Ibid.
vii. Ibid.
viii. Tanza, John. “South Sudan: Machar Aims to ‘Liberate Nation from Dictatorship.’” AllAfrica. February 6, 2014.
ix. Alex de Waal, Abdul Mohammed. “Breakdown in South Sudan.”
x. “South Sudan.” African Economic Outlook. June 9, 2013.
xi. “South Sudan Profle.” BBC News. January 8, 2014.
xii. Natsios, Andrew. “Save South Sudan From Itself.” New York Times. December 25, 2013.
xiii. Reeves, Eric. “Te Arming of Rebels in Sudan and South Sudan: What is the Evidence?” The Sudan Tribune: Plural News and Views on Sudan. June 18, 2013.
xiv. Natsios, Andrew. “Save South Sudan From Itself.”
xv. Ibid.
xvi. Tubiana, Jerome. “Sudan and South Sudan Inch Toward War.”
xvii. Alex de Waal, Abdul Mohammed. “Breakdown in South Sudan.”
xviii. “Full Statement by President Salva Kiir on Attempted Coup.” Gurtong. December 16, 2013.
xix. Andreas Hirblinger, Sara de Simone. “What is ‘Tribalism’ and Why Does it Matter in South Sudan?” African Arguments. December 24, 2013.
xx. Idris, Amir. “What It Takes to Save South Sudan From Itself.” The Sudan Tribune. January 12, 2014.
