South Sudan’s agreement is not keeping the peace
JUBA, South Sudan—When South Sudan’s president signed a peace deal a year ago to try to end the country’s civil war, he added 16 reservations to the agreement.
Salva Kiir called it “the most divisive and unprecedented peace deal” in African history and said he only signed it because of “many messages of intimidations and threats” from the international community. He complained about the power given to opposition leader Riek Machar as First Vice President, the placement of rebel forces in the capital of Juba, and the authority given to monitors of the peace deal.
Kiir’s reservations were swiftly rejected by the U.S. government, which led the charge for the peace agreement, according to diplomats in Juba.
One year after the deal was signed, Kiir’s list of reservations has become a map of how South Sudan’s peace agreement has unraveled: Machar is no longer vice president, his forces have largely left Juba, and U.N. peacekeepers have been largely ineffective.
“The year since the peace deal was signed has been an absolute disaster for South Sudan,” said Joshua Craze, a South Sudan researcher at the Small Arms Survey. “Both sides, and especially the government, have very little interest in keeping the peace deal which was largely forced on them and accepted to pacify regional and international actors.”
South Sudan’s civil war, which began in December 2013 and killed tens of thousands of people, was a mixture of ethnic and personal conflicts. After the agreement was signed in August 2015, fighting continued and even intensified in some areas. President Kiir increased the number of states from 10 to 28, a move of gerrymandering that put local power in the hands of his allies, analysts say.
It took eight months of painstaking negotiations to persuade Machar and his rebel forces to return to Juba, only for the city to erupt into conflict in July which killed hundreds of civilians and soldiers. Machar was controversially removed as First Vice President, and hundreds more people have been killed in fighting between the two armies in at least three other parts of the country since the July clashes in Juba.
Adding to South Sudan’s problems, inflation has reached 660 percent and many hospitals face drug shortages. Nearly 197,000 people live in U.N. protected camps across the country and many say they feel unsafe to return home.