South Sudan independence heroes ‘have lost their way

Instead of celebrating the third anniversary of its independence, South Sudan has sunk into a fratricidal war, observers say, with rival political factions spreading death and misery.

Matthew LeRiche, a political science professor at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, stood alongside friends under a blazing sun in the capital of Juba in July 2011 as South Sudan became the world’s youngest country.

“We were optimistic, even if we were aware of the very real dangers to the new nation,” he recently told FRANCE 24 in reference to the threat of war with Sudan to the north, and of internal political confrontations.

Three years on, many of the South Sudanese friends who celebrated their country’s birth alongside LeRiche are lying dead or wounded, and the academic says he is deeply saddened by the “opportunities lost.”

Indeed, instead of establishing the foundations of an independent and stable nation, South Sudanese have suffered months of deadly civil and ethnic strife.

The conflict between President Salva Kiir against his former vice-president Riek Machar has dragged members of the country’s two largest ethnic groups, the Dinka and the Nuer, into violent confrontations. Kiir is a Dinka, while Machar is a Nuer.

Since the war erupted in December, thousands have diedand hundreds of thousands have been displaced. Observers say the threat of epidemic and famine could kill millions more.

The ‘happy idiot’

“There is an African proverb that says that when two elephants fight it’s the grass that gets trampled. In South Sudan, this is what is happening,” Ariane Quentier, the spokeswoman for the UN Mission in the Republic of South Sudan, or UNMISS, told FRANCE 24. "It’s the population that is paying the price.”

Quentier said that when Machar broke ranks with Kiir last year, no one imagined the conflict would take on such huge and destructive proportions.

Marc Lavergne, a member of the French National Centre for Scientific Research and an expert on the Horn of Africa region, thinks otherwise. “This is a catastrophe waiting to happen,” Lavergne said in an interview three years ago at the time of South Sudan’s creation. And time, tragically, has proved him right.