The author of this piece casts doubt on the chances for success at the upcoming peace talks mediated by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) but says that there is still hope for peace in South Sudan.
A group of conflict analysts this past month described the renewed East African regional push for peace in South Sudan as “the best – if imperfect – chance to end the conflict.” US President Barack Obama meeting with IGAD bloc leaders in Addis Ababa said that the group’s diplomatic efforts give “hope” that a deal can be reached. His top envoy for South Sudan, Donald Booth, says that the period between now and an upcoming 17 August deadline is critical for the peace process.
IGAD, which is chaired by the Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, had suspended negotiations for several months, in part due to the failure of the last round of talks but also because of distractions such as the Ethiopian general elections. During the adjournment the rival Arusha peace process gained traction, largely at the expense of IGAD’s initiative.
Now, however, some observers say that Obama’s intervention has given new impetus to the IGAD process. The publication of a new peace proposal on the part of the mediation also represents a change of tactic aimed at courting a broader array of stakeholders within South Sudanese society and internationally. The proposal contains a number of significant if controversial new elements.
Nonetheless, the power-sharing elements of the IGAD proposal remain similar to earlier proposals that were rejected by the warring parties. The critical substance of the proposal remains a power-sharing agreement between two men, Salva Kiir and Riek Machar. Underlying the new IGAD push for a deal are certain assumptions about the political interests of these two men and their constituents. On the basis of these assumptions, the authors and backers of the new proposal have taken pains to accommodate the perceived political interests of both sides to the extent possible.
The mediators and their supporters appear to believe that the two sides could be brought to a deal – given that the right formula is struck on what ‘share’ of power each side will take and given the right set of inducements and pressures. To be sure, neither the mediators nor their supporters have expressed an abundance of optimism, but at the same time they would not still be backing the IGAD process unless they held out some hope of achieving a deal roughly along the lines of what IGAD has publicly proposed.
For my part, I highly doubt that an IGAD deal will be achieved this month in Addis Ababa, in any formulation. Prior to the collapse of the previous round of talks I argued that a such power-sharing agreement “seeks to unite irreconcilable personalities and essentially irreconcilable principles.” In other words, the peace formula sought by the mediators is one that is essentially unattainable.
This remains as true today as it did before the last round of failed talks. “There will be no peace,” President Kiir was quoted as saying last week. And I think he is in a fair position to know.
In the meantime, the horrors that continue to be perpetrated on the ground threaten to swallow up what hopes remain for any sort of viable political process, fracturing and hardening the remaining fighting groups. In just this past month, for example, a group of men were reported to have been killed and their bodies dumped into latrines in Malakal; travelers in Central Equatoria were taken from vehicles by highwaymen and shot; and villagers in Western Equatoria, Unity State and elsewhere were attacked, robbed and sometimes killed.
In all of these cases the victims were targeted on the basis of their ethnicity and in none of them were the crimes perpetrated in connection with major hostilities. This continues to be a major part of the conflict pattern in South Sudan – not a series of battles between armed groups but a series of atrocities perpetrated against civilians.
The mediators ignore the increasing complexity and depravity of the conflict at their own peril. Ultimately, the details of the power-sharing proposal will be irrelevant if the spiral of violence, impunity and cover-up continues unchecked. What happens in the political space is of course pertinent to how the situation develops on the ground, but that does not mean that there is always strategic logic to the violence. Horror begets more horror, and hatred more hatred.
In a recent piece in the Washington Post, the writer Michael Gerson reflected, “There are reports of leveled villages and piles of burnt bodies. But the vastness of South Sudan probably swallows the worst of the horrors.”
What he meant was that many of the worst atrocities are hidden from public view because they happen in remote places and are rarely documented. In this sense he is right. From another point of view, however, we should expect South Sudanese to be more rather than less horrified that so many atrocities are not documented, not discussed, not acknowledged, not mourned.
This is actually another reason for many to keep fighting, to despair of real justice and turn to vengeance instead, and to perpetrate their own crimes. And it is this therefore that makes the conflict more and more intractable and puts the matter of justice increasingly at the center of the conflict nexus (as it actually has been, arguably, since December 2013).
The longer that the ‘horrors’ of this war are left unaddressed, the deeper that they will sink into the hearts of South Sudanese. We see the effects of this trauma manifesting already on a wide scale. Psychological trauma sometimes manifests as fear, grief, frustration or anger, but also sometimes instead as an appearance of indifference, denial, or callousness – which are masking serious wounds.
I believe there is hope for peace in South Sudan, but I don’t believe that sweeping horrors under the earth is a part of that hope. In the end, a killer can bury his victim, but he can’t make the widow to forget him, he can’t stop the orphan from missing him, and he can’t stop the father from mourning him.
Eventually also the killer will have to face what he has done. Is he going to forget what happened – what he did? Will he forget where he buried his brother? Is he going to be angry forever? Eventually communities will have to come together to face together the terrible truth of what has happened, but also to move on together in peace – a peace based not on “power-sharing” but on truth-telling.
Photo: Women demonstrating for peace in Juba, 1 August 2015
The views expressed in ‘opinion’ articles published by Radio Tamazuj are solely those of the writer. The veracity of any claims made are the responsibility of the author, not Radio Tamazuj.