Julian Hattem
Last September, South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir, signed a power-sharing deal with rebel leader Riek Machar, promising to bring an end to the five-year civil war that has crippled the world’s newest country, which declared its independence from Sudan in 2011. It wasn’t the first time. A similar agreement signed in 2015 broke down the following year, leading to fighting that prompted Machar to flee the country.
Observers predicted the new agreement would share the fate of its predecessor. What was billed as a “revitalized” peace plan was still silent on many of the underlying drivers of violence and seemed in many ways to be a stale retread of a deal that had already failed to deliver on its promise.
One year later, the pessimists are mostly being proven right. A cease-fire has largely held, but it is a fragile peace. Key provisions of the agreement about demobilizing fighters and redrawing internal political lines remain unfulfilled. There are mounting fears that the deal’s eventual breakdown could lead to a return to large-scale violence in South Sudan. For now, the best prospect for the future involves a frustrating period of uncertainty defined merely by the absence of war, with only dim hopes for creating true political inclusion.
An estimated 383,000 people are believed to have died in the years of fighting following South Sudan’s 2013 descent into civil war. Amid the fighting, a famine was declared for parts of the country, and government troops were accused of carrying out killings and sexual violence that amounted to potential war crimes. Peace was briefly declared in 2015, but that agreement soon collapsed. Machar subsequently fled the country on foot and spent several years under house arrest in South Africa.
Last September, Kiir and Machar agreed to something of a revised version of the 2015 accord, which would create a temporary unity government leading to nationwide elections in three years. In one respect, it has seemed to work. Fighting between the signatories has more or less halted. Some senior opposition figures have returned home. Humanitarian workers have been able to deliver aid. Even amid the ousting of Sudan’s longtime president, Omar al-Bashir—a key powerbroker who had intervened both to upset and then calm tensions in South Sudan—the framework of the agreement has not fallen apart.
But the deal did not include every armed group in South Sudan, and in particular failed to get the support of Thomas Cirillo, a powerful former military official whose National Salvation Front has continued to carry out armed violence, especially in the regions of Central Equatoria and Western Equatoria.
Additionally, leaders have already postponed forming the unity government and seem likely to miss their new deadline later this year. The transitional government was originally supposed to come into being on May 12, keeping Kiir as president and installing Machar as one of five vice presidents. Sensing the impossibility of that goal, it was delayed by six months until November. The delay provided a bit of breathing room but didn’t inspire much confidence about the long-term durability of the peace agreement. For many, it just meant more uncertainty.
Since then, virtually nothing has happened. Implementation of the broader terms of the agreement has stalled, and both sides remain behind on their obligations. An August meeting in Ethiopia aiming to break the deadlock came up empty-handed. Like many analysts, opposition leaders are skeptical that a unity government will be formed with the full support of all the major players in South Sudan.
One major hurdle is what to do with former fighters. The deal required soldiers from all sides to either give up their weapons or be integrated into the country’s military or police. That hasn’t happened. Fighters were supposed to report to designated cantonment sites and barracks by the end of July, but many of the sites lack the basic resources to house them. Cease-fire monitors have expressed growing concerns about the delay.
Additionally, there is an ongoing debate over how to redraw the internal boundaries between South Sudan’s states and precisely how many states there should be. South Sudan originally had 10 states when it gained independence in 2011, but in the midst of the civil war, Kiir increased that number first to 28 and then to 32, as part of an effort to maintain his hold on power. A special government agency in Juba, the Independent Boundaries Commission, has been tasked with sorting out how to move forward, but it has remained deadlocked.
Issues of demobilizing fighters, forming a unified military and finalizing political borders are historically among the most challenging provisions to implement in any peace deal, says Madhav Joshi, a professor at the University of Notre Dame who tracks the implementation of peace accords. “The main problem there that they are facing is a sequencing mismatch,” he says, which makes completion of these difficult tasks a precondition for the formation of a unity government.
Complicating all of these efforts is the lack of trust and communication between Kiir and Machar, underscored by their refusal to even meet much at all. There have been repeated efforts over recent months to get the two men in the same room, but the only real success occurred during a dramatic retreat at the Vatican in April, when Pope Francis knelt to kiss their feet and plea for peace. Machar still lives outside the country, in Khartoum, and has expressed concern about his personal safety should he return to Juba. Both sides seem unable or unwilling to enter negotiations without stewardship by outside groups, notably the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, an eight-country regional trade bloc.
Kiir, meanwhile, has been slow to disburse the $100 million he promised to speed up the implementation of the peace deal. Instead, his government has taken the time since last September to hire a Washington lobbyist to try and reverse U.S. sanctions and block the creation of a hybrid war crimes court, suggesting he may be more interested in his own self-preservation than implementing the peace deal. As long as these two men remain in charge—or unless they overcome their deep-seated mutual distrust—it’s difficult to imagine a functioning unity government in Juba.
Still, a tenuous peace is better than no peace at all. Leaders have once before prolonged the cease-fire by delaying the deal’s implementation; they could well do it again and kick the can further down the road. A new oil field in the country’s north—the first discovery since independence—offers the promise of new income for senior leaders, which could be an incentive to see the deal through. Oil is the lifeblood of South Sudan’s government financing and makes up nearly 98 percent of its coffers. Yet major investment is unlikely without some certainty about durable peace.
The deal isn’t dead yet, but the fragile peace won’t last forever. Over its one-year anniversary hangs the shadow of a possible return to war. There is still time for South Sudan’s leaders to avoid that fate.
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