For the past year and a half, South Sudan has been on the brink of a new civil war. A 2018 peace deal that ended the last civil war has been faltering, while the war across the border in Sudan has threatened to spill south.
According to my interview guest, Daniel Akech of the International Crisis Group, the tipping point has been breached. We are now in the early stages of a new civil war in South Sudan—one that may prove even more destructive than the 2013–2018 conflict, which left an estimated 400,000 people dead.
There are a number of reasons for this—not least the civil war in Sudan, which has decimated oil revenues that long underpinned South Sudan’s political economy. And, as in the first civil war, ethnic tensions are being deliberately stoked, raising the prospect of mass atrocities.
We kick off by discussing recent events on the ground in South Sudan, including an offensive by opposition forces sparked by the arrest and prosecution of Riek Machar, a former vice president who led one side of the previous civil war. We then explore the potential trajectory of this conflict, how it is intimately tied to the war in Sudan, and the role of key regional actors.
South Sudan is a new country, having gained independence from Sudan in 2011—but just two years later, civil war erupted, killing hundreds of thousands, displacing millions, and destroying infrastructure across the country. This new outbreak of violence may lead to something just as bad— or worse — but has received little attention in the Western press. A very big thank you to Daniel Akech for bringing depth and nuance to this conversation.
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