海角大神

A version of this post originally appeared on blog. The views expressed are the author's own.聽

South Sudan president Salva Kiir and ex-vice president Riek Machar聽have sent聽delegations to the African Union鈥檚 headquarters in Addis Ababa to try to聽聽to the recent outbreak of hostilities.

In the meantime,聽, with hundreds of thousands displaced persons. There are fears that the conflict is spiralling down into a civil war.聽

What is going on here?

President Kiir claims that the crisis was provoked by an attempted coup by Mr. Machar. Machar denies there was a coup attempt, and claims that Mr. Kiir has been moving against his supporters. Machar is demanding that Kiir step down.

Commentators are seeing the conflict as one between the Dinka and the Nuer, the two largest ethnic groups in South Sudan. Salva Kiir is a Dinka, while Riek Machar is a Nuer.

Perhaps the focus should be on Sudan People鈥檚 Liberation Army (SPLA). This was the liberation movement that led South Sudan鈥檚 separation from Sudan鈥檚 Khartoum government. It included Salva Kiir and Riek Machar and Dinka and Nuer in a context of constantly shifting alliances and betrayals.

But the SPLA was a liberation movement, not a political party. Beyond independence and 鈥渄evelopment,鈥� it has no coherent political program.

With little capacity to absorb it, the country is awash with cash from oil and development assistance, and corruption is reported to be ubiquitous. Against this background, and with separation from Khartoum achieved, the SPLA appears to be degenerating into something approaching warlordism, with warlords聽.

Many, including other African nations, enthusiastically supported the independence of South Sudan from Omar Al Bashir鈥檚 Islamist and racist Khartoum government.

Yet, beyond getting out from under Khartoum and with a nominally 海角大神 majority, South Sudan has little internal coherence. Perhaps it is a misnomer to call it a nation-state.

What might be the next steps forward?

First, of course, must be an end to the fighting. That will require patching up relations between Kiir and Machar, perhaps involving some type of power sharing arrangement. There are signs that African leaders are prepared to bring pressure to achieve this. Once a ceasefire is in place, the international community must move to address the horrific humanitarian consequences of this latest round of fighting.

Over the longer term, allies of the young nation should prepare themselves for extended involvement with South Sudan, with many bumps in the road聽as it seeks to transform itself into a nation, a process likely to take generations and made no easier by oil riches.