By JOSH KRON and NICHOLAS KULISH
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Camille Lepage/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A man injured during tribal
clashes that have erupted in Jonglei State. Ethnic conflict there is
keeping at least 100,000 civilians from receiving urgently needed food
and medical aid.
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KAMPALA, Uganda — Long before South Sudan achieved its hard-fought independence, the United Nations was here, feeding its hungry, sending in doctors to fight disease and steering the vast, destitute region toward its goal of self-governance and self-determination.
But instead of gratitude and comity, the relationship between the United
Nations and the young country it helped midwife into existence two
years ago has evolved into one characterized by growing distrust on both
sides. South Sudan, meanwhile, has become one of the most dangerous
theaters of operations for the United Nations.
The relationship has taken on added urgency as ethnic clashes have fueled a growing crisis in the restive Jonglei State.
In April,
seven United Nations employees and five Indian peacekeepers working for
the body were killed in an ambush in Jonglei by armed men identified by
the South Sudanese as antigovernment rebels.
Last December,
South Sudan’s military shot down a United Nations helicopter, killing
all four Russian crew members in what officials in the South Sudanese
capital of Juba later said was a result of miscommunication.
United Nations personnel, including the former human rights chief there,
have been detained and even beaten up by security agents, while
equipment has been impounded. A human rights researcher for the body was
expelled from the country last year and, after an anticorruption
campaign, a special presidential adviser hired by the United Nations
mission fled after receiving death threats.
In late June, a report by the United Nations secretary general said that
there had been seven cases of arrest and detention, one assault and one
illegal seizure of property involving staff members of the mission
since the last report in March.
“Until January of last year, politically the government in Juba saw the
U.N. as an ally — that is no longer the case,” said an adviser to both
the United Nations and the South Sudanese authorities, speaking on the
condition of anonymity to avoid alienating either side.
Myriad United Nations agencies operate in South Sudan, helping to
improve literacy, road access, health and more, but it is South Sudan’s
relationship with the body’s peacekeeping mission itself, the adviser
said, that is growing increasingly tense and has been punctuated by
heated discussions.
The question now is whether the episodes have simply been evidence of
the risks that come with operating in a country that is heavily armed
and unstable after decades of civil war or evidence of something more
volatile, even a growing sense of enmity.
South Sudanese officials increasingly question whether the world body is
on their side, with earlier support for independence turning to
criticism of the young government’s record on human rights and
continuing confrontation with neighboring Sudan, from which South Sudan
seceded.
The situation today stands in stark contrast to the heady optimism that
followed South Sudan’s independence in July 2011. Days of celebration
led to the sobering reality of trying to govern the country, Africa’s
newest and one of the least developed in the world.
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| Reuters: South Sudanese soldiers. The country has become one of the most dangerous theaters of operations for the United Nations. |
After decades of civil war and neglect by rulers in Sudan, landlocked
South Sudan has few paved roads and little industry to speak of aside
from the oil production upon which it depends for revenue. Largely
rural, the country has a very young and very poor population estimated
to be around 11 million, divided into more than a dozen ethnic groups.
Sudan and South Sudan each accuse the other of waging a proxy war by
arming rebels groups. Conditions are particularly dire in Jonglei, a
large, swampy territory where ethnic conflict is keeping at least
100,000 civilians from receiving aid.
“The fighting is threatening the lives of ordinary people and has
reduced the ability of humanitarian organizations to provide urgently
needed help,” Valerie Amos, the United Nations’ under secretary general
for humanitarian affairs, said in a statement last week. She called on
all parties to “create the necessary security environment conducive for
aid delivery.”
The administrator of the United States Agency for International
Development, Rajiv Shah, said in another statement last week that the
United States was “gravely concerned by the serious escalation of the
humanitarian crisis in Pibor County in South Sudan’s Jonglei State” as a
result of the violence there.
The situation is complicated by the fact that South Sudan’s security
personnel are a confusing mixture of soldiers, militia members and
police and intelligence officers, widely considered undisciplined and
violent. In 2011, police officers assaulted the leader of the United
Nations human rights division in South Sudan, who had to be
hospitalized. Humanitarian groups have complained about security forces’
hijacking aid convoys.
South Sudanese say that for all the assistance channeled to the
impoverished country, the wealth of the aid industry does not reach the
national economy. They also say that foreign officials are hired without
checking with the government, breeding tension, and that the United
Nations does not alert the military to peacekeeper movements. The United
Nations has failed to protect civilians and its mandate is
overreaching, they contend.
Perhaps most damaging to the relationship is the impression that the
peacekeeping mission has turned its back on the South Sudanese in their
simmering conflict with Sudan.
“It seems like they are favoring Khartoum,” said Ben Majok, a former
South Sudanese soldier in Rumbek, a city in central South Sudan.
The United Nations says it is losing tolerance for South Sudan’s human
rights record, and warns that the growing threats to the security of its
staff are obstructing its work. The body’s current mandate in South
Sudan, described in its budget
as “political transition” and “extension of state authority,” is
completely different from what it was during Sudan’s civil war.
The South Sudanese are “looking for a mission that would protect them
from enemies,” according to the United Nations’ peacekeeping chief in
South Sudan, Hilde F. Johnson.
It is not unprecedented for the United Nations to clash with local
residents and officials. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, residents
have hurled stones at United Nations convoys, accusing the body of
incompetence. In Haiti, civilians have attacked peacekeepers over fears
that they brought disease and did not do enough to improve the country.
In Kashmir, where a United Nations mission has been operating for more
than 50 years, politicians have asked the peacekeepers to leave.
Despite the tense relationship in South Sudan, officials on both sides
are trying to continue forward. South Sudan’s minister of information
insists that relations remain smooth. Ms. Johnson said that risk was
something peacekeeping missions “have to live with,” but that there had
been “incidents we didn’t expect.”
The peacekeeping presence in South Sudan is older than the republic
itself, which Ms. Johnson once referred to as “still a toddler by every
measure,” and has been acutely intertwined with the history of the
nation’s birth.
Within months of independence, the relationship between the government
and the United Nations was put to the test. First, South Sudan shut down
oil production, then accounting for roughly 99 percent of national
income, over a disagreement with Sudan. Then South Sudan’s army invaded
Sudanese oil fields, which they claimed were in disputed territory.
Rather than receiving the support they had become accustomed to, South
Sudanese forces got a strongly worded demand from the United Nations
mission to withdraw. One private consultant with South Sudan’s
government called it a moment of reckoning for South Sudan. The
relationship has been slowly deteriorating ever since.
By June 2012, when the mission’s mandate was up for renewal, Vice President Riek Machar wrote to the United Nations requesting that the mission be downgraded, calling the mandate “no longer appropriate.”
That same month the United Nations published a report claiming that
South Sudan’s military had committed widespread abuses in Jonglei in an
effort to disarm civilians there. The government in Juba condemned the
report as one-sided. In November, a human rights officer researching
atrocities in Jonglei was expelled from the country.
The attack on the United Nations helicopter in December “rendered aerial
reconnaissance for early warning purposes impossible,” the office of
the secretary general warned in a report in March, and “restricted the capacity to react to incidents in a timely manner.”