Purblind power grabs

In April, there was a truce in South Sudan which brought to an end 17 months of civil war in the world’s newest sovereign state. Last week rival troops started shooting at each other again in the capital Juba. Despite United Nations’ pleas, the violence has been continuing. President Salva Kiir accuses his rival Riek Machar of restarting the conflict. Machar accuses Kiir. It is more likely that the president’s rival Dinka tribesmen fell out with Machar’s Nuer over some trivial issue and both sides opened fire. This is symptomatic of the distrust that South Sudan’s two leading tribes feel for each other. It is no secret that Kiir and Machar also share a mutual loathing. It was when the president sacked his then Vice President Machar, accusing him of planning a coup, that the country’s civil war broke out. At least ten thousand people were killed, 2.2 million refugees were created and famine struck many areas. In the jubilant days five years ago this month when crowds in Juba celebrated, there was a very real hope that the new state could at last find peace and prosperity, based on its oil reserves. The guerrilla war with Khartoum that had brought the people of South Sudan to this wonderful threshold had been waged for 20 years, cost at least 1.5 million lives and displaced over four million. Surely after such a long and agonizing trauma, the different tribes that made up the new country would find peace? But from the outset there were tensions based on tribal loyalties. It took 36 months before they finally broke out into open conflict. Those days of hope at independence have been shattered. But did it really have to be this way? The contest between Kiir and Machar is at base all about wealth and power. The tribal affinities are secondary to this pursuit. The same thing is happening now in Libya. Tribalism, overlaid by city rivalries, not least between Misrata, Benghazi and Zintan have brought the country to the brink of civil war and a possible split between east and west. Libyan political leaders are by and large sophisticated and well educated. Some of them are significantly wealthy. But their maneuverings against each other are all about jockeying for total power and more wealth. In South Sudan and in Libya everyone claims to be acting in the best interests of the country. But their behavior proves this to be a lie. In both states, the UN has tried exhaustively to broker agreements and peace. It has failed because the leaders are not prepared to settle for only a part of the pie of wealth and power. They lack the vision to see that compromise will give them most if not all of what they want. Libya could be a very rich country indeed. But in fighting for control of every bit of that wealth, the rival leaders are actually destroying it. It is the same in South Sudan. The tragedy is that the the foot soldiers who back the warring contestants produce nothing except grave yards while erecting ever higher walls of enmity and distrust. The barbarity and lawlessness in South Sudan and Libya are actively undermining these countries’ future. If the politicians refuse to compromise they are condemning their people to utter misery while ensuring that the result of their purblind power grabs will give them little or nothing.