In this chapter John Young explores the political history of the state in South Sudan. This chapter is part of the book “The Nation State: A Wrong Model for the Horn of Africa” by John Young, John Markakis and Günther Schlee published in March 2021. Download
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Abstract This article examines what scholars can learn about civilian killings from newswire data in situations of non-random missingness. It contributes to this understanding by offering a unique view of the data-generation process in the South Sudanese civil war. Drawing on 40 hours of interviews with 32 human rights advocates, humanitarian workers, and journalists who produce ACLED and UCDP-GED’s source data, the article illustrates how nonrandom missingness leads to biases of inconsistent magnitude and direction….
Definition: This article revisits debates about the root causes of civil wars with the aim of providing a coherent framework for addressing such drivers and building sustainable peace. It is argued in this article that the civil war is better explained by the absence of resilient social contract rather than the dominant theoretical perspectives that attribute causation of civil wars to grievances or greed. The resilient social contract framework with its three postulated drivers is…
Abstract: South Sudan was embroiled in a civil war from mid-December 2013 to mid-September 2018. Nearly 400,000 people died, and several million were displaced. The economy nearly collapsed as the nation’s output was severely reduced, causing inflation to soar. While prior research on the immediate humanitarian crisis in South Sudan has focused on forced displacement and food insecurity, there is little information available about the long-term impact the war had on human capital accumulation in…
Scholars have long argued that local conflicts need to be integrated into the analysis of civil war and peacebuilding. Yet, systematic research of the linkages between communal violence and civil war is sparse. This contribution connects communal violence research to the stabilization and peacekeeping debate. To further a more systematic analysis of communal conflicts, the author distinguishes various types and their linkages to civil war and peacebuilding. In South Sudan, large-scale communal conflicts—communal wars—precede the…
A mere two years after achieving independence, South Sudan in 2013 descended into violent civil war, refuting US government claims that the country’s succession was a major foreign policy success and would end endemic conflict. Worse was to follow when the international community declared famine in 2017. In the first book-length study of the South Sudan civil war, John Young draws on his close but critical relationship with the rebel SPLM-IO leadership to reveal the…
The euphoric birth of South Sudan was celebrated around the world – a triumph for global justice and a sign that one of the world’s most devastating wars was finally over. But the party would not last; the Republic’s freedom-fighters soon plunged their new nation back into chaos, shattering the promise of liberation and exposing the hubris of their Western backers. An epic tale of paradise won and lost, A Rope from the Sky is…
The five-year-old civil war in South Sudan is an unparalleled humanitarian and security crisis, causing the largest exodus of refugees on the African continent since the Rwandan genocide and leaving over a third of the population displaced and two-thirds severely food insecure. Beyond the human toll on South Sudan’s long-suffering citizens, the country’s unraveling underscores the shifting political and security fault lines in the Horn of Africa. This Special Report surveys the region’s various interstate…
In late April 2018, South Sudan government forces and their allied militias launched an offensive on Leer and Mayendit counties, in southern Unity state, which continued throughout May and June. Based on interviews with around 100 displaced people from Leer and Mayendit, this briefing describes how government forces and their allied militias attacked villages in opposition-held areas of southern Unity state and committed crimes under international law and other serious human rights violations. During these…
Could the civil war in South Sudan have been prevented? Could some of the violence and misery caused by the war have been avoided? Those questions are academic in some ways, as so much damage has been done. But in other ways, seeking answers is vital because patterns of violence in the 21st century suggest there will be more wars that resemble the South Sudan conflict: (a) fought within a country’s borders, (b) fought between…
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