South Sudan

South Sudan
Author: Matthew Arnold
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2013-01-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190257547

In July 2011 the Republic of South Sudan achieved independence, concluding what had been Africa's longest running civil war. The process leading to independence was driven by the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Movement, a primarily Southern rebel force and political movement intent on bringing about the reformed unity of the whole Sudan. Through the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005, a six year peace process unfolded in the form of an interim period premised upon 'making unity attractive' for the Sudan. A failed exercise, it culminated in an almost unanimous vote for independence by Southerners in a referendum held in January 2011. Violence has continued since, and a daunting possibility for South Sudan has arisen - to have won independence only to descend into its own civil war, with the regime in Khartoum aiding and abetting factionalism to keep the new state weak and vulnerable. Achieving a durable peace will be a massive challenge, and resolving the issues that so inflamed Southerners historically - unsupportive governance, broad feelings of exploitation and marginalisation and fragile ethnic politics - will determine South Sudan's success or failure at statehood. A story of transformation and of victory against the odds, this book reviews South Sudan's modern history as a contested region and assesses the political, social and security dynamics that will shape its immediate future as Africa's newest independent state.

Politics of Liberation in South Sudan

Politics of Liberation in South Sudan
Author: Peter Adwok Nyaba
Publisher: Fountain Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1997
Genre: South Sudan
ISBN: 9789970021024

Winner of the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa 1998. The jury cited the book as "a pioneering text, the most important book to have appeared to date about the struggle for African national liberation in the Sudan. It is a first-class inside story of the history of the civil war of the past fifteen years, told with passion and commitment. Its stature, ringing significance and contribution to knowledge make it a powerful and unique book." The process of liberation in south Sudan has been rocky since 1955. Successive governments in Khartoum have broken promises and agreements relating to governance of the south, and the northern establishment has manipulated the situation to perpetuate northern hegemony, and to speed up the process of Islamisation in the south. This study from an activist in the politics of liberation in the south addresses relevant issues such as the objectives of the armed struggle, and the reasons for so long a struggle; the contradictions of the political leaders in the south; the repercussions of the Nasir coup of 1991, and the prospects for the SPLM/A struggle.

Chosen Peoples

Chosen Peoples
Author: Christopher Tounsel
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 135
Release: 2021-03-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1478013109

On July 9, 2011, South Sudan celebrated its independence as the world's newest nation, an occasion that the country's Christian leaders claimed had been foretold in the Book of Isaiah. The Bible provided a foundation through which the South Sudanese could distinguish themselves from the Arab and Muslim Sudanese to the north and understand themselves as a spiritual community now freed from their oppressors. Less than three years later, however, new conflicts emerged along ethnic lines within South Sudan, belying the liberation theology that had supposedly reached its climactic conclusion with independence. In Chosen Peoples, Christopher Tounsel investigates the centrality of Christian worldviews to the ideological construction of South Sudan and the inability of shared religion to prevent conflict. Exploring the creation of a colonial-era mission school to halt Islam's spread up the Nile, the centrality of biblical language in South Sudanese propaganda during the Second Civil War (1983--2005), and postindependence transformations of religious thought in the face of ethnic warfare, Tounsel highlights the potential and limitations of deploying race and Christian theology to unify South Sudan.

War and Genocide in South Sudan

War and Genocide in South Sudan
Author: Clémence Pinaud
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2021-02-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1501753010

Using more than a decade's worth of fieldwork in South Sudan, Clémence Pinaud here explores the relationship between predatory wealth accumulation, state formation, and a form of racism—extreme ethnic group entitlement—that has the potential to result in genocide. War and Genocide in South Sudan traces the rise of a predatory state during civil war in southern Sudan and its transformation into a violent Dinka ethnocracy after the region's formal independence. That new state, Pinaud argues, waged genocide against non-Dinka civilians in 2013-2017. During a civil war that wrecked the region between 1983 and 2005, the predominantly Dinka Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) practiced ethnically exclusive and predatory wealth accumulation. Its actions fostered extreme group entitlement and profoundly shaped the rebel state. Ethnic group entitlement eventually grew into an ideology of ethnic supremacy. After that war ended, the semi-autonomous state turned into a violent and predatory ethnocracy—a process accelerated by independence in 2011. The rise of exclusionary nationalism, a new security landscape, and inter-ethnic political competition contributed to the start of a new round of civil war in 2013, in which the recently founded state unleashed violence against nearly all non-Dinka ethnic groups. Pinaud investigates three campaigns waged by the South Sudan government in 2013–2017 and concludes they were genocidal—they sought to destroy non-Dinka target groups. She demonstrates how the perpetrators' sense of group entitlement culminated in land-grabs that amounted to a genocidal conquest echoing the imperialist origins of modern genocides. Thanks to generous funding from TOME, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.

South Sudan

South Sudan
Author: Edward Thomas
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2015-01-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1783604077

In 2011, South Sudan became independent following a long war of liberation, that gradually became marked by looting, raids and massacres pitting ethnic communities against each other. In this remarkably comprehensive work, Edward Thomas provides a multi-layered examination of what is happening in the country today. Writing from the perspective of South Sudan's most mutinous hinterland, Jonglei state, the book explains how this area was at the heart of South Sudan's struggle. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and a broad range of sources, this book gives a sharply focused, fresh account of South Sudan's long, unfinished fight for liberation.

Second-Generation Liberation Wars

Second-Generation Liberation Wars
Author: Yaniv Voller
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2022-02-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 1316513130

An exploration of the strategies that both governments and insurgents employed in the liberation wars in Iraqi Kurdistan and South Sudan.

South Sudan

South Sudan
Author: Douglas H. Johnson
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2016-11-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0821445847

Africa’s newest nation has a long history. Often considered remote and isolated from the rest of Africa, and usually associated with the violence of slavery and civil war, South Sudan has been an arena for a complex mixing of peoples, languages, and beliefs. The nation’s diversity is both its strength and a challenge as its people attempt to overcome the legacy of decades of war to build a new economic, political, and national future. Most recent studies of South Sudan’s history have a foreshortened sense of the past, focusing on current political issues, the recently ended civil war, or the ongoing conflicts within the country and along its border with Sudan. This brief but substantial overview of South Sudan’s longue durée, by one of the world’s foremost experts on the region, answers the need for a current, accessible book on this important country. Drawing on recent advances in the archaeology of the Nile Valley, new fieldwork as well as classic ethnography, and local and foreign archives, Johnson recovers South Sudan’s place in African history and challenges the stereotypes imposed on its peoples.

When Peace Kills Politics

When Peace Kills Politics
Author: Sharath Srinivasan
Publisher: Hurst Publishers
Total Pages: 442
Release: 2021-12-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 178738635X

Why have war and coercion dominated the political realm in the Sudans, a decade after South Sudan’s independence and fifteen years after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement? This book explains the tragic role of international peacemaking in reproducing violence and political authoritarianism in Sudan and South Sudan. Sharath Srinivasan charts the destructive effects of Sudan’s landmark north–south peace process, from how it fuelled war in Darfur, the Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile to its contribution to Sudan’s failed political transformation and South Sudan’s rapid descent into civil war. Concluding with the conspicuous absence of ‘peace’ when non-violent revolutionary political change came to Sudan in 2019, Srinivasan examines at close range why outsiders’ peace projects may displace civil politics and raise the political currency of violence. This is an analysis of the perils of attempting to build a non-violent political realm through neat designs and tools of compulsion, where the end goal of peace becomes caught up in idealised constitutional texts, technocratic templates and deals on sharing spoils. When Peace Kills Politics shows that these methods, ultimately anti-political, will be resisted—often violently—by dissatisfied local actors.

South Sudan

South Sudan
Author: Hilde F. Johnson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2016-06-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1786730057

In July 2011, South Sudan was granted independence and became the world's newest country. Yet just two-and-a-half years after this momentous decision, the country was in the grips of renewed civil war and political strife. Hilde F. Johnson served as Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Mission in the Republic of South Sudan from July 2011 until July 2014 and, as such, she was witness to the many challenges which the country faced as it struggled to adjust to its new autonomous state. In this book, she provides an unparalleled insider's account of South Sudan's descent from the ecstatic celebrations of July 2011 to the outbreak of the disastrous conflict in December 2013 and the early, bloody phase of the fighting. Johnson's frequent personal and private contacts at the highest levels of government, accompanied by her deep knowledge of the country and its history, make this a unique eyewitness account of the turbulent first three years of the world's newest - and yet most fragile - country.

South Sudan's Civil War

South Sudan's Civil War
Author: John Young
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2019-01-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1786993775

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 true dynamics of the conflict, and exposes how the South Sudanese state was in crisis long before the outbreak of war. With insider knowledge of the histories and motivations of the rebellion’s chief protagonists, Young argues considerable responsibility for the present state of South Sudan must be laid at the door of the US-led peace process. Linking the role of the international community with the country’s opposition politics, South Sudan’s Civil War is an essential guide to the causes and consequences of the violence that has engulfed one of Africa’s most troubled nations.