A Big Question On IGAD Neutrality Over South Sudan Peace Talks:

By David Lony Majak:

Opinion

 September 1^st 2014(Nyamilepedia) —  It is now making nine 9 months down the road (plus fifteen days of December), the big question of thoughts on IGAD neutrality over south Sudan peace deal in the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, is a sign of failure to resolve conflict between the warring parties.

The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) has played a card of negative neutrality over South Sudan crisis; peace talk have been an ongoing process for nine months without any positive solution to resolve the problem between the warring parties in the Republic of South Sudan. What are they after for real?

The IGAD board needs to re-study the objectives of peace building on how to strike a balance between ‘negative’ peace and ‘positive’ peace deal. Because conflicts usually leave their mark on the post-settlement process in form of broken lives, shattered and divided communities, distrust, and hatred. The task of re-constructing a self-sustaining peace is never an easy one because today in south Sudan, so many lives have been lost and continuing being lost up to date.

I believe before the war broke out over SPLM powers girded, South Sudan had been an independent Nation comprised of three primary groups – the greater Upper Nile region (northeast), Bahr el Ghazal region (northwest) and Equatoria region (southerner). The secondary indicators are 10 states with 86 countries. These three regions have got different tribes within although some are dominated by majority members of the tribes. South Sudan has been quieter a greater nation before it was recognized as an independent state in 2011. But the societies of south Sudan were not completely free of internal disputes for power, the three groups got along, sharing a common culture, religion, language, and set of values and taboos as well especially; the Dinkas, Nuer and their brother Shilluk has cultural relativism in South Sudan.

About IGAD, One of the reason may be that they overlooked this fact could be the bureaucratic professional orientation of the warring parties over South Sudan conflict. These are neither social scientists nor cultural experts; but they got engaged in their office as long as they are paid with definite roles and responsibilities. Therefore they understood peace process as it was described in different peace categories, but failed to accord peace and to understand the underlying realities that contributed to the making of that peace settlement.

In South Sudan during its autonomy government of CPA implementation between the southerner south Sudan and Sudan the then; it was survey that discrimination and unequal access to scare resources led to violence, as the discrimination took place along ethnic lines, and the violence and counter violence became ethnic ton of positive humiliations amongst the minority tribes which do not even have representatives in the government institutions. There were superimpositions of social cleavages with fault lines in political power, economic wealth, and ethnicity reinforcing each other. This conflict started before 2010 elections and has continued until today.

IGAD body didn’t understood the Root causes of conflict in South Sudan

The IGAD peace mediation team should clearly understand that; there is no smoke without fire; this mean south Sudan crisis is not just a conflict of no root causes. The worth number one factor is the;-

1. Divisive & dictatorship leadership: The leaders of the country’s political camps have engaged in demagogic rhetoric which has sometimes incited violence from some points of view in South Sudan.
2. State monopoly of resources: The population is preponderantly rural and engaged in subsistence agriculture where there is no government support and initiatives for farmers. The country’s small industrial sector is confined largely to local production or uncompetitive exports such as oil and gold, produced until recently by state industries. Control of state power almost coincides with control of economic resources which caused so many failures on economic sector.
3. Past discrimination: Since independence in CPA 2005/2011, some tribes dominated regimes have discriminated against others.
4. Weight of a violent history: South Sudanese’s post independence history is strewn with recurrent whether there was a coup or attempted coups which leaded to the inter-communal violence in the country. Clashes that took place in 2005 until 2013 have caused mistrust amongst different tribes in South Sudan. This sequence of massacres has created a culture of violence which is hard to dissolve in South Sudan.
5. Unequal distribution of public resources and discriminative employment of youth in the government institutions.
6. Traditional and cultural grouping on political institutions when lobbying for powers, unequal representation in the national level.

In a thorough political analysis over peace mediation; African nations have been ravaged by conflict, resulting in destabilization, displacement, and infrastructural destructions, all of which have based genders-specific consequences. In South Sudan today, for example, an estimated 75% of South Sudanese IDPs leaving in the country’s UNMISS camps and refugees in different countries are women and children. This IGAD team and other stakeholders should evaluate the post conflict and conflict resolution in South Sudan in order to find the immediate solution to the problem, with particular focus on Sudan and South Sudan conflict references. IGAD has been a role model on African issues and have performed so many an important roles as peace negotiators and peace educators in both Countries and regions in the continent of Africa. Therefore; IGAD board should finally, impose and to suggest ideas to integrate into conflict resolution and peace building efforts so that South Sudan receives peace deal again.

The columnist can be reached on delonymajak@gmail.com, (leave it or take it).