As South Sudan implodes, America reconsiders its support for the regime

IT IS not as bad in South Sudan as people think, insists Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth, the petroleum minister. The UN may claim that a third of the population have fled their homes, but that is an exaggeration, says the sharp-suited former diplomat.

Why, then, does he think the refugee camps are so full? Some people go there for the services, such as free food, he explains. Others have been scared by fake news, peddled by insurgents. “People are saying: ‘The Dinka [the largest ethnic group in South Sudan] are coming to kill you. You must leave!’” Seated in his plush office in Juba, the capital, Mr Gatkuoth scoffs that, when he was a rebel during South Sudan’s long war to break away from Sudan, his comrades used similar propaganda, telling people that the Arabs were coming to burn their villages and rape their children. “It was very effective,” he recalls.

At camps for displaced people near Wau, one of South Sudan’s largest cities, no one agrees with Mr Gatkuoth’s account of current events. All describe, not rumours of massacres heard on social media, but actual massacres that they saw with their own eyes. The perpetrators, they say, were Dinka marauders wearing blue and Dinka soldiers in uniform.

“I saw my son shot in front of me. He fell and I was holding him. I survived, maybe because the killers thought we were both dead,” says Pascalina, a fugitive. “They took my sister and raped her,” says Anyor, a mother who hid in the bush with her nine children as the attackers killed the men in her village, looted everything of value (“goats, chickens, sorghum”) and kidnapped young women.

The spoils of oil

South Sudan, the world’s newest country, is like a jigsaw puzzle that has been broken apart, soaked in petrol and set alight. It will not be easy to put back together. It seceded from Sudan in 2011, after half a century of on-off rebellion and a peace deal in 2005. In a referendum, 99% of South Sudanese (who are mostly black and non-Muslim) voted to separate from the Arab, Muslim north. Sadly, clashes between different ethnic groups within South Sudan began almost immediately after independence.

Full-blown civil war erupted in 2013, after President Salva Kiir (a Dinka) sacked Vice-President Riek Machar (a Nuer). A truce in 2016 lasted less than four months. It ended with gun battles in Juba and Mr Machar fleeing to South Africa, where he remains under house arrest.

The mayhem is now many-sided. The other tribes (of which the country has about 60) accuse Mr Kiir of funnelling government jobs and cash to Dinkas, and of using the national army to assert Dinka supremacy. Terrified non-Dinkas have formed armed groups to defend their homes, land and cows—and sometimes to raid the neighbouring villages. The government sees these groups as rebels to be exterminated, and tacitly encourages the ethnic cleansing of areas thought to support them. All sides slaughter civilians.

In Wau, Dinkas walk in the streets without fear (except at night, when robbers prowl). Meanwhile, tens of thousands of non-Dinkas huddle in tented camps nearby, guarded by UN peacekeepers. The non-Dinkas say they are too scared to return home. Many report being raped if they venture out to collect firewood. “Now it is death for anyone who is not a Dinka. If you can’t talk like a Dinka, if you don’t have the right [ritual] scars, they shoot you, no questions asked,” says Abdullah, a farmer. “They want to clear the other groups and take control of everything. They kill you and take your land to graze their cattle on.”

Out of South Sudan’s pre-war population of 12m, the UN estimates that 2m have been displaced internally and another 2m have fled abroad. So bad is the violence that some flee into the war-ravaged Central African Republic, or into Sudan’s troubled region of Darfur. Though South Sudan is fertile, more than half of its people face hunger. A famine earlier this year was averted by food aid. Diarrhoea, cholera and malaria have spread rapidly, along with kala-azar (a deadly parasitic disease carried by sandflies).

The economy is a disaster. The state depends on oil, which is 95% of exports. Not only has the oil price fallen by more than half since 2011, but output has collapsed in the fighting. The IMF guesses that real income has been cut in half since 2013. Inflation is over 300% a year. The government is short of cash. Unpaid soldiers rob civilians with impunity.

Much of the budget is stolen. Absurdly, half of the government’s net oil revenues are spent on petrol subsidies—the government insists that fuel should be sold for far less than it costs. As a result, petrol stations have run dry. Outside each one, black-market traders sell fuel in water bottles for more than ten times the official price. The finance minister says fuel subsidies should be scrapped, but faces resistance from those who pocket them.

The government says it welcomes the foreign aid groups who provide most of South Sudan’s public services. In practice officials often obstruct them. Aid workers are regularly barred from delivering food and medicine to rebel-held areas. Dozens have been murdered. Many roads are impassable because gunmen patrol them, stealing aid supplies and killing drivers. Bureaucrats constantly demand new fees and permits. (Your correspondent was barred from an internal flight over a missing piece of paper which, once he had obtained it, no official asked to see again.)

Mr Kiir’s government came to office on a wave of international goodwill. Both the Bush and Obama administrations included close personal friends of the plucky rebels who liberated South Sudan from the Islamist tyranny of Khartoum. But Donald Trump’s White House has no such sentimental ties, and America is rapidly losing patience with Mr Kiir. Three South Sudanese officials have been sanctioned by America’s Treasury for alleged corruption. More may follow.

Last month Mark Green, the head of USAID, America’s government aid agency, visited South Sudan. Mr Kiir is said to have told him that there was no systemic insecurity in the country, that what violence did occur was the opposition’s fault, and that aid workers could do their jobs unhindered. Mr Green was shocked to be lied to so brazenly. He promised a “complete review” of American policy towards South Sudan. This month America’s ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, will visit Juba, hoping to revive peace talks. President Trump, however, may be inclined to cut South Sudan loose. That is risky. “If we disengage, people will starve to death,” laments an American official.