When did South Sudan become the newest nation in the world? How did it go from fresh hope and nation building to another civil war? How did corruption affect its ability to succeed? How did Sudan's regime in the North affect its people? How did South Sudan end its civil war? And what is going on there today? How did the civil war in northern Sudan begin
in 2023? And what has happened in the last year? We will answer these questions and many more in today's episode, Sudan & South Sudan 101, Part 3 of 3. Welcome to Wiser World, a podcast for busy people who need a refresher on all things world. Here we explore different regions of the globe, giving you the facts and context you need to think historically about current events. I truly believe that the more we learn
about the world, the more we embrace our shared humanity. I'm your host, Alli Roper. Thanks for being here. We are going to take these two countries from 2005. That's the end of the second Sudanese civil war all the way until today, April 2024. If you haven't listened to Parts 1 and 2 yet, please go do that now because they lay all the groundwork for this episode. So many things that are happening right now have roots in the past and that context matters. So I hope
you give those a listen first. Just a reminder that I designed these episodes so people who know very little to nothing about the Sudan's can develop a good basic foundation. And finding information on this part of the world can be really tricky. There's low literacy rates, there's different languages. And we did our best. We often found that the nonfiction that was closest to our disposal was written by journalists and diplomats. And we also read
some memoirs that were written by South Sudanese people. So as always, please do your own independent research. And if you need help finding some good places to start, I'll share some of those on my Patreon, which you can sign up for at patreon.com slash wiserworld podcast. I also share additional resources there that just help solidify what I teach you on the episodes. I give you pictures and maps and just some things that kind of help it sink in a little bit deeper.
So lastly, just like with parts two, with parts one and two, the history in this episode is is difficult. I don't want to sanitize this horrible history. It includes heinous work crimes and assaults and sexual abuse and violence and other really challenging topics. But I also don't want this to be impossibly painful to listen to. So I have tried to thread the needle with details, giving what I feel is enough to show the intensity, including
some detail, but hopefully being tactful. And I recommend that you give this a listen before you give it to teenagers. And I do not recommend it at all for children. It's heavy, but we do need to know it. You can't help something you don't know about. So we have to start with education and just take breaks if you need to while you listen. But I do hope you give it a good thorough listen. So let's get into it. We're going to take
the history from 2005 to 2024. And I would say I'm going to spend a little more of the history on South Sudan because for one, I was able to find more material on South Sudan. And also because a lot of the major history in North Sudan during this time period has to do with its western region of Darfur, which was having a major conflict during these years. And I have decided to spend an entire episode on Darfur because just doing a couple
of paragraphs really didn't work for me. You can't cover it as well as I wanted to. So don't worry if you feel like North Sudan isn't covered adequately in this episode between this episode and the next Darfur episode, you will have a much better look at it. So don't worry about that. We ended part two with the end of Sudan's second civil war. It had begun in 1983. It ended in 2005 and it was between the North and the South parts of
Sudan. The North had declared Sudan and Islamic Republic. The South largely rejected this. It's a lot more complicated than that, but you'll remember that's basically the gist of it. And a comprehensive peace agreement, a CPA, was signed that ended 22 long years of fighting. And there was a lot of international pressure to get this deal signed. And you'll remember that in the war, there were various groups fighting it. It wasn't like there
was just one army in the North and one army in the South. No, there was a national army in the North, but there were also Arab militia groups in different parts of the North. And in the South, there was a lot of violence between southern and southern of different tribal groups and ethnic groups that did not get along. But after 22 long, long years,
there finally was a ceasefire. And probably the biggest part of the agreement was that in six years, the southern Sudanese people could vote on whether to become their own nation. So they had from 2005 to 2011 to more or less, kind of set the stage for becoming their own nation if they wanted to to become independent from Northern Sudan. It's kind of like a dress rehearsal for statehood. And this period, these six years is often called the interim
years. And I want to talk about them for a minute because they tell us a lot about nation building. Now, spoiler alert in 2011, South Sudan did become the newest nation in the world. But in 2005, things really weren't so sure. In fact, part of this six-year trial period was to see if it was possible for the North and South to stay together. I mean, they just had a civil war, right? So they were thinking, okay, maybe we'll develop the
South. It's been marginalized and very underdeveloped. Let's see if we can share the oil wealth. Oil was exported from Sudan for the first time in 1999. So it was a pretty new thing. And for the first time ever, the South could actually benefit from the oil in its boundaries. So the primary goal of the peace agreement was, you know, to see if they could stay together.
But if not, there was kind of an opt-out clause for the South to become independent. So what this looked like boots on the ground was a one country two systems model where southerners would have some autonomy in a regional government in the South, but they also would be part of a unity government in Cartoum. And John Gaurang, who was the leader of the SPLM, which was the South's major political group, was named as the first vice president of Sudan.
And president of the regional government in the South. And he was rearing to go to create a new Sudan to bring them together. Now, during the Second Civil War and the peace process, the United States began to play a more pivotal role in South Sudan because John Gaurang, again, that's the leader of the South's SPLM, he gained a strong relationship with some
key U.S. congressmen who led a faction that lobbied for SPLM support. And he had a very charismatic way of selling his ideas for evangelical Christians, African American constituencies, and human rights advocacy groups. And as a result, the U.S. sided with the SPLM and overlooked a lot of his more dangerous leadership qualities. It's pretty authoritarian because they didn't appear as terrible as the attacks coming from the North. So the U.S. supported the SPLM
through aid packages and diplomatic assistance. And we're also supportive of the South becoming its own nation. Only a few months after the peace agreement was signed, John Gaurang died in a helicopter crash. Now, this is a problem. He was the VP of Sudan and the president of that regional government in the South. So the SPLM was in a state of emergency here. When it comes to military hierarchy in the SPLA, John Gaurang was number one. But number two was
a man named Selva Kier. Kier spelled K-I-I-R. Now, Selva was also ethnically Dinka, just like John Gaurang. I'm going to call Selva Kier Selva in this episode because in South Sudan, they often call their leaders by their first names. So Selva Kier says name, I'm going to call him Selva. A little background on him because he's still today a major leader in South Sudan. Selva had fought in the First Civil War with the Anjanyah rebels and was also
part of the SPLM, SPLA, when it first started under Gaurang. He was a capable person to command well, wasn't ever a threat to Gaurang. And therefore, he rose higher in the ranks. And even when other aspiring leaders were punished or killed, Selva was so non-threatening and passive that he ended up becoming number two in the SPLM. So when Gaurang died, Selva took his job and became more or less an accidental and even reluctant president. And many people
thought he was too weak-willed to pull it off. And just a side note here, John Gaurang has really been lionized in South Sudan. He has a mausoleum. He's on their money. There are statues of him in major cities. His wife, Mama Rebecca, is the country's most revered woman. But he was not universally popular. He was actually quite polarizing and his lack of transparency alienated a lot of people. But it's really important to know he was
a force of nature. There was a lot of people who very much love him. And he's a very important part of South Sudan's history. Selva Kure, number two, on the other hand, did not have this charisma. He is known for being very indecisive and much more easily influenced by others. Many were not happy that he became the leader in this way. And this created even more divisions within the SPLM and the South because their linchpin, John Gaurang,
was gone. And with Selva at the head, things changed. Selva did not believe in this new Sudan lincharang and instead wanted an independent South Sudan, which was what most southerners wanted. Selva also didn't have any personal ties with Washington, DC. So when Americans visited Selva Kure, who by the way, he always wears a black cowboy hat, these people who visited him, they realized that they were working with a very, very different person.
And the SPLM wasn't squeaky clean. As we talked about in part two, John Gaurang had his own authoritarian leadership problems and in 1991 at the height of the Civil War, the SPLM fractured when some of its top leaders attempted to coup against him. And when it failed, they created their own factions that ended up fighting against each other. And one of
those leaders was react mature, who's ethnically new air. And he's going to play a big role in part three, what we're talking about right now because of this division that happened in 1991. So Selva Kure had a huge job to do in these interim years, these six years. Not only did he have to work with the North on power and oil sharing, but he also had to create an autonomous regional government in the South with that had warring factions
or had factions that didn't get along. And the peace agreement talked about this dream of Sudan remaining unified, but no one really believed it because Selva didn't believe it. And he immediately poured much of the budget into military rearmament. So it became pretty clear pretty quickly that the South was working to succeed from the North in 2011. And this alone unifying the South was going to be a massive job. Unfortunately, this interim
time was super dysfunctional. From everything we researched, it feels like most of this dysfunction was due to lack of leadership or dysfunctional leadership and a fractured population that disagreed on the leadership. And the lack of development within the country didn't make things easier. For example, before 2011, government leaders had to carry multiple
phones with multiple carriers because calls wouldn't connect between networks. So for example, a government minister's business card would have multiple numbers from four or five different networks. And everybody had multiple SIM cards and getting those networks to work in huge swaths of the country was nearly impossible. So then satellite phones had
to be used. And as Zach Burton writes, quote, unlike in the West, where cell phone numbers of the super elite are kept within tightly held circles, the numbers of the most influential government officials were not hard to come by. Their digits circulated among colleagues and subordinates, extended families and hometown communities, as well as foreign businessmen,
journalists and anyone who wanted some FaceTime. When in a pinch, asking a seasoned boat of Oda driver for the number of the deputy finance minister was worth a shot, end of quote, whoa, right? This makes getting anything done in South Sudan very difficult. And again, just another reminder that during the Civil War, the Second Civil War, the South had also been at war with itself with ethnic infighting. And so the Southern leadership was not unified.
And because the SPLM did not have a democratic culture because John Grain didn't allow it, Salva had to kind of decide how to move forward. And he chose to surround himself with his friends and began creating the regional government of Sudan with hopes of independence after the six years. And if there's anything that I've learned in studying the world, it's that nation building is no joke. I think sometimes when you're in a stable country,
it's really easy to take a stable government for granted. But the government of South Sudan has never been stable. And so the people have never known what it feels like to have regular services or have the government function properly to assist them. For example, there was no VA to help war vets recover from wartime injuries. And the central government had never provided relief or recovery or social welfare for these people. They never had a unified
police force to protect them. There were no firefighters, no public schools, not even roads to drive from one town to another. Most roads were very impossible for most vehicles. So without systems and forces that they could trust, people continued to look to their own communities and their own peoples for their survival. Meanwhile, on the government front, Salva needed more support from a fractured SPLM. So he
used money to do it. He included ethnically new air folks in the National Army. He gave government jobs to a wider variety of tribal groups than many thought he would. And a lot of this was because he needed support. Many of these deals were made by paying people a lot of money to support him. Many of these people being his former rivals. However, most of the men put into governmental positions were SPLM generals or other military leaders
who had little to no experience with any sort of governmental or financial training. Most were from very small villages in the bush. And anyone who spoke out against this was viewed as a dissenter or even seen as collaborating with the North. Now, if we look at this really, really logically, we can see how this would be a huge opportunity for these men to work for the government. Zach Burton writes, quote, as in many underdeveloped economies, government
jobs were most sought after. Some felt called to public service, but many were motivated by the one institution that offered a decent salary and a chance for social mobility. The top jobs, like the cabinet, executive office, governorships, all afforded luxuries of high office, jobs to dole out to loyal supporters and huge official budgets that could
be gobbled up for personal use. In a country accustomed to turbulence and changing circumstances, one would not waste a chance to get ahead during a turn at the feeding trough. Selva also started beefing up the military. Part of the CPA agreement, that peace agreement, was that the South would get more than a billion dollars of oil revenue each year, which was an incredible amount of money. So Selva bought weapons from arms dealers in Russia and
Ukraine and other former Soviet states. And this was, of course, against the CPA agreement, but who is going to know? Okay, everyone knew, you guys, everyone knew. The unity government in Cartoum also broke down pretty quickly, neither side knew how to trust each other, and the South especially felt like the North was hogging all of the oil revenues. So there even was a moment in the middle of these six interim years where another war seemed
likely. But Selva looked to foreign help to move South Sudan toward independence in 2011. The USA, Europeans, the Chinese, other African neighbors were high priorities. The USA in particular had a tricky time with Selva because he was not John Gareng and did not have the same relationships
or social skills that John Gareng was known for. Because war with Sudan was always on the table, foreign powers overlooked a lot of the struggles that were going on between the ruling elite class of the SPLM and instead focused their attention on this referendum or this chance to become independent that was coming in 2011. But within the SPLM, the new South Sudanese leaders became drunk on their power. And with all of this oil money coming in, corruption took hold. Over the next
decade, billions and billions of dollars went missing. So they were basically stolen by government leaders from the state coffers. For over two decades, these men had lived off of the bush and the local populations. And suddenly they had more petriot dollars than they knew how to handle. And suddenly becoming rich was actually a major curse for the southern part of Sudan.
And it's actually called a resource curse. It's a phenomenon. And with this new resource taking over 98% of the economy, the new leaders did not invest it correctly in nation building and infrastructure and the people of South Sudan or diversifying the economy by investing it in something other than oil. But instead, the leaders got greedy. And like I said, billions of dollars
just went missing. It was later discovered that millions of dollars of cash were kept under the beds and in briefcases of leading officials and were sent off to neighboring countries to be kept safe. A lot of this had to do with connection to community over government and just this lack of
understanding of how it should work. So for example, if you've been an SPLM general for the last two decades living in the bush and someone comes to you and says, can you pay for my granddaughters medical procedure or my uncle's school fees, the leaders became under pressure to deliver that money and opportunities back to their original tribes, their chiefs and their family members. As Zach Burton writes quote, in the ensuing years, the goat herder and rural Barragazal
remained without electricity or running water. But the army chief purchased a mansion in Melbourne, Australia, they boasted a home theater, a sauna and two swimming pools. Like 70% of their fellow citizens, the goat herder and his wife remained illiterate and their children had no primary school to attend. But the children of SPLM elites wore designer clothing and drove range-rovers to premiere schools in upscale London neighborhoods and leafy Nairobi suburbs. Corruption was certainly
not unfamiliar in Africa. But the circumstances seemed a particularly agrarious betrayal of the SPLM's history and its stated ideals. Sal Sudan was fortunate to enjoy ample new revenue and the peace deal meant the long-suffering population might finally catch a break after decades of pain and sacrifice. What could explain a collective heist of this scale in a country so poor, neglected and in need of development? End of quote. Now how they did it was pretty simple,
they stole it through various schemes. Many of these men were older and wanted to cash in before their time on Earth was up. They lived in the bush, wanted to live the high life for a while, and a lot of times the disappearance of hundreds of millions of dollars wasn't even hidden very well. For example, different governmental ministers would take official budgets and use them for personal use or give contracts for governmental work to companies that were actually registered in the names
of their family members. Many senior officials would list their children or spouses or other family members like Nese's and nephews and such. As shareholders and companies for telecommunications, defense contractors mining road construction. For example, Salvaqir, that's the president, his own 12-year-old son had a 25% stake in a shell company. One ministry actually withdrew $30 million and labeled it office equipment and another authorized $50,000 for a cousin's medical
treatment in another country. So this is super, super crooked, not great, not legal and not even well concealed. As Peter Martell writes quote, leaders lost their moral authority. It was both practical and symbolic. Inceiving from the state, they stole the funds needed to build the nation. More dangerously, they showed they did not care about the concept of the country. Their parade of stolen cash offering the clearest illustration that talk of national identity
was but a smokescreen for personal profit. Because the regional government was so new, things like essential bank and things like that didn't really exist. They could have safeguarded against this extreme corruption. There's even proof that many names on government payrolls didn't actually exist and their salaries were being pocketed by higher officials. These workers were called ghost workers. Another example of this is that they ordered materials to make roads because
roads were not happening in most parts of South Sudan. There were some highways but they were too rough for most vehicles like we talked about. So there was a plan to create a highway system and increase trade but it never happened because officials bowled those dirt tracks and then pocketed the rest of the money that would have paid for longer lasting efficient roads. So the roads obviously washed away within a few rainy seasons but they cost a million dollars per kilometer
to build. So I'm going to admit right now these are the moments in researching that made me want to scream. Like this is the definition of corruption and 95% of the population paid for it. In the end, during the six years there was no trickle-down effects of the oil boom in South Sudan. That goat herder was still traveling three days by foot to the nearest market, had lost a child
to malaria because they didn't have access to cheap medication. Women were still walking around trying to clean up towns from land mines that were left behind and meanwhile the money was relocated
out of the country and foreign banks mostly. In Kenya you go on to the Gulf as well as US, Canada, Europe, Australia and many of these leaders actually spent most of their time outside of the country enjoying their spoils rather than governing and because of this they obviously had less interest in home if your children are being educated elsewhere and your money's elsewhere you stop caring about where you live. And the South Sudanese government became more authoritarian and heavy-handed.
For example, they ignored primary elections and just put in their preferred candidates instead. Opposition leaders were shut up. In fact, one opposition leader spoke out against this corruption and an army leader came to his house and knocked his front teeth out. Quote, and so when it came time to govern, the party was ill-equipped. Democracy will not just fall from heaven one critic claimed, like will suddenly become democratic overnight. This is our
biggest problem. We never had a democratic culture. We think that the gun is everything end of quote. Top down hierarchical leadership was the name of the game and not only were there factions within the SPLM that disagreed with each other. But now there's a lot of money and ammunition involved, right? In this time, Juba grew more urban and more distanced from the rural areas where the
majority of South Sudanese lived. And because of the nature of the landscape, most people ended up rebuilding their huts which are made out of straw and mud and corrugated tin every three to four years. Sometimes every season they continued walking for water, eating maize, dried fish, beans,
fruits and ground nuts when life was good and eating boiled grasses when it was not. Many who had left during the war had returned home hoping for a changed country but found everything still mostly in ruins and those who had developed skills to help were often overlooked because of the corruption. And when emergency food aid was delivered, a lot of the times SPLA fighters would take it for themselves. Over time, all of this corruption began to corrode away at a government and
a people that did not have a strong foundation. And there was this big disconnect between the very small elite governing class and the masses and under the table, true democracy was just not happening. In fact, just before the referendum in 2011, the Constitution was revised to give the president Salva Kier much more power. So hopefully you're getting the picture here that the government's not stable. But despite this, South Sudan was still poised to become an independent nation.
Let's take a quick break to hear from this episode, sponsors. Being both a teacher and a mom has given me firsthand experience in seeing how unique each child is with their learning style and just their life circumstances. And we parents want to empower our children to succeed in education. One great option for children's education is K-12 powered schools. These are tuition free online accredited public schools for kindergarten through
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student to reach their full potential now. Just go to k12.com slash wiserworld today to learn more and find a tuition free K-12 powered school near you. That's the letter K, the number 12.com slash wiserworld. So let's talk about how South Sudan became an independent nation. The negotiations that went into this really pretty messy divorce from the North could honestly be a book of its own. I'm just going to say here that negotiating South Sudan's independence was impossibly
complicated and difficult and it was a tug of war that almost ended in actual war. A country splitting into is really no small thing because there are things like oil and borders and security and debt and citizenship and currency and all of those things are pretty urgent and they need solutions and not to mention things like making your own money or having area codes for calls and
it just complicated. The number one issue was oil. Cartoon had felt the positive effects of oils in the 90s but the South had really remained impoverished and as we talked about in part one the oil was mostly found in the borderlands which were contested. Zach Burton writes quote as the two sides wrangled over contested territory, nomadic herders feared being cut off from grazing lands while families identifying a southern nurse worried they would be absorbed into
the wrong country. Displaced elders clung to hopes of one day returning to traditional homelands from which they'd been wrongfully ousted. Because economic, cultural and linguistic frontiers in these border regions were so fluid a solution would require more than drawing a line on a map. It also necessitated creating the kind of soft border that would allow cross boundary
movement and trade upon which millions depended to continue. Citizenship and nationality were also critical agenda items in a country as racially ethnically and religiously heterogeneous as Sudan. Decisions presented potentially life altering consequences for the Dinka man who was born in cartoon married to a northern Sudanese woman and whose children spoke Arabic and attended schools in cartoon suburbs. He was a southern descent but South Sudan was a foreign as foreign a place
as any to him. Would he be fired from his job or denied services in Sudan on the two countries split? Would he be forced to return home to take up citizenship in a country he'd never set foot in? Would his wife be welcomed there? End of quote. So we can see how insanely complicated this this gets. They had to hammer out all of the details of the military. The north was not excited about the South seceding because it was worried that jubo was going to support some of its own rebels.
The north had a cocktail of problems of its own especially the massive conflict that was going on in the western region of Darfur where there was a lot of violence and because of that it had issues with its neighboring country Chad. In 2009 the international criminal court issued an arrest warrant for President Bashir for war crimes in Darfur President Bashir is a president of Sudan. In 2010 it accused him of genocide in Darfur. His was a regime that was very restrictive
religious minorities were persecuted and morality police enforced the rules Sudan. You know while not in the same situation as South Sudan because it had a bit more development and was a bit more stable it did have a repressive government that was not in super great shape. The north also had border disputes in oil towns with the south two again they just couldn't agree but right before the referendum in 2011 North Sudan decides to send out an announcement that the two million
southerners who were living in the north would no longer have citizenship rights in the north jobs or benefits they would not be allowed to buy or sell in a cartoon market they would not be quote even given a needle in the hospital end of quote other leaders in the north spoke out
the same way and southerners obviously began to worry about their safety if they lived in the north so there's a lot of issues in this negotiation process and it's honestly amazing it happened at all but the Americans dispatched some of their best diplomats and against all odds in January of
2011 millions of south Sudanese went to vote on whether or not to secede from Sudan and because about 70% of south Sudanese cannot read or write even today they had to simplify the ballots one box showed two hands clasped together which represented unity or stained together with Sudan
and another box showed a single free hand raise representing separation from Sudan so to vote a person just put their finger into purple ink and marked the box that they preferred and the south Sudanese waited in line for hours many of them dressed in their best clothes it was a huge day
in south Sudan and 95% of southerners voted for secession huge celebrations exploded in the streets so it was announced they were told to mark their calendars for July 9th 2011 when south Sudan would officially become its own nation and southerners from the north began pouring back into the south to
hopefully build a new home there the excitement of independence was through the roof hope for the future was at an all time high here was a country who had over 56 years of intense violence and theoretically had a clean slate to work with however it really didn't and all of the issues that
had crept up in the interim period just came back to bite them in the end the challenges of building a nation became more and more clear and painful quote south Sudan was poor landlocked and had no formal economy to speak of private investment was scant and the lack of production had created a
crippling dependence on imports nine out of ten people lived on less than a dollar a day development indicators like poverty education health clean water seemed to reach new lows on global indexes with no services no roads and no electricity few outside the capital had any
meaningful experience of the state what few services were available were usually provided not by the government but by international aid groups juba already had its hands hands full establishing institutions of governance in 2005 but with sovereignty in 2011 came an additional menu of
responsibilities from central banking and monetary policy to customs enforcement and foreign policy there were plenty of practical matters to american diplomats helped out by putting together a how to become a country binder with tabs ranging from postal codes to UN membership to registering
a country code for telephone numbers and if quote foreign aid did pour into south Sudan including a charity organization headed by George Clooney who's a Hollywood actor and i'm going to talk more about George Clooney actually in my episode on darfur the UN also did feed people but unfortunately
much of the diplomatic support that the south had received during the interim years dried up and as south Sudanese intellectual jok meduc wrote quote our country as it stands today is a four-legged animal but the legs are broken each of the legs of a functioning nation like
government service delivery a disciplined military a vibrant civil society and political unity were crooked the young animal is in serious trouble and if quote the government of south Sudan was set up with selva kira's president and reac mcchar as vice president we know about selva but
let's learn a little bit about reac because he is possibly the most polarizing figure in south Sudan largely again because of his split from john gering in 1991 and how he led the boar massacre against the dinka people during the second civil war which we talked about in part one he also
worked for a time in cartoon during that war when he was distanced from the splm so a lot of people felt like reac mcchar was a traitor here's a little bit more about him quote reac is fiery a man who's mood and body language can change rapidly one minute jovial easygoing flashing is unmistakable
smile and the next intense and confrontational jabbing a finger in the air moving forward in his chair and leaning in on you a conscious imposition of his presence and of quote so here we have a character like reac mcchar in contrast to the power hungry but also accidental president of selva
kira who was highly influence of influence of and also a dinka right so this is new air and dinka running the country together and right off the bat issues with the north cropped up oil was the main issue the south had sixty percent of the oil but the north had all the refineries and access
to the red sea to get it to market china was of course in the middle of all of this it operated the oil fields and it also refined almost all of the crude that was coming from both countries but after months of squabbling about oil fees that the south was not paying cartoon decided to hold
hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil hostage on its own tankers to make the south pay and the south was pretty upset by this and so what did it do it decided to shut down its entire oil production in retaliation to the north okay so what do we know about south students economy
pretty much all of its economy is in oil so this is straight up financial suicide for south Sudan it was a matter of national pride for them they felt that if the north was going to play this way the south was going to shut it all down and this is kind of when the entire international community
woke up to realize that south Sudan was not working the way that they hoped it was going to work the united states was a flabbergasted like you're going to shut down your entire economy and risk everything to get revenge on north Sudan and south Sudan basically was like yeah yeah our people
have suffered for generations but they are prepared to suffer a little longer that's what one leader said so for a while there another war looked imminent and for a time the south drew up plans to create their own pipelines through Ethiopia and Kenya and they tried to take crude oil on trucks
on roads that were pure mud which ended up getting oil in the swamp lands it's a mess the economy in the south naturally deteriorated when the prices for everything doubled and then tripled civilians citizens you know they're furious all support dries up for south Sudan at this point government
leaders go looking for loans but they can't get any except from pretty shady people and there were also major issues happening internally within the south's government within the splm for starters in 2012 so just one year after they fully secede from the north the corruption that had been going
on during the interim years became more and more apparent and it needed to be addressed but when higher ups began saying something to others about it the response was like wait you're going to call us out for stealing the money we can rat you out for what you've stolen too this actually
happened president salva sent out a letter at one point saying you know four billion is unaccounted for guys and you got to return the money to this particular account before a certain day and he actually listed everyone on a public list and it caused a major uproar and brought back all that
factionalism right to the surface in the end nothing happened the money was not returned he backed down but there were rebellions started cropping up more and more people were not used to having a government of this type their loyalties remained to their individual communities and tribes and people
didn't identify as south Sudanese but rather they identified as dinka or new air or barry or equatorian or whatever there was no real loyalty to a country at large there was no glue that bound them together and they didn't have shared symbols or themes that united them plus the economy was
failing because of the choice that the government had made to shut down oil and so violent spats begin cropping up between groups again especially between dinka and new air and the new air in particular were growing pretty restless and feeling left behind and largely ignored by a more
dinka heavy government then in 2013 just two years after independence president salva who again is a dinka he's surrounded by hardliners and again he's very easy to influence he decided to make major cabinet changes he did a complete overthrow and fired pretty much all of the national ministers
in the government including reac mcchar he also began secretly recruiting dinkas to replace newaires in the army and reac and a group of other leaders spoke openly against salva they began to be very bold and very clear that they did not agree with this choice that salva had made they also
knew that elections were coming soon and they wanted to lead right and the in-party issues were now public knowledge everybody knew about them salva then claimed on public television that reac had tried to launch a coup against him public television there's still no evidence that there
actually was a coup but anyone who stood up against salva and spoke out against his authoritarian nature was thrown into jail and reac mcchar went on the run from here it gets out of control so fast in December of 2013 it was ordered that dinka members of the military guard were too
disarmed their new air counterparts and so violence soon broke out dinka military man began military men began shooting at other military men within the military compounds and then the violence busted out into the streets dinka soldiers began breaking into new air homes in juba asking people
if they could speak dinka and when they couldn't they would shoot them or slit their throats or loot their homes they began setting out roadblocks to check for new air names or the facial scarring that is done in new air communities entire new air neighborhoods were taken out the people
either fleeing or being killed people began flooding to the u.n. compound which did not have the ability to care for them all but this is kind of a beautiful side note but a Bosnia and civil war survivor who had lost his family in a massacre in Bosnia actually was there and convinced
u.n. leaders to allow people in for refuge and this single act saved hundreds of lives but it was anyway it was complete chaos and it became a massacre soldiers began dumping bodies into unmarked mass graves to conceal the scale of what was happening in juba women were raped often
gang raped some were burned alive in their homes others were asked to do horrible things like drink their family members blood or eat charred corpses in order to remain alive or not be raped new air soldiers were captured and taken to prisons where their once fellow soldiers shot at them
through the windows absolutely inhumane and deplorable behavior and so many people lived in terror that the government troops were coming after them and the minister of information dismissed everything as normal saying that people were fleeing juba to go home to their villages for
Christmas because this is December of 2013 all of this corruption and militarization and factionalism and astrangements from you know the common man it had all caught up to south Sudan and in two years after it became its own nation south Sudan was again in a civil war the new air
mobilized together to seek revenge against the stinker attack which had been called for by the president of the nation salva and reac mature who again was on the run he speaks out and he condemns what's happened and he enlists his white army which we talked about in part two in a series of
revenge attacks so a revenge mentality has essentially taken over south Sudan at this point one new air explained that in his culture quote a man has an obligation to ensure that justice is met if my mother is killed by you i cannot leave your mother in life never end of quote he goes on to
kind of explain that he has a moral imperative to seek retribution and that there really is no exceptions he even says quote even if it is a god who killed our people we can go and fight with that god end of quote this revenge mentality causes so many problems and the juba attacks led to
sweeping violence across the country revenge after revenge after revenge and then avenge what has been done and they often barely had food or water but they were always very well armed and women and children faced the realities of this the most one grandmother wrote that she ran for her life
with several of her grandchildren and waited into flooded swamplands to take cover they hid their day and night while soldiers searched the area by 2014 the international world was starting to call it a genocide as new air commanders began telling people on the radio to hunt dinka civilians
and telling them explicitly on the radio to rape dinka women south Sudan again became a lawless place while the powerful salvage here had initiated the fighting everything really got derailed when it turned into an ethnic conflict rather than a political one gunmen stopped following any sort
of military chain of command and after sometime the violence became unmanageable for leadership to even control because this revenge mentality you can see it just spiraled out of control other ethnic groups were also forced into the fight salva and reac both kind of bought up local warlords
who were not loyal to either side and would give them money to fight for their side so they basically accepted buyouts meanwhile the economy is hemorrhaging from world oil prices going down and also many oil fields being destroyed they also started borrowing against future oil and taking loads from
loans from pretty shady groups huge debt people who had just left the north were now fleeing back to it believing that they would be safer there than in the south the international world took note of this and neighboring African nations the united the united the united states norway
other u n peace makers they started to intervene in kind of complete panic you ganda however was the one who actually joined was salva and sent in their own troops which also added to the messiness Sudan and the north started playing both sides to its advantages kenya and egypt and aria
all tried to promote peace a group of peacemakers and negotiators were flown in and began working on peace talks to get some kind of ceasefire moving quickly they met in etheopia at a very fancy hotel this was during president obama's term in the united states and secretary of state john
kerry was making personal phone calls to salva and to reac all the time washington ordered travel bans for south Sudanese leaders to not be able to leave the country if they were involved in disrupting these peace talks for more than two years the country remained in violent and economic chaos
while these men reac and salva refused to work together effectively in peace negotiations it really is a story of men wanting power and doing anything to get it and they got very comfortable in their hotel and in many cases they kind of forgot what was going on back home sometimes one
side would be so belligerent that they wouldn't even show up for talks that day a us diplomat zagvertin wrote it felt like a race to the bottom end of quote different marginalized groups were invited to participate in these peace talks but they were rarely listened to ended up just going
home there was an official ceasefire but it really wasn't heated the violence continued and salva kira continued to deny his part in it and even suggested that people who were fleeing to nearby Uganda were part of a conspiracy against the government meanwhile the economy is hemorrhagine
and normal average south Sudanese wanted something different than this they wanted justice and accountability and better government not having to fear for their lives and their children's lives they wanted schools and health care and food and getting a new road into their village and
they were tired and the politicians failed to create any sort of peace but actually church leaders throughout the country were really the only ones who managed to make any headway on the ground in areas where it was too dangerous for foreign aid workers to go churches offered health and
education however they could but the situation was so dire that it felt too many south Sudanese like there was no point to peace at all as Peter Martell writes quote there's already a steady process of ethnic cleansing underway in several areas of south Sudan using starvation gang rape
and the burning of villages everywhere we went across to this country we heard villagers saying they were ready to shed blood and get their land back many told us it's already reached a point of no return end of quote reak and salva finally met in person in march 2015 they began discussing
how to share people a new government organized security forces and they really did pretty much blame everyone but themselves even the main peace negotiators wrote that in a memo the united states came down hard on them in the past the u.s. had supported south Sudan pretty wholeheartedly but that
was gone people began talking about how they could create a government where neither salva nor reak could be involved at all and the questions really were pretty complex would that create more stability or less stability it was high drama high-tense times finally a peace agreement was signed that
set up a new government where salva and reak would share power salva would get 53% of the government's seats reak would become vice president and get 33% of the seats the rest would be divided among other splm members and political parties there would be a ceasefire economic reforms
a new constitutional process war crimes would be investigated finally in august of 2015 the agreement was signed but not without a lot of drama reading the backstory on these peace talks honestly it felt like watching a soap opera i cannot overstate how difficult both sides were
on this both sides reak and salva fled for their lives many times where the other party would kill them and everyone at home paid the price for this nearly a million refugees had fled thousands of lives were lost south Sudan was more polarized than ever many south Sudanese were very skeptical
about the u.s involvement in this peace deal and there were a lot of theories someone called them conspiracy theories about the whole thing misinformation was rampant in south Sudan anti-americanism was at a high you know issues about how the peace deal was made many people felt the americans
favored reak or they had some ulterior motive for helping it was so complicated and it did not take long for the peace treaty to deteriorate it was very fragile to begin with and within a few months april 2016 reak and salva were working out how to make this transitional government when
gunfire erupted between their two forces outside and things escalated and by july of 2016 there was intense violence once again displacing even more people reak mature who's the vice president flees the country in exile saying that salva tried to kill him there's some evidence of this
more violence continues and a man made famine was declared in february of 2017 finally in 2018 salva and reak met again signed a new agreement and that made reak mature serve as one of five vice presidents by the end of the war in 2018 roughly four million were displaced and somewhere
around 400,000 people were killed in the south Sudanese civil war that lasted about five years there were significant delays in the process of creating the new government and it wasn't until 2020 that a full unity government was even formed today salva here is still the president reak
mature is the first five president vice president with four other vice presidents and violence and ethnic clashes are still occurring within the country it remains dependent on oil and because of its instability and lack of infrastructure it still has a massive uphill climb out as of 2024
elections have been delayed due to fear of violence and also an inability to completely implement the peace process that was set in 2018 south Sudan has been called a failed state and in many ways it has failed but it's still a nation though a very precarious nation because of weak leadership
immature infrastructure and a resource curse south Sudan has been in the state of disarray since independence which I find to be a true tragedy and moving forward it has a lot of work to do there are a lot of up and coming thinkers who would like to create change but unfortunately the
old group is still in there and the new thinkers are having a hard time moving in and replacing old ways of doing civil service there are a lot of theories on how things could have been done better south Sudan was thrust into a situation very late in the game and during the time when other
nations were very far ahead of them they didn't have clean water but they had to figure out how to design a constitution and nearly every single south Sudanese person has experienced trauma including its leaders it also had no economic engine when it started oil money only destabilized the nation
and it really wasn't enough to employ a lot of people farming was a good option but there was no infrastructure to transport it power concentration in the middle was a major problem it didn't have much to build on and it became dependent on the international community from being in an emergency
situation for so so long right like food and basic services had really been provided by western aid groups and the UN for decades and unfortunately that also reinforced an external dependency and it changed the notions of sovereignty long before the country was even born so south Sudan is
a really unique look at nation building and it's also unique look at how tribalism and violence and trauma can affect a people for many many years the land down under has never been easier to reach united airlines has more flights between the US and Australia than any other US airline
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meanwhile north Sudan from 2013 to 2018 was having its own significant problems it was yes playing the field in the south you know using the warring factions against each other to get more fees in the oil industry but on its own ground it was having governmental issues it was an
Islamic state but it still had opposition parties that were being shut up for speaking out against the government we talked about the legal code that was based in sharia law in part two but you'll remember that this was not accepted or appreciated by everyone Sudan is not a homogenous nation for
example in 2014 so 10 years ago a woman who had a christian mother but a muslim father wanted to marry a christian boy now because all that matters here is the father's religion she was considered a muslim by law so marrying this christian was not recognized by sharia law so she was convicted
of adultery and imprisoned while pregnant she actually had to give birth with her leg shackled to the ground she did not get out or she did get out on appeal and she made it to the united states but this case shows how sharia law played out for someone who did not fit the mold that was
required and more and more people began to protest asking for democracy and new systems of governance in 2016 because of foreign sanctions as well as the fluctuation in oil prices there were major price hikes on basic things like bread which causes protests and media coverage
of these protests was banned there were major oppositional protests to bashier's rule but he declared a state of emergency in early 2019 and fired or eliminated his cabinet and regional government and many of them ended up in prison or dead human rights activists and opposition leaders
condemned his actions condemned the acts of his government and there were major clashes and quite a lot of violence now like i said i'm not going to go deep into the crisis in dark four in this episode because it's massive it deserves its own episode but in order to understand Sudan
now in 2024 i'm just going to give you a little primer on two main military or militia groups the first is the rs f and the rs f stands for rapid support forces this is a powerful group that was created by bashier's regime to repress southern rebels during the second civil war
we talked about these kind of Arab militiamen in part two that they would do these scorched earth campaigns against the southerners they caused major displacement and brutally attacked civilians and in dark four and the western part of Sudan this group was called the janja weed
and they were heavily used to do terrible things in dark four so the rs f the rapid support forces kind of grew out of that janja weed militia in 2013 it's era of majority it was armed by the government of cartoon under bashier it's now a military force that is largely used for border
disputes and bashier even used it to protect him from coups against him they've also been deployed in other areas like Yemen to fight for Sudanese interests but the other military group is called the s a f and that is the southerners armed forces and this is the national army of Sudan
so it's a more conventional military force it's kind of been the backbone of Sudan's political system and the s a f or the southerners armed forces primary role has been to uphold domestic order and contribute to the country's development so these two groups have had a rivalry for quite
some time and they are not aligned in values but they both have a lot of guns and in April of 2019 both militia groups the s a f and rs f joined together to essentially launch a revolution against bashier this military coup ended his 30 year dictatorial rule it was a huge
deal and they dissolved Sudan's government announced a military council and suspended the constitution there were talks of Sudan transitioning into a democracy even then in September of 2019 an agreement that a new government would have a three year power sharing agreement between military
civilians and protest groups under a prime minister and in October of 2021 the s a f and the rs f orchestrated another coup that took out that prime minister whose name was objala hamdok massive protests took place in cartoon demanding civilian rule rather than military rule and the prime
minister came back briefly for a time but then finally resigned in January of 2022 because he could not control the military groups who were at that time beating and killing protesters since early 2022 leaders of the s a f and rs f have been at the helm of the government and by the
end of 2022 it looked like Sudan could have a transitional period to civilian government and national elections but then there was a sticking point in the agreement about how the rs f and the s a f would integrate together and how these military leaders would what role they would play
in a civilian government and these two leaders could not agree and they began to battle each other for who would have control of the state and of course it's oil resources then on April 15th of 2023 there were explosions in cartoon that neither the s a f nor the rs f said they did they actually
blamed each other and this rivalry escalated to war it involved the Wagner group it involved the u a the united arab emirates military and two warring military factions have now been fighting for about a year this has displaced over eight million people some people are saying close to
eleven million people they've killed at least twelve thousand people according to the u n and most people have fled to unstable areas in south Sudan Chad and Ethiopia all looking for safety because there are two major military groups fighting against each other there have been illness outbreaks
especially cholera that have claimed many lives the situation is dire almost 50% of Sudan's population is in need of humanitarian assistance abc news wrote quote the impact of the war has been devastating as profound damage has ravaged nearly every sector of the northeast african nation many
civilian homes continue to be occupied by militia groups while civilian jewelry cars and other items have been looted and often smuggled into neighboring countries and a quote there are even some organizations including the u n that are saying that it is the number one crisis spot in the
world in terms of human displacement and threat of drought and starvation this war is dangerous because it affects fragile neighboring nations as well especially south Sudan Sudan is already in a tough neighborhood and it's dissented to civil war will only worsen the prospects for peace
among its neighbors so far peacemaking efforts have failed and the world is watching trying to figure out how the situation is going to go okay we're going to stop here for now let's review briefly in 2005 the second Sudanese civil war officially ended between the north and the south
and an interim period of six years began for south Sudan to more or less have addressed rehearsal for statehood their issues from the get go john grang dies salvacare takes over leadership the internal splm divisions grow more complicated despite a lot of corruption and instability
south Sudan votes to become its own nation in 2011 by 2013 it is at war again largely between dinka and new air and other groups are roped into it as well the war lasts for five years until 2018 when a peace treaty is officially signed keeping salva as president and making reac
mature a top VP the government and country of sardine is of south Sudan still in turmoil and has not fully implemented the peace treaty it is still in 2024 in a precarious position meanwhile in the north the dictatorship of basher leads to protests for democracy he is ousted by a military
coup in 2019 that ends his 30 year rule a dream of democracy and civilian rule took the country it was an exciting moment but instead the two militia groups of the s a f and the rs f joined together to take him out but then began fighting over control and power in the new government in april of 2023
the fighting became so intense that it is now displacing over eight to 11 million people and it's in a very fragile region of the world and so this year to 2024 it is predicted to have the one of the worst famines that the modern world has ever known okay let's talk takeaways i have
about three thousand thoughts on all of this probably less than five percent of what we read i've included in these episodes so i do hope one day to do an episode with my research assistant where we can talk a little bit more about the things that we've learned but for now i think that
sudan and south sudan's brutal histories have really shown me the power of unstable governments on the lives of their citizens and in turn that has given me more appreciation for stable governments and to live under a stable government i recognize that stability is a relative term but
we're talking about the most unstable countries in the world here and the contrast is is enormous Albert Einstein said quote peace is not merely the absence of war but the presence of justice or law of order end of quote having a government that can provide justice and law and order
is important and i hope to be a more grateful person at the end of the day that justice law and order have been a stable force in my life i know what those things look like and i'm recognizing more and more that there are many people in the world who do not know what that looks
like and studying these words has has also caused me to think a lot about leadership and revenge and in both countries we have two groups right now who cannot seem to put the nation above themselves we have leaders who do not see themselves as part of the problem but instead distance themselves
and do not do not own their own contribution they blame the other side and this has trickled down to the average person's life i can't tell you how many interviews we read where average citizens really just repeated whatever sides leader you know they belong to and in a country that
has such low literacy rates it really does make a leader's job so important and a leader who can take responsibility for their actions is a really rare find these days in developed nations as well and it's caused me to it's caused me to think more about what i take responsibility of and also
teaching my children to take responsibility i've also given so much thought to why what's going on in the Sudan's isn't talked about more and what can be done about that how is it that in the last year from april 2023 to april 2024 over eight million people have been displaced and it's not
mainstream news i think that the primary reason is because it doesn't have as many ripple effects in the developed world it's mostly just affecting that particular region of the world but does this mean that we can just turn a blind eye because it doesn't affect us economically because it's not
a major player on the world's economic stage you know i don't think so i think that when human suffer we all feel that and i think there's something that can be done about it but i do think each person needs to consider what that looks like for them i really don't feel comfortable giving
wide sweeping statements or telling everyone to donate to you know one particular NGO or one particular non-profit and the reason for this is because i completed part of a master's degree in non-profit work and i learned that non-profits are not all created equal many of them have their own
corruption issues and not always does the money actually make it to the area or the people that you hope it would make it to not to mention even with great NGOs there's often corruption in the government that is preventing that aid so it's a very complicated web but at this point i do feel
like the international rescue committee which works with refugees in particular is speaking out about Sudan and south Sudan and i have learned from their resources you can find them at rescue.org i also watched some interviews about the world food program and their work to provide food
for these people but they're struggling with decreased funding due to the economy right now so i do not have all of the answers but i am trying to research for myself figure out what feels right to me on how i can help and i hope that you'll do the same as well i have some links to my
show notes to some different ideas or some different articles that can get you going on that i hope that you'll give them a look and see what feels right to you ultimately i'm hoping that we become better leaders from this by not taking a revenge model for handling conflicts and also hoping
that we're able to approach people who think differently look differently have different beliefs with more grace and generosity than we did before and if you want to learn more about the students i share some pretty great resources on my patreon patreon.com slash wiserworld podcast
you can also follow me on instagram at wiserworldpodcast you can sign up for my monthly email at wiserworldpodcast.com you can also subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcasting app to know when another episode
drops next month i'm going to cover the conflict in darfur and that will wrap up our research on sudeon but thank you so much for listening and learning with me i think this is really important material and things that we need to know and in the meantime until next time let's go make the world a little wiser