South Sudan: Escalating Ethnic Tensions Cannot Be Ignored

Add the element of "identity" to a conflict, and it will go from bad to nasty in the blink of an eye. Identity-based violence, either open conflict or one-sided, exacerbates pre-existing tensions that may have lent themselves to more peaceful resolution, or at least a lower level of open hostility, and is prone to manipulation by vested political interest. Identity issues are also at the heart of any genocide, and account for much of the most egregious violence against civilians.

This is why observations on South Sudan in a recent report by Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) should have us particularly worried: Layered on top of the many challenges to peace and stability facing the region in the coming year are the "political linkages" between the governing party and certain ethnic groups, which politicize "more traditional conflicts over resources access" and increase the propensity for violence. Indeed, violence in South Sudan already seems to be showing this trend, as previously low-scale "inter-tribal" conflicts are taking on a wholly new character, with attacks targeting women and children, and forcibly displaced over 300,000 civilians last year.

Yet most attention remains on the ongoing negotiations between North and South Sudan, to avert a return to civil war, and between the government in the North and the rebels in Darfur. Far too little attention has been paid to dynamics and characteristics of the violence in the South, or how the government of South Sudan is playing a role in either feeding or not appropriately handling a situation that could easily and very quickly escalate to something far worse.

When Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair delivered his Annual Threat Assessment to Congress, he did not elaborate on the statement in the report that "a new mass killing or genocide is most likely to occur in Southern Sudan." But it is not unreasonable to surmise that increasing ethnic tensions in the South -- an issue, the NRC points out, that must be dealt with in tandem with but distinct from the threat of violence from the North -- are at least in part the cause for this worrying distinction.

Photo credit: Stein Ove Korneliussen