South Sudan : Military lull and diplomatic discomfiture

The whole fragile equilibrium hinges on the rebels practically giving up . It would be enough for them to find a foreign sponsor , public or private , or to mobilize enough cash to buy ammunition and fuel on the open market , to suddenly upset the whole thing . 

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The last five days in South Sudan have been marked by two different developments which unfortunately point in the same direction :  temporary stalemate .

At the military level first , the government’s army (or rather its proxies , because it was the SSLM and JEM which were the real victors in Malakal and the UPDF which retook Bor) have achieved a series of successes . The ex-Vice-President Riak Machar and his generals (John Koang , Peter Gadiet) were forced to abandon strategic towns but they have not lost the war . Large swaths of Jongleï and Upper Nile are still in their hands and the three Equatorias , although theoretically under Juba’s control , are in fact the seat of an independent rebellion loosely allied to Riak .

The diplomatic results were immediate . First the IGAD countries , which were so divided over the question , chose not to wash their dirty linen in public and cancelled their January 23rd Juba meeting . In practice , this meant that IGAD as a mediator was nearly dead . A last effort is underway as we write these lines : IGAD has given till tonight midnight to the parties to sign the new draft it has produced , embodying the two main rebel demands : freedom for the eleven detainees and the withdrawal of foreign troops . Neither are acceptable for the government which already rejected them two weeks ago as it was on the verge of falling and which is unlikely to accept them now that it has improved its situation.  The AU sort of approached the subject , but remained prudent as it knew that the disagreements on the topic were so big as to endanger any participants . The Ugandans call their UPDF forces in South Sudan “regional forces” , without any mandate to do so .

There are vague talks about resuscitating the idea of a common force , first mooted on December 27th in Nairobi . But no decision has been reached yet by anybody . The Ethiopians are not happy about Museveni’s brutal assertiveness , they are watching any move by Eritrea and Kenya is worried . So it seems that for Salva Kiir , the issue is closed : he has won the war and he is not interested in any foreign meddling . He already let it be known on January 21st that he looked upon the UN as trying to establish a “parallel government” in South Sudan and it is not Herman Cohen recent OpEd piece , demanding that South Sudan be put under a UN Trusteeship that will quiet him down . Accepting the IGAD proposal would be akin to bowing gracefully and letting go of the benefits of his victory .

But what victory ? The whole fragile equilibrium hinges on the rebels practically giving up . It would be enough for them to find a foreign sponsor , public or private , or to mobilize enough cash to buy ammunition and fuel on the open market , to suddenly upset the whole thing . They have the men to do so but they lack the supplies . This is a civil war and not a police operation . It can still offer sudden surprises capable of overthrowing all previous calculations