JUBA/NAIROBI: At a well-attended investor conference in South Sudan’s capital just three weeks ago, President Salva Kiir declared that the world’s newest country was ‘at last safe’ and open for business.

It was a bold assertion from a nation that only gained independence from Sudan in 2011 after decades mired in conflict. It suggested the moment had come to cap a huge international effort to build a state. But it proved spectacularly ill-timed.

On Dec 15, fighting erupted in Juba that has swiftly spread beyond the capital along ethnic fault lines, exposing the failure of national reconciliation efforts, the limited influence of generous foreign sponsors and the reluctance of rebel fighters-turned-statesmen to give up the tactics of bush conflict.

Whether South Sudan tips into a broader ethnic war or draws back from the brink largely depends on two men who have long tussled for power: the president from the dominant Dinka tribe and the ambitious deputy he sacked in July, Riek Machar, a Nuer.

The United States and other Western backers of the new nation are scrambling with regional African states to broker talks, but have limited leverage to end fighting that has killed hundreds of people and driven 40,000 to UN bases for shelter.

Failure to halt the escalation could have wider fallout in an already volatile region. Sudan may be drawn in if there is a threat to oilfields from which it derives vital fees from pumping crude across its land. And other neighbours fret about a descent into chaos. Uganda has already sent troops to Juba.

Both leaders say they are ready to talk. But old habits die hard. Kiir said he was the target of a ‘foiled coup’ and rounded up rivals. Machar slipped away and has mustered militia forces.

“I am in the bush, and I am trying my best to have a better negotiating position,” said Machar, 61, who holds a doctorate from Britain’s University of Bradford.

Missed opportunities

The international community has poured in billions of dollars of aid and sent in a myriad of advisers to build the new state. But it has been unable to fix the dysfunction that has festered at the top of government and which came to a head in the summer when Kiir dismissed his vice president.

“Opportunities were certainly missed to engage in more robust preventive diplomacy over the past few months as the political crisis began gathering momentum,” said John Prendergast, member of a US group of intellectuals that cajoled Washington to back South Sudan’s split from Sudan.

In spite of Kiir’s confident comments launching the Dec 4-5 investment conference, a showdown had long been brewing with Machar, who has made no secret of his presidential ambitions.

For almost a year before Machar’s dismissal, the two men’s relationship in office was defined by “miscommunication or mistrust or silence”, said former culture ministry undersecretary Jok Madut Jok.

The power play caused stasis in government, and most worryingly derailed crucial efforts to build a programme of national reconciliation between bigger ethnic groups, such as Dinka and Nuer, and the dozens of others that have long clashed over control of the south’s scant resources.

Kiir, largely educated in the bush, has patched up militia rivalries to hold together the brittle SPLM/SPLA that fought Sudan and now runs the south. But they say he lacks the vision of his predecessor, John Garang, who died in a helicopter crash in 2005, the year a peace deal was signed with Sudan.

Machar, his acquaintances say, is a highly intelligent rival whose political ambitions tend to trump any national agenda. He led a splinter SPLA group in 1991 and his Nuer troops massacred Dinkas in Bor town that year. In 1997, he signed a unilateral deal with Khartoum that gave him an official post in Sudan.

“Anything short of the two men sitting down and trying to work it out will not work,” said Jok.

But bringing the two together for now has hit deadlock. Kiir’s government has refused to release the group of rival politicians he detained. Machar says they must be freed as they are the ones who will handle any negotiations.

Shifting loyalties

Much may depend on Kiir’s reputation as a conciliator, often bringing in rival militias even though it could mean putting political influence before competence in government.

“Kiir has always said that he doesn’t want his people to turn back again to war,” said Foreign Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin. “We talked to them and they were absorbed into our government.”

Eric Reeves, a fellow American activist for South Sudan with Prendergast, said Machar needed to be convinced that prolonging any ethnic conflict would mean he would lose US or other Western support. But the patchwork nature of the SPLA and shifting loyalties means there is little chance of turning the UNMISS force into a robust intervention brigade like the one that quelled a rebellion in next door Democratic Republic of Congo.

“If you don’t know where your enemy is coming from, or who your enemy is, it doesn’t really matter how heavily armed you are,” said Reeves.

US President Barack Obama said on Saturday that any military effort to seize power would end US backing. His envoy, Donald Booth, was in Juba on Monday talking with Kiir.

Jok said Washington and its allies might have steered South Sudan on a safer course if a pell-mell rush to support the new nation had come with more state-building conditions earlier.

But like others, he said the blame largely lies with the leaders, who have failed to make the transition from liberation warrior to politician, squandering international goodwill.—Reuters