The spectacle of failure in South Sudan is saddening. A nation that was brought to independence with the enthusiastic support of the United States, ending a long civil war, is now being torn apart by its own leaders. Millions in South Sudan are enduring hunger and disease. In the annals of nation-building experiments, this one may be remembered as ill-fated and short-lived.
President Barack Obama is now threatening further punishment of warring parties in a nation he once helped to its feet.
The president's meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with leaders of Uganda, Sudan, Kenya, Ethiopia and the African Union was more like a gathering of surgeons pondering one last rescue for a patient on the road to doom--one who refuses to be saved.
South Sudan's president, Salva Kiir, and his one-time deputy and now mortal rival, Riek Machar, deserve the largest share of blame for wrecking their nascent nation. The African Union has now delivered to the government in Juba the report of a commission of inquiry that documents grave human rights abuses in the conflict. This report ought to be made public and the perpetrators brought to justice. A corruption watchdog group, the Sentry, chronicles in a new report how South Sudan has been destroyed from within by "a kleptocratic regime" of self-interested elites who have siphoned off its national wealth.
Editorial on 08/03/2015