Boston globe south sudan

My flight to the town where Mou lives was abruptly canceled. Planes were grounded all week. At the airline office, the woman behind the counter gave no explanation. So I was stuck in Juba. I spent my time interviewing businessmen who have come here with a little capital and a lot of guts. There were stories of lavish houses, with fully stocked bars, and drivers who keep Land Rovers running all day so they are air-conditioned whenever the boss wants to go for a ride.

Residents complain that the SPLA pledged to give Unity State 5 percent of the oil revenue after independence, but they have yet to make good on that promise.

The failure to share the oil resources has renewed tensions in this battled-scarred land. The civil war against the north was fought, in part, because Khartoum tried to take the oil of the south without compensating the locals for it. Now officials in Juba seem to be doing the same thing. Our intelligence services behaving the same way. Our army behaving the same way. There was a time when the only regular food deliveries here came from the UN planes. Now foreign aid organizations hold conferences about harnessing the private sector.

The message is clear: South Sudan, which turns 2 on July 9, needs to stand on its own. But the economic dreams of the new nation remain stillborn for the vast majority of its citizens.

Some argue that the government should cut citizens a check from the oil wealth, like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. But the oil could run out in a decade. South Sudan needs to find another way to make money. Opposition leader Onyoti Adigo said the oil money should have been used to build roads and infrastructure for the future. Instead, he says, it is spent on sending the children of top officials to expensive private schools abroad.

Similar security breaches have been reported in displacement camps all across the country, leading Kai to conclude that there is no safe space for him in South Sudan.

It will up to the UN to prove him wrong. In confidential letters to the Security Council since July, Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has detailed several instances when UN staffers and troops already on the ground have been threatened with violence, and even physically assaulted, by soldiers. He has pointed to a troubling decline in humanitarian access.

Clearly, the obstruction of extra peacekeepers has already begun, which means the conditions for imposing an arms embargo have been met. Because despite years of conflict, South Sudan has no shortage of brilliant and dedicated people. There are civil servants who work for months without pay , small business owners who use meager incomes to support extended families, journalists who keep working under the threat of death, and technocrats who have concrete plans for how to develop their young country.

So for the international community, an arms embargo against an abusive government is an obvious first step. The key recruit, though, was the actor George Clooney.

He took up the cause of secession, testified at hearings, and gave the idea decisive credibility. It is not a lineup known for trenchant strategic thought but dazzling nonetheless. Americans fought a civil war to prevent the secession of our South, but, in Sudan, we encouraged separatism.

Years of lobbying led the Obama administration to promote a referendum in the southern provinces that produced a pro-independence vote. Under heavy pressure from Washington, President Bashir agreed to allow the division of his country. Clooney responded with a successful campaign to have the International Criminal Court indict Bashir as a war criminal.

Bashir certainly qualifies but so do the terrorist warlords Clooney and his celebrity friends have empowered. Believing that life would improve under a new regime required ignoring every key fact on the ground.

The piece of Africa now called South Sudan is riven by deep tribal animosities. Its people are among the poorest on earth. Three-quarters are illiterate. There is just one paved highway in the entire country, which is the size of Texas. Western-style democracy is unknown. Yet a determined group of Americans imagined that it could transform this into a flourishing republic by bringing the leaders of two major ethnic groups together.

She reached the clinic by canoe after an hour of travel, seeking help for her sick child. There, she also received a ration of food. Esonwune, recalled the sight of newly displaced people sheltering under trees without mats, blankets or mosquito nets.

Now the international community has rung the alarm about likely famine in another flood-hit part of Jonglei state. The U. The new report of likely famine is an eye-opener and a signal to the government, which has not endorsed its findings, said the chairman of the National Bureau of Statistics, Isaiah Chol Aruai.