美国国家公共电台 NPR Unhappy Anniversary, South Sudan

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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Six years ago this week, South Sudan became an independent state. The moment marked the end of decades of fighting between rebels in the predominantly Christian¹ south and their northern Arab rivals in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. The creation of South Sudan was a major U.S. foreign policy success that had been championed by politicians on both sides of the aisle² dating back to the Clinton administration. But just a few years after its birth, South Sudan has disintegrated³ into one of the world's worst humanitarian⁴ disasters in the world. NPR's Jason Beaubien reports.

JASON BEAUBIEN, BYLINE⁵: South Sudan by any measure right now is a mess. Civil war broke out late in 2013. Millions of people have been forced to flee their homes. Famine was declared in parts of the country in February. And now more than half the population is on the brink⁶ of starvation.

ISAIAH MAJOK DAU: At the moment, the two biggest things in South Sudan are the problem of famine as well as the escalation⁷ of violence - civil war itself.

BEAUBIEN: Bishop⁸ Isaiah Majok Dau, the overseer of the Sudan Pentecostal Church, says the situation in South Sudan has been going from bad to worse.

DAU: So we are hungry, and we are afraid at the same time.

BEAUBIEN: The Bishop spoke⁹ to NPR during a recent visit to Washington D.C. In 2011, when the predominantly Christian South Sudan formally broke away from Khartoum, cheers erupted in the dirt streets of the capital, Juba. But that jubilation¹⁰ was short lived. And independent South Sudan was one of the poorest countries in the world.

It had almost no paved roads. Most of the population survived as subsistence farmers. Schools were in shambles¹¹. The only significant source of revenue for the fledgling nation was its oil wells, which quickly became a prize to fight over. Richard Downie, the deputy director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, says he's very pessimistic about the current civil war in South Sudan being resolved anytime soon.

RICHARD DOWNIE: First and foremost, so many lives have been lost. The country has collapsed¹³. The economy is in ruins. And the humanitarian disaster that South Sudan is currently facing is really just astonishing.

BEAUBIEN: Nearly 4 million of the country's 11 million people have been driven from their homes. Millions more face severe food shortages. Inflation last year pushed above 800 percent. In 2013, the vice¹⁴ president, who's from the Nuer tribe, took up arms against the president who's a Dinka. The country has become sharply divided along ethnic¹⁵ lines, and human rights groups warn the country could be on the verge¹⁶ of a genocide. Downie says the collapse¹² of South Sudan has been incredibly frustrating¹⁷ for Western diplomats¹⁸ who worked so hard to establish the country.

DOWNIE: It's particularly galling¹⁹ for the United States, given the investment it's made in the country, that its own aid workers have been the target of attacks, of rapes²⁰, that journalists have been targeted for abuse, that humanitarian supplies and donations from the U.S. have been stolen, looted or even prevented from reaching the people who most need them.

BEAUBIEN: NPR's East Africa correspondent, Eyder Peralta, was jailed for four days in Juba for attempting to report on the situation in South Sudan. One of the international aid groups that's continued to work there is Mercy Corps²¹. Mercy Corps' country director, Deepmala Mahla, is based in Juba. She says it's become harder and harder for aid groups to operate in South Sudan for a variety of reasons.

DEEPMALA MAHLA: Ongoing²² fighting, yes, active hostility²³ towards aid workers, intimidation²⁴, looting of our facilities, attacks, killings²⁵. I would say sometimes bureaucracy, weather, rains, absence of roads.

BEAUBIEN: South Sudan has terrible infrastructure²⁶. Aid groups have to fly many of their supplies around the country because the roads are impassable. But Mahla stresses that the thing that's hurting the people of South Sudan the most is the war - the complete lack of security for South Sudanese and for humanitarian groups that are trying to help them.

MAHLA: The biggest issue in South Sudan is that we are trying to find a humanitarian solution to a political problem.

BEAUBIEN: Until there is progress on peace, she says, there isn't going to be progress on anything else. Bishop Dau from the Pentecostal church says part of the problem is that his country has known nothing but war for decades. All South Sudanese, he says, from the oldest to the youngest are children of war. But he still has faith that peace will come.

DAU: Because the darker the night, the brighter the light will shine. It's part of our message as a church at the moment is to tell the people, hey, there is hope. What has a beginning, will have an ending one time. So we pray. And we work. And we hope that the best is yet to come for our country.

BEAUBIEN: Jason Beaubien, NPR News.

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