It’s cruel and dishonest to call South Sudan a failed state whose people have little to celebrate on their fourth Independence Day, which passed by earlier this July. The failure is one of state building—and of building the wrong state.
After years of bitter internecine conflict in the country, those same international governments and agencies pronouncing South Sudan kaput share responsibility for this failure with South Sudan’s current government.
The United States and other countries sent immense resources to South Sudan’s generals-turned-statesmen, seeking to prevent another war with Sudan or, worse yet, a Somalia-like environment for terrorists. They couldn’t or wouldn’t see that many of those generals, possessed of a lust for power, were still at war with Sudan-sponsored militias. Soldiers in the South Sudanese army, meanwhile, were becoming ever more impatient for the peace and prosperity promised after decades of bloodletting.
