After dithering about it for a couple of days, yesterday South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir reportedly told US Secretary of State John Kerry that he was prepared to sign an agreement to end that country’s 20+ month long civil war.
Salva Kiir told US Secretary of State John Kerry he had decided to sign after “a couple more days of consultation”, a State Department spokesman said.
His refusal on Monday to sign the deal to end an 18-month civil war was described as “mind-boggling” by the chief mediator.
The US said the latest developments were “encouraging”.
The terms of the deal include:
- power-sharing in central and provincial governments, but with the rebels having less of a share of power than in previous draft agreements that Kiir’s government has rejected
- the creation of a court to investigate and punish war crimes committed during the conflict (but the agreement reportedly scraps deadlines for forming this court that were written in to previous drafts)
- demilitarization of the capital city of Juba (though language about international peacekeepers occupying the city has been removed)
It’s not clear what motivated Kiir to suddenly sign the deal after just a couple of days earlier requesting 2 weeks to think about it, but it could be that US proposals for a UN arms embargo against South Sudan nudged him toward signing. South Sudan’s problems are now twofold. First, there are already signs of splintering in the main rebel SPLM-IO (Sudan People’s Liberation Movement In Opposition) ranks over their decision to sign the deal, so the possibility for continued fighting does exist. Second, the country is still being run by Salva Kiir, a war criminal (uh, allegedly, I guess, but yeah) who enjoys threatening to kill journalists who report unfavorably on his government:
“If anybody among [journalists] does not know that this country has killed people, we will demonstrate it one day, one time. … Freedom of the press does not mean you work against the country,” Kiir ironically told a group of journalists while addressing the issue of press freedom.
If the end of this civil war really is in sight, that’s great news for the people of South Sudan. The fact that they’re going to wake up tomorrow still governed by Salva Kiir is maybe not so great.
Hey, thanks for reading! If you come here often, and you like what I do, would you please consider contributing something (sorry, that page is a work in progress) to keeping this place running and me out of debtor’s prison? Thank you!
The Foreign Exchanges Companion 
