The US — a key backer of South Sudan’s 2011 independence — is increasing diplomatic pressure amid an intensifying conflict, but will not consider military intervention, experts said.
Analysts do not expect Washington to launch a massive military campaign, despite US President Barack Obama’s decision to send nearly 100 troops to the country this week to help protect US citizens, personnel and property.
Obama has warned South Sudan over the week-long conflict, saying the country is on the “precipice” of civil war, and that any military coup would trigger an end to diplomatic and economic support from Washington and its allies.
US Secretary of State John Kerry also told South Sudanese President Salva Kiir over the weekend that the violence endangers the independence of the world’s youngest nation, born in July 2011 after a five-decade struggle for independence from Sudan.
Fighting has gripped South Sudan since Dec. 15, after Kiir accused his former deputy Riek Machar of attempting a coup. Machar denied the claim and accused Kiir of carrying out a vicious purge of his rivals.
Washington has had a longstanding interest in South Sudan and supported the southern rebels in their battle for independence.
Post-independence, the US became Juba’s biggest source of political and economic aid as the country took its first steps, said Richard Downie, Africa assistant director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“Now the US is looking at the situation and it is driven by this desire not to let all the hard work get away,” the analyst said, noting that Washington’s engagement in South Sudan has been “driven by humanitarian concerns.”
Downie recalled that throughout former US president George W. Bush’s 2001 to 2009 tenure, there were “ongoing efforts diplomatically to try bringing peace to Sudan” that begun as a bid to end the bloody, long-running civil war between the North and the South.
Also lobbying for sustained US involvement were South Sudanese living in the US, many devout Christians who have the support of the US evangelical movement.
The fate of South Sudan has also long interested Hollywood — with actors George Clooney and Mia Farrow taking up the cause.
However, offering a more cynical take was France’s former ambassador to Khartoum Michel Raimbaud, who said he “doubts that democracy and human rights guide the interests of the United States in South Sudan.”
“The secession, in which Washington played a very important role, was motivated by oil and strategic considerations, to break up Sudan — the biggest Arab country in Africa,” the retired diplomat who now works as an independent expert said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema