Pope’s visit to South Sudan: beacons of hope in the country without peace

Even after the end of the war in 2018, South Sudan is plagued by hunger, natural disasters and violence. Many people are now looking forward to the Pope – and have high expectations of him.

A derelict fire station used as refugee accommodation: James Gatwak’s face is horrified when he talks about what just recently happened to him and the other people in his village.

“At night, fighters set fire to people’s huts, and as they fled they snatched the children out of the hands of our women,” he says. They wandered around the country without food, migrating from the state of Jonglei to Malakal in the state of Upper Nile. Many people died along the way:

He looks around. Behind him, a few dozen people sit wordlessly in the dust. How is it going for all of them now? James Gatwak doesn’t know. “Tell the world how bad we are,” he begs the reporter.

War in South Sudan? Didn’t that end in 2018, when the president and former rebel leader signed an agreement after a five-year conflict and formed a joint transitional government in the state that only became independent in 2011? “Yes, down in the capital Juba one can talk about peace, but up here it doesn’t exist,” says an employee of a UN organization who asked not to be named.

Persistent violence even after the war

Talking to the desperate people who have come to Malakal over the past few weeks confirms this assessment. The already overcrowded United Nations refugee camp is getting fuller every day.

Families who don’t make it in are stuck in the ruins of the devastated former frontline town. They report on fighters from the so-called White Army in Jonglei and Upper Nile lately again up to mischief: executions, rapes, forced recruitment of child soldiers.

International observers confirm the accounts, but numbers on the magnitude of the atrocities are hard to come by. In Kodok, a village about 50 kilometers north of Malakal that can only be reached by boat for aid workers due to climate change-related flooding, government commissioner Paul Ajak reports that 3,000 people have lost their lives in the recent spate of violence in the area. Experts from the UN refugee agency strongly doubt that there were so many – but affirm that the situation is both dramatic and confusing.

Smoldering conflicts between population groups

This becomes apparent not least when you try to answer the question of who is actually fighting against whom. The White Army, for example, is a militia of the Nuer population group, which is currently targeting members of the Murle and Shilluk in the north of the country. The and other groups also have their own associations of fighters. But is “fighter” even the right word when the conduct of the conflict consists largely of terrorizing civilians?

In addition, in South Sudan, one of the most corrupt countries in the world, military-political-strategic alliances change frequently, especially when it comes to support from the army of the South Sudanese government. Since the deal between President Salva Kiir, a member of the Dinka ethnic group, and Vice-President Riek Machar, the former Nuer leader, the leadership in Juba, although multi-ethnic on paper, remains predominantly Dinka-dominated.

The Dinka, the largest ethnic group with more than a third of South Sudan’s population, and the only, the second largest at about fifteen percent, fought between 2013 and 2018. Hundreds of thousands of people died and millions were internally displaced. The opponents in Juba are still anything but green, which is why the ongoing violence in some parts of the country is also to a certain extent proxy wars.

Citizens have high hopes for the Pope’s visit

And now? Can the Pope’s visit really change anything for the better in a country torn apart by violence, which is actually a rich country because of its mineral resources and fertile soil? Many South Sudanese expect nothing less than a miracle from a guest from Rome. “We hope that the Pope will bring us security and harmony,” says Abraham Chol, for example, who works as a teacher in a Catholic facility in the Malakal refugee camp.

He is not the only one who remembers the grand gesture of 2019, when the pontifex kissed the feet of the President and Vice President in Rome, thus vowing to continue the peace process. Will there now also be a new dialogue between the government and those rebel groups with whom there has not yet been an agreement? There are many indications that the “Rome talks” should be resumed, according to reports from Juba this week.

“We need a new South Sudan in which all problems disappear and real peace prevails,” says teacher Abraham Chol.

Aid representatives take a more pragmatic view of the whole thing. They simply hope that the Pope’s visit will draw the world’s attention a little more towards South Sudan. Especially since the beginning of the war in Ukraine a year ago, the interest of international donors and private donors in Africa and thus also in South Sudan has decreased dramatically. United Nations projects in the country are severely underfunded.