TY - JOUR
AU - Akech, Thiong, Daniel
AB - Abstract Soon after South Sudan achieved independence in 2011, its political landscape grew increasingly volatile. It became almost impossible for international and regional actors to address one crisis before another more serious one erupted. This article combines cultural, political, economic and social factors into a comprehensive framework to explain the role of the political elites in transforming fear and politicized anger into violent and deadly conflicts. The theoretical framework of the security dilemma model is applied to the South Sudanese conflict to demonstrate how it was triggered—and continued to be exacerbated—by the politics of fear. President SALVA Kiir was the leader of the autonomous government of Southern Sudan from 2005 through 2011, and he continues to lead the independent South Sudan. The ability to arbitrarily impose sanctions on individuals and institutions and to remove and reappoint governors or state assemblies—even to change the vice president—was granted to Kiir by the Transitional Constitution of South Sudan.1 Having fired his vice president, Riek Machar, in July, Kiir approached the parliamentarians in August 2013 and introduced James Wani as his nominee for vice president, threatening to ‘dissolve the parliament and make the lawmakers roam in the streets’ unless his nomination was confirmed.2 Kiir sought to ensure approval by a two-thirds majority of all members of the National Legislative Assembly as demanded by the Transitional Constitution. Kiir’s approach—installing compliant supporters in key positions, rewarding supporters at the expense of others and punishing opponents—drove the country into ‘crisis instability’ in 2013.3 Asked by a journalist whether he would consider stepping down after the conflict resumed in July 2016, Kiir warned, ‘My exit could spark genocide’.4 Kiir intentionally drew upon the threat of terror as a self-preservation tactic aimed at spreading fear and mobilizing perceptions of danger to gain control over populations and to maintain his hold on power.5 In South Sudan, the political elites are deploying ‘politics of fear’ to manipulate and to legitimize supposed economic and security concerns (for their own benefit). Elites and their associates regularly revive past grievances from earlier episodes of violent ethnic rivalries to promote hate and to generate fear, creating a landscape in which political elites in one group fear each other as well as their elite rivals from other groups because allies and enemies frequently change. As the warring parties target the masses along ethnic and regional lines, individuals are forced to coalesce in ethnic or regional groups for security reasons; however, arming groups to enhance security has led to increased levels of fear across the country. Combining cultural, political, economic and social factors in a comprehensive framework to explain the role of the political elites in transforming fear and animosity into violent and deadly conflicts, this article discusses the way politics of fear have impacted the country according to the security dilemma framework.6 The basic research questions this article addresses are (1) How were the masses persuaded to support violence? (2) What was the key process that led to the transformation of an elite rivalry over the control of state power and resources into a deadly conflict in South Sudan? While existing studies have focused largely on contextual factors to explain the conflict, few research studies have examined the role of psychological threats. Additional research is needed to understand how the manipulation of negative emotions plays a key role in driving ethnic conflicts. It is argued that the utilization of politics of fear to control populations is a successful strategy in South Sudan. The elites’ politicization of ethnic identity and the promotion of danger, insecurity, resentment and hatred is successfully used to dominate rivals and to control populations, suggesting that manufactured group-based grievances are more potent in determining the outbreak of an ethnic conflict than contextual factors. Group-based grievances were manufactured in South Sudan through a patronage system of rewarding compliant supporters at the expense of others and through the spreading of negative messages through mass media by influential elites. Specifically, it is argued that in 2013, the politics of fear reactivated the once-dormant conflict in South Sudan and have continued to fuel hostility. South Sudanese political elites and their associates disseminate largely false narratives through the mass media, generating fear and hatred and manipulating community grievances.7 The elite spreads these narratives to discredit their rivals and their support bases to gain—and to retain—control of power and of the state apparatus. The result is increased suspicion and the victimization of South Sudan’s different groups, as the crimes (imagined or real) of rivals are blamed on their communities. The hate-generating narratives pit communities against each other and trigger toxic exchanges that damage the social fabric of South Sudanese society and that perpetuate deep enmity. These narratives are successful in amplifying social hostility—not because the stories are true but because (1) they are repeated and re-disseminated by individuals through social media using ‘like’ and ‘share’ buttons; (2) there are few counter-narratives to refute these misperceptions among different ethnic groups, both within and outside of South Sudan, as South Sudanese populations settle in communities defined along tribal lines; and (3) the harmful social media narratives contain built-in appeals to ethnic resentments and hatred underpinned by earlier episodes of ethnic conflicts. This article draws on field research carried out over the three-year period the author spent in South Sudan from April 2013 to December 2016. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in person in Nairobi and Juba and via phone, email and social media with more than 100 individuals at both the lower and higher levels of government and the military and with independent researchers, civil society members, political and economic analysts, academics, traders and youth. To gather in-depth information about the masses’ thoughts and opinions on the conflict, focus groups discussions were utilized. Each of more than 20 sessions, which took place mainly in hotels in Juba over breakfast, lunch or dinner, had between five and ten members. The groups’ discussion topics varied but were related to the conflict, politics, corruption, and humanitarian and economic crises. Members of these groups included cabinet ministers, professors from the University of Juba, ambassadors, army generals, activists, traders and youth. The organization of the article is as follows. The next section describes the security dilemma and explains why this analytical tool was chosen. This is followed by a review of existing research on South Sudan and then a comparison with the general framework of the security dilemma model. Existing works have largely ignored the roles of agents who use politics of fear to construct communal grievances and have instead focused on contextual factors. This article proposes that such a strategy may be less effective in determining the outbreak of an ethnic war. It contributes to the existing literature by integrating an analysis of the roles of actors and the situational contexts into a perspective that emphasizes the strategic use of fear by political elites. The article then presents the internal dynamics of South Sudan’s elite. The ways in which events that preceded the war can be explained through the lens of the security dilemma framework is also discussed. The article concludes with the deduction that the spread of violent conflicts in South Sudan is a response to the provocations of elites, who make fear an instrument of political governance, resulting in humanitarian, economic and political chaos. The security dilemma model The concept of the security dilemma is derived from the realist paradigm of the International Relations theory to identify the factors that increase the risk of violent conflicts when imperial order disintegrates.8 In particular, the concept of the security dilemma rests upon the impossibility of knowing the true intentions of the ‘enemy/opposition’, such that both sides are tempted to prepare for the worst while acknowledging that this proclivity will more likely lead to conflicts. Barry Posen, who first applied the model to ethnic conflicts, stated that the security dilemma accurately captures ‘the special conditions that arise when proximate groups of people suddenly find themselves newly responsible for their own security’.9 Adopting Posen’s approach, Chaim Kaufmann argued that ‘regardless of the origins of ethnic strife, once violence reaches the point that ethnic communities cannot rely on the state to protect them, each community must mobilize to take responsibility for its own security’.10 Posen and Kaufmann’s work suggests that a durable solution to ethnic conflicts may only be achieved by going beyond the partitioning of splintered states and physically separating ethnic groups to minimize perceptions of threat and to maximize their capacities for self-defence, thus eliminating the security dilemma facing both sides11; however, the cases of Sudan and South Sudan have indicated that the separation of groups may only shift the axis of political struggles away from the centre to the periphery and could exacerbate border disputes that might otherwise have remained dormant. While state behaviours can generate uncertainty and fear in some groups—aggravating the security dilemma and potentially leading to war—not all wars are caused by security dilemmas.12 The security dilemma is restrictive and suffers from some limitations in its original formulation; it assumes that actors survive and interact in an anarchic political structure characterized by uncertainty. For all cases of ethnic conflicts to which the security dilemma theory has been applied (research begun by Posen), the existence of a central authority prior to disintegration has been assumed. Shiping Tang’s reformulation predicts that the security dilemma can result in four different outcomes: The security dilemma is brought under control because the central authority is restored quickly, or both sides take effective measures to alleviate the security dilemma. The two sides of the security dilemma are unable to take effective measures to alleviate it, but neither side takes measures to exacerbate the security dilemma because they do not harbour malign intentions towards each other. The security dilemma is exacerbated because some elites on one or both sides—although they harbour no malign intentions against the other group—strive to gain power or to avoid losing power by encouraging ethnic tension and hatred. One or both sides harbour true malign intentions. The security dilemma is only real at the very beginning of the process. As soon as one or both sides begins to harbour malign intentions against the other side, the security dilemma ceases to operate and becomes a genuine security threat. Such situations almost inevitably result in mass violence or war unless international bodies intervene in a timely manner.13 Tang’s reformulation of the integrative theory of ethnic conflict for application to the Sudanese case contends that ‘the security dilemma can emerge when the central authority is captured or dominated by one group, thus becoming a de facto intra-elite group while the other group has to provide their own security’.14 The mushrooming of non-state actors in South Sudan speaks to the inability of the central authority to mitigate fear and points to the accumulation of power, a necessary condition of a genuine security dilemma.15 Ole Frahm noted that non-state actors, such as localized militias, that fill the void of government presence are generally sources of insecurity themselves.16 Jok Madut agreed, remarking that ‘nowhere did it become more evident than in South Sudan that a society where everyone is armed on the pretext of self-defence is a society where no one can be assured of safety’.17 This assertion confirms Posen’s thesis that ‘the actions taken by groups to enhance their security produce reactions that in the end can make them less secure’.18 The conflict in South Sudan arose from the use of fear as an instrument of governance or insurgent advancement by political leaders who had established control mechanisms that rely on coercion and threats through mass media, aiding this process as transmission lines. Because fear allows one group to dominate another and group polarization and identity all affect risk assessment, the security dilemma concept is important and necessary to understanding the role of political elites in transforming fear and politicized anger into a deadly conflict. The next section integrates existing approaches that explain the conflict dynamics in South Sudan by grouping them into broader trends and by assembling them under the security dilemma framework. Greed, neopatrimonialism and identity The mainstream literature on the factors that influence social conflicts can be classified into macro-level factors (socio-politico-economic factors) and micro-level factors (relevant agents, such as the government, rebels and the masses). Using this categorization, existing approaches used to study the dynamics of conflict in South Sudan are grouped into three subcategories: greed, neopatrimonialism and identity. All the subcategories are integrated into the security dilemma model. In a series of quantitative studies on the causes of civil wars, Paul Collier and his colleagues produced a number of theories focusing largely on macro-level factors with rebels as the primary agents. In 1998, Collier and Hoeffler argued that civil wars are primarily caused by the greed—not the grievances—of rebel groups to produce economic returns.19 In 2004, Collier and Hoeffler modified some of their previous theoretical claims, adding a grievance-based explanation proposing that objective social exclusion explains civil war.20 In 2009, Collier and colleagues offered the feasibility hypothesis, which proposes that where rebellion is more financially and militarily feasible, it is more likely to occur.21 They argued that a combination of certain structural features, such as the abundance of resource rent, low secondary-school enrolment (among potential youth fighters), the availability of weapons (such as from a prior war), a geography that provides safe havens to rebels and a state that is ineffective at maintaining a monopoly on legitimate violence makes a situation ripe for conflict. To explain why a conflict occurs when it does, additional explanations are necessary. Despite the presence of these structural features in South Sudan, the conflict did not occur until 2013. The feasibility hypothesis ignores the effects of the role of the ruling elite. The greed versus grievance paradigm assumes that rebels are rational actors who perform a cost-benefit analysis before engaging in violent behaviours—an assumption that Collier himself doubted in a later work.22 Notably, the greed-grievance paradigm accounts neither for the type of intermittent outbursts of violence witnessed in South Sudan in 2013 and 2016 nor for risks associated with group identities or grievances engineered by elites. This is the very oversight for which the Collier–Hoeffler framework has received serious criticism. Aleksi Ylonen argued that the Collier–Hoeffler framework does not sufficiently explain Sudanese conflicts because it cannot quantify culturally and regionally defined political grievances or the socio-economic consequences that result from these two factors.23 Justin Leach argued that southern rebel groups do not develop along ‘any single economic-rationalist model’ but rather around ‘deeper concerns about security and culture’.24 David Keen maintained that Collier and Hoeffler only considered vertical inequalities as they might occur between individuals and neglected horizontal inequalities that occur between communities or cultural groups within a country.25 To account for these factors, since the 1980s, several scholars have used the concept of neopatrimonialism to explain the forms of political domination in African states.26 Neopatrimonialism is the vertical distribution of resources that engender patron–client networks centred around a powerful individual or party. Early accounts defined it as ‘the distinctive institutional hallmark of African regimes’.27 Recent studies have increased the relevance of the model by expanding its scope and using the rebranded framework to explore the link between armed conflicts and neopatrimonial systems. For example, Paul D. Williams argued that neopatrimonial systems of governance do not automatically lead to armed conflicts because they can vary considerably, taking more or less severe forms, and because some rulers have been adept at managing factionalized politics, effectively stifling opportunities for rebellion.28 Williams argued that risks can be acute when neopatrimonial systems experience a crisis that the ruling authorities are unable to contain.29 Such crises tend to occur when external resources are exhausted, when outrageous behaviours test the limits of the systems’ legitimacy or when other factors develop that make armed rebellion feasible for marginalized segments of the population.30 This account resembles Alex De Waal’s political market model in which the ruler must secure enough money to operate the political machine, and lacking legitimate sources of funds, turns to corruption to compensate.31 De Waal argued that widespread corruption in Sudan, though economically inefficient, enabled the ruling elites to consolidate domestic control and to minimize internal strife. This gambit made it extremely expensive and difficult for the Sudan government to sabotage Kiir’s political goal of independence, but once an independent state had been achieved and funds had diminished, Kiir did not possess the political business skills needed to maintain a centralized, neopatrimonial system of government.32 Using resources to bribe pivotal groups was not the only measure preventing internal war during the interim period (2005–2011); the political elites relentlessly exploited historical group-based grievances and invoked fear that an external aggressor, based in Khartoum (with the support of southern allies), could undermine the referendum exercise on self-determination for the then Southern Sudan (2011). The elites’ promotion of fear of an external aggressor not only moderated the masses’ expectations during the interim period but also crucially forced cohesion within the country’s elites as members focused largely on the common goal of becoming an independent country. The successful outcome of the referendum that resulted in the creation of the Republic of South Sudan in 2011 eradicated fears of an external aggressor and rendered this form of manipulation ineffective. The prospect of establishing a democratic state and delivering services threatened the political survival of the ruling elites. The immediate response of these elite factions was to engage in the politics of fear to outmanoeuvre each other, transforming ethnic politics into outright ethnic war. As such, many scholars have attributed the conflict to the struggle within the dominant class over power and resources. Clémence Pinaud argued that the conflict in South Sudan must be understood within a system of class domination based on wartime predation from which a dominant class emerged that occupied most of the country’s wealth and could make decisions regarding how to allocate state resources.33 These elites secured their positions by establishing a regime through a system of patronage that rewarded close supporters and punished opponents, thereby producing grievances that increased the risk of war.34 Mohamed Suliman asserted that the war in the south is best understood as the consequence of opposing political approaches to the reality of diminishing resources.35 Some scholars have challenged this interpretation because a violent appropriation of resources can emerge as part of a larger set of political strategies predating rent-seeking opportunities, rather than as a cause of conflict in the first instance.36 Jok attributed the conflict to the cumulative impact of the long march to independence that has burdened the conscience of South Sudan.37 Douglas Johnson traced the root causes of the conflict to ‘unresolved tensions following the split in the SPLA in the 1990s, and the incomplete reintegration of anti-SPLA forces into the SPLA after 2005’.38 In a similar vein, Øystein H. Rolandsen attributed the conflict to ‘the combination of neopatrimonial politics, a weak state structure and legacies of violence from the previous civil war’.39 Rolandsen and M. W. Daly viewed the conflict as an outcome of historical processes restricted to and shaped by external and institutional processes.40 Existing works have largely overlooked the roles of political elites who use politics of fear to construct communal grievances and instead focus solely on contextual factors, which may be less potent in determining the outbreak of ethnic war.41 The three main channels through which the politics of fear serves as a manufacturer of group-based grievances are corruption, propagation of fear and politicized anger through the mass media and the use of physical and psychological violence as political tactics. This article contributes to existing literature by examining the roles of actors and situational contexts. The neopatrimonialism paradigm highlights a limited number of macro-level factors, such as ‘historical legacies’, ‘historical grievances’ and ‘economic shocks’, with little consideration for communal grievances or internal shocks fabricated by power elites through deliberate, painful reminders of the past. The paradigm focuses on the risk management skills of power elites at the expense of addressing the effects of their manipulative tactics. Like the Collier–Hoeffler framework in which fractionalization is attributed to the level of heterogeneity of a society,42 the neopatrimonialism paradigm views the fractionalization of society as a structural problem produced by neopatrimonialism.43 Both approaches fail to consider the role of elites in manufacturing fractionalization. By viewing fractionalization as a characteristic of some societies, these arguments do not adequately explain what occurred because they do not consider that elites are capable of creating and designing some textures of their societies. Despite these limitations, both approaches can provide insights into and depth to the security dilemma framework. The core insight of this framework is that fear of the unknown intentions of others inexorably leads to conflict. The ability of a sovereign power to centralize and to mitigate the fears of all persons under its jurisdiction is the currency of its political legitimacy.44 In sub-Saharan Africa, many governments resort to mitigating fear in the sectors of society that are pivotal to maintaining the status quo of power; however, the ethnic groups excluded from state protection against fear cease to view the central authority as a legitimate power, generating rival non-state actors, but often, the actions taken by non-state actors to enhance their security may ultimately make them less secure.45 The neopatrimonialism paradigm offers a criterion for evaluating how the security dilemma progresses: armed conflict is highly likely when ruling elites are ‘no longer able to assert their dominance over local strongmen in their patronage network’.46 In such cases, the political landscape enters a mode of crisis instability—the danger of war due to each side’s fear that the other is about to attack.47 According to Lake and Rothchild, ‘intense ethnic conflict is most often caused by collective fears of the future’.48 The final approach to be examined in this article focuses solely on macro-level factors. The media regularly characterize the dynamics of conflicts in South Sudan as motivated by ancient ethnic or tribal hatred between social groups. A piece appearing in African Arguments notes that ‘in South Sudan, few doubt the political and military saliency of ethnicity’.49 South Sudan’s auditor general, Stephen Wondu, has argued that ‘ethnicity became the defining factor in the allocation of public offices’,50 while Francis Deng characterized the Sudanese conflict as a result of competing visions of multiple identities.51 While the role of ethnicity in the conflict cannot be dismissed, ethnicity in itself does not explain the conflict. Rather, its exploitation by political actors for political and economic purposes depicts the conflicts as ethnic in nature.52 Although ethnic differences may provide leaders with the rhetoric for mobilization,53 South Sudan scholars dismiss explanations that focus exclusively on ethnicity—without sufficiently incorporating other contributing factors—as simplistic54 because they disguise the complex historical relations within and between the ethnic groups.55 In addition, some political alliances across ethnic lines have endured despite ethnically targeted violence.56 The politicization of group identity can also take place at the micro-level, where the political elites redefine the previous group identity of their support bases to exclude their rivals’ constituencies on either a clan basis (as in the Lakes and the Warrap states, where elite-fuelled conflicts between various clans within the Dinka ethnic group have been raging) or based on the memory of past alliances (as in the Unity state, where there is a deadly rivalry pitting members of Nuer clans against one another). While ethnicity is not a driver of conflict per se, the politicization of ethnic identity is a crucial process in propelling ethnic politics toward ethnic war.57 As Ann Laudati argued, ‘any investigations into conflict must explore how identity has been mobilized for social and political purposes, as well as strategies to access material (natural resource) gains’.58 Elites generate support and antagonize rural communities by appealing to ethnic sentiment and invoking the memory of past factional violence to disguise the fact that local grievances are in fact caused by failures of governance, development and security and by high levels of corruption.59 The success of this approach pivots on politicized ethnic discourses of fear, ethnically-based grievances and targeting civilians along ethnic lines60 through the conscious manipulation of ethnic loyalties by the elites.61 The relevance of the manipulation of identity politics to this article’s conceptual framework has also been noted by Murshed and Tadjoeddin, who posited that grievances are based on ‘identity and group formation’.62 Overall, existing approaches have mostly concentrated on macro-level factors, often ignoring the roles of powerful political agents who can (and do) construct communal grievances via the politics of fear. These actors are necessary to explain the outbreak of ethnic war.63 In the following section, the empirical work and the evaluation of the data using the analytical framework are presented. The internal dynamics of South Sudan’s ruling elite and the way events that preceded the war can be explained through the prism of the security dilemma paradigm is discussed. In addition, the ways actions of certain leaders relied on or promoted politics of fear are explained. Finally, it is shown that the spread of violent conflicts in South Sudan occurred in response to the provocations of the competing political elites. Internal dynamics of South Sudan’s ruling elite Following the death of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A’s) leader, John Garang, in July 2005, Kiir became the chairman of the SPLM, the commander in chief of the SPLA, and the leader of the autonomous government of Southern Sudan. A group of loyalists began to position itself to make decisions regarding the distribution of influence and wealth. In addition to its political and economic interests, the group aimed to settle wartime grievances against its rivals. The competition for access to resources and power resulted in a slow expulsion of some elites from the centre of power and a consequential rise in the power of others. Internal struggles within the SPLM leadership led to a form of the security dilemma during the 2008 SPLM convention, when Kiir urged attendees to endorse James Wani Igga as deputy chairman (to replace Machar) and Taban Deng as secretary general (to replace Amum).64 Members were concerned about the adverse consequences of this decision, particularly at a time when unity within the SPLM rank and file was thought necessary to withstand the machinations of an external aggressor in Khartoum (who could ostensibly undermine the exercise of a referendum). With the help of elders, Abel Alier and Joseph Lagu, amongst others from Warrap, the efforts to dismiss Riek Machar and Pagan Amum were averted, and the status quo was maintained to avoid the disintegration of the party.65 The crucial element in averting this crisis was that the rivals did not make their grievances public or wage a war of words. The intra-party power struggle re-emerged in late 2012, when the SPLM members of the political bureau discovered that the masses were blaming the ruling SPLM for having failed to deliver crucial basic services.66 With the general elections scheduled for 2015 (which themselves had to be preceded by an SPLM National Convention, where the chairman is nominated by the delegates to the convention and then becomes the SPLM’s candidate for presidency), the popular anger at the SPLM triggered a three-person power struggle. The secretary general, Pagan Amum, and the Vice Chairman of the SPLM, Riek Machar, deflected blame for the failure of the SPLM onto the chairman and President Kiir, attempting to position themselves as alternative options. Upon failing to quell the tension internally, the president, the vice president and the secretary general of the party resorted to using the mass media to trade accusations and to air their grievances. The SPLM trisected itself into hostile power centres. Pagan Amum led a camp of former SPLA commanders, who perceived themselves as having ideological fidelity to the founding chairman of the SPLM, John Garang. Riek Machar led another camp, consisting largely of the former fighters who had aligned with him during the 1991 split with the SPLA. Kiir created a faction consisting of former SPLA commanders who were loyal during an internal crisis within the SPLA in 2004, pitting him against John Garang, several politicians who were aligned with Khartoum during the civil war and other senior SPLM leaders. With no external intervention and weakening communication between Kiir’s camp and the other two camps, the effects of the public statements from the ruling elite transmitted through mass media and social gatherings created a ‘fear contagion effect’ across the country and triggered considerable uncertainty among the rival camps. Heightened criticism of the president by the vice president and secretary general were viewed as a pre-emptive strike, while the president’s removal of those he deemed disloyal and his anti-corruption measures targeting his opponents exacerbated tensions. In May 2013, the governors of Bahr el Ghazal resolved to support Kiir.67 Identity politics soon began to shape internal power struggles in the party, and a security dilemma occurred in classic fashion. To purge rivals, the president dismissed his entire cabinet in July 2013. He also dissolved the SPLM structures. The two camps, led separately by Riek Machar and Pagan Amum, now both fired, planned to depose Kiir and engaged in a highly risky confrontation in a country in which the army lacked cohesion.68 The crux of the security dilemma is that through efforts to enhance their own security, actors provoke fear and enact countermeasures, which reduce rather than increase security. This is precisely the trajectory that occurred at the end of 2012 and into early 2013. According to Tang, the security dilemma was exacerbated because some elites on one or both sides—although they harboured no aggressive desire to launch a conflict—strove to gain power or to avoid losing power by inciting ethnic tensions and hatred. The three-person competition setting the president, vice president and the secretary general against one another is best captured by one of Tang’s categories in which ‘the leaders set an aggressive goal, usually domination over another group, not because their constituents demand it, but because the leaders expect that once they have succeeded in provoking violent conflict they can count on a ‘rally around the flag’ effect, which will bolster their power and de-legitimize their political opponents’69; however, the marked increase in fear and hatred quickly transformed the situation by the first week of December from a security dilemma into a genuine security threat, a stage that Tang described as taking place when one or both sides harbour truly malign intentions. Tang predicted that such situations almost inevitably end in mass violence or war unless the international society intervenes in a timely manner.70 Following the Equatoria conference in February 2013, the Bahr al Ghazal conference in May 2013 and the SPLM leaders’ conference on 6 December 2013 (led by Riek Machar and Pagan Amum, who were both from the Upper Nile region), political alliances began to take on regional and ethnic contours. By December 2013, the Dinka group split into two: moderate elites and hardliners. The Nuer group split into moderate elites and hardliners, who were further split into two more groups due to internal politics in the Nuer community and Kiir’s exploitation of this dynamic. As in the case of the Dinka group, the Equatoria regional group had two actors. The moderate Dinka leaders who opposed Kiir’s policies were framed in mass media as traitors and thieves, while Kiir and hardliners framed themselves as the protectors of Dinka interests.71 Both the minister of information, Michael Makuei, and the presidential spokesperson, Ateny Wek, launched a media campaign depicting General Paul Malong as a thief.72 Deng Alor was harassed by junior employees and by President Kiir to frustrate him enough to resign; he was accused of working against the government as a traitor.73 Youth in Jonglei composed a song that trended on social media depicting Majak D’Agoot, a former deputy defence minister who fell out with President Kiir in 2013, as a traitor. A coercive strategy called loony chok—‘to unleash hunger’—was deployed against internal dissenters. The loony chok strategy was effective because the system was centrally controlled by Kiir so that those who did not express loyalty were denied jobs, even in the private sector. The moderates who did not harbour real hatred were forced to either cooperate or be replaced by hardliners who did feel genuine hatred (or at least pretended to do so).74 In this atmosphere, strategies to remain in any influential government position became nothing short of adopting extreme views—or at least pretending to be extreme. Those who acted deceptively by pretending to hold extreme views did not go to jail, while those who did not cooperate became a part of the group known as the ‘former detainees’. Some moderates survived in the system by pretending to profess ethnic hatred, which forced them to put these beliefs into practice.75 In 2013, a group of elites from the Dinka group emerged under the name of the Jieng Council of Elders (JCE). Through productive manipulation of fear, animosity and ethnic and regional identities, the Dinka hardliners, led by the JCE, mustered support through ethnic solidarity to optimize the success of collective political and military actions among its supporters. The assurance of in-group solidarity and a collective response in the ethnic conflict redoubled the security dilemma.76 Driven by the desire to centralize power at the grassroots,77 Kiir issued a decree that divided South Sudan’s ten states into 28 new ones, modifying an initial proposal by the JCE. Motivated by the same calculations, Riek Machar also considered the politics of redrawing boundaries to optimize political influence.78 The ethnic balkanization exacerbated the security dilemma rather than removing it. Douglas Johnson showed that in colonial times, establishing effective instruments of law minimized security dilemmas in most of the then-Sudan through a policy of including hostile or competing neighbours within the same district or province to better regulate them and to resolve their disputes. He highlighted an instance in which an attempt at segregation exacerbated inter-province hostility and was abandoned.79 In the early days of the conflict, some hardliners fanned fear to reject any peaceful settlement. The legal advisor to the president, Telar Deng, sowed dread about the opposition’s leadership ambitions: ‘I think peace is difficult to be achieved especially at this time because Riek Machar’s ambition for the presidency is increasing’.80 Telar also blamed Pagan Amum’s group of ten former detainees: ‘To be frank, this group was the one that ignited the ongoing war because it incited Machar to do so’.81 After reluctantly signing the August 2015 Peace Agreement, Kiir and the hardliners in his camp publicly impugned the agreement. The SPLA Chief General Malong Awan stated that ‘we will not reward those who have rebelled with positions in the army’.82 Information Minister Michael Makuei echoed a similar resistance: ‘we strongly believe that this document [August 2015 Agreement] cannot serve the people of South Sudan; it is a sell out and we cannot accept it’.83 Makuei later softened his stance: ‘As of now, let us change the language: if you are a supporter of the government, don’t write any other unhealthy language. We don’t want any further hostile propaganda. We don’t want hate speech on the radios’.84 While speaking at the SPLM House, President Kiir fanned fears regarding the dangers of implementing the August 2015 Peace Agreement, especially welcoming back opposition members: If they find you unorganized, you will all be bought. The information I have about this peace agreement is that our brothers are told by their own friends to keep destabilizing South Sudan permanently so that South Sudanese do not see development.85 The deputy chair of the JCE, Joshua Dau, termed the idea of deploying the regional protection force—as stipulated in the peace accord—as a ‘strategy to advance their regime change objective’.86 The chairman of the JCE, Ambrose Riiny, described the suggestion as ‘a declaration of war and invasion of the country’.87 Following reports of the targeting of Dinka members on the highways in Equatoria, Aldo Ajou Deng, a JCE member, spread panic by claiming: ‘We know that there is hidden boiling hatred against the Dinka community in Central Equatoria’.88 Fighting for equitable representation among the elites was a key motivator in this conflict by non-Dinka elites. Anti-government militias sought to exploit insecurity and tribal tensions to mobilize and to engage in military operations to advance their local political aspirations.89 Like Dinka elites, some non-Dinka elites were contributing to manipulating psychological responses among ethnic groups. Similar to a phenomenon Edward L. Glaeser noted elsewhere,90 hate-creating stories were supplied by non-Dinka elites to non-Dinka masses when such actions helped to discredit the government. While Riek Machar was rarely seen fomenting ethnic hatred/fear through mass media himself, some top opposition military leaders, speaking in native Nuer, along with spokespersons and other social media users associated with Riek Machar, deployed mass media to fan ethnic hatred. This follows a pattern noted in Tang’s framework, by (a) attributing a government’s crimes to the Dinka ethnic group; (b) mythologizing such crimes against Nuer civilians as part of the collective memory; (c) painting the Nuer as innocent victims while demonizing the Dinka as unforgivable perpetrators; and (d) painting the Nuer as heroic, powerful and glorious ‘freedom fighters’ and the Dinka as treacherous, weak and inglorious ‘genocidal forces’.91 All Nuer members who had remained in the government were stigmatized as ‘Nuer whew’—the Nuer who have been bought through jobs—even though many Nuer leaders occupied their positions long before the conflict began. In a regional conference held in Juba in 2013, Governor Bakosoro stirred regional fear/hatred by painting the Equatoria region as innocently victimized by the Dinka-dominated government, declaring that ‘most of the time, Equatorians are being suspected, jailed and accused’.92 Josephine Lagu, daughter of the prominent South Sudanese revolutionary leader General Joseph Lagu (who hails from Equatoria) was accused in 2012 of embezzling public funds. Governor Clement Wani framed the imprisonment of Josephine Lagu as punishment for all Equatoria, and alleged that the funds likely ended ‘up in the hands of one community (Dinka) and families who are not even in schools’.93 Thomas Cirilo, a former deputy SPLA chief who resigned and announced the formation of a new movement, hinged his military mobilization on the Dinka politico-military elites’ alleged implementation of the JCE’s agenda of ‘ethnic cleansing’, ‘forceful displacement of people from their ancestral lands’ and ‘ethnic domination’.94 Cirilo invoked ‘ethnic cleansing’ to appeal to ethnic Nuers. His mention of ‘the forceful displacement of people from their ancestral lands’ was aimed at the Fertit of Western Bahr al Ghazal and the Shilluk, where a conflict had been raging on this particular issue of land. The fear of ‘ethnic domination’ by the Dinka in vital government organs has been a constant fear in Greater Equatoria. The scale of mobilization of Murle youths by David Yau in 2012 and early 2013 demonstrated the success of the elites’ exploitation of feelings of resentment, distrust and marginalization among the Murle population toward the government, especially in the wake of an abusive and uneven SPLA disarmament campaign.95 The collective demonization of the Dinka due to the behaviour of a handful of their elites led to the targeting of Dinka civilians on South Sudanese roads in Equatoria as well as attacks in other towns.96 The main source of fear among the elite was of a power consolidation by their rivals,97 and they succeeded in translating their individual fears into tribal ones.98 Jok explained that contests for state power turned violent because political leaders drew upon local communities and turned their individual quests for power into matters of survival for their communities.99 The politicization of group identity and the manipulation of psychological responses mobilized youth on both sides of the conflict. For their part, all political elites mobilized the least privileged across all ethnicities to defend themselves against rivals.100 To mobilize masses in Dinka, Nuer and the Equatorial areas, the political elites exploited past historical hostilities,101 memories of ethnically charged killings, economic disenfranchisement and ethnic marginalization.102 Acute illiteracy and poverty among the masses caused the people to be more prone to manipulation.103 The youth fighters’ incentives stemmed from socio-economic grievances, which, as has been argued, are often constructed by manipulative elites. Southern Sudanese youth were drawn into armed conflicts in previous civil wars largely to protect themselves and their communities against the military.104 Rebels successfully incorporated the government’s indiscriminate violence into their appeals to recruit supporters.105 The systematic targeting of Nuer civilians in Juba in the days following 15 December 2013 and the resulting anger and desire for revenge were critical in mobilizing Nuer to join the opposition.106 As Tang observed, the malicious elite on one or both sides of a struggle who mobilize even a fraction of the population can inflict so much devastation on the other side that the response is sure to be one of hatred and rage.107 When this reaction is achieved, those from the side that initiated the violence fear becoming the target of revenge. Consequently, the masses on both sides feel ‘rationally’ compelled to support mass violence and ethnic war.108 The hardliners sought to generate politicized anger and then to divert this resentment toward outer-group leaders. Understanding themselves as victims of power-hungry opponents who were solely responsible for all the chaos absolved hardliners of responsibility for what occurred around them. It excused them for their failures, allowing them to blame everything on their rivals and to use political fear to motivate their support bases to endorse self-destructive policies. The elites’ machinations hardly stand against basic cultural logic. Still, the effects of the politics of fear encourage individuals to publicly lie about their privately held political beliefs due to perceived political, economic, security and social sanctions in a centrally-controlled system.109 Despite the conspicuous wealth accumulated by officials in his government110 and the apparent mismanagement of the economy under his rule,111 the president of South Sudan continues to receive active support from sizeable shares of his impoverished ethnic Dinka base. Many Equatorians view the government as a vehicle for the Dinka to acquire absolute power, such as to use the security apparatus to spread propaganda, to liquidate its opponents/critics, to confiscate land from those less empowered/connected and to amass state resources for personal gain.112 The government’s political legitimacy is irreversibly compromised. In the past, the technological capability of ethnic rivals to accumulate power was balanced. In a conversation on a South Sudanese policy forum on the relations among groups, Sam Laki, Agricultural Economics Professor at Central State University, noted that ‘both Equatorians and the Dinkas were never in control of the police and military, so the amount of pain they inflicted on each other was marginal, and pales in comparison to the pain that they are inflicting on each other now’.113 In Jonglei, the government’s uneven disarmament exacerbated a security dilemma between the Murle and the Nuer.114 Communities that feel disadvantaged prepare to strike at the first opportunity, while groups that gain from the government’s actions increase their war propaganda to protect their gains. Conclusion Studies have predominantly focused on contextual factors as the dominant explanatory variables of the South Sudanese conflict. The greed versus grievance paradigm approaches the conflict from the material conditions of rebels, giving little consideration to other relevant agents, such as the ruling elite, who may manufacture grievances and exploit group identities to achieve certain aims. It is argued in this article that it is not the mere existence of previous affliction but rather the deliberate reminder of such affliction by the power elites that triggers ethnic conflicts. The neopatrimonialism paradigm highlights a limited number of contextual factors, such as historical legacies and historical grievances, essentially overlooking constructed communal grievances or internal shocks constructed by the power elite. The focus is on the risk management skills of the power elite, with negligible consideration of the effects of their manipulative tactics. This article also stresses the importance of the elites’ role in constructing fractionalization and thereby increasing the risk of armed conflicts. The security dilemma framework and empirical data are used to show that the effects of politics of fear reactivated the once-dormant conflicts in South Sudan in 2013 and have continued to intensify ongoing conflicts. To manage fear among themselves and to maintain their hopes of ensuring the political survival or political demise of rivals, the elites resorted to manipulating group identities and to what Tang referred to as ‘psychological regulators’ (fear, hatred, resentment and rage).115 The elites adopted coercive strategies to silence or radicalize in-group moderate elites and to deal with opposing out-group elites through bribery and the exploitation of internal grievances. Those who feared for their lives shifted from moderate to extremist. The loss of political influence among the moderate elites confirms what Snyder and Ballentine asserted: that during successful ethnic mobilization, the more fearful and hateful voices prevail in the marketplace of ideas.116 South Sudanese political elites and their associates disseminate largely false narratives through social media, effectively generating fear and hatred, and these narratives continue to aggravate South Sudan’s conflict dynamics. Elites spread these narratives to discredit their rivals and their support bases and to gain or to retain power and control over the state apparatus. The spread of this content amplifies the suspicion and victimization of South Sudan’s different groups, triggering toxic exchanges that damage the social fabric of South Sudanese society. Manufactured group-based grievances can be considered a product of the effects of the politics of fear. Politics of fear are thus a key process leading to ethnic wars. Only by more deeply explicating ethnic mobilization can ethnic war be better understood to counter the potentially brutal fallout. Those who are better informed—it is hoped—are less hateful and less fearful of others. They view the survival of their groups not in isolation but bound to the survival, security and prosperity of other groups. A similar resort to the politics of fear in many other political contexts worldwide can be observed as political elites resort to manipulating economic and security concerns to legitimize their own existence. When elites disagree on a fair formula for sharing power and access to resources, to outdo one another, they resort to using political fear to manipulate the masses to support their policies. However, the use of political fear among multiple elites of conflicting interests can generate a collective outcome vastly different from what any party might have expected. One party may escalate threatening gestures, hoping that the attacked party would cooperate to avoid conflict, but the other party may feel that its security lies in launching a counterattack. This generates a security dilemma, which exacerbates what might have been a dormant conflict, therefore potentially triggering chaos. Daniel Akech Thiong (dakechth@gmail.com) is an independent researcher interested in elite politics. For comments and suggestions on earlier drafts, I thank Kon K. Madut, Majak D’ Agoot, Alex de Waal, Zoe Cormack, Rebecca Lorins, Taku Mkencele, and the editors and two anonymous reviewers of African Affairs. Footnotes 1. Republic of South Sudan, Transitional Constitution of the Republic of South Sudan (2011). Art. 101/105. <https://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/docs/MONOGRAPH/90704/116697/F762589088/SSD90704%202011C.pdf> (19 May 2018). 2. Sudan Tribune, ‘Kiir threatens to dissolve parliament unless it supports Wani Igga’s appointment’, 24 August 2013, <http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article47776> (14 June 2017). 3. Crisis instability is the danger of war due to each side’s fear that the other will attack. See Barry O’Neill, ‘A measure for crisis instability with an application to space-based antimissile systems’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 31, 4 (1987), pp. 631–672; Alex de Waal, ‘When kleptocracy becomes insolvent: Brute causes of the civil war in South Sudan’, African Affairs 113, 452 (2014), pp. 347–369. 4. Interview, Jeff Koinage and President Salva Kiir, Juba, South Sudan, 3 August 2016, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOQEyFk-4do> (17 March 2017). 5. Francois Debrix and Alexander D. Barder, ‘Nothing to fear but fear: Governmentality and the biopolitical production of terror’, International Political Sociology 3, 4 (2009), pp. 398–413. 6. Shiping Tang, ‘The onset of ethnic war: A general theory’, Sociological Theory 33, 3 (2015), pp. 256–279. 7. Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, ‘South Sudan: Dangerous rise in ethnic hate speech must be reined in’, United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, 25 October 2016, <http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20757> (14 June 2017). 8. Barry Posen, ‘The security dilemma and ethnic conflict’, Survival 35, 1 (1993), pp. 27–47. 9. Barry Posen, ‘The security dilemma and ethnic conflict’, in Michael Brown (ed), Ethnic conflict and international security (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1997), pp. 10–124. 10. Chaim Kaufmann, ‘Possible and impossible solutions to ethnic civil wars’, International Security 20, 4 (1996), pp. 146–147. 11. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Van Evera, ‘When peace means war: The partition that dare not speak its name’, The New Republic, 18 December 1995, p. 18; Chaim Kaufmann, ‘Intervention in ethnic and ideological civil wars: Why one can be done and the other can’t’, Security Studies 6, 1 (1996), pp. 62–100. 12. Shiping Tang, ‘The security dilemma and ethnic conflict: Toward a dynamic and integrative theory of ethnic conflict’, Review of International Studies 37, 2 (2011), pp. 511–536. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. Ingrid Marie Breidlid and Michael J. Arensen, ‘The Nuer White Armies: Comprehending South Sudan’s most infamous community defence group’, in Saferworld, Informal armies: Community defence groups in South Sudan’s civil war (Saferworld, February 2017), pp. 29–39; Hilde Johnson, South Sudan: The untold story from independence to War (L.B. Tauris and Co Ltd., London, UK, 2016), p. 253; Mareike Schomerus and Charles Taban, ‘Arrow boys, armed groups and the SPLA: Intensifying insecurity in the Western Equatorian states’, in Saferworld, Informal armies (Safeworld, February 2017) pp. 6–16; Luka Biong and Deng Kuol, ‘Dinka youth in civil war: Between cattle, community and government’, in Saferworld, Informal armies (Safeworld, February 2017) pp. 19–26; Øystein Rolandsen and Ingrid Marie Breidlid, ‘What is youth violence in Jonglei’ (PRIO Paper, PRIO, Oslo, 2013). 16. Ole Frahm, ‘Making borders and identities in South Sudan’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies 33, 2 (2015), pp. 1–17. 17. Saferworld, Informal armies, p. 2 18. Posen, ‘The security dilemma and ethnic conflict’. 19. Paul Collier and Ann Hoeffler, ‘On economic causes of civil war’, Oxford Economic Papers 50, 4 (1998), pp. 563–573. 20. Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, ‘Greed and grievance in civil war’, Oxford Economic Papers 56, 4 (2004), pp. 563–595. 21. 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Paul D. Williams, War and conflict in Africa (Polity, Cambridge, 2016), p. 55. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. Alex de Waal, The real politics of the Horn of Africa: Money, war and the business of power (Polity, Cambridge, 2015), pp. 91–96. 32. Alex de Waal, ‘When kleptocracy becomes insolvent’. 33. Clémence Pinaud, ‘South Sudan: Civil war, predation and the making of a military aristocracy’, African Affairs 113, 451 (2014), pp. 192–211. 34. Philippe Le Billon, ‘The political ecology of war: Natural resources and armed conflicts’, Political Geography 20, 5 (2001), pp. 561–584. 35. Mohamed Suliman, ‘Civil war in Sudan: The impact of ecological degradation’, Contributions in Black Studies 15, 1 (1997), pp. 99–121. 36. William Reno, ‘Economies of war and their transformation: Sudan and the variable impact of natural resources on conflict’, Journal of Modern African Studies 40, 1 (2002), pp. 83–104. 37. Jok Madut Jok, Breaking Sudan: The search for peace (Oneworld Publications, London, 2017). 38. Douglas H. Johnson, ‘Briefing: The crisis in South Sudan’, African Affairs 113, 451 (2014), pp. 300–309. 39. Øystein H. Rolandsen, ‘Another civil war in South Sudan: The failure of guerrilla government?’, Journal of Eastern African Studies 9, 1 (2015), pp. 163–174. 40. Øystein H. Rolandsen and M. W. Daly, A history of South Sudan: From slavery to independence (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2016). 41. Shiping Tang, ‘The onset of ethnic war: A general theory’. 42. Collier, Hoeffler and Rohner, ‘Beyond greed and grievance’. 43. William Reno, ‘Patronage politics and the behavior of armed groups’, Civil Wars 9, 4 (2007), pp. 324–342. 44. Debrix and Barder, ‘Nothing to fear but fear’. 45. Barry Posen, ‘The security dilemma and ethnic conflict’. 46. Reno, ‘Patronage politics’. 47. Barry O’Neill, ‘A measure for crisis instability with an application to space-based antimissile systems’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 31, 4 (1987), pp. 631–672. 48. David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild, ‘Containing fear: The origins and management of ethnic conflict’, International Security 21, 2 (1996), pp. 41–75. 49. African Arguments, ‘Choosing to be a Dinka: Selecting ethnicity remains to be an elite privilege,’ 28 February 2013, <http://africanarguments.org/2014/02/28/choosing-to-be-a-dinka-selecting-ethnicity-remains-an-elite-privilege/> (2 April 2017). 50. Stephen Wöndu, From bush to bush: Journey to liberty in South Sudan (Kenway Publications, Nairobi, Kenya, 2011), pp. 244–250. 51. Francis M. Deng, War of visions: Conflict of identities in Sudan (Brookings Institution, Washington DC, 1995). 52. Pamela Paglia, ‘Ethnicity and tribalism: Are these the root causes of the Sudanese civil conflicts? African conflicts and the role of ethnicity: A case study of Sudan’, Africa Economic Analysis, n.d. <http://www.africaeconomicanalysis.org/articles/pdf/sudan0807.pdf> (7 March 2017), p. 36. 53. Ibid. 54. Douglas H. Johnson, ‘Briefing: The crisis in South Sudan’. 55. Michael J. Arensen and Ingrid Marie Breidlid, ‘‘Anyone who can carry a gun can go’: The role of the white army in the current conflict in South Sudan’ (Peace Research Institute Oslo, 2014). 56. Ingrid Marie Breidlid and Michael J. Arensen, ‘Demystifying the white army: Nuer armed civilians’ involvement in the South Sudanese Crisis’, Conflict Trends 3 (2014), pp. 32–39. 57. Tang, ‘The onset of ethnic war’. 58. Ann Laudati, ‘Victims of discourse: Mobilizing narratives of fear and insecurity in post-conflict South Sudan – The case of Jonglei State’, African Geographical Review 30, 1 (2011), p. 17. 59. Breidlid and Arensen, ‘Demystifying the white army’. 60. CFR Interview, Alex de Waal, Executive Director World Peace Foundation, 14 September 2016, <http://www.cfr.org/south-sudan/understanding-roots-conflict-south-sudan/p38298?cid=nlc-dailybrief-daily_news_brief--link29-20160922&sp_mid=52363867&sp_rid=c2NvbGxtYW5AY2ZyLm9yZwS2> (26 March 2017). 61. Breidlid and Arensen, ‘Demystifying the white army’. 62. Syed Mansood Murshed and Mohammad Zulfan Tadjoeddin, ‘Revisiting the greed and grievance explanations for violent internal conflict’, Journal of International Development 21, 1 (2009), pp. 87–111. 63. Tang, ‘The onset of ethnic war’. 64. A. Awolich and Z. Ding Akol, ‘The SPLM leadership contest: An opportunity for change or a crisis of governance?’ (Policy Brief, The SUDD Institute, Juba, 23 July 2013); John Young, The fate of Sudan: Origins and consequences of a flawed peace process (Zed Books, London, UK, 2012). 65. Facebook post, Telar Deng, former legal advisor to President Kiir, 19 April 2018. 66. Awolich and Akol, ‘SPLM Leadership Contest’. 67. Radio Tamazuj, ‘Greater Bahr el-Ghazal governors pledge support to Kiir in next election’, 22 May 2013, <https://radiotamazuj.org/en/news/article/greater-bahr-el-ghazal-governors-pledge-support-to-kiir-in-next-election (18 June 2017). 68. Interview, Mawut Reech, South Sudanese analyst, e-mail, 20 March 2017. 69. Tang, ‘The security dilemma and ethnic conflict’. 70. Ibid. 71. Radio Tamazuj, ‘Foreign minister says he was being ‘humiliated’ in Juba,’ 20 February 2018, <https://radiotamazuj.org/en/news/article/foreign-minister-says-he-was-being-humiliated-in-juba> (21 May 2018). 72. Eye Radio, ‘Gov’t reacts to Malong’s move’, 10 April 2018, <http://www.eyeradio.org/govt-reacts-malongs-move/> (29 May 2018). 73. Radio Tamazuj, ‘Foreign minister says he was being ‘humiliated’ in Juba’. 74. Shiping Tang, ‘Fear in international politics: Two positions’, International Studies Review 10, 3 (2008), pp. 451–471. 75. Ibid. 76. Telephone Interview, Dr Majak D’ Agoot, former deputy defence minister, Nairobi, 1 October 2016. 77. Hilde Johnson, South Sudan. pp. 94–95. 78. Sudan Tribune, ‘S. Sudanese rebels establish military command, create 21 states’, 31 December 2014, http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article53509 (20 March 2017). 79. Douglas H. Johnson, ‘Why Abyei matters: The breaking point of Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement’, African Affairs 107, 426 (2008), pp. 1–19. 80. Radio Tamazuj, ‘President Kiir’s legal advisor redraws red line on interim government’, 11 August 2014, <https://radiotamazuj.org/en/news/article/president-kiir-s-legal-advisor-redraws-red-line-on-interim-government> (14 June 2017). 81. Ibid. 82. Sudan Tribune, ‘S. Sudan army chief rejects IGAD power-sharing proposal’, 30 July 2015 <http://sudantribune.com/spip.php?article55883> (14 June 2017). 83. Radio Tamazuj, ‘Makuei slams Pagan Amum for signing IGAD document’, 18 August 2015, <https://radiotamazuj.org/en/news/article/makuei-slams-pagan-amum-for-signing-igad-document> (14 June 2017). 84. Radio Tamazuj, ‘South Sudan broadcast minister instructs gov’t media to stop war propaganda’, 6 November 2015, <https://radiotamazuj.org/en/news/article/south-sudan-broadcast-minister-instructs-govt-media-to-stop-war-propaganda> (14 June 2017). 85. Radio Tamazuj, ‘Kiir says he fears SPLM will turn against him after peace’, 14 November 2015, <https://radiotamazuj.org/en/news/article/kiir-says-he-fears-splm-will-turn-against-him-after-peace> (14 June 2017). 86. Radio Tamazuj, ‘Dinka council of elders says no short cut to presidency’, 21 January 2017, <https://radiotamazuj.org/en/news/article/dinka-council-of-elders-says-no-short-cut-to-presidency> (14 June 2017). 87. Radio Tamazuj, ‘Dinka Council of Elders warns war over additional UNMISS troops’, 18 July 2016, <https://radiotamazuj.org/en/news/article/dinka-council-of-elders-warns-war-over-additional-unmiss-troops> (14 June 2017). 88. Ibid. 89. United Nations Panel of Experts on South Sudan, ‘South Sudan’s UN Panel of Experts Report’ (United Nations, 2016). 90. Edward L. Glaeser, ‘The political economy of hatred’, Quarterly Journal of Economics 120, 1 (2005), pp. 45–86. 91. Tang, ‘The onset of ethnic war’. 92. Sudan Tribune, ‘Greater Equatoria demands federal system in South Sudan’, 17 April 2011, <http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?iframe&page=imprimable&id_article=38608> (14 June 2017). 93. Ibid. 94. Malakal Post, ‘Lt. Gen. Thomas Cirillo Swaka’s resignation letter’, 11 February 2017, <http://www.malakalpost.com/lt-gen-thomas-cirillo-swaka-the-deputy-chief-of-general-staff-for-logistics-resignation-letter> (29 May 2018); Radio Tamazuj, ‘Gen. Thomas Cirillo declares new rebel group’, 6 March 2017, <https://radiotamazuj.org/en/news/article/gen-thomas-cirillo-declares-new-rebel-group> (29 May 2018). 95. Small Arms Survey, ‘David Yau Yau’s Rebellion’, 4 June 2013, <http://www.smallarmssurveysudan.org/fileadmin/docs/facts-figures/south-sudan/armed-groups/southern-dissident-militias/HSBA-Armed-Groups-Yau-Yau.pdf> (25 March 17). 96. Facebook conversation, Kuir Garang, political analyst, May 2016. 97. Interview, Ngor Deng, social media commentator, email, 19 March 2017; Interview, Mawut Reech, e-mail, 20 March 2017. 98. Interview, John Ghereng Maduk, an activist, e-mail, 19 March 2017. 99. Saferworld, Informal armies. 100. Facebook exchange, Dr August Ting, director of research, Sudd Institute, 13 April 2017. 101. Interview, Mawut Reech, e-mail, 20 March 2017. 102. Interview, Mawut Reech, e-mail, 20 March 2017; Facebook exchange, Aduei Riak, an activist, 14 March 2017. 103. Interview John Ghereng Maduk, e-mail, 19 March 2017. 104. Cherry Leonardi, ‘“Liberation” or capture: Youth in between “hakuma”, and “home” during civil war and its aftermath in Southern Sudan’, African Affairs 106, 424 (2007), pp. 391–412. 105. Mark Irving Lichbach, ‘Deterrence or escalation? The puzzle of aggregate studies of repression and dissent’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 31, 2 (1987), pp. 266–297. 106. ICG (International Crisis Group), ‘South Sudan: A civil war by any other name’ (Africa Report No. 217. 10 April 2014), p. 17; John Young, ‘A fractious rebellion’. 107. Tang, ‘Security dilemma’. 108. Ibid. 109. Michael D. Makowsky and Jared Rubin, ‘An agent-based model of centralized institutions, social network technology, and revolution’, PLoS One 8, 11 (2013), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0080380. 110. John Prendergast, ‘Violent kleptocracies: How they’re destroying parts of Africa and how they can be dismantled’, The Enough Project, (2016), <http://enoughproject.org/reports/violent-kleptocracies-how-theyre-destroying-partsafrica-and-how-they-can-be-dismantled> (16 May 2018). 111. De Waal, ‘When kleptocracy becomes insolvent’. 112. Email exchanges, Konyen Nakuwa, co-founder of the South Sudan Young Leaders Forum, 10 February 2016. 113. Email exchange, Sam Laki, Agricultural Economics Professor at Central State University, Development Policy Forum, 2 October 2016. 114. Yuki Yoshida, ‘Interethnic conflict in Jonglei State, South Sudan: Emerging ethnic hatred between the Lou Nuer and the Murle’, African Journal on Conflict Resolution 13, 2 (2013), p. 39. 115. Tang, ‘The onset of ethnic war’. 116. Jack Snyder and Karen Ballentine, ‘Nationalism and the marketplace of ideas’, International Security 21, 2 (1996), pp. 5–40. © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal African Society. All rights reserved This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - How the politics of fear generated chaos in South Sudan
JO - African Affairs
DO - 10.1093/afraf/ady031
DA - 2018-10-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/how-the-politics-of-fear-generated-chaos-in-south-sudan-bLJENen6KV
SP - 613
VL - 117
IS - 469
DP - DeepDyve
ER -