According to Countryaah.com, with capital city of Juba, South Sudan is a country located in Eastern Africa with total population of 11,193,736.
2011 Independence
On days 9-15. January 2011 South Sudan voted for independence. The results were published on January 30, showing that 98.3% had voted for independence. On July 9, the new state declared its independence. Five days later it was admitted to the UN, and on July 28 it was admitted into the African Union. 55 years of more or less intensive conflict had then cost DKK 2½ million. killed and several millions driven on the run.
However, independence did not lead to peace. The border region of Abyei is disputed and will later conduct a referendum on whether it will belong to Sudan or South Sudan. Furthermore, oil revenues have a great potential for contention. 80% of the oil revenue in the original United Sudan came from South Sudan, and the North does not lose sight of it with gentle eyes. See ABBREVIATIONFINDER for how SSOM can stand for South Sudan.
Already a month before independence, in June 2011, battles between North and South on Abyei. The international community then became a mediator and deployed 4,200 Ethiopian soldiers as a peacekeeping force in Abyei. In March 2012, Sudan bombed South Sudan in the area south of Abyei. Sudanese forces responded again by occupying the Heglig oil field.
In addition, there are a number of internal conflicts in South Sudan that besides the government involved the Shilluk, Murle and Lou Nuer people. The violent conflicts affected 9 of the country’s 10 states.
Until independence, for 20 years, Israel had provided the SPLA with weapons, with the aim of destabilizing the large Muslim country of Sudan. And in December 2011, the President visited Israel to thank the Israelis for their assistance during the civil war. But in 2012, Israel began deporting South Sudanese refugees. Thousands were held in detention camps awaiting deportation.
As part of Sudan, South Sudan had been subject to the US blockade of Sudan until independence. With its independence, South Sudan remained exempt from the US economic and military blockade and in January, Barack Obama announced that the United States was prepared to provide weapons and advisers to South Sudan’s military. A few days later, the United States dispatched the first 5 military advisers.
In March, South Sudan attacked the Heglig oil field in South Kordofan state in Sudan. This happened on the basis of disagreement over border crossing and disagreement over Sudan’s payment for oil transport through Sudan. South Sudanese troops were quickly pushed out of Sudan and in September the two countries signed an agreement on border demarcation and oil transport. The agreement provided, inter alia, South Sudan has the right to export 350,000 barrels of oil daily. But already back in November, when Sudan bombed Bahr el Ghazal state in northern South Sudan. At this time, the people of South Kordofan and the Blue Nile states of southern Sudan were also involved, having started an armed uprising against the central government to be incorporated into South Sudan.
In late 2012, rumors began to circulate of a coup in Juva, prompting Kiir to initiate a larger purge within the government, party and army. In January 2013, he removed the chief of police and 29 senior generals. The following month, he removed another 117 generals, hinting that his opponents were seeking to nourish the contradictions that had led to bitter internal struggles in the 1990s.
South Sudan announced in January that it had signed an agreement with several Israeli oil companies on oil exploration.
In June 2013, Kiir revoked two of his ministers’ parliamentary immunity after being accused of being involved in corruption. The following month he dissolved his entire government. In November, he disbanded all the higher bodies in the party.
In December 2003, the South Sudanese army fired a UN helicopter from the UNMISS force into Jonglei.
Civil war in South Sudan
The dominant theme in Sudanese politics since independence has been the relationship between the North and the South, which for several periods has led to extensive civil war, until the ceasefire was entered into in 2005.
The conflict has several ethnic, religious and economic dimensions, but appears primarily as a conflict between the dominant, substantially Islamic, North Sudan and the Christian and partly South Sudan. The southern part of the country has always felt neglected politically and economically by the ruling elite in the north, although much of the country’s wealth is to be found in the south, including most of the oil. The civil war in South Sudan has therefore essentially been about the right to self-government and thus self-determination over the exercise of religion and co-determination over the management of the country’s economic values. While there has been a war against the government in the south in the south, there have been internal disagreements in South Sudan, also within the dominant political movement, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement(SPLM). On the question of the region’s future, some wanted to become an autonomous part of a united Sudan, others wanted full independence and detachment from Sudan.
The first civil war in South Sudan lasted from 1955 to 1972. The organized resistance began when the Anyanya guerrilla movement was formed in 1963, which – backed by its political branch, the Southern Sudan Liberation Movement (SSLM) – fought for a peace treaty was signed in 1972; the so-called Addis Ababa Agreement, which gave South Sudan internal autonomy.
The war was resumed in 1983 by Anyanya’s successor Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), and its political part, SPLM. The background to the new civil war was the introduction of Sharia law also in the south, as well as a division of South Sudan into three provinces, which in effect meant that the peace agreement of 1972 was broken by the government. The new uprising started with support from members of the government, including Colonel John Garang de Mabior, who remained the SPLA’s leader until his death in 2005. From the outset, the SPLM / SPLA requirement was widespread autonomy in a united Sudan, or alternate independence for South Sudan.. In the mid-1990s, the war was stepped up by the government declaring holy war, jihad, against the rebels in South Sudan. But despite several government offensives, SPLA failed to succeed.
At the same time as SPLA joined several groups in the fight against the government in Khartoum, from the early 1990s there was internal conflict in SPLA, with division into two factions in 1991. The split took place along ethnic lines, where SPLA, led by Garang, stood strongest among the Dinkas, the outlaws, led by Riek Machar, secured support among the Nubians. In the same year, the SPLA was weakened by the collapse of Ethiopia’s military junta. The insurgents in Sudan were supported by Ethiopia, while Sudan supported the Eritrean liberation movement that fought against Ethiopia. The SPLA was weakened until 1997, when the movement again strengthened its military position. Further divisions took place in the 1990s, and some opposition groups, including the South Sudan Independence Movement(SSIM), signed separate peace agreements with the government in 1997.
The war in South Sudan was the worst of Africa’s conflicts in the 1980s and 1990s. Both parties were accused of being responsible for gross human rights violations, and both the government and the SPLA are accused of forcibly recruiting soldiers, including children. The war also contributed to hunger disasters in the south of the country, which has been a further cause of approximately 4.5 million people being internally displaced in the late 1990s; a further one million fled to neighboring countries. It is estimated that around two million people lost their lives as a result of the war, which required large-scale humanitarian efforts. This was largely prevented by the Sudanese government, and assistance to South Sudan had to be mainly taken from Kenya.