If the economy of the country is weak, the country is also weak (part 1)
By Lino Lual Lual, Juba, South Sudan
February 3, 2016 (SSB) —- So the rebellion cannot be difficult, the rebel leader told a journalist that in Zaire, rebellion was easy, all you needed was only ($10,000) and satellite phone. While this was obviously poetic exaggeration, he went on to explain that in Zaire, everyone was so poor that with these amount you could hire yourself a small army and the satellite phone.
This takes us to the third and financial economic risk factor in civil war and rich natural resources like South Sudan. Because of dependency upon the foreign imports commodities substantially increase the chances to civil war. There has been the several causes where our own brothers, neighbours and international companies have advanced massive amounts of funding to rebel movement in return for resources concession in the event of rebel victory, which will only happens unless by the spirit in the next World not this World.
It is apparently how the natural rich resources help finance conflict and sometimes even motivates it not meaning that the past conflict caused the present one. However, the most of the places that are at peace now have had the civil war sometimes in the past before rather some of the economic conditions lend themselves to being taken advantage of by gutter politicians who build their success on the hatred. Genuine grievances should be redressed whether they provoke rebellion in the country or not.
Rebels’ leaders who claim to have launched the civil war for the good of their country are usually deceiving themselves and their followers, the foot soldiers of rebellion often do not have much choice about the joining rebel camp. The author previously noted from Foday Sankoh a rebel leader’s preferences for recruiting teenage drug addict.
In Uganda, the Lord Resistance Army (LRA) whose stated goal is to establish government according to the (ten) commandments, recruits the members by surrounding a remote schools building in his own district with troops and setting fire to the schools building. The children who manage to run out are given the choice of being shot or joining up rebellion. Those who joined are then required to commit an atrocity in their home villages such as raping an old woman which make it harder for the boys to go back home in any other time.
The same style of recruitment has happens with South Sudan white army rebel of Riek Machar who rape and kill all patients in hospitals in greater upper Nile region. Diseases do not respect the frontier and South Sudan economic crisis also spreads since most conflict are bordered by several others, there is straight forward explanation that conflict generates territory outside the control of recognized government and this comes in handy if all government protocols are not implemented accordingly.
Osama bin Laden chose to locate himself in Afghanistan for the same reasons, so the countries in civil war have what might be called a comparative advantage in international crime and terrorism. (AIDS) amongst other diseases probably spread through an African civil war countries with the combination of mass rape and mass migration produces ideal condition for spreading sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).
Unlucky country got into war shortly after independent like South Sudan, why? The two big risk factors are low income and low growth exactly it has more coups because it is poor. Wars and coups keep low income countries from growing and hence keep them dependent upon the other people that make history repeat itself.
If wars and coups could readily be avoided by good domestic political design democratic right leaders in South Sudan then the responsibility for peace would be predominantly internal.
That is, we might be reasonable to think if peace should be a struggle waged by citizens of the country rather than something for us to become actively concerned about, but the evidence is against such internal solution. When the growth process fails in a low income society, it’s exposed to risks that are hard to contain.
We should not be expecting to claim that only the economy matters but without growth peace is considerable more difficult. Civil war leave the legacy of organized killing that is hard to live down, violence and extortion have proved the profitable for the perpetrators.
The emerging pattern seems to be that guns become so cheap to be afforded by any one during conflict because many get imported through official and semiofficial channels that proportion of them leak onto the informal market. The country such as Republic of South Sudan will need around half century of peace at its present rate of growth simply to get back to the income level it had in early years of (CPA) 2005-2011
The author is a master of strategic studies at center for Peace and Development Studies University of Juba, He can be reached via Linolual69@yahoo.com
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