South Sudan, as the world’s youngest country, is experiencing more than just teething troubles.<br /><br />As the state marks its third birthday, following independence from the Republic of the Sudan, it is beset by war, disease and hunger, with the f word, famine on the way. <br /><br />It was never going to be a walk in the park for South Sudan after a decades-long civil war ended in 2005 and left the country impoverished with minimal infrastructure and corrupt political institutions. <br /><br />Things took a catastrophic turn for the worse in December last year when a power struggle broke out between President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, and his then Vice-President Riek Machar, a Nuer.<br /><br />The president accused Machar of plotting a coup.<br /><br />At the time both men had support across the ethnic divide, but once the battle lines were drawn the fighting became tribal. <br /><br />To date more than 10,000 people have been killed in the inter-ethnic blood-letting and 1.5 million have been displaced.<br /><br />To add to this tale of human tragedy close to seven million people are considered “acutely food insecure,” a polite way to describe at risk of famine. <br /><br />Hilde Johnson recently ended a three-year stint as Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for South Sudan: “South Sudan has been afflicted by three diseases since 2005: the cancer of corruption with the oil becoming a curse rather than a blessing, rule by the gun and not by the law, with impunity among security forces and services, and rule by a self-serving elite, for the elite, and much less for the people.”<br /><br />In April this year the world got a glimpse of the brutality of the conflict.<br /><br />In the town of Bentiu, after rebel troops had taken control, a massacre of Dinka took place in hospitals, schools, churches and mosques.<br /><br />Local radio stations urged Nuer men to rape Dinka women in a blood curdling echo of the genocide in Rwanda.<br /><br />The slayings prompted US Secretary of State John Kerry to act and a peace deal was signed in Addis Ababa in May.<br /><br />Although the fighting has calmed, many believe it is the lull before the storm.<br /><br />To add to the desperate picture the ongoing oil dispute between South Sudan and the Republic of the Sudan is adding to the crushing poverty.<br /><br />Although South Sudan is marking independence the reality is that it will be many, many decades before the country is self-reliant and many thousands will die before that day arrives.
