On South Sudan, in English. Review of the Books by Peter Martell “First Raise A Flag: How South Sudan Won the Longest War but Lost the Peace” and John Young “South Sudan’s Civil War: Violence, Insurgency and Failed Peacemaking”

2020 ◽  
pp. 109-115
Author(s):  
Anna Sharova
Keyword(s):  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
Civil War ◽  
English Language ◽  
South Sudan ◽  
International Governance ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Graham Greene ◽  
The Future ◽  
Independent Country ◽  
Spot Analysis

Anna Sharova reviews two recent books separately published by two English language authors – P. Martell and J. Young. The books are very different in style and mood. While P. Martell presents an excellent example of British journalist prose in the style of his elder compatriots Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene, who did their reporting and writing from exotic countries during fateful periods of history, J. Young offers a more academic, though no less ‘on the spot’ analysis of the situation in the youngest independent country of Africa. J. Young’s considers two possible approaches to conflict resolution as possible outcomes: non-intervention cum continuation of the war, or the introduction of international governance. P. Martell comes up with a disappointing prediction about the future of South Sudan. The war will go on, the famine will return, and the threat of genocide will not disappear. People will continue to flee the country, and refugee camps will grow. New warring groups will appear, new murders will be committed. Neighbouring states will not stop competing for influence and resources. New peacekeepers will arrive. Warlords will be accused of crimes, but, as before, they will escape punishment, while some will be promoted.

Child marriages in Rwandan refugee camps

Africa ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan de Smedt
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Young People ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Young Adolescents ◽  
Deviant Behaviour ◽  
The Future ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact

The Rwandan refugee camps in Tanzania witnessed the marriages of very young adolescents: girls as young as 13–14 married boys of 14–15 years, boys they often did not even know. These marriages usually did not last very long; after a few months many girls were forced to leave—sent away by their husband. People of both sexes and all ages, when asked about the problems in the camp, would always mention these child marriages as one of the biggest problems. They were worried not only about the loss of respect for Rwandan culture and traditional values but also about the future of the marriages and what would become of the children. This article is not based on extensive research into child marriages, but the author was able to interview a number of young people who had got married in the camps, and to collect information and the opinions of other people on these and other cases. Rather than describing marriage customs and wedding ceremonies in Rwanda, and comparing them with what took place in the refugee camps, the article aims to show the impact of (civil) war, the consequent poverty and the destruction of social structures on a community, in order to show how in these circumstances behaviour can change radically. Refugees have to build up a new life in a camp, and the new ‘society’ is likely to be different from the one they came from, with different rules and changed values. Among various examples of deviant behaviour child marriages were the most remarkable.

Abyei, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the War in Sudan’s New South

2020 ◽  
pp. 62-77
Author(s):  
Douglas H. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
New South ◽  
South Sudan ◽  
Border Region ◽  
Cultural Issues ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Common ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Political Question

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement succeeded in resolving Sudan’s oldest political question regarding the future of South Sudan, but its most obvious failure was the immediate resumption of war inside Sudan’s ‘New South’ along its border with South Sudan before the latter’s formal independence in July 2011. By focusing on resolving ‘the Southern Problem’ only, the international mediators failed to recognize the common political, economic, and cultural issues of marginalisation that linked large parts of the border region to the wider war. Conflict in Abyei preceded the outbreak of the second civil war in 1983, but the Abyei Protocol was largely an afterthought that inadequately addressed the main issues confronting the peoples of the area. The CPA as a whole failed to include robust monitoring instruments to enforce compliance, enabling Khartoum to refuse to accept any resolution to the Abyei conflict on anything but its own terms.

scholarly journals Significance of Societal Customs in the South Sudan Civil War Resolution

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-17
Author(s):  
Winnifred Bedigen
Keyword(s):  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
South Sudan ◽  
The South ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
Sustainable Peace ◽  
The Face ◽  
Contrary View ◽  
Customary Laws

The South Sudan intermittent conflicts and civil wars have attracted national, regional, and international interventions. Dominated by politically led conventional ideologies of peace approaches that revolve around suppression, negotiation, and mediation, such approaches have not achieved sustainable peace in the region. The case for societal customs presented here demonstrates a contrary view. Historically, the Nilotic Lwo ethnic groups of South Sudan, that is, Dinka and Nuer, have fought each other but utilised their customs in conflict resolution. The use of societal customs has prevailed at the grass-roots level in the face of intermittent interethnic conflicts, which feed into civil wars. This article explores the potential of societal customs in delivering sustainable peace even at a civil war level. It highlights a way of exploring further the themes (customary laws and practices) and of thinking about how/why/when these can be useful in meeting local’s interests, values, and perspectives in the civil war resolution.

Epilogue

2018 ◽  
pp. 239-248
Author(s):  
Amy Murrell Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Home State ◽  
The Future ◽  
To Come

The epilogue follows Edward and Emma Whitehurst, Eliza Bogan, Gabriel Burdett, and their families well into the postwar period. It traces all of their efforts to acquire property and a livelihood that could support them for years to come. It follows Eliza Bogan’s journey in and out of sharecropping in Phillips County, Arkansas, as well as the Whitehursts’ eventual purchase of land in Virginia and Edward’s successful property claim filed with the Southern Claims Commission. It also describes Burdett’s entrance into Republican Party politics in Kentucky and his eventual migration, along with his family, to Kansas in the 1870s, in order to escape increasing racial violence in their home state. All of these individuals survived emancipation and the Civil War. But they also discovered that their time in the refugee camps was not an end but a beginning of what would become an extended pursuit of freedom well in the future.

scholarly journals Transition Without Transformation: The Legacy of Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 340-359
Author(s):  
Gene Carolan
Keyword(s):  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
South Sudan ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
Transformative Justice ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
Legal Accountability

Abstract In recent years, the transitional justice framework has expanded to include a broader notion of transformative justice, which strives for socio-political reform in addition to legal accountability. Over the course of two civil wars, Sudan has grappled with various attempts at transition and transformation with mixed results. Though the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement brought an end to decades of North–South conflict, South Sudan’s subsequent descent into civil war has been characterised by a flawed transition and a lack of any immediate transformative potential. This paper analyses the Comprehensive Peace Agreement’s transitional mechanisms. In doing so, it explores how certain mechanisms frame the ‘meta-conflict’ about what the conflict is about, and how this can cut off a range of conflict resolution opportunities. It concludes by considering the legacy of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in contemporary Sudan and South Sudan, and how it might inform the prospective transitions in both countries.

Epilogue

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
The Public ◽  
Antebellum Era ◽  
Narrative Device ◽  
The Future

This conclusion explains how American temporalities changed after the war and sketches how expectations and anticipations of the future have alternated as the dominant view in American culture through the twentieth century to today. This chapter also shows how the short war myth, the story that Civil War Americans expected a short, glorious war at the outset, gained currency with the public and consensus among scholars during the postwar period. It contrasts the wartime expectations of individuals with their postwar memories of the war’s beginning to show how the short war myth worked as a tool for sectional reconciliation and a narrative device that dramatized the war by creating an innocent antebellum era or golden age before the cataclysm. It considers why historians still accept the myth and showcases three postwar voices that challenged it.

Prologue

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Antebellum America ◽  
Women Slaves ◽  
Military Planning ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future War

This introduction explains that looming, a nineteenth-century term for a superior mirage, shows us how visions of the future war affected antebellum America. First, some spark, an event or object, captured people’s attention. Second, a unique atmosphere elevated and enlarged that spark, making it loom greater than reality. Before the Civil War was fought or remembered, it was imagined by thousands of Americans who peered at the horizon through an apocalyptic atmosphere. Third, observers focused on it and reported what appeared to be beyond the horizon. Popular forecasts rose from leaders but also women, slaves, immigrants, and common soldiers. These imaginings shaped politics, military planning, and the economy. The prologue identifies the two prevailing temporalities of antebellum America, anticipations and expectations, and calls for more historical attention to the diverse temporalities of past people.

OMNES QVI SVNT EIVS ORDINIS A POMPEIO EVOCANTVR: THE PROCONSUL POMPEIUS’ SENATORIAL MEETING IN 49 b.c.

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Roman M. Frolov
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Republican Rome ◽  
The Future ◽  
Scholarly Attention

In his Bellum Ciuile, Caesar reports the events of 1 January 49 with these words (1.3.1): misso ad uesperum senatu omnes qui sunt eius ordinis a Pompeio euocantur. laudat <promptos> Pompeius atque in posterum confirmat, segniores castigat atque incitat. When the Senate had been dismissed towards dusk, all who belonged to that order were summoned by Pompeius. He praised the determined and encouraged them for the future while criticizing and stirring up those who were less eager to act. This meeting has not attracted much scholarly attention and admittedly for a good reason: other circumstances of the outbreak of the Civil War are, perhaps, more significant for understanding the events as well as the intentions and decisions of the political actors. The importance of this gathering lies, however, not so much in what its role might have been in the developments of the year 49 but rather in the context of the phenomenon of the promagistrates’ interference in the domestic politics of Late Republican Rome.

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