Is Government Corruption Blocking South Sudan’s Path to Peace?

In this compelling episode of "At the Boundary," guest author  Dr. Steven C. Roach delves into the challenges and resilience of South Sudan, drawing from his book "South Sudan's Fateful Struggle: Building Peace in a State of War." Roach examines the devastating impacts of the civil war, the corruption that plagued Sudan’s transitional government, and the role of civil society in fostering hope amidst chaos.

Discover how civil society actors are striving to establish war crimes courts and truth commissions to pave the way for justice and lasting peace. Roach’s insights offer a crucial perspective on one of the world’s most complex and ongoing conflicts.

Link to South Sudan's Fateful Struggle: Building Peace in a State of War.

At the Boundary from the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida, features global and national security issues we’ve found to be insightful, intriguing, fascinating, maybe controversial, but overall just worth talking about.

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Transcript

Jim Cardoso: 0:00

Jim, hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of at the boundary, the podcast from the global and national security Institute at the University of South Florida. I'm Jim Cardoso, Senior Director for GNSI, and your host for at the boundary. This will be our last planned episode of 2024 it's been a non stop year of growth and activity at GNSI. And the team will take a well deserved holiday break to rest up for what will be a busy 2025 over the past year, we hosted five major conferences covering topics such as artificial intelligence in the era of strategic competition, envisioning peace in the Middle East and rethinking Afghanistan going forward. We took ownership of the Journal of strategic security at top 20 military journal, and in partnership with USF libraries, published four issues under the GNSI Banner. We published 12 monthly decision briefs to concisely inform policy makers on the key issues of the day, as well as longer research articles on Iran, Israel, conflict and resistance in Venezuela. We also stood up the future strategist program, providing outside the classroom experience to inspire and prepare students for careers in global and national security. That's just the tip of the iceberg of activity, and there'll be lots more to come next year. Today we'll listen as Dr tat schnaufer strategy and research manager at GNSI interviews, Dr Steven roach. Dr Roach is Professor of International Relations at USF School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies. Among his many accomplishments, he was country expert on USA IDs, democracy, human rights and governance work team in South Sudan. This experience helped fuel his latest book, South Sudan's fateful struggle building peace in a state of war. Stephen and Tad will use his book as a framework to discuss how Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement was supposed to bring an end to their second Civil War by creating an autonomous southern state, but failed to resolve the effects of rebel factionalism, party infighting and corruption.

Tad Schnaufer: 2:37

Hey, welcome Steven to the podcast. Thank you, Ted, so today we're gonna be talking about your book on South Sudan. And it really seems like, you know, looking across the literature and the that this book really has a great fit in filling a gap between what happens before the Civil War what happened after, and kind of, given that history and background, is that the purpose is that, why you really,

Dr. Steven Roach: 2:55

yeah, that was the purpose, really, to provide a comprehensive book looking back from what has occurred right at the present, all the way as far back as about the 1820s which is actually further back than where most people start, in fact, really to the slave trade and whatnot. So I sort of made a couple of determinations as to where to start on that and that slave trade, but also just the Ottoman Empire, oppression and what was going on in terms of those dynamics was really critical to understand just, just where the southern Sudanese identity began to emerge. So there's kind of an implicit message there was to try to trace the southern Sudanese identity got to go all the way back to that time. And one could even take it back further than that, certainly, but, but I think in in terms of just having a book that is, you know, comprehensive, but not too long about South Sudan, yeah, because you

Tad Schnaufer: 3:44

just don't see that many books in South Sudan particularly, and then one that covers everything is great, great addition. But before that, what got you interested in South Sudan, and what's your experience with it, personally? Yeah.

Dr. Steven Roach: 3:56

So I first went back to South Sudan in 2013 with a close friend colleague who had actually been doing some work on it, and he got me very interested in it. My initial interest actually sort of lied in a master's thesis on Sudan. But I didn't know that much really about the southern region itself. Was there was a lot of focus on the air forces the NIF, for instance, and the emergence of FAMU al Hassan Bashir. But I really didn't know that much about the Christian south, and my friend did, who's also a Christian, but also is somebody who really was interested in the politics of the South, what was what had emerged in terms of a new state? So we went back together in 2013 the summer, which was a period in which there was relative stability, which is actually very scarce to say, as they'll find out, precisely and but we felt the tensions that were emerging even in that summer of 2013 the Vice President had just been sacked by the President, and that was a big deal. And that would later come into play in terms of a rebellion on December. 15th, 2013, just six months later, actually, and and then, of course, I we came back south Sudan. Began to we made the decision to try to write an article, publish an article, on South Sudan and the independence and self determination and the success of the regime. But when civil war broke out, of course, that all changed. We began to look at what the failure was, and we started to sort of derive it from the Comprehensive Peace Agreement which had brought in peace to Sudan in 2005 had brought an end to the second civil war in Sudan and and then ultimately we came back in 2016 just after Bush salvakir had dropped. Had driven out mashar from Juba. It was a very violent conflict, and was one in which people lost their lives, and some humanitarian workers, in fact, and one un worker actually lost their life. And there was a lot of attention paid to South Sudan at this time. It was the end of a very brief period of peace was worked out, and the first agreement on the resolution of conflict in South Sudan were axis, and this, this summer, was critical. We we saw a difference in South Sudan that we hadn't seen before. That difference was that the people now were very, very tense, and there was more thievery. There was more chaos on the streets. It was very difficult to walk. We like to walk on the streets a little bit a little bit more than what the humanitarian workers would do. And later my my contemporaries and my cohorts and USAID, which I would go on to work with and as a country expert in 2019, 2020, just before the pandemic. So we were able, I got recruited by them to perform expertise that, in this case, finally took me out of Juba, and I was able to get to the different cities in the north and also the south of South Sudan, which really, in this case, brought a different perspective on things, the people and whatnot, and we engaged in hundreds of interviews, we did surveys, we conducted focus groups, we looked at, in this case, the success of some of the work that USAID was doing in some of these cities, and also looking at UN compounds where they're prisoners of civilians, the UN In this case was focused pretty much on just protecting civilians at this point, and not state building per se. And that really gave me the practical experience. And so I became much, much more deeply interested in writing a book. And this book was the product, really, of those trips and primarily my USAID experience. I felt behooved to write something about that experience, especially having interviewed so many people and and met so many interesting people, local people and whatnot. Well

Tad Schnaufer: 7:51

and in the book, you start off going back to that history piece. So why don't we take a look at those in a sense, this first couple chapters looking going back to the Ottoman times, and then the Egyptian and British rule and colonization over the Sudanese,

Dr. Steven Roach: 8:04

yes, and so I, again, I felt that the Ottoman Empire was a good place to start. In the 1820s 1830s we began to see what would ultimately become more of a conflict between the Arabs and some of ultimately, what would become the Christian south. At this time, we began to see how some of the leaders, indigenous leaders of Sudan, were jockeying for power, emerging, in this case, being appointed by the Ottomans to rule some of their local affairs, and ultimately, most importantly, by the 1870s 1880s there was a nationalist movement that emerged, the Mahdi movement, which was the first real indigenous Sudanese nationalist group to emerge in that area, and and they drove out the British they drove out this, this Premier and very well known commander, last name Gordon, who really was very much spearheading the movement to Christianize the area and to try to sort of not move out Islam, but in this case, to try to set up a larger area that would pressure the Arab by, in this case, Christianizing more of the south and more some of the North. But when he did this in this case, he actually inspired a lot of people to go back to their their Islamist roots, and that's where the the Mati in this case emerged. Why

Tad Schnaufer: 9:32

did Sudan's a large country, and why did Islam take more hold up north and northern Sudan, and then do Christians more in the South? Was there something that divided that land there

Dr. Steven Roach: 9:42

in Khartoum, there was, there was more where the Nile meets, the white and the permanent meet. There was more of an is what we like to call, sort of an Islamic influence, maybe even a civilization up there. And there was also a lot of trading that went on that in which, in this case, the Islamic the. Traders and still permitted, and still, in this case, something that slave trading, in other words, was something that was still permitted by some of the the as Islamist or the Arabs that were actually conducting some of the trade in that area, and so they were kind of counted on to sort of do that kind of work, or in this case, to perpetuate it. And this, again, just began to rub up against what the British began to do in their very early stages of ultimately colonizing the area, which was to not only Christianize the south and evangelical groups down into the south, but to also, in this case, control some of the trade routes for ivory and other very important natural resources. And so really, ultimately, what it came down to was that the North began to establish an identity as sort of an Islamic identity, primarily because of some of the Arab valleys and Arab influence that concentrated itself inside the large city of Khartoum. And ultimately the South was left very undeveloped. The South was just a country where, even prior to the 1870s there really wasn't any sort of southern identity. What to speak of. There were just tribal groups that were living in relative peace with one another, some skirmishes, but nothing in this case that was on a violent scale. And so there was nothing really in this case to speak of in terms of a southern identity. The north, in this case was really Islamist and really Arab primarily because of those factors that I mentioned. And the British had to play off that. But the British felt that they had an opportunity in the south to, in this case, rival, if not pressure the or, I should say, further control the north. And that was in this case to ultimately impose what would, what would become known as the indirect rule in the south, under their their colonial empire, under their condominium with Egypt was called the Anglo Egyptian condominium, in which, in this case, there was sort of a partnership between the two, the Two powers to control the affairs and rule over the area that was controlled primarily all the way down to some of the southern areas of southern Sudan, like the bar El Al Ghazal and but these areas were very, very uncivilized or not controlled by any sort of outside force. It was all very much indigenous in that sense, right? Limited

Tad Schnaufer: 12:25

infrastructure, not a lot of roads. It's just hard to get to as well. And now, what would the British interest late 1800s now, obviously, oil hasn't been discovered in South Sudan yet. That obviously that's going to play a factor later on in our discussion, and you touched on in the book. But what was the British interest into another limited extent, Egypt being a client state of the British at this time, but working with them. What are their interests in Sudan at this time?

Dr. Steven Roach: 12:50

Yeah, primarily was ivory. The ivory trade was very big at this time, but also in this case, getting control over some of the trade routes of other essential commodities, but gaining control over the Nile really meant, in this case, controlling the trade routes all the way from mediterranecy all the way down into Africa, and really, in that sense, taking control of a very important chunk of the African continent. And mind you, at this time, there was finally, sort of the emergence of the unofficial policy of colonialism, an 1885 agreement, which, in this case, essentially carved out all of Africa, the Berlin Yeah, the Berlin Conference of 1885 and Britain played a very important role with that, and they were trying to use their control over the Nile to try to make more inroads from

Tad Schnaufer: 13:42

Egypt to South Africa, right? Yeah, they had a pretty good stretch there, yes. But with that, you know, going in a little bit deeper. So how are they able to play different ethnic groups and religious groups off each other to maintain control? Because the British are not well known for doing this across Africa and other regions of the world as well, to maintain that informal control. And then what's, you know, how does that play on the identities of the Sudanese?

Dr. Steven Roach: 14:04

Yeah, they had, they had the British set up the system where they they had these, these loose patrols that would go out into the hinterlands of southern part of Sudan, which was not very well controlled, but they would send out these patrol systems, and these patrols would either instigate conflict between the different ethnic groups that they would play an intermediary role in terms of conflicting so they've gained control over the conflict that they actually created, and also making deals with chiefs of these tribal groups trying To, and this case, become closer to one ethnic group over another, treating one in this case as, let's say, a little bit more superior than the other. This This was a classic facet of colonialism, and especially under British colonialism. So what ultimately ended up being the case is that a lot of the British Empire. Began to place more emphasis on establishing and brokering relations with the Dinka, the real majority group, and the newer was the other minority group, sort of got the short end of the stick and began to not get the sort of privileges that the British would provide, monetary privileges, other sorts of privileges that would sort of explain how the dynamic of conflict between the different ethnic groups began to really emerge at this time. So when we talk about the politicization of tribal conflict, one can really sort of point to these early stages of the condominium, or in this case, British colonialism, in that area under indirect rule. And these patrols, these governing patrols, that would go out to the different sort of outer reaches of the different parts that that brings us up, sort of to the point, the very sort of first critical point in the 20th century where you got Egyptian independence. And when you got Egyptian independence, then, of course, you began to see really the emergence of a South and North identity in Sudan. And that was played out in a way in which the Sudanese nationalists, who emerged primarily in the 1920s taking inspiration from the Al Mahdi movement. Earlier on there, I think, were actually still some Almaty leaders that were still around and able to sort of provide some influence in that regard, that they took inspiration from the Egyptian nationalists. And it wasn't as if the Sudanese Egyptian nationalists were working really closely together, but they were, in this case, working in a way in which they found a common enemy, which was the British. And now, of course, the much of it fell to the Sudanese nationalists to work out some sort of agreement. So this the the British were trying to sutinize. They had this policy called ptonization of the area to try to control it. And that meant, in this case, controlling the some, some of the military in that area, through various deals that they would put together, but also the educational system. But primarily, as I had suggested, what they did ultimately was to sort of privilege the Sudanese rulers in the north, or focused more attention on them in terms of providing them more educational opportunities and other sorts of infrastructural benefits, such as roads and other sorts of things that would actually develop the country. So they really were focused on development in the north south. It was really about sort of essentially giving sort of the meat and scraps to the south, providing no real substantive remedy to the south, not trying to develop it. In short, trying to keep it oppressed, trying to keep it undeveloped in ways in which they could control it further. But as they did, that they did is they drove a wedge between the North and the South, and ultimately, in this case, they would help sort of spur a new southern movement, because the southern movement now saw also their enemy in the north. Their enemy in the North was about ready to take over the state, and they eventually did. And ultimately that would play out in a way in which the new Sudanese state would become sort of the new enemy for the North. But this all was, in this case, building what we would like to call a national consciousness, and the southern it wasn't nearly as systematic as well formed as we saw in the north, but it was starting to emerge in the 1950s through various

Tad Schnaufer: 18:33

events. So going back to the beginning of that piece of the late 1800s you had the British there you have people like Winston, Churchill and other people who have these experiences in Sudan, the British Empire is very far flung at that time, but towards the end of World War Two, jumping forward 60 years to the end of World War 219, 45 the British Empire is waning. They're losing control of a lot of their colonial territories. A lot of independence movements are on the rise, and then Sudan's able to achieve independence in 1955 so what's that look like in the the world war two time frame for Sudan, as it's starting to go towards independence, and again, that dual identity within again, Sudan is a large nation, but you have this the Sudanese that are in the north, which are more Islamic, based out of hartun. And then you have the Sudanese in the South that are more Christian. Again, a lot of ethnic groups in there too. We'll discuss those, as you mentioned, with the DHS and the Nur but, but focused in Juba.

Dr. Steven Roach: 19:25

Yeah. So the policy civilization worked for the North. There was much more military discipline that was actually conferred on to the the military in the north, and they, they, in essence, benefited from that, and it would actually get them to realize that they had the kind of capabilities as a group to oppose the British Empire, that they could sort of rise up, just like the Egyptian nationalists did earlier on, to oppose the British and and really there was also one other thing I should mention. And with with regards to this emergence of Sudanese nationalism, but ultimately, how it led to a new state. They the partnership, or I should say, the loose kind of friendly ties that they had with the Egyptian nationalists was such that even by the mid 1930s Egypt still did not have full control, or the Egyptian state didn't have full control over a lot of its bases, a lot of areas, Suez Canal, for instance. So the Sudanese policy provided this sort of lever for the Sudanese nationalist to begin to really pressure the British to the point where, as you pick up what you had talked about, to make it no longer in their interest to control the area they they found it too expensive to do so they didn't have the public support back at home anymore about maintaining their colonial presence in that in that area, there were a lot of factors that came into play in terms of, ultimately the British relenting and simply sort of standing back and then handing over the reins to the Sudanese nationalists. So it was a relatively peaceful transition of power. Actually, it's Sudanese independence. The British really sort of stepped aside and just sort of handed them the reins and and, and, and that sort of that, that point in time, was definitive, I think, for for how the relations between the South and North would play out. Because

Tad Schnaufer: 21:34

you have, again, we have this divide. Again. It's a religious divide, it's an ethnic divide. It's geography based. You know, Sudan proper has a long coastline in the Red Sea, which makes it pretty strategic. And we see a lot of interface with some of the superpowers during the Cold War because of that as well. But what after independence in 1955 which you said, relatively non violent independence movement. Unfortunately, violence is not does not remain scarce in South or in Sudan because of the Civil War, the first Civil War. So what's that look like? How do we go from relatively peaceful independence movement to a decade long, over a decade long civil war?

Dr. Steven Roach: 22:11

Yeah, the the massacre and torrent was was crucial for understanding, first of all, the official emergence of a Sudanese nationalist movement, a South Sudanese nationalist, excuse me, and it was one where you began to see the split between those who wanted some type of autonomous agreement honored, or some type of autonomous unit in The South that would be recognized, and those who would ultimately become more radical and more militarized, those in this case that believed that peace with South Sudan, or in this case, trust in and the Sudanese government, was not something that could be attainable, or in This case was really, in this case, achievable. What ultimately happened was that we, we began to see the tensions emerge between these two groups and militarized group, which would ultimately come known as the anyana, and a much more moderated group that was led by Lagu and by 1962 the anyana sort of declared themselves separate from that movement, and in this case, declared that they wanted to seek secession. And so that was the start of the first civil war in Sudan, when they began to attack government forces. And then there was, of course, military engagement between the anyana, one, we'll call them at this point. And this Sudanese government led by nimeri, and this played out over a long period of time, of course, 10 years. But by the time you get to the early 1970s the anyanna is getting a little bit tired. People are getting tired of the anyana in terms of not being able to deliver on their message. And people are not seeing very much progress. And nemeri is starting to make these overtures. Murray being the president of Sudan at this time for peace. And so we began to work and sometimes sort of broker these sort of behind the scene deals with Lagu was the more moderate person still standing, if you want, still, in this case, representing a peaceful solution to the conflict, and one in which, in this case, autonomy, would be the settlement. And they did reach a negotiation, they were able to, in this case, broker agreement, and there was not too much outside help on the United States was still kind of opposed and to marry and whatnot. There was a lot of internal agreement between the two. The Anya agreed, this case, to disarm and to be retrained into the Sudanese forces. This was something very dramatic. This was something that maybe signified a new beginning, but it was all for naught, obviously, because the new regional southern government would. To ultimately collapse and fail, primarily, not because, not on its own, but because, numerically, the president Sudan began to orchestrate these these plans and these deals, and that were very nefarious and very oppressive. And ultimately, by the end in 1983 numeric had reimposed Islamic rule on the south. And that was something that became sort of a battle cry for the southern rebels. And also, in this case, the coalesce to the anyana too. But in this case led to something much more important, which was the Sudan People's Liberation Army movement, the SPLA SPLM. So it was something that also

Jim Cardoso: 25:41

allowed leadership

Dr. Steven Roach: 25:44

that was more visionary, that was more intellectually rooted, that was much more broad based, even more populist, if you want to use that term. And that was John Granger, who had fought with the Sudanese forces as a colonel, and now in this case, felt portrayed by that Islamic law, but also amongst other things. And he felt in this case, now, Mary was simply using the South as a pawn to try to gain leverage in the world. And so in 1983 May of 1983 they formed the SPLM Syrian people's liberation movement. And that was, of course, an exciting point. The Onion two, sort of eventually got behind the SPLM and grang used his influence and his intellect to be able to communicate a message and a manifesto that brought together all the different tribal ethnicities were, in this case, that neutralized the ethnic dimension.

Tad Schnaufer: 26:40

For

Dr. Steven Roach: 26:43

long, but for a time here Well,

Tad Schnaufer: 26:46

and that's an interesting point, is we're getting ready to discuss the second Civil War as we go into the late 18 or 1980s into the 1990s and you have all these different players. And it's one thing throughout the book you cover extremely well, is showing that dynamic nature of Sudan's politics, Sudanese politics, and then South Sudan's politics as well. You have all these different groups. You have many different ethnic groups over the major ones, but you have a lot of competing factors. And then you have people, as we'll discuss here shortly, people who are allied for a short period of time, groups that are fighting together, then they end up fighting each other, then they come back together. And it's a maze that you have to constantly be paying attention on. It's very complex, and it seems like that's something within as we get to your policy recommendations, talk a little bit more. But people in the West, it's hard for us to conceptualize such divide and such tribalism and different ethnic groups. Where, how do you you know? How do you form a function government with so many competing factions,

Dr. Steven Roach: 27:41

yeah. And so ultimately, what happened with inside the SPLM was that grangs hold over it broke down and broke down along ethnic lines, primarily, in this case, react, mashar teni, react, mashar, or react, we'll call him and La Mako, who's a chaluk, got together, and they decided that Greg's leadership was not only authoritarian, it was out of touch, but it was also, in this case, not the way forward for the Sudanese people and we. They needed more democracy inside the SPLM. They needed these other sorts of things that grang simply was not providing them, at least from their perspective. And so they staged revolt in 1991 the tour revolt, and they formed their own SPLM to oppose grangs SPLM. And so what happened after that, as you had just alluded to was that mashar broke away from LA McCall by 1993 then formed his own faction and and then ultimately tried to collaborate with Khartoum, the Sudanese forces against graing, which of course, gives us sort of the south on South war in that regard. And this kind of went back and forth until about 1998 or the 1999 when grang, in this case, was no longer grang had lost his appeal, became sort of persona non grata with his own movement, and grang recognized that, and ultimately brought him back into the fold after mashar pleaded with them to go back into the SPLM that was run by grang in 2001 and so there was unity again, back in SPLM after about a 10 year period. And 10 years a decade, I guess that's that's one of those sort of, you know, important magical markers here. And then that got the international community interested. People began to see gorang as somebody that they could actually back, somebody that was actually a Democrat, somebody in this case, that was a unifying figure, that was even liberal figure, was somebody that, in this case, espoused a lot of. Rural Western values. And so the West got behind them and and when they did this case, they they got together, and this this case, formed the Troika, which was the United States, Norway and Britain, to mediate the negotiations, all the different agreements, protocols that ultimately came together in what was called the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005 worked out border disputes, not entirely. They left open this case, some of the border disputes, especially in ABA, which was very important, but they did actually settle on a provision in which the southern people would get their autonomy, and also a choice as to whether or not to stay autonomous within the existing state of Sudan, or to in this case, succeed. And so there was a big push by gorang, initially, to further unity with Sudan and and he called this word the new Sudan. And the new Sudan would be a democratic, unified Sudan, one that, in this case, did not discriminate along religious or ethnic lines, so it was very secular in that sense. Unfortunately, Greg lost his life in 2005 in helicopter crash, which was somewhat mysterious circumstances the summer of 2005 not long after the conference of peace agreement had been signed. So that passed the reigns on to salvagir, his sort of second in command and salvaged, as some people might know, is still the president of South Sudan. So he's been in charge for quite some time. So he initially said support Coronavirus vision the new Sudan. But by 2008 it was clear that the Sudanese government was not entirely to be trusted, and he began to realize that the SPLM had to consolidate itself. And so we pushed for elections. And so we got elections. Ultimately, after some delays and rain delays, put it that way, into 2010 and there was elections that a lot of people criticized. They felt that the SPLM was manipulating the the elections, not ballot stuffing, but this case, intimidating people to not vote and vote and and whatnot. So they kind of strong armed the the elections and consolidated. And they wanted to do that because they wanted to show the rest of the world that they were in charge. They're in power. And they could, in this case, move to the next step, which in this case, was secession, and which is what they did. The secession flowed naturally out of the elections and and it was agreed to, and they they eventually did so in January of 2011 so

Tad Schnaufer: 32:42

in this book published late in 2023 so we've kind of covered what has happened since with the postponement elections, guys. Where you pretty much leave off is that, hey, the elections are, you know, were set for 2024 they got postponed. They got postponed again in 26 but what you know, to kind of wrap up this concept and going to the title of the book, building peace in a state of war. So what's that look like now for South Sudan, right?

Dr. Steven Roach: 33:10

It means one, the only way to get rid of the violence is to focus a little bit more on the inter communal violence outside the cities, you get raging conflicts. You have a lot of militias, non governmental militias, that are, in effect, being financed by outside sources, that are attacking the civilian populations, and that are really causing a lot of mayhem, a lot of violence, which the government simply cannot control fully. Which suggests, in this case, that that you do need more outside help to try to provide the government with the capabilities to be able to to control that inter communal violence. Because, in fact, it is in the government's interest to do so, and they would do so if they had the finances, but they don't. You know, soldiers are not paid their their salaries usually deferred, or they're paid only $15 a month. In this case, and it's very, very minimal. There's almost no incentive to fight on the government side. So the government needs, of course, the resources to be able to pay more their their servants. But again, this gets us back to corruption right in terms of how much money actually has been making it into uh.

Tad Schnaufer: 34:17

So how do you break the loop? I mean, if you have outside aid coming in more resources, but the government's corrupt. It's it's not just it's got to be resources with some sort of conditions or something to be able to incentivize, like President cure, to take a risk on democratizing. Or the

Dr. Steven Roach: 34:35

question is whether or not you can do it with cure and power. And you know, my opinion on that is that I don't think you can do it with care and power, and I don't think you can with a lot of the existing elites. The status quo has not worked, and it hasn't worked for that country many years, but yet we keep on falling back on it. What you would need and this, this. This requires a new thinking. This requires something where, if you're going. The vision for the country of peace and democracy, you're going to have to have some rethinking of the contract between the people and the government, because this was never, in this case, discussed in any way that would suggest that South Sudan had a long term vision in

Jim Cardoso: 35:27

We hope you enjoyed this intriguing conversation between Dr Stephen Roach, author of South Sudan's fateful struggle building peace in a state of war, and GNSI strategy and research manager, Dr Tad schnaufer, with all the headlines focused on the Middle East, Ukraine and the Far East, it's important to take into account instability in Africa and consider its effect on regional and global security. Thanks for joining us today. If you liked the podcast, please share with your colleagues and network. You can follow GNSI on our LinkedIn and X accounts at USF, underscore GNSI, and check out our website as well. At usf.edu/gnsi, from the entire team at the global and national security Institute. We wish you, your family and your friends, the most wonderful of holiday seasons. We can't wait to rejoin you on January 13 with more interesting guests, deep analysis and an unwavering commitment to keep you informed on what's going on in the world of global and national security. So in an adjustment to my normal closing that's going to wrap up this year of at the boundary next year, we'll continue to feature global and national security issues we found to be insightful, intriguing, fascinating, maybe controversial, but overall, just worth talking about. I'm Jim Cardoso, and we'll see you in 2025 at the boundary. You.