Most nations are born in a flurry of optimism. South Sudan was no different. Ahead of its independence day on July 9th 2011, Salva Kiir, the country’s first and only president, promised his people “a just, equitable and prosperous nation”. Unshackled from its former overlords in the north, the new state would be “united and peaceful” within three years, its founding fathers predicted. If any nation deserved some slack, it was South Sudan. In the half-century before it seceded from Muslim-dominated Sudan its people had known little but war, famine and enslavement. A decade later, however, South Sudan is neither just, nor equitable, nor prosperous. Having scoffed at those who suggested that it would “slip into civil war as soon as our flag is hoisted” in his independence-day speech, Mr Kiir helped unleash one just two years later. It claimed perhaps 400,000 lives before a tenuous ceasefire in 2018.
SOURCE: THE ECONOMIST
