Proven wrong
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By Zechariah Manyok Biar
June 29, 2013 - After the failed states report came out in June, 2013
showing South Sudan as ranking forth of the failed states, a friend
whom I did not know before but knew me through my writing, sent me an
e-mail with a link to the article I wrote in 2010. The article I wrote
in 2010 is entitled: “Will South Sudan be a failed State?”
In that article, I doubted the belief that South Sudan would be a
failed state. Now that it has failed, my friend wanted to politely
remind me that I was wrong in my prediction. I completely agree with
him that I was wrong. But I will briefly show in this article what I
based my prediction on and I will again make another prediction that
could still make me wrong next year.
I based my prediction on the SPLM/A records of self-rule in the bush
during the civil war. This logic is shown by this paragraph from the
above motioned article as published by different media websites: “The
fact that the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/A (SPLM/A) managed to
control Southerners during the war would have been a good indicator on
how South Sudanese can rule themselves. SPLM/A was undoubtedly one of
the most organized rebel groups over the last two decades. SPLM/A even
had better human rights records, compared to the government in
Khartoum. SPLM/A was able to educate its soldiers during the
liberation war not to kill the prisoners of war (POWs). After the
signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005, SPLM/A set
free thousands of the POWs of Sudanese army. Those freed POWs are
still alive today. How many POWs from SPLA did the government in
Khartoum release? None.”
I strongly believed in what I said in that article and I still believe
in it today, despite our current failed status. There are examples
showing how SPLM/A could make people change within its ranks during
the war. When the civil war started in 1983, SPLA soldiers thought
that anybody captured from the enemy could be killed. They killed some
POWs from the Sudan armed forces (SAF) before senior SPLM/A leaders,
including the current President Salva Kiir, learned about what was
taking place in front lines and started disapproving of it. The
practice immediately stopped, resulting in the keeping of thousands of
the Sudanese POWs who were set free after the signing of CPA in 2005.
Furthermore, after the SPLM/A split of 1991, the killing of members of
tribes that were regarded as enemies by each side in the split took
place. Many important people were killed in less than two months. But
senior SPLM/A leaders, including the then Commander Salva Kiir,
started condemning the practice within the SPLA and it stopped
immediately.
The above examples show how South Sudanese can quickly change bad
practices when they understand that top leaders disapprove of them. If
words are combined with action today, then change for the better will
be realized in all sectors of our society, pushing the country to a
better position in the rating of next year. I strongly believe in
this. Because of this belief, I will still make a prediction that
South Sudan will move away from the Sudan in the ranking of failed
states next year by at least one point.
South Sudanese are competitive people who do not like what makes them
look bad. They will aim higher next year partly to show that South
Sudan is better than the Sudan. But above all, they will aim higher in
order to improve their images abroad.
We know that we will now all be seen as failed people regardless of
individual’s achievements. Our leaders will now find it difficult to
condemn bad behaviors of other countries without being reminded of the
failure of South Sudan. I cannot now accuse Kenyans of pretending to
be holier than us, like I did some years ago when they accused our
government of being weak. I know they will prove me wrong by pointing
out that Kenya is graded higher than South Sudan when it comes to
failed states. There will be no way I will prove them wrong in such a
statement.
If we try to take refuge in the idea that South Sudan is very young
and we use China as the example by saying that even China which is
more than 2000 years old still has bad records in human rights, then
Kenyans are going to say that the irony of the example we have given
is that what matters is not how old the country is, but its
determination to change. If it is the age of the country that matters,
they will argue, then human right records in China would have been
better than those of the United States since the USA is less than 300
years old.
If, on the other hand, we dismiss every report like we often do
without questioning the methodology used to arrive at a particular
conclusion, then countries like Kenya whom we had been accusing of
being the same with us will say that they are better than us because
our way of reacting to issues show that we are not even able to
differentiate fiction from reality.
We are aware now that it will be difficult for us to find excuses that
will make us feel better or look equal to better countries that are
not Somalia. Somalia which made our leaders angry in 2010 when Dr. Lam
Akol compared South Sudan with it is just three points away from us
now. So, we know now that we are not better than Somalia.
This reality will make our leaders work hard to move South Sudan up
next year by one point, if the anger in 2010 meant we did not like to
be like Somalia. They will achieve this by targeting at least two
issues that make South Sudan a failed state and improve on them. I
know Sudan will not do this because it is, as Dr. Garang once said,
too deformed to reform. South Sudan will be deformed by choice but not
because its leaders are too deformed to reform like ones in the Sudan.
I am aware that making another failed prediction will make me lose
confidence of my readers. But I am not afraid to take risk again in
making another prediction because I know South Sudanese are
competitive people who do not like to be seen as failures. I will be
surprised if we do not improve by at least one point next year.
Zechariah Manyok Biar can be reached at [email protected]
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