The wars in South Sudan after 2013 brought widespread experiences of arbitrary violence from the government and SPLA-IO hakuma. This arbitrary violence without impunity again portrayed the hakuma as god-like. In these wars, power in the hakuma shifted seismically. The wars in South Sudan from 2013 radically reshaped the security arena in the country. Through years of deadly violence, armed opposition groups became visibly incapable of challenging Salva Kiir’s leadership. The security arena has also been reconfigured to wither the SPLA and allow the rise of armed forces more directly controlled by the president and his cadre. Therefore, there have been seismic shifts in the hakuma.
At the same time, the wars of the hakuma were not devoid of the spiritual and cosmic logics. The government and armed opposition heavily relied upon rurally recruited forces which meant they had first-hand experience of witnessing conflicts in the post-CPA era. These recruits had long experience of these contestations to restrain hakuma violence by contesting its impunity, as well as the continuity and remaking of moral norms such as for revenge. For both government and opposition forces, armed conflict post-2013 often made moral sense because it satisfied the demand for revenge from past, and often recent, grievances.
Peace-making started almost as soon as the war began. Peace deals did not quieten the dead or provide judicial peace. Worse than this, they also reaffirmed structures that would create violence and armed conflict. The peace made by regional actors was to be incredibly violent. In the following two chapters we explore in more depth the consequences of the post-2013 wars and peace for the communities around the Bilnyang and connected rivers.