Craze and Marko attribute the conflicts in Warrap State after the 2018 Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) to the agreement’s new centralised control over state and county appointments. As much as this caused conflict, it was nothing new. As described in Chapters 5 and 6, the CPA had radically reformed rights over land, labour, property and resources. In the ambiguities around land, this had increased the importance of the appointment of the governor and commissioners, and communities feared when they suspected that these appointees would not recognise their rights. At the same time, these appointments in practice were almost wholly made by Juba, allowing centralised control. This was particularly the case in areas like Warrap State where the presidency had an intimate knowledge and private interest. Chapters 6 and 7 intentionally trace conflicts, post the CPA, through periods of war, and after R-ARCSS, to show this continuity.
Yet, in Warrap State there was a radical change to political dynamics post-2013. This was most visible in Tonj North. The radical shift after 2013 was the cementing of control of the security arena by Salva Kiir and a Warrap State cadre. While Kiir had been president before, others in the government and SPLA had restrained his control over the security forces. The post-2013 wars changed this. As described in Chapter 11, the years of war provided an opportunity for Kiir to wither the power of the SPLA and develop more directly loyal forces. Initially this included the Mathiang Anyoor under the leadership of Paul Malong. Recruitment in Dinka-speaking areas of Bahr el Ghazal in 2012 created this force which fought the Sudan government, and then for the government in Juba. In 2014, Paul Malong was appointed SPLA Chief of Staff. However, by 2016, Paul Malong’s power threatened Kiir – and Kiir feared his rebellion. This encouraged Kiir’s further support of Akol Koor Kuc (from Tonj North, Warrap State) who had been Director of Internal Security Bureau (ISB) of the National Security Service (NSS) from 2013. According to Craze, ‘under Kuc’s leadership, the NSS transformed from an intelligence gathering agency into one of the most efficient military organizations in the country’.
1 Joshua Craze, ‘“And Everything Became War”: Warrap State Since the Signing of the R-ARCSS’, HSBA Briefing Paper (Small Arms Survey, 2022). In 2017, there was a new commander from Warrap State appointed to head the Presidential Guard, replacing Marital Ciennoung Yol (from Lakes State). The post-2013 period, and especially post-2016, saw the rise of national power in the hands of sons of Warrap State and the communities to the west of the Bilnyang. Initially there was close cooperation between the leadership of National Security and the new leadership of the Presidential Guard.
The growing power of the Warrap State leaders, mixed with land and military labour regimes built on autochthony, caused increased conflict. Some of this, especially in relation to Greater Gogrial, is already documented in Chapter 6. The rise of these Warrap State leaders put particular strains on the martial youth as these leaders sought to recruit armed forces from this shared but limited pool. From 2012, there were repeated, often forced, recruitment campaigns, with chiefs both assisting and resisting. For example, Craze suggests that as many as 10,000 men were recruited between September 2018 and August 2019.
2 Ibid. Chapter 6 focused on conflict and peace in Gogrial after the CPA into the post-2013 period. Here, instead, we consider Tonj North County.
In 2020, there was a controversial disarmament campaign in Warrap State. The heavy-handed disarmament in some communities was understood as certain army leaders contesting the power of Akol Koor Kuc through attacks on this community. In clashes that followed, forces of the National Security Service and the national army supported different sides.
3 Ibid. Armed conflict has sliced across communities in Tonj North ever since. Lots of these conflicts were based on histories of past grievances such as elopement, cattle theft or individual killings, and escalated to conflicts that killed hundreds.
Destructive, new patterns of violence have been a constant concern. There was not only cattle raiding, but also numerous targeted assassinations, the burning of
tukals, the killing of children, the blockading of access to aid and markets, and the cutting of fruit trees. Dinka norms of war suggest that women and children should not be the targets of armed conflict.
4 Naomi Pendle, ‘Competing Authorities and Norms of Restraint: Governing Community-Embedded Armed Groups in South Sudan’, International Interactions 47:5 (2021): 873–897. Beyond this, targets that could also harm children and women, such as the domestic space of the
tukal, are also out-of-bounds in legitimate warfare. The violation of such norms in the 2020–22 conflicts was often interpreted as a declaration that peace was no longer imaginable or possible; as norms of war were violated, there was no process in the cultural archive that could resolve the conflict to make peace. The patterns of violence themselves also imagined long-term harm and antagonism. For example, the cutting of fruit trees was unprecedented and seemingly designed to create hunger for years into the future. It was an act of violence that imagined a long war.
Unending wars had their utility. Craze makes the astute observation that these armed conflicts in Warrap State incorporated the patterns of violence from the national civil war into the wars of the home.
5 Ibid. The wars may have introduced new imaginings of what violence was possible, but the making of unending wars was also instrumental for those who wanted to claim land and labour through imagined communities. Unending armed conflicts, or the imagining of such, not only divided communities but remade these boundaries as static and inter-generational. These newly made bounded communities could justify greater claims on land and labour.
Throughout these ongoing wars people kept trying or claiming to make peace. Warrap State governors repeatedly carried out ‘peace tours’. These peace tours included a series of summary executions; their peace was physically very violent. Governors showed that they had the power to kill with impunity and to step outside of the law. People perceived some governors’ interventions as partisan, and subsequent armed conflict was partly defensive against such power. During these years, government-initiated peace meetings were also held. Yet, people often had little confidence in these gatherings. Armed conflict continued.