What Trumps the Horrors of the South Sudanese Hellscape? The Donald

Again and again, armed men have fallen upon towns and villages filled with noncombatants.  That’s exactly what happened to Leer in 2015.  Militias allied with the government, in coordination with Kiir’s troops — the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, or SPLA — attacked the town and nearby villages again and again.  Rebel forces fled in the face of the government onslaught.  Fearing execution, many men fled as well.  Women stayed behind, caring for children, the sick, and the elderly.  There was an assumption that they would be spared.  They weren’t.  Old men were killed in their homes that were then set ablaze.  Women were gang raped.  Others were taken away as sex slaves.  Whole villages were razed.  Survivors were chased into the nearby swamps, tracked down, and executed.  Children drowned in the chaos. 

Those who lived through it spent months in those waterlogged swamps, eating water lily bulbs.  When they returned home, they were confronted yet again by pitiless armed men who, at gunpoint, took what meager belongings they had left, sometimes the very clothes off children’s backs.     

This is a story that ought to be told and told and retold.  And yet here in Leer, like everywhere I went in South Sudan, I couldn’t get away from Donald Trump.  So many — South Sudanese, Americans, Canadians, Europeans — seemed to want to talk about him.  Even in this ruined shell of a town, Trump was big news.

The “Endorsement” Heard Round the World

Back in Juba, I settle down in the shade of my hotel’s bar on a Saturday morning to read the Daily Vision.  In that newspaper, there’s a story about the dire economic straits the country finds itself in and the violence it’s breeding, as well as one about violations of the 2015 peace pact.  And then there’s this gem of a headline: “Nobody Likes Donald Trump.  Not Even White Men.”

A fair number of South Sudanese men I ran into, however, did like him.  “He mixes it up,” one told me, lauding Trump’s business acumen.  “At least he speaks his mind.  He’s not afraid to say things that people do not want to hear,” said another.  I heard such comments in Juba and beyond.  It leaves you with the impression that if his campaign hits rough shoals in the U.S., Trump might still have a political future in South Sudan.  After all, this is a country currently led by a brash, cowboy-hat-wearing former guerrilla who mixes it up and is certainly not afraid to speak his mind even when it comes to threatening members of the press with death. 

Compared to Kiir, who stands accused by the United Nations of war crimes, Trump looks tame indeed.  The Republican candidate has only threatened to weaken First Amendment protections in order to make it easier to sue, not kill, reporters.  Still, the two leaders do seem like-minded on a number of issues.  Kiir’s government, for example,  is implicated in all manner of atrocities, including torture, which Trump has shown an eagerness to employ as a punishment in Washington’s war on terror.  Trump has also expressed a willingness to target not only those deemed terrorists, but also their families.  Kiir’s forces have done just that, attacking noncombatants suspected of sympathizing with the rebels, as they did during the sack of Leer. 

So it didn’t come as a surprise when, in March, the Sudan Tribune — a popular Paris-based website covering South Sudan and Sudan — reported that Salva Kiir had endorsed Trump.  It even provided readers with the official statement issued by Kiir’s office after his phone call with the U.S. presidential candidate: “Donald Trump is a true, hard-working, no-nonsense American who, when he becomes president, will support South Sudan in its democratic path and stability. South Sudan, the world newest nations [sic], is also looking forward to Donald Trump’s support and investment in almost all the sectors.”  Trump, said the Tribune, “expressed his thanks for the endorsement and said he will send his top aides to the country to discuss further the investment opportunities.”

It turned out, however, that the Tribune had been taken in by a local satirical news site, Saakam — the Onion of South Sudan — whose tagline is “Breaking news like it never happened.”  That the Tribune was fooled by the story is not as strange as it might first seem.  As journalist Jason Patinkin observed in Quartz, “Kiir’s reputation is such that many Africa watchers and journalists found the story plausible.” 

I, for one, hadn’t even bothered to read the Tribune article.  The title told me all I needed to know.  It sounded like classic Kiir.  I almost wondered what had taken him so long to reach out.  But South Sudan’s foreign ministry assured Patinkin, “There is no truth to [the story] whatsoever.”

For now, at least.

Will He Win?

There’s a fever-dream, schizophrenic quality to the war in South Sudan.  The conflict began in an orgy of violence, then ebbed, only to flare again and again.  As the war has ground on, new groups have emerged, and alliances have formed while others broke down.  Commanders switch sides, militias change allegiances.  In 2014, for example, Brigadier General Lul Ruai Koang, the rebel army’s spokesman, called out the SPLA for “committing crimes against humanity.”  Kiir, he said, had lost control of his forces and had become little more than a puppet of his Ugandan backers.  Last year, Lul split from Machar to form the “South Sudan Resistance Movement/Army” — an organization that attracted few followers.  This year, he found a new job, as the spokesman for the military he once cast as criminal.  “I promise to defend SPLA in Media Warfare until the last drop of blood,” he wrote in a Facebook post after being tapped by Kiir.  Of course, Machar himself has just recently returned to Juba to serve as first vice-president to Kiir.