In July of 2011 when South Sudan gained independence, there was a world of promise.

While the country ranked near the bottom in almost all human development indicators, it appeared to have shed the chains of a despotic government in Khartoum and had natural resources and an environment that gave it great potential for development.

The greatest resource the country has is oil, which history has shown can either be a blessing or a curse.

Supporters hoped that petrodollars would allow for rapid development and a transition to a democracy that respects human rights and is friendly to foreign direct investment.

Over the last two-and-a half-years, the promise has yet to translate into real growth or development and the world’s youngest state is taking significant backwards steps in the form of horrific violence and internal fighting.

Estimates are that about 500 people have died and 800 more have been wounded since what appears to be a failed coup attempt a week a ago. President Salva Kiir blames the fighting on those loyal to his dismissed former vice president Riek Machar.

The accusations against Machar lend an ethnic as well as a political element to the conflict. Kiir is a Dinka from the country’s largest ethnic group, while Machar is from the Nuer tribe.

A week before the fighting began, Machar, along with several other dismissed former high-ranking officials in Kiir’s government, accused Kiir of “dictatorial tendencies.”

“Dictatorial Tendencies”

Douglas Johnson, a South Sudan expert who has written widely on the Nuer and is familiar with Machar, seems to share his belief, telling Reuters that he believes this was a spontaneous uprising and “…Kiir is using the excuse of putting down a coup to suppress political dissent,” by going after Machar.

According to government sources the fighting is completely under control, but foreign observers are less convinced. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he is “deeply concerned” about the situation and U.S. President Barack Obama stated the country was “…at the precipice…” and that “…recent fighting threatens to plunge South Sudan into the dark days of its past.”

Political Scientist Jay Ulfelder, whose success at predicting mass violence has been discussed previously on AFKInsider, has taken to fatalist prognostication. He predicts the country now has about a 70 percent chance of mass killings before 2015. The model defines mass killings as more than 1000 civilians killed from a discrete group such as a ethnic or political group. As a matter of comparison, “high-risk” states generally have around a 10-percent chance of such atrocities in the model.

In addition to the death toll, the violence has already taken a particularly troubling turn, with “Luo Nuer” youths, a sub-group of Machar’s Nuer ethnic group, attacking a U.N. base that was sheltering civilians, killing an unknown number of civilians and two Indian peacekeepers.

At the time of the attack, 32 civilians had gathered at the base for protection. The South Sudanese government has also reported to the U.N. Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) that youth are being mobilized by various groups and directed towards the U.N. facility in Bor, which is currently housing approximately 14,000 civilians. All told, estimates have the number of civilians seeking U.N. protection at 35,000 in a country of just more than 11 million.

Old Ethnic Rivalry

Attacking U.N. facilities is a mark of a particularly brutal and lawless conflict.

Such instability has also had a tremendous effect on the business of multinationals in the country. Approximately 200 oil workers have also sought refuge in U.N. facilities until they can be brought to safety by China National Petroleum Corporation, the main operator. Additionally, over-ground transportation has been halted “with hundreds of trucks stuck at border crossings with Uganda and Kenya…”

In South Sudan, ethnic tensions between the Nuer and Dinka groups are fresh in many memories. There have been clashes in Bor, the site of the U.N. facility housing 14,000 civilians, along with the site of a 1991 Dinka massacre at the hands of the Nuer.

Such long-ingrained ethnic tensions are considered by scholars of civil conflict to be among the most difficult to overcome in favor of peace. Predictably, such conflict lends itself to historically significant “us-versus-them” narratives that can be difficult to break.

On this site we have discussed in great detail the difficulties for businesses associated with instability. Difficult security situations along with long periods of interruption for various conflict-related reasons create a near-impossible atmosphere to conduct business.

While the South Sudanese government claims to have a handle on the fighting and a pan-African delegation is attempting to mediate between groups, the attacks on U.N. installations along with the apparent ongoing ethnic tensions lend to the belief that conflict and civil upheaval in the country are far from complete.

Andrew Friedman is a human rights attorney and consultant who works and writes on legal reform and constitutional law with an emphasis on Africa. He can be reached via email at afriedm2@gmail.com or via twitter @AndrewBFriedman.