From Pakistan Observer

The government of South Sudan and rebels led by its former vice president, Riek Machar, are scheduled to begin a second round of negotiations. During the first round last month the parties agreed to a cease-fire, but the violence has not stopped and an agreement to end the rebellion has yet to be reached. Yet even peace would be a partial solution, be-cause it cannot address the underlying cause of the strife: the lack of competent institutions of governance in the fledgling republic.

The crisis began on Dec. 15, 2013, when fighting broke out within the Presidential Guards between forces loyal to the president, Salva Kiir, who belongs to the Dinka tribe, and supporters of Machar, a Nuer. Despite its ethnic facade, the struggle is a tussle over power, and it turned violent be-cause South Sudan lacks robust institutions of mediation and governance.

South Sudan gained independence from Sudan on July 9, 2011, when its inhabitants overwhelmingly voted in favor of statehood in a referendum. That vote was made possible by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005, which ended over two decades of civil war between the government of Sudan in Khartoum and rebels mainly from the south known as the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (S.P.L.M./A). Under the terms of the peace deal, the S.P.L.M./A was supposed to be restructured into three distinct institutions — a government, an army and a political party — ahead of the 2011 referendum.

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