HARDtalk on the Road - South Sudan HARDtalk

the country for the past eight years has eased. Now it's time for

HARDtalk. Today, HARDtalk is on the road in

Juba, South Sudan. Three years ago, this city was full of hope as people

celebrated the birth of Africa's newest nation. Today, much of that

hope has turned to fear because this country is in the grip of a brutal

struggle between the President and his former deputy. It is a conflict

which has threatened to spread terror and ethnic hate throughout

South Sudan. Why have things here gone so wrong so quickly? It was a

long march to freedom in South Sudan. In Juba, they commemorate

every step. After a war with Khartoum that cost many thousands of

lives, the Sudan People's Liberation Army became the guardian of national

unity. A blend of South Sudan's many tribes. They cowboy hatted

President, Salva Kiir, was drawn from the majority Dinka people and

his deputy was from the Nuer, the second`biggest tribe. South Sudan

was to be their shared identity. Last December, the president accused

Nuer troops of mounting a military coup, backed by the recently

dismissed vice president. The Nuer claimed they were the victims of an

ethnic assault and as the fighting spread, civilians paid the price.

The killing was ethnically targeted. Dinka killing Nuer, Nuer killing

Dinka. From Juba to the towns of Bor and Bentiu, reports emerged of

killing that reminds us of the Rwandan genocide. There was a

failure to end the violence despite the peace agreement. Riek Machar is

the leader of South Sudan's rebels. Fired from the vice presidency, he

accused President Salva Kiir of being a dictator. I met him in the

Ethiopian capital. Riek Machar, welcome to HARDtalk. Let's talk

about your own political ambitions. You have said that Salva Kiir is, in

your view, and will remain, illegitimate. Is it your intention

to push for a return to your old job as vice president? What do you want?

We want to negotiate and to find a solution to the conflict. It won't

be military. It will have to be a political settlement. So you are

prepared to work with Salva Kiir as president of South Sudan? We will

negotiate on the table. That is not a negotiating point. He is the

president of South Sudan. For the time being, he is. To us, he is an

illegitimate president. Let's talk about your responsibilities. Are you

prepared to take responsibility for perhaps the single worst atrocity

during the conflict. That is, your forces going into the town of

Bentiu, the northern oil town on April 15, and, according to all of

the reports, independent reports, being responsible for the massacre

of hundreds of civilians. I have heard of the incident. We have

discussed it. We have decided to investigate it. All in all, we say

that we must investigate. You must have read the UN and the Amnesty

International report based on interviews with a multitude of

People who catalogue how armed men went into a Catholic Church, went

into a mosque, went into a hospital and killed civilians, having

established their ethnic identities. This investigation of yours, you

must know whether that is true. I do not know if it is true because there

can be also other facts besides this. I acknowledge that something I

would not accept myself has happened in Bentiu. You aren't talking about

what happened in Juba. It was administered by the President in the

eyes of the international community. 20,000 people, one ethnic group were

killed, massacred. Buried in mass graves. Why are you not talking

about that? Are you saving you will never accept a Salva Kiir as

president of South Sudan? He has lost his legitimacy. He is dividing

South Sudan. After five months of conflict, the youngest country in

the world is fast becoming one of the most traumatised. This is the

camp for displaced civilians. It is overcrowded, unsanitary and, in the

words of the UN official in charge, a death trap. Almost 20,000 Nuer

civilians refuse to leave because of one overwhelming factor. Fear. Borne

of terrible experience. You say that your eldest daughter saw her father

being shot dead. What impact has it had on her and the rest of the

children? The UN is protecting and policing

almost 100,000 displaced civilians in camps across South Sudan. In all,

one million people have been made homeless. The toxic cocktail of

ethnic suspicion, anger and accusation has seeped into the soil

of this new nation. In the camp, we meet this man. Until five months

ago, he was a senior official in the office of the President. Now, he

sits in a tent with nothing. The killing was of Nuer tribes. Ethnic

cleansing? What happened in Rwanda, yes. Your tent is three minutes'

walk to your home from where we are sitting now in the camp. Why don't

you go home now? If I go home, they will kill me. They will kill me. You

make it sound like this country has already sunk into tribal warfare.

Absolutely. That is it. Tribal warfare. When you speak like this,

you sound like a man who, if you had a gun, you would go out of this camp

and try to kill Dinka people. I'm not going to kill. President Salva

Kiir has to come down. If not, the war won't stop. He will tell you

outside, the man, the same thing. We need to elect a new president for

the country to unite us. Juba, the capital of South Sudan, is

relatively calm. The violence that swept through has left an indelible

mark. I have driven for 30 minutes out of central Juba. This suburb was

where, five months ago, government security forces moved in against

rebels from the Nuer tribe and many Nuer residents were killed. We don't

know how many. The survivors fled. That is why this suburb is now

virtually deserted. In Juba's majority of Nuer neighbourhoods,

shops, homes and streets are eerily empty. I went to the property

belonging to the Nuer official who worked in the President's office.

The length of the grass is a sure sign that no`one had lived here for

months. It feels like a neighbourhood that has been

ethnically cleansed, though it is hard to get anyone to talk. Why did

they damage the houses and shops? Some were damaged by wind and

sometimes, when the... (CROSSTALK). The army was here? The army was

here. There were many people killed here? I am new here. If many people

were killed, I am not aware. You say that you are new here. You just

moved in? I was here and then I went somewhere and came back. And you are

Dinka? Yes. The Nuer are not here. I can't see them. Why don't you think

they are here? Are they frightened? The Nuer? I don't know. I have no

answer. The worst fallout from South Sudan's descent into violence is

being felt in the countryside. It has forced farmers off the land.

Most of this year's wheat was left unplanted. Aid supply lines have

been cut and a humanitarian catastrophe looms. The only way to

keep hundreds of thousands of people alive is by dropping emergency food

supplies by air. It is ten times more expensive to deliver aid by

plane rather than truck. Unless international donors come up with

hundreds of millions of dollars now, this emergency airlift could grind

to a halt within a month. The UN warns of a famine that could be as

bad as Ethiopia's three decades ago. Hilda Johnson, welcome to HARDtalk.

It seems to me that you neither have the mandate, nor the forces to

intervene in a meaningful way in the conflict that is unfolding. This is

a peacekeeping operation, which means it is here to support peace.

The mandate is redundant. It is not an intervention. It is not about

intervening in a conflict which is ongoing between parties. The mandate

must change to have relevance. It is under review by th Security Council.

The Security Council will have to decide what to do in the current

situation. The conflict has spread and it has spiralled. Yet, the

Security Council can't deliver on a promise to give you more troops. It

is the member states and the troop contributing countries that are

within the peacekeeping missions that will have had to respond to the

cry for resources. It is a desperate need on our part. We are

overstretched. We need all the resources we can get, both

militarily and on the police side to face the challenge we are in the

middle of. Each camp you set up reflects what you have called an

ethnic violence in this country that threatens to spiral out of control.

Is the danger not that, by acting as you do, offering refuge,

understandably doing that in the spirit of humanitarianism, you are

part of the entrenching of this ethnic warfare and ethnic cleansing

in South Sudan? our gates and given refuge to these

people, it is very likely they would have been killed. It is very likely

that the cycle of violence would have spun out of control, to a much

larger extent on what we have seen so far. Every independent expert

believes that a massive humanitarian hunger`based crisis is facing South

Sudan. How seriously are you taking that threat?

If critical actions are not taken now, money is not coming in to fund

the humanitarian operations now, access is not provided to all

corners of the affected population in South Sudan, we are likely to see

a devastating hunger situation, towards the end of the year.

You have used the word famine. And we can also face famine.

The worst famine, you have said, in Africa since the 1980s is looming

here. In the region, and in South Sudanese

history. That is the risk we are facing. That is why we are sounding

the alarm bells. If there is anything we should do it is to stand

up and support the suffering people. They have suffered for far too long,

through a civil war, and now they are there again. Let us now mobilise

everything we can to help them, while there is still time. We are

running out of time, in fact. For now, the relief planes are still

flying. Mass starvation remains a grim prospect, not current reality.

But in South Sudan, the margin between life and death is perilously

thin, and getting thinner. For President Salva Kiir, the

mismatch between the high hopes of independence three years ago and the

despair of today could hardly be starker.

President Salva Kiir, welcome to HARDtalk.

Where is this conflict going from here? The ceasefire does not appear

to be working and there seems to be a real danger this country is

descending into total civil war. I don't believe it can slide into

civil war, because it is not the two sides which are on the offensive. It

is only one side. That is the side of Riek Machar.

You characterise this as a conflict instigated by him. But the truth is,

right now, this looks like a conflict between tribes, with the

ethnic hatred fuelling the fighting. Well, it is him who has incited the

Nuer against Dinkas. The hatred has been incited by Riek Machar and we

always defuse it. The facts do not appear to bear that out. The first

serious, outrageous acts of violence based on ethnicity appear to have

taken place here in Juba, right after 15 December. We have reports

from the UN and Amnesty International of your troops going

into neighbourhoods in the city, seeking out Nuer men, taking them to

secure facilities and murdering them. We received information that

there was killing going on in the states around Juba. `` estates

around Juba. I set up the commission and sent in troops to arrest anyone

who had taken the law into their own hands.

With respect, it was the security forces who were doing the killing,

based on ethnicity. Your security forces.

I am not defending them but the law does not know who you are. If the

security forces were involved in that, they must be punished for

their actions. Well, let's not say "if". All the

evidence, including independent reports, said that your forces were

responsible. I will not accept that until it is

confirmed. Because we have the fighting, we

also have a massive humanitarian crisis developing in South Sudan.

I agree with you. I spoke to the director of the World

Food Programme, who said it is no longer a question of whether people

die of hunger in South Sudan, it is a question of how many. He is

concerned that your government does not understand how serious the

situation is. We understand. It is a man`made

disaster. This is why it we want the war to stop, so that we can allow

the humanitarian access to everybody in the country. The civil population

is going to face one of the worst famines that has ever been witnessed

in South Sudan. We have to stop this fighting so that we save the

people's life and people do not die of hunger.

Hilde Johnson suggested to me that in the next few weeks the UN must

make a crucial decision whether to strengthen the mandate of the

thousands of peacekeeping troops who are here. And there is discussion of

a stronger mandate, giving them more ability to intervene in this

conflict. Would you support that? You know, the problem with the UN

missions in South Sudan is that they have no capacity even to defend

themselves, let alone intervening to protect the civilians. So why are

they here? South Sudan will not be taken over by foreign forces in the

name of the United Nations. As for hopes, I still hope that South

Sudan, if there was no conflict today, we were progressing very

rapidly. With respect, Mr President, you were

not. You yourself wrote a letter to all of your ministers decrying

systematic corruption. You said that $4 billion had gone missing. You

said to your own ministers that we cannot continue in this way. Your

own office, the Office of the President, was investigated. Two of

your most senior officials were accused of systematic corruption.

With respect I come back to the same point. Do you really believe you are

the man to get South Sudan out of this crisis? It is not me to say

that I am. It is not me. When I came to this office, they elected me. I

did not come in through bullets. I came in by the votes of the people

of South Sudan. And you still believe you can pull

this country back from the brink? I believe so. If these people do not

stab me from the back, I can improve this country. I can pull it out from

where it is now. South Sudan is at a tipping point.

If the violence continues, ethnic divisions will deepen and thousands

will succumb to starvation. Africa's youngest nation might not

survive its infancy. Hello, there. For many places, it

turned a bit brighter on Thursday. Sunshine broke through the clouds

but that set off some showers in the south. And as we head through the

night, this weather front continues to produce showers