Link to article: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/1/our-children-die-in-our-hands-floods-ravage-south-sudan
Analysis: Nearly a million people in the country of South Sudan have been either displaced or isolated for months by the worst flooding in memory. Flooding was the result of this year’s intense rainy season, which could be a symptom of climate change.
Waters began rising in June, washing away crops, swamping roads, and increasing hunger and disease in the young nation already struggling to recover from civil war. To make matters worse famine is now a growing threat.
On a recent visit by The Associated Press, to the Old Frangak area in hard-hit Jonglei State, parents recounted walking for hours in chest-deep water to find food and healthcare as malaria and diarrhoeal diseases spread.
Regina Nyakol Piny, a mother of nine stated, “We don’t have food here, we rely only on the UN humanitarian agencies or by collecting firewood and selling it. My children get sick because of the floodwaters, and there is no medical service in this place”.
Isolation due to the flooding has left people disconnected from the world. Nyaduoth Kun, a mother of five, says she had little knowledge of the coronavirus pandemic ravaging other parts of the world and spreading largely undetected in poorly resourced South Sudan.
South Sudan gained independence from Sudan on July 9, 2011 as the outcome of a 2005 agreement that ended Africa’s longest running civil war. With South Sudan’s recent status of sovereignty, these floods could make or break its future. Already South Sudan is at a huge disadvantage with its current political conflicts, economic woes, and displaced population. With these recent floods, that would even pose a challenge to an established country, South Sudan’s success and future is looking bleak at best. Floods are displacing homes, destroying crops, spreading disease, and killing livestock; leaving people hungry, sick, and homeless. To make matters worse South Sudan hasn’t remained unaffected by the coronavirus pandemic.
Concerning it’s Geopolitical Realm, South Sudan is situated in a shatterbelt zone. Both Sudan and South Sudan exist within this zone because of cultural conflict in 2011. Unlike realms, such as the Maritime Realm and the Eurasian Continental Realm, this shatterbelt has no anchor. This is because the United States is an ally to South Sudan, while Sudan has better relations with Russia, China, Morocco, and Belarus. South Sudan’s and the US’s previous relations can be seen in US military aid to South Sudan during the Heglig Crisis. Furthermore, the US recognized South Sudan’s sovereignty the day they declared independence. Sudan’s ties with Russia, China, Morocco, and Belarus are existent, but limited because of Sudan’s poor economic system. If one was to assess it in a geopolitical hierarchy, Sudan would be a client or bandwagon state.