South Sudan leaders must account for atrocities

Riek Machar seen here with President Salva Kiir

NAIROBI: It is time to stop romanticising about the world’s newest state and deal firmly with its leaders before their careless actions push it over the precipice and condemn it to another cycle of bloody civil war.

Currently, Riek Machar, one signatory of a Collective Peace Agreement, is in hiding, holding out with a band of men trying to gain passage to a country other than the one he represented barely months ago. The other signatory, Salva Kiir, continues his presidency in Juba as if oblivious to threats facing his country. The unrest in South Sudan is everyone’s problem. If the now broke, starving and war-ravaged nation goes completely belly up, the impact will reverberate across its borders.