Deadly Enterprise: Dismantling South Sudan's War Economy and Countering Potential Spoilers
Publisher: Enough Project
Author(s): Justine Fleischner
Date: 2015
Topics: Extractive Resources, Governance
Countries: South Sudan
This report lays out the main modalities of financing used by the government of South Sudan and the SPLA-IO in order to provide an overview of the war economy and political incentives in order to identify specific policy interventions to support the transition towards peace. Nevertheless, disrupting the war economy and managing potential spoilers remains a challenging endeavor. The violent kleptocracy that has emerged in South Sudan is the product of long-standing exploitative economic practices with their origins in the Sudan-SPLA civil war. Thus dismantling the kleptocracy and managing potential spoilers will require a total reorientation of the current system away from the economics of exploitation and predation that have existed in what is today South Sudan for the better part of the last 60 years. A starting point for this process, which will take years if not decades to achieve, is to begin to create accountability for economic crimes, support transparency in government institutions and spending, address potential spoilers, and return at least a portion of the proceeds of corruption back to the people of South Sudan.