Most of the Biden administration’s key players – Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, USAID Administrator Samantha Power, and Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer – were part of the team that helped oversee the birth of South Sudan as a new nation, full of hope, under President Barack Obama’s administration in 2011. The country quickly erupted into a civil war in 2013, and the crisis has only deepened since then. But the Biden team still has an opportunity to take meaningful action for South Sudan’s future. Specifically, the U.S. government and its allies should impose network-based sanctions on President Salva Kiir and his corrupt regime.
As the world’s newest country, South Sudan has become a case study in one of the oldest patterns throughout history: Its rulers benefit from systemic corruption and use extreme violence to maintain the status quo. Meanwhile, the nation’s economy is in a tailspin, subnational violence is on the rise and, in September, the regime postponed elections once again — this time for two years.
The primary obstacle to any movement toward democracy, peace, and good governance is the violent kleptocratic system built by the architects of South Sudan’s independence. The warped system leaves no room for fair elections and ensures that its rich natural resources are looted by Kiir’s regime, which violently represses dissenting voices. This is not a failed state; it is a state hijacked and repurposed for private profit. And the Biden administration could use its final weeks in office to set a new course for the international community’s failed diplomatic efforts.
The International Community Cannot Count on Elections to Alleviate the Crisis
In 2018, Kiir and the armed opposition, led by Riek Machar, agreed to a peace agreement, which was supposed to culminate in free and fair elections. But the Kiir regime’s leaders are determined to stay in power indefinitely. They have obstructed implementation of key provisions in the peace accord and postponed elections, all with the aim of protecting their exploitative kleptocracy.
Implementation of the peace deal has been almost nonexistent, with missed deadlines on all the key benchmarks, thereby upending the envisaged roadmap to elections. Starved of funds and political support, crucial benchmarks involving the unification of military forces, judicial and institutional reform, and transitional justice have been stymied. For instance, the country’s feared National Security Service (NSS) operates under legislation enacted prior to the 2018 peace accord. That legislation contains provisions granting the NSS sweeping powers of arrest and detention without due process. The NSS’s practices are incompatible with the bill of rights in South Sudan’s Constitution, as well as the 2018 peace agreement, but it remains unreformed. Citizens arrested by the NSS are incarcerated for long periods, often incommunicado, without access to legal representation, Human Rights Watch reports.
Despite these missed benchmarks, mediators in the Troika — the United States, the United Kingdom, and Norway — and the African Union have insisted that elections be held on schedule. As envisaged by these regional and international mediators, elections were intended to introduce a measure of democracy, one in which representatives of the people hold the government accountable. But their vision has not become a reality. Although Kiir publicly supported holding elections this month, his government’s actions, including postponing elections for two more years, have not matched his rhetoric. The establishment of electoral institutions is still behind schedule and grossly underfunded.
Kiir’s refusal to hold elections points to another failure of the 2018 peace accord. This optimistic paper agreement imagined serious anti-corruption and anti-money laundering measures, but it failed to uproot the kleptocracy Kiir and his associates built over the course of decades. This corrupt regime is enormously beneficial to Kiir and his cronies, who have amassed and hoarded considerable wealth while doing nothing to improve the lot of South Sudan’s people. This same kleptocracy caused deep-seated grievances that contributed to the onset of civil war in 2013. A decade later, in 2023, South Sudan ranked at the very bottom – 177 out of 180 nations – in Transparency International’s annual corruption perception index.
Adept at giving the international community the slightest of concessions to buy time, Kiir has mastered the art of appearing to cave in to rhetorical pressure from the international community, only to later renege. Given these circumstances, elections will not undo the status quo and foster political stability in South Sudan, nor will cutting additional side deals with proliferating rebel groups.
Mediators have failed to grapple with the fundamental problem in South Sudan: The hijacked state seeks only to concentrate power and wealth in the hands of Kiir and his network.
The U.S. and Its Allies Should Deploy Network Sanctions Against South Sudan’s Kleptocracy
Instead of relying on non-existent elections, policymakers should consider a longer-term approach that seeks to dismantle South Sudan’s captured government with the goal of state retrieval. A strategy to hold Kiir and other regime officials accountable for obstructing peace and democracy is urgently needed. NSS leaders who authorize the illegal arrest of journalists and civil society activists, while limiting other press freedoms and rights, should face repercussions for their actions.
A new diplomatic approach requires the use of targeted financial policy tools that can dismantle kleptocratic networks and create accountability for state looting. And the Biden foreign policy team can take initial steps down this path during its final weeks in office.
The United States, European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada should deploy network sanctions authorities to impose targeted consequences on South Sudan’s leaders and the entities they control. Thus far, sanctions have failed to change the regime’s behavior because they target low or mid-level officials with no real power, are intermittent, and are not fully enforced. For example, the U.S. and UK sanctioned Gordon Koang Biel and Gatluak Hoth Nyang, two low-level county commissioners responsible for egregious human rights abuses against civilians, in December 2022 and December 2023, respectively. Such sanctions have little to no impact on Kiir and his regime.
Network sanctions would instead target Kiir himself, as well as his web of cronies, companies, family members, and enablers. Implementing sanctions in this holistic fashion would make it much more difficult for the regime to oppress South Sudan’s people and impede their democratic aspirations.
Kiir and his kleptocratic associates have sustained their hold on power by repurposing the government to serve South Sudan’s elite and their transnational enablers. The regime controls financial resources by awarding preferential contracts to its loyalists and diverting public funds to offshore accounts. This patronage network, with its extensive business footprint, is well equipped to circumvent the democratic process. Therefore, network sanctions are needed to open a new democratic path forward.
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the EU have already greylisted South Sudan, meaning it is subject to increased economic monitoring and regulation in response to severe anti-money laundering lapses. Those two multilateral bodies should double down on their efforts to pressure South Sudan’s regime while also engaging the private sector to counter the government’s looting machine. Using financial pressure to hit the kleptocracy where it matters most could begin to alter the warped incentive structure away from corruption, authoritarianism, and violence.
Past financial measures enacted against regime leaders demonstrated that they do respond to international pressure if the effort is concerted and sustained. The 2018 peace agreement, for example, was only possible because regime elites caved in to targeted financial measures by the U.S. Treasury Department and the UK’s National Crime Agency. Treasury released a rare country-specific advisory on anti-money laundering and due diligence for South Sudanese political figures. This forced banks in the region and around the world to undertake enhanced oversight of any transaction related to South Sudanese political actors, making it much harder to launder the proceeds of their looting.
Plagued by violence and mass corruption since attaining independence from Sudan in 2011, South Sudan’s people yearn for a credible and accountable government — and a sustainable peace. To achieve those goals, the captured kleptocratic state must be squarely addressed. Nothing short of state retrieval should be the policy goal. The Biden administration can take a first step in that direction by imposing a much more painful cost on those who are benefiting from the hijacking of hope in South Sudan.