South Sudan

In 2011, South Sudan became an independent country. Its long liberation struggle was an attempt to right the wrongs of history: a brutal colonial conquest that was followed by more than a century of deliberate neglect and racial oppression organized by governments headquartered at Khartoum. The long struggle has had a violent aftermath. The war of liberation chaotically reconfigured the economy of South Sudan's pastoralist hinterlands around looting, markets and humanitarian aid. In some of the hinterlands, South Sudan's independence was marked with raids and massacres that pitted ethnic communities against each other. In this remarkably comprehensive work, Edward Thomas provides a multi-layered examination of what is happening in the country today. Writing from the perspective of South Sudan's most mutinous hinterland, Jonglei state, the book explains how an area so remote from the power and wealth of the national capital was at the heart of South Sudan's painful, slow history of state power and liberation. Jonglei's experience - at once central and peripheral - exemplifies South Sudan's own history as a rebel province that could bring down Sudanese governments. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and a broad range of sources, this book gives a sharply focused, new account of the country's long unfinished struggle for liberation.