The failure of the US pressure to enforce a cease-fire in the four-week long strife in South Sudan and the continuation of violence between the combatants regardless of the human drama could be attributed to one main factor: oil.

The warring parties are jockeying for power and control of resources, oil, and that is why they pay little attention to what the American officials are saying. It is China, not the US, that has invested in the country’s oil industry and it is Juba’s bulk export market.

Though civil strife has been raging in Sudan for decades. oil discoveries and exports back in 1999 increased the need for a peace deal that eventually led to South Sudan’s separation.

More importantly, it enhanced the new country to be economically viable and there was a chance for the state’s efforts to succeed.

During the six-year interim period that led to its separation, South Sudan earned $12 billion.

With the separation, new country took with it 75 percent of the known oil reserves of the once unified Sudan in addition to more than 300,000 barrels of daily production.

Moreover, with oil revenues constituting 98 percent of the government’s income where at least one-third is allocated for security and defense departments, oil became the center of focus for those harboring leadership aspirations.

And that is why the fight between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Dr. Riek Machar concentrated more or less on oil producing areas like the Unity state and its capital Bentiu, the Upper Nile and its capital Malakal that have been changing hands between the two groups over the past four weeks.

More than the old wisdom of denying the foe any resources, controlling the country’s oil wealth is the surest way to dominance.

Machar revealed his intentions last year to run against Kiir and to compete for the chairmanship of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), the leading political movement in the country.

Securing the top post in the SPLM ensures the candidacy of the party in presidential elections.

And that is where the game started to become rough.

Kiir fired Machar and some of his allies in July — a move that led to increased tension and it took only a coup attempt in the story of Kiir or forcing disarming some of the security guards in the story of Machar to have the long suppressed competing divisions flaring up.

Like any political struggle, the combatants called on whatever support they could get to beef up and consolidate their stand: this time it is tribal. And what started as jockeying for power and resources by elites have turned into tribal and ethnic strife.

It was interesting to see how the US was feeling embarrassed that the only diplomatic achievement of successive Republican and Democratic administrations supported by various lobbies, thinktanks and NGOs have turned sour less than three years of midwifing South Sudan independence calls for enforcing a trusteeship are being aired.

Former US envoy Princeton Lyman called on the US to assume the role of the protector. Another expert G. Pascal Zachary was more specific calling on Washington to seriously consider taking the role of trusteeship.

That seems more logical than threatening to cut the $50 million US aid to South Sudan, which means nothing compared to income generated by oil. The same applies to aid donors, who have been looking after the people even before separation in the areas controlled by the SPLM providing food, health and sometimes education services.

But that also does not provide the needed leverage to pressure Juba politicians to behave in a better way. One US official summed up the situation saying, “if you consider just a year ago in Washington we held an investment conference for South Sudan and the president said the country is open for business. Now we are telegraphing sanctions which are the most business unfriendly thing you can do to a regime... the relationship has swung 180 degrees.”

Since Washington has mainly moral and political interests in South Sudan, it has very little that it can do.

Ironically it is China with its investments in the country’s oil industry that is more qualified to put more meaningful pressure, but that takes the issue to a completely new game of what China wants or does not want to do.

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