ABSTRACT
Introduction The Northern Ireland case study argues that social services contributed to conflict management and transformation over almost a 30-year period where the capacity of social services was relatively high. It represents, in many respects, a best-case scenario of social service provision during civil wars. This chapter analyses a markedly different case – South Sudan. South Sudan represents something of a hard case; the common wisdom is that the injection of resources into a resource-scarce environment such as Sudan entices insurgents to engage in rent seeking behavior, with deleterious consequences on conflict dynamics. As a consequence, this case presents a significant test of the proposition that the addition of resources can actually promote conflict transformation over time. This chapter addresses these issues by considering the operation of social services in both insurgent and government controlled areas of South Sudan. It uses the concepts of opportunity hoarding and exploitation to map the dynamics of social-service provision during recent civil war there from 1983 to 2005, with a particular focus on dynamics after the advent of OLS in 1989. The chapter traces changes within the SPLA as it developed from an Ethiopian-backed Marxist movement capable of shooting down aircraft carrying humanitarian aid workers to one that became heavily engaged with the international community through the aid system. This engagement facilitated important changes within the SPLA while making it politically less costly to engage with them diplomatically. This chapter is divided into three sections. Following the pattern of the previous chapter, the first section presents a “case within the case,” examining in detail dynamics associated with social-services delivery in the Upper Nile region of South Sudan, with a particular focus on the town of Malakal. This is followed by a second section that presents a more general discussion of the macro situation with respect to social-service delivery in South Sudan, with a particular focus on areas controlled by the SPLA. The final section considers the contribution that service provision made to conflict management and transformation in Sudan.
