South Sudan’s sluggish peace deal and unsteady road to elections

SAM MEDNICK

Martha Nyanguour didn’t have time to bury her husband, son or granddaughter when they were killed by gunfire in September.

Instead, the 50-year-old paid her respects by throwing bits of grass over their bodies, grabbed her remaining children and fled.

It had taken years for the mother of seven to muster the courage to return to South Sudan and trust its fragile peace deal ending a civil war. But weeks after she arrived in Atar town in Upper Nile state, fighting erupted between militias aligned with government and opposition forces.

“I thought if there was peace I was supposed to go back to my land,” said Nyanguour, seated under a tree in Kowach village in Canal Pigi county where she now lives with thousands of other displaced people, five days’ walk through swamp water from her home village. “I thought maybe there would be peace in the future,