Ethnic Killings Fray Unity Marking Birth of South Sudan

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South Sudan, born six months ago in great jubilation, is plunging into a vortex of violence. A man carried his daughter as people who fled the small town of Pibor returned after fleeing the violence there. More Photos »
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: January 12, 2012

The trail of corpses begins about 300 yards from the corrugated metal gate of the United Nations compound and stretches for miles into the bush.

There is an old man on his back, a young woman with her legs splayed, skirt bunched up around the hips, and a whole family — man, woman, two children — all face down in the swamp grass, executed together. How many hundreds are scattered across the savannah, nobody really knows.

South Sudan, born six months ago in great jubilation, is plunging into a vortex of violence. Bitter ethnic tensions that had largely been shelved for the sake of achieving independence have ruptured into a cycle of massacre and revenge that neither the American-backed government nor the United Nations has been able to stop.

The United States and other Western countries have invested billions of dollars in South Sudan, hoping it would overcome its deeply etched history of poverty, violence and ethnic fault lines to emerge as a stable, Western-friendly nation in a volatile region. Instead, heavily armed militias the size of small armies are now marching on villages and towns with impunity, sometimes with blatantly genocidal intent.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/world/africa/south-sudan-massacres-follow-independence.html?pagewanted=all