Ebook: Collapse of a country: a diplomat's memoir of South Sudan

As the first Canadian diplomat to be posted to war-torn Sudan, in 2000, Nicholas Coghlan was a natural choice to head up Canada's diplomatic representation in the new Republic of South Sudan, soon after peace talks resulted in the secession of the South in 2011. Coghlan and his wife Jenny were on hand in Juba when, barely two years later, the capital erupted in gunfire and a new civil war began, pitting one half of the army against the other, Vice President Machar against President Kiir, the Nuer tribe against the Dinka. The Coghlans would later be honored by the Government of Canada for their role in helping evacuate dozens of Canadians of South Sudanese extraction who were now forced to flee for their lives. This action-focussed narrative, grounded by accounts of meetings with key players and by travels throughout the dangerous, impoverished hinterland of South Sudan, explains what happened in December 2013 and why. It describes in harrowing terms the ebb and flow of war and the humanitarian tragedy which followed, and the well-meant but often confused and ill-conceived attempts of the international community to mitigate the misery and bring peace back to a land that has rarely known it. South Sudan's civil war simmers on today, largely ignored by the West. Coghlan's stark narrative serves as an object lesson to statesmen, to diplomats, to aid workers and development practitioners. As General (retd) Romeo Dallaire, UN commander at the time of the Rwanda genocide (1994) warns: 'This place smells bad.'"