The United States of America is undoubtedly one of the countries that ceaselessly supported South Sudan during the liberation struggle for independence against the Khartoum government. But the American government was and remained clueless on how an independent state should be structured to prevent it from plunging into conflict.

Right after South Sudan attained in 2011, the U.S. appointed Susan Page as its first ambassador to Africa’s youngest nation. She was excited about her new achievement. Ms. Page was quoted by The National to have said “You don’t get to be the first at something like that.”

Barack Obama, the then President of the United States said, “Today is a reminder that after the darkness of war, the light of a new dawn is possible,” he was referring to the Independence Day.

The hope they had was a mere hallucination. Ms. Page, who spent much of her professional career working on Sudan, said she has seen warning signs of some of the issues South Sudan would face years earlier, during her work on the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in the early 2000s. She believed South Sudan would emerge as an independent state.

“I was pretty sceptical that they would actually get to the referendum,” Ms Page said. “I had witnessed the parties, the southerners in particular, during meetings, for instance, with the assessment and evaluation commission, and just how woefully underprepared they were,” she told an international online media outlet.

But Page and her government could not point out or help save the Southerners from the foreseen circumstances that could befall an independent state. Two years after independence, war broke out, setting a trajectory for endless humanitarian catastrophe.

The conflict spanned from 2013 to 2018. Between those years, almost 400,000 South Sudanese were killed and over 2 million were forced to flee their homes, becoming refugees and asylum seekers.

Page confessed her government could not help.

“To see it go so, so badly, even what you predicted you couldn’t predict,” she was quoted.

The American government eventually suspended its operations in Juba, ordering the evacuation of all non-essential staff and stopping consular services. Page said the decision presented no hope to the citizens of South Sudan.

“Recognising that if we left and closed our doors, the message that we would be sending to everyone else, that there was really no hope,” she said. But they did anyway. They had no option.

Looking back on the past 10 years, former US officials cannot help but feel “disappointment” at how the situation unfolded. She is not alone, however.

Michael Morrow, the U.S. charge d’affaires in Juba from 2017 to 2018, called South Sudan’s situation “a squandered opportunity”.

In 2018, Nikki Haley, then US ambassador to the UN, described President Salva Kiir and the opposition leader Riek Machar as an “unfit partner” during a Security Council meeting.

The public redressing complicated Mr Morrow’s relationships in South Sudan, but he said it was not unwarranted.

He put it bluntly that: “If the South Sudanese government wants to freeze us out for a while, because they’re angry at us calling it like it is, then fine.”

At the end of Mr Morrow’s mission in Juba, Kiir and Machar signed a peace deal, officially ending the five-year civil war. The two American diplomats predict doom and gloom for South Sudan.

“I’d like to be hopeful but there’s nothing I can grab on to,” Mr Morrow said.

Ms Page said: “If you don’t have any other way to make money or have a chance to be sitting on top somewhere, your only option is to go into government. So it’s very hard to see how are they going to stop the corruption.”

Foreign policy

While to Page and Marrow it was always the leaders in South Sudan with the problems, a journal published by Elizabeth Shacklefold, American Foreign Service Officer who worked in South Sudan in 2017, points to foreign policy negligence by the United States.

Titled The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age, the journal gives a firsthand account of how American foreign policy has failed the people of South Sudan.

In the journal, Shackelford reserves particularly strong criticism for National Security Advisor Susan Rice whom she says had been a strong supporter of the SPLA as South Sudan gained independence and continued to advocate strongly for Kiir. According to Shackelford, Rice worked behind the scenes to block the passage of an arms embargo at the UN Security Council.

Frustrated after the Trump administration failed to heed her call for reform, Shackelford submitted a fiery resignation letter and flew back to Washington.

Relations with Kenya

The United States has not been alone in its game. Kenya has joined in from the Eastern part of the continent.

When the United Nations Security Council extended arms embargo against South Sudan, Kenya was one of the two countries that abstained, the other being India. The reasons for the abstinence was that South Sudan should be supported to successfully implement the peace agreement.

In June, the Kenya Assets Recovery Agency froze the bank account of Dr. Martin Elia Lomoro on grounds of suspicious transactions. Lomoro is the Minister of Cabinet Affairs in South Sudan.

Infuriated, Lomoro called out the Kenyan government to come clean on whether they were support the American sanctions against them or not. Nairobi did not respond despite threat by Lomoro that he will go to the East African Court.

Lomoro accused Kenya of backing the U.S. government’s regime change agenda which targets erstwhile loyalists of President Kiir.

President Kiir weighs in

As the diplomatic rift deepens, President Kiir in an interview with Kenya’s Citizen TV made it clear that Uhuru Kenyatta, the President of Kenya betrayed him because the Jubilee leader has created safe havens for South Sudanese rebels in Nairobi.

“I am not happy with Kenya because, after 2013, President Uhuru under IGAD took the lead and said he was coming to take the leaders that I apprehended during the coup,” Kiir said.

“I told him I could not hand over the people to him so that they could answer to charges and shed light on their role in the coup,” he added.

As South Sudan marks a new decade of independence, its diplomatic relations with Kenya and America remained feint.