Region

ISTANBUL — What has long been a dream for the Middle East’s Kurds, an independent state, is within reach in Iraq, but Turkey’s Kurds, wearied by a 30-year conflict with Ankara, see a brighter future at home, where negotiations could deliver the rights they have fought for.

At Istanbul’s Kurdish Institute, where 400 students are learning Kurdish, they are riveted by events across the border in Iraqi Kurdistan, which appears to be hurtling towards independence as state forces retreat and Sunni militants, led by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an Al Qaeda offshoot, seize parts of northern Iraq.

Events are not, for now at least, stirring separatist sentiment in Turkey, where many Kurds prefer to put their faith in greater autonomy within the established borders of a booming economy than in the vagaries of a new nation state surrounded by hostile neighbours.

That might not always have been the case, when Kurds and the Turkish state appeared beyond reconciliation after more than 40,000 people, mostly Kurds, were killed in an armed struggle led by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) since 1984.

When linguist Zana Farqini began work at the Kurdish Institute two decades ago, he faced terrorism charges just for performing a song in his native language at a political rally.

Police regularly raided the institute, which published a magazine and offered workshops, as the separatist insurgency raged in Turkey’s southeast.

Now, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s efforts to negotiate an end to the 30-year conflict have included lifting strict curbs on Kurdish political and cultural expression, long unthinkable in a country with strong nationalist sentiment.

“We finally see it is possible to solve our problems without spilling blood, through democratic means,” said Farqini, now 47. “With the peace process, Kurds are declaring they want to live with Turks. They’re saying ‘We do not want to break away’.”

Nation without a state

Kurds are considered the largest ethnic group without a state — more than half of them living in Turkey — and their fate in Iraq will reverberate across the region. Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), long locked in a dispute with the central government in Baghdad over oil revenues, is planning a referendum on independence.

Iraqi Kurds, who have governed themselves since the 1990s, have responded to the ISIL crisis by taking over areas left undefended by the Iraqi military, adding as much as 40 per cent to their own territory.

Officially, Turkey remains committed to Iraq’s territorial unity. But Ankara has largely welcomed the KRG’s empowerment in recent years, partly out of its own economic concerns, seeking access to Kurdish oil and gas and with its construction firms leading a building boom there.

There is strong mutual interest. Iraqi Kurdistan serves as a buffer against the chaos in the rest of Iraq, while Turkey is the only viable export outlet for Kurdish hydrocarbons en route to lucrative markets in Europe.

Relations with the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad have meanwhile soured. Erdogan, who is like most Turks a Sunni, has accused Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki of sectarian policies that have led to Iraq’s current crisis.

“Because Kurds in Iraq are not getting their needs met by the central government, Kurdish aspirations for independence have gained more legitimacy and justification,” said Yasin Aktay, who heads the ruling AK Party’s foreign affairs office.

That is a lesson the government will have learned from events at home, where the PKK has scaled back demands for full-fledged independence in favour of local administration and more cultural rights, including Kurdish-language education.

Violence largely subsided after talks began with jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in late 2012.

Shifting lines

Kurds inhabit a mostly mountainous arc from Turkey and Syria into Iraq and Iran. Denied a land of their own in the break-up of the Ottoman Empire after World
War I, the turmoil in Iraq puts the dream of statehood within their grasp.

These shifting lines have lent a fresh sense of urgency to the Kurdish peace process in Turkey. In late June, parliament began work on legislation to resolve the conflict, formalising the process for the first time.

The advances have helped quell fears of Turkey fracturing along ethnic lines, according to Idris Kardas, coordinator of the Platform for Global Challenges at Istanbul Bilgi University.

“The PKK and its supporters have accepted that remaining in Turkey is more realistic, as long as they have more autonomy, cultural rights and a say in governing themselves,” he said.

An August election, in which Erdogan aims to become Turkey’s first directly elected president, is also driving the impetus, given that no politician can ignore a community that makes up about a fifth of the population.

In a sign of Kurds’ commitment to mainstream politics, one of Erdogan’s two competitors in the August presidential race is a Kurd: Selahattin Demirtas, head of parliament’s Peoples’ Democracy Party (HDP), a pro-Kurdish alliance of left parties that now wants to be a broader, Turkey-wide organisation.

The HDP itself is opposed to an independent Kurdistan carved out of Iraq, lest it imperil the fledgling peace in Turkey.

Idris Baluken, an HDP lawmaker and mediator in the talks, said Kurds exert more clout within the countries where they reside than they would in any new nation, surrounded by neighbours opposed to its very existence.

“Our model is a democratic confederacy that is based on living within borders, together in pluralism,” he said.

Demographic movement has also blunted the urge for independence; after decades of migration from the poverty-stricken Kurdish southeast, Istanbul, with an estimated two million Kurds out of a population of 14 million, is now the world’s biggest Kurdish city.

“Despite everything, Turkey is home,” said Farqini at the Kurdish Institute, on a broad boulevard in Istanbul’s ancient quarter of Fatih. “We want unity, but it cannot be forced. It must be of our own accord.”

If negotiations fail, the influence of events in Iraq, where former PKK militants remain in mountain hideouts, can only grow.

“My friends in the mountains are a guarantee for the peace process. If it doesn’t work, we will of course defend ourselves once again,” said Umut, a 17-year-old villager sitting with his father and uncle near the town of Silopi, close to the Iraq border.

BEIRUT — Syrian President Bashar Assad decreed an amnesty last month but for tens of thousands of prisoners, among them high-profile dissidents, the promise of freedom is a fraud.

Yara Bader, 29, has been desperately waiting for word on her husband Mazen Darwish, a journalist and activist detained since February 2012.

Her hopes that Assad’s efforts to undercut Western support for a three-year-old uprising against his rule might lead to a relaxation of his regime’s decades-old iron grip have faded.

“I wouldn’t want anyone to go through what we have suffered,” Bader told AFP.

“The amnesty gave me real hope they would be freed within hours, but they are still in jail a month on, and it is impossible to know what will happen next.”

Her husband was arrested with two other prominent political prisoners — blogger Hussein Ghreir and activist Hani Zeitani.

They have been held since a February 2012 raid on the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression in Damascus.

Bader says she fears new charges may be brought against the three to prolong their detention despite the much publicised amnesty pledge by the president.

“The wait just gets harder every day,” she said.

“It’s a reality we have to face that, in spite of all our hopes, they may not be freed any time soon after all.”

Human rights groups say some 100,000 people have been detained since the uprising against Assad’s rule erupted in March 2011, which escalated into an armed rebellion after the regime unleashed a brutal crackdown.

Another 50,000 are believed to be held by the regime’s myriad of military intelligence branches.

On June 9, after securing a new term in a controversial election held in government-controlled areas only, Assad issued an amnesty that should have freed tens of thousands of prisoners.

Crucially, many of those detained under the anti-terror legislation the regime has used to lock up its opponents, armed or not, should have been set free.

But lawyers say less than 1,500 people have been released, very few of them political activists or other civilians caught up in raids.

“The Syrian government’s failure to release people, and their continuing to hold them in horrific conditions is something that should be condemned,” said Lama Fakih, researcher at Human Rights Watch.

“It appears the amnesty was issued in a bid to gain legitimacy. Praise is not due,” she told AFP.

“With some exceptions, it appears mainly those who were released had been held for non-political reasons. The important thing to remember is that these people should not have been detained to begin with,” she added.

Syrian human rights activist Sema Nassar said Assad’s amnesty promise was a “fraud”.

“It’s absurd that the decree got so much attention, considering how small the numbers have been in comparison to those still held,” she said.

“Take the instance of [opposition bastion] Daraya, near Damascus. Some 3,000 people from that town alone are currently in jail, all over accusations connected to the uprising. Only 20 of them, including one woman, have been released in the past month.”

Many of those released were rebel commanders or soldiers who were suspected of wanting to defect from the army.

“This is not an amnesty, it’s a military operation. The amnesty was an incentive for fighters to hand over their weapons and to stop battling the government,” Nassar said.

Of the better known dissidents in jail, only a handful, including veteran regime critic Jalal Nawfal and young activist Hazem Waked, have been freed.

“Meanwhile, the raids and arbitrary arrest campaigns have by no means stopped, nor have torture and other violations,” Nassar said.

Earlier this year, UN human rights chief Navi Pillay condemned the “routine” use of torture in Syrian prisons.

Torture in times of conflict constitutes a “war crime”, and its systematic use may amount to a “crime against humanity”, Pillay said.

GAZA CITY –– An Israeli drone strike on a motorcycle killed one person in the northern Gaza Strip, medics said Wednesday, in the second day of an air campaign against the Palestinian territory.

The strike in Beit Lahiya killed Rafiq al-Kafarneh, 30, and seriously wounded another person, medics at Kamal Odwan hospital, where they were taken told AFP.

It brought to 29 the death toll from Israel's campaign, which began Tuesday, to stamp out rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.

At least two women and five children were killed in air strikes in Gaza, as well as a number of militants from the armed wing of Hamas, which controls the Palestinian territory.

The military carried out raids against more than 150 targets on Tuesday, it said, and militants fired back more than 130 rockets, including several at Tel Aviv, Israel's largest city, and Haifa in the north.

Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, also claimed firing four rockets at Jerusalem, the first time since 2012.

DUBAI/VIENNA — Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran would need to significantly increase its uranium enrichment capacity, highlighting a gap in positions between Tehran and world powers as they hold talks aimed at clinching a nuclear accord.

Iran and six major powers — the United States, Russia, France, Germany, China and Britain — have less than two weeks to bridge wide differences on the future scope of Iran’s enrichment programme and other issues if they are to meet a self-imposed July 20 deadline for a deal.

They resumed talks in Vienna last week and their negotiators continued meetings in the Austrian capital on Tuesday, but there was no immediate sign of any substantive progress.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in Paris that none of the major outstanding issues had been agreed and that the United States wanted foreign ministers to join the negotiations.

Iran’s capacity to refine uranium lies at the centre of the nuclear stalemate and is seen as the hardest issue to resolve.

Iran insists it needs to expand its capacity to refine uranium to fuel a planned network of atomic energy plants. 

The powers say Tehran must sharply reduce that capacity to prevent the country being able to quickly produce a nuclear bomb using uranium enriched to a far higher degree.

“Their aim is that we accept a capacity of 10,000 separative work units (SWUs), which is equivalent to 10,000 centrifuges of the older type that we already have. Our officials say we need 190,000 SWU. Perhaps this is not a need this year or in two years or five years, but this is the country’s absolute need,” Khamenei said in a statement published late on Monday.

An SWU is a measurement of the effort necessary for the separation of isotopes of uranium. Western experts say Iran’s current centrifuges have a very low enrichment capacity compared with the most modern technology in the world. The Islamic Republic says it is developing new, more efficient models.

Iran says its programme is for civilian purposes such as electricity generation and denies having any ambitions to build a nuclear weapon.

Ending the decade-long dispute with Iran is seen as central to defusing tensions and averting the danger of a major Middle East war.

A Western diplomat made clear the uphill task negotiations face if they are to hammer out an agreement: “We’re still far from a deal...[However] the deadline is July 20 and that’s what we’re working towards.”

Iran expert Ali Vaez said the negotiations were now at a precarious stage. “This has once again turned into a contest of wills,” Vaez, of the International Crisis Group, said.

Hardliners

Last week, other Western diplomats said Iran had reduced demands for the size of its future nuclear enrichment programme in the negotiations, although Western governments were urging Tehran to compromise further. They did not give details.

But Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the non-proliferation programme at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think tank, said Khamenei’s statement “confirms what I have suspected: That although Iranian negotiators have leeway on some issues, such as transparency and the time frame for lifting sanctions, they are not authorised to accept cutbacks to the enrichment programme”.

Iran now has more than 19,000 installed enrichment centrifuges, mostly old-generation IR-1 machines, with about 10,000 of them operating to increase the concentration of uranium’s fissile isotope U-235.

Mohammad Ali Shabani, a Tehran-based political analyst, said Khamenei’s statement was in line with what Iran’s negotiators have been saying for months in Vienna.

“The open timeline, however, allows enough flexibility for the two sides to come to consensus,” he said.

In defiance of Western pressure, Iran has expanded centrifuge numbers sharply over the last decade until it stopped doing that under a November 24 interim deal agreed with world powers in exchange for limited sanctions relief.

Iran wants an end to sanctions, which have stifled its economy and hindered oil exports. But Khamenei, ultimate arbiter on all major decisions in Iran, said the country “should plan for the future, supposing the enemy won’t ease on sanctions”.

Khamenei said the idea of shutting down the underground Fordow enrichment plant was “laughable”, his website said.

GAZA/OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — At least 16 people were killed in strikes across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, Palestinian officials said, as Israel threatened a lengthy offensive against Islamist fighters whose rocket fire reached as far as Tel Aviv.

Israelis ran for cover as sirens sounded in the business capital, in the deepest attack from Gaza since hostilities flared three weeks ago after the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers. Air raid sirens later sounded in Jerusalem.

The military said its Iron Dome interceptor shot down the rocket which the Islamic Jihad militant group said it had fired.

Explosions echoed across densely populated Gaza, shaking buildings and sending up plumes of smoke. In residential areas, children could be heard crying as ambulance sirens wailed.

At least 12 civilians, including five children, were among the 16 dead in Gaza, Palestinian officials said. On the Israeli side, medics said rocket impacts wounded at least two people.

“We will not tolerate rocket fire against our cities and townships, and therefore I ordered a significant broadening of IDF [Israel Defence Force] operations against the terrorists of Hamas and other terror groups in the Gaza Strip,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.

He called on Israelis to rally together and “show resilience, because this operation could take time”.

Israeli officials said a ground invasion of Gaza was possible, but not imminent, and urged citizens within 40km of the enclave to stay close to bomb shelters.

In scenes repeated in many Israeli towns near the Gaza Strip, motorists in the southern port city of Ashdod scrambled from their cars and raced for the relative safety of apartment block entrances as an air raid siren sounded.

In a bold infiltration, five gunmen from Hamas landed on the shore near Zikim, where a kibbutz and an army base are located, just over the border from Gaza. Israel’s army said it shot them dead.

US condemns rockets

Washington backed Israel’s actions while France, Germany and the United Nations urged restraint on both sides.

“We strongly condemn the continuing rocket fire inside of Israel and the deliberate targeting of civilians by terrorist organisations in Gaza,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

“No country can accept rocket fire aimed at civilians and we support Israel’s right to defend itself against these vicious attacks.”

The surge in violence along the Gaza border — the worst since an eight-day war in 2012, when Tel Aviv was also targeted — followed a chain of events begun by the abduction of three settler teens in the occupied West Bank on June 12.

Blaming Hamas, which neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the kidnapping, Israel arrested hundreds of the group’s activists in their search for the teenagers who were eventually found dead, as was a Palestinian teen abducted in East Jerusalem last Wednesday in a suspected revenge murder.

Palestinians have since launched more than 200 rockets from Gaza, Israel says.

Hamas has threatened an “earthquake” against Israel. But it offered on Tuesday to restore calm if Israel halted the Gaza offensive, recommitted to a 2012 Egyptian-brokered truce and freed prisoners it detained in the West Bank last month.

“The enemy must not think about enjoying security unless these terms are met,” the Hamas armed wing spokesman said.

The Israeli military said on Tuesday that, to support regular forces, it had called up 1,000 reserve troops out of a pool of 40,000 approved on Tuesday by the Security Cabinet. Some 1,500 other reservists have already been mobilised.

One Israeli attack overnight destroyed the house of a Hamas member’s family, killing six people inside, locals said. The Palestinian interior ministry said the family had received a telephone call from an Israeli officer telling them to leave.

Locals said people had been urged to congregate there as “human shields” to deter a second attack after it was targeted earlier.

Another strike killed a Hamas commander and three others travelling in a car together, a pro-Hamas website said, identifying the senior Hamas man as Mohammed Shaaban.

Netanyahu said Israel was trying to target combatants only, saying: “Hamas deliberately hides behind Palestinian civilians, so it bears responsibility when they are inadvertently harmed.”

TUNIS — Beji Caid Essebsi, the 87-year-old ex-premier and leading opponent of the Islamists, said Tuesday he will stand in Tunisia’s presidential poll later this year, if he’s “still alive”.

“At the moment, my intention is to run” in the November 23 election, Essebsi told a news conference.

“[I say] for the moment, because nothing is certain in life. If I’m still alive on election day, obviously, I will do my best to be there,” he said.

The octogenarian has already been nominated as the candidate of Nidaa Tounes, Tunisia’s main secular party, which he heads.

A veteran of Tunisian politics, Essebsi was minister of the interior, defence and foreign affairs under the country’s founding president Habib Bourguiba, and then parliamentary speaker under Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

His critics accuse him of seeking to restore the regime of the deposed dictator, while his supporters say he is the only credible counterweight to the Islamist Ennahda Party, which resigned this year after months of political crisis.

After months of negotiations among political parties, Tunisia’s parliament last month approved October 26 as the date of the legislative election and November 23 for the first round of the presidential poll.

On Tuesday, Essebsi called for a one month extension of the voter registration process, which was due to be completed on July 22.

About eight million Tunisians are eligible to vote, but only half that number registered in 2011, for the first poll after the uprising that toppled Ben Ali and sparked similar revolts across the region.

Before the Arab Spring uprisings, there were more elderly leaders in the region, with Egypt’s ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak, now aged 86, leading the race by some distance.

If he were elected, Essebsi would claim that dubious title, being 10 years older than the oldest head of state still in power, Algeria’s Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

MOGADISHU — Islamist militants attacked Somalia’s presidential compound on Tuesday with a car bomb and gunmen broke through a perimeter wall but were repulsed by security forces, and the president was not there at the time, the interior ministry said.

Up to five members of the Al Shabab Islamist group, which claimed responsibility, were killed, Interior Minister Abdullahi Godah Barre told Reuters. Three militants were confirmed dead and one or two more were believed to have died in the car blast.

The assault was the most dramatic in a string of attacks in the capital Mogadishu by Al Shabab since it launched a campaign during the current Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

But President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was not there at the time as he was at another location attending an iftar, the meal to break the Ramadan fast after sunset.

“I can assure you the president is not hurt and as a matter of fact he was not in the palace,” the minister said, adding the gunmen were repulsed in the car park near the prime minister’s offices and had not made it to the presidential quarters.

It was the second time since February that Al Shabab had attacked the sprawling compound, which includes the presidential buildings and other government offices. Officials said security had been tightened since then, including adding stronger gates.

Officials said the attackers were quickly defeated by Somali security forces and members of the African Union peacekeeping force, which remains the backbone for Somali state security.

However, Al Shabab said fighting still raged after officials said it was finished. “Let them enter the palace and meet us if the fighting is over,” Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, spokesman for Al Shabab’s military operations, told Reuters.

He said their fighters had killed 14 soldiers in the raid, while the minister said there had been no such casualties. The minister also said details of the attack were still not clear and greater clarity would come in the morning.

Police said earlier there was also fighting near a cell holding Al Shabab militants. “I understand there is fighting going on around the underground cell where militants are jailed — just outside the palace,” Colonel Abdullahi Aden, a senior police officer, told Reuters.

Residents said they could still hear sporadic gunfire into the night.

African Union forces along with the Somali army launched a new offensive this year against Al Shabab, which is fighting to impose its strict interpretation of Islam on Somalia.

Several towns have been wrested back from the group but officials say the Islamists still control tracts of countryside and some settlements, from where they have been able to continue their guerrilla-style campaign.

The militants, who seek to impose their own harsh version of Islamic law, have also staged attacks outside the Horn of Africa state, including a raid on a Kenyan shopping mall in September that killed at least 67 people.

SANAA — Some 10,000 families have fled the northern Yemeni city of Amran in three days to escape an intensified battle between the army and Shiite rebels, the Red Crescent said Tuesday.

Launching a “call for help”, the organisation said 5,000 more families were trapped by fighting inside the city.

Amran, 50 kilometres north of Sanaa, is home to an estimated 120,000 inhabitants.

It has been the scene of fighting between troops and Huthi rebels — also known as Ansarullah — as well as tribes on both sides since February as the rebels advanced from their mountain strongholds towards the capital.

“The bodies of 60 people killed, mostly civilians and soldiers, have been brought to the hospital since Saturday,” said a medic at Amran’s main hospital.

“Around 180 wounded, many of them civilians, were also admitted,” the source told AFP, which could not immediately compile a full toll.

Army reinforcements sent to Amran Sunday were locked in fierce clashes with rebels in Dharawan, 15 kilometres from Sanaa, and in and around the city itself, military sources said.

Early on Tuesday, fighter jets bombed Amran’s Warak neighbourhood, hours after it was seized by rebels.

Huthis have been battling the government for years from their Saada heartland, complaining of marginalisation under former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who stepped down in 2012 after a year-long uprising.

Clashes erupted anew last month in the north, ending an 11-day truce agreed after mediation backed by UN envoy Jamal Benomar.

In a statement published on the official Saba news agency Tuesday, Benomar said he “is deeply concerned about the continuing violence in Amran and other areas of the north”.

“He profoundly regrets the heavy loss of life over the past days,” said the statement.

He “stresses the need for all parties to work toward a definitive cessation of violence through a political process” and “reiterates the need to develop a peace plan for the north”, it added.

Benomar also urged “all sides to facilitate safe and unhindered humanitarian access to evacuate the wounded, and to ensure the delivery of assistance to all populations in need”.

The rebels say a federalisation plan agreed in February after national talks as part of a political transition would divide Yemen into rich and poor regions.

They seized areas of Amran province in fighting with tribes in February that killed more than 150 people.

RIYADH — Saudi citizens belonging to Al Qaeda were behind an attack near Yemen last week that killed five soldiers and left five Saudi militants dead, the kingdom said Tuesday.

Interior ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour Al Turki said an investigation revealed that six Saudi men who were on a wanted list took part in Friday’s attack on a Saudi border post. Turki said in a statement released late Monday that one of the men was arrested and the others killed. Another, unidentified militant died in a suicide blast on the Yemeni side of the border that killed a soldier, Yemen’s state news agency has reported.

Yemen is home to one of the most active branches of Al Qaeda, and many of its members are Saudi nationals.

The official Saudi Press Agency reported that Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi arrived in Saudi Arabia Tuesday and was received by Crown Prince Salman. He is scheduled to meet with King Abdullah, the agency reported.

Friday’s attack erupted when a suicide car bomber struck the Yemeni side of the border post in Al Wadia area, killing one Yemeni soldier. The militants then fled in two cars toward Saudi Arabia and opened fire on soldiers, killing four Saudi border guards. The Saudi interior ministry said three militants were killed in the attack.

JUBA — South Sudan marks its third birthday this week in a state of civil war, carved up along ethnic lines, locked in a cycle of atrocities and on the brink of famine.

Despite vast oil reserves and billions in foreign aid, the world’s youngest nation has been classed as a massive failure — most recently by the Fund For Peace which put South Sudan in the top spot on its Fragile States Index, ahead of Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Banners on the streets of Juba proclaim “One People, One Nation”, but with war raging across the country and nearly a fifth of the population forced from their homes, any talk of national unity rings hollow and there will be little to celebrate.

Juba has been a divided city since mid-December, when presidential guards loyal to President Salva Kiir clashed with troops supporting ousted vice-president Riek Machar — the event that triggered the now seven-month-old civil war.

The initial fighting saw hundreds of members of the Nuer tribe, to which Machar belongs, massacred by troops and civilians from the Dinka group, the single largest tribe and that of President Kiir.

Thousands of others fled to Juba’s United Nations base, where they remain packed in squalid conditions, ringed by fences and guarded by UN peacekeepers. In other towns, thousands of Dinka civilians have been displaced by a revenge campaign of murder, rape, looting and destruction by Nuer fighters.

“We are here because the Dinka are killing us,” said Gatmai Nhial Riek, a 26-year-old Nuer student who has been sheltering with ten family members in the UN base in Juba for the past six months.

Many fear travelling to their tribal areas through shifting, uncertain frontlines.

For some, life in the capital of old enemy Sudan — from which South Sudan won independence in 2011 — is more attractive.

“I would rather live in Khartoum than South Sudan. I don’t want to stay in South Sudan, the security is not good for us Nuer,” said another camp resident, 27-year-old Abraham Tut Mayak Kai.

“I feel South Sudanese but I’m not treated as a citizen of this country. At the moment, we’re not a country.”

Collapse of a state

South Sudan was born out of a long and brutal independence struggle with Muslim Khartoum, and finally raised its flag of independence in 2011 to much international fanfare and widespread optimism — having taken with it the main oil fields and buoyed by international aid.

Zachariah Diing Akol, a researcher with South Sudan’s SUDD Institute, an independent think-tank, said the picture today could not be more different than three years ago.

“2011 was the termination of many years of struggle by the South Sudanese for a sense of respect, for a dignified life to live in freedom. People were very excited, people spent the whole night in the streets, it was very powerful,” he recalled.

“The sense of being victorious, the sense of living peacefully, without fear in your own country: that has changed drastically. Many lives have been lost.”

Relief agencies say famine will break out within weeks unless there is massive funding for food aid for an estimated four million people — or nearly half the population — now dependent on handouts.

“The whole system of justice and law has completely broken down. There’s no mechanism for getting justice anymore in the country and particularly in the conflict affected states,” said Aimee Ansari of the aid agency Care.

She said in the northern oil-hub of Bentiu, scene of some of the worst fighting, people are walking “for hours and hours and days” just to get a meal.

The International Red Cross, meanwhile, has been forced to charter cargo planes to airdrop relief supplies and keep isolated groups of refugees alive.

“It’s really the last resort,” Franz Rauchenstein, ICRC head in South Sudan, told AFP, warning of “alarming signs” of malnutrition.

Peace talks a farce 

While millions battle hunger, thousands and possibly tens of thousands have already died — cut down by machine-gun fire while hiding in swamps, massacred in homes, churches and even hospitals, or lynched by their neighbours because of their ethnicity.

“The conflict has at times seen horrific levels of violence,” said Raphael Gorgeu, South Sudan chief for Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, MSF). “Patients have been shot in their beds, and lifesaving medical facilities have been burned.”

Despite warnings of war crimes charges, threats of sanctions and flying visits by diplomatic heavyweights Ban Ki-moon and US Secretary of State John Kerry, both Kiir and Machar appear immune to pressure and determined to fight it out.

Peace talks have been in progress since the start of the year in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, but successive ceasefire deals have failed to stick, and the talks have occasionally bordered on the farcical.

At one point the two sides halted the talks because they were unhappy with the venue, Addis Ababa’s opulent Sheraton hotel. The talks recently hit further trouble when the government boycotted the talks after a regional peace mediator accused both sides of “stupidity” for carrying on the war.

“The two sides are still not interested, at least it seems to me, in a settlement very soon,” said Akol of the SUDD Institute. “There is still a belief that this war is winnable.”