West responsible for catastrophe in South Sudan: Pundit

Press TV has conducted an interview with Lawrence Freeman, an African affairs expert from Baltimore, about a recent call by the United Nations for arms embargo on South Sudan.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: The situation in South Sudan is worrying, to say at least, and looking at the death toll, hundreds left dead on both sides before ceasefire was called for. What do you make of that?

Freeman: Well, I think we have a very very serious situation in South Sudan that has been developing for many years and prior to becoming independent. And one thing that we also have to bring into the picture is that out of a population of 12 million people eight million people are listed as food insecure that’s two thirds and 4.8 million people are listed as severely food insecure.

So, you have a country that really is not functioning as a nation and you have two warring factions who are fighting over goodies but there are no goodies. The country has nearly been destroyed and I place two major responsibilities for this on the West for creating South Sudan and then abandoning South Sudan.

Press TV: Right now it is quite clear that the leaders of South Sudan, so to speak, putting their personal interest over that of the nation. What needs to change now? What can be done to ensure that this ceasefire holds, there is not another outbreak of violence, where hundreds get killed and things get out of control?

Freeman: Of course, you already had thousands killed and hundreds of thousands displaced. The problem is that the country is not functioning or potentially capable of being a country, where people have the interest of the country and country can provide services to its people; then, it’s not going to function.

And the problem of South Sudan is they never had the economic development. The major thing that the West refused to do and they should have done this immediately on July 9th, 2011 is to build up the country.  There are no roads, there is not fuel production, there is not any kind of production. People are living in a beast-like condition.

So, when you are under those condition, you will fight, you will kill, if you think you can get a little bit more than your brother or sister and you kill your brother and sister figuratively to get food, to get water, to get land. And so in a condition that we helped create that is the United States and the Great Britain cannot simply wait for one we have to begin the process that we haven’t done up this point, which is massive infrastructure economic development as part of a whole global African development project which I’ve been working on. 

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