NAIROBI, Kenya — The death tolls are huge and the individual incidents gruesome. One estimate says nearly 10,000 people have been killed in South Sudan in a month of warfare, while in neighboring Central African Republic, combatants in Muslim vs. Christian battles have beheaded children.
Sub-Saharan Africa has had a very violent start to 2014, with raging conflicts in South Sudan and Central African Republic, as well as continued violence in Congo, and attacks in Somalia and Kenya.
The conflict that broke out in South Sudan on Dec. 15 had violence radiate across the country as ethnic groups targeted each other. Then Uganda dispatched troops and military equipment to aid South Sudan's central government from breakaway units of that country's military.
Casie Copeland, South Sudan analyst for the International Crisis Group, said violence in Africa tends to involve other countries and noted a “long history of regional involvement in African conflicts.”
The U.N. Security Council on Friday, however, “strongly discouraged external intervention that would exacerbate the military and political tensions.”
The United Nations has said more than 1,000 people have died in the South Sudan conflict. But Copeland, after speaking to U.N. workers, aid actors, government officials and combatants, estimates nearly 10,000 have died.
Civilians in the Central African Republic — a country where violence pits Muslims against Christians — have suffered terribly since armed rebels overthrew the president in March 2013.
