A Rope from the Sky: The Making and Unmaking of the World's Newest State

by Zach Vertin

Overview

The untold story of America's attempt to forge a nation from scratch, from europhric birth to heart-wrenching collapse.

South Sudan's independence was celebrated around the world—a triumph for global justice and an end to one of the world's most devastating wars. But the party would not last long: South Sudan's freedom fighters soon plunged their new nation into chaos, shattering the promise of liberation and exposing the hubris of their foreign backers.

Chronicling extraordinary stories of hope, identity, and survival, A Rope from the Sky journeys inside an epic tale of paradise won and then lost. This character-driven narrative is first a story of power, promise, greed, compassion, violence, and redemption from the world's most neglected patch of territory. But it is also a story about the best and worst of America—both its big-hearted ideals and its difficult reckoning with the limits of American power amid a changing global landscape.

Zach's Vertin's firsthand acounts, from deadly war zones to the halls of Washington power, brings readers inside this remarkable episode—an unprecedented experiment in state-building and a cautionary tale. It is brilliant and breathtaking, a moder-day Greek tragedy that will challenge our perspectives on global politics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781643134765
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	07/21/2020
Pages:	544
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

ZACH VERTIN is an American writer, foreign policy expert, and diplomat. He currently serves in the Biden Administration as Senior Advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Vertin also teaches at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. He was previously a Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Brookings Doha Center, where he conceived and led a project on the New Geopolitics of the Red Sea.

Vertin's areas of expertise include: U.S. foreign policy, multilateral diplomacy, China, the UN and international institutions, conflict analysis and resolution, mediation, peace processes, political transitions, and global norm development. He has worked on a range of global policy challenges in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and at the United Nations. Vertin also served in the Obama Administration as Director of Policy for the U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan and South Sudan. Prior to that, he spent six years at the International Crisis Group, as a Senior Analyst in the Africa program and as an Advisor on the United Nations and multilateral diplomacy. He was also a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and has consulted for the International Peace Institute, Atlantic Council, U.S. Institute of Peace, and Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue.

Vertin's 2019 book, A Rope from the Sky: The Making & Unmaking of the World's Newest State (Pegasus Books) chronicled the extraordinary birth of South Sudan, its subsequent collapse, and a reckoning with the limits of American influence amid a changing global landscape. Vertin has also published policy reports, long-form analyses, and op-eds on a broad range of topics and contributed expert commentary to: The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Economist, CNN, Al Jazeera, Guardian, Le Monde, and the BBC.

Table of Contents

Maps xiii

Timeline xvii

Author's Note xix

Prologue 1

Part 1 The Making of South Sudan

1 Boomtown 17

2 A Damp Hell 33

3 War, Peace, and the Americans 45

4 "Saving" Darfur 64

5 The Accidental President 75

6 Rebel with a PhD 98

7 It Isn't Yet 111

8 A Turbulent Union 121

9 A Very Greedy Boy 141

10 Drinking the Milk 165

11 A Messy Divorce 188

12 Inception 206

Part II The Unmaking

13 The Nuclear Option 225

14 Waldorf Astoria 240

15 Rocking the Boat 259

16 War 283

17 Alarm 307

Part III Picking up the Pieces

18 Tipping Point 327

19 Business as Usual 339

20 From the Bush to the Palace 363

21 Houses Divided 388

22 Love Lost 410

23 Koang's Dilemma 425

Epilogue 449

Notes 461

Acknowledgments 487

Index 489

Editorial Reviews

"A highly readable, well-informed and people-centered account. Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand why South Sudan has unraveled."

Dame Rosalind Marsden

A brilliant, authoritative, and colorful insight into the hope and despair that is the world’s youngest country. Unique in modern history, this untold story of South Sudan’s birth carries lessons not just for Africa but for the rest of the world.

Jon Snow

"An engrossingly written account. A Rope from the Sky is an essential guide to one of the world's most intractable conflicts—a must-read for warriors, diplomats, relief experts, and would-be peace negotiators anywhere in the world."

Jon Lee Anderson

"Panoramic and absorbing. A masterful account of the birth and near-death of a nation. Vertin seams together a staggeringly complicated puzzle, re-creating the savage street battles and high-level diplomacy that has informed South. But much of the book’s texture comes from beautiful portraits of the South Sudanese people. An invaluable contribution."

The Minneapolis Star Tribune

"A political roller coaster from Africa to the White House and back. Zach Vertin guides us through South Sudan’s euphoric independence and its devastating descent into war. A compelling read. "

Barton Gellman

"A hugely important contribution to the debate about one of Africa's longest running tragedies."

Chris Patten

"A remarkably authoritative account of South Sudan’s rise and fall; Zach Vertin matches expert political analysis with a journalist’s knack for storytelling, and the result is an exciting and immersive book that will be read for years come. He was present at the creation, and could not be better suited to tell this story."

Haile Menkerios

"A superb read. Zach Vertin skillfully unpacks the events that gave rise to a nation and then hastened its tragic unravelling. It is at once a story that echoes with the experience and hopes of the South Sudanese people, and a chronicle of one of the most consequential attempts at state-building in the modern era. No matter where we seek to advance the cause of peace and justice in the world, we would be wise to learn from this important book."

Rt Hon. Andrew Mitchell MP

Vertin offers unprecedented access to the full story...A vitally important, expert account of the little-understood founding of a struggling nation.

Booklist (starred review)

10/15/2018
Vertin, a former NGO analyst and adviser to the U.S. special envoy to Sudan and South Sudan, brings an insider’s knowledge to this gripping, well-written account of South Sudan: its independence from Sudan in 2011, its descent into a brutal civil war, and ongoing international efforts to mediate an end to that war. Based on more than 100 interviews, the story follows such major personalities as South Sudan’s first president Salva Kiir, deposed vice president Riek Machar, other Sudan People’s Liberation Movement government notables, and foreign dignitaries. Especially cogent is Vertin’s analysis of the decades-long, unwavering, and largely uncritical support for the SPLM from American evangelicals, the Congressional Black Caucus, advocacy groups, and proponents of “drop-in Hollywood activism” like George Clooney, a visible supporter of the Darfur campaign and South Sudan secession movement. He observes that the SPLM has been weakened by “factionalism, narrow self-interest, and a lack of direction” and recounts the five-year-long and counting struggle among former SPLM allies. The inclusion of stories from ordinary people the author came to know over his time in South Sudan rounds out the book and makes it much more nuanced. This work will appeal to the general reader interested in African politics, conflict resolution, and international diplomacy. Agent: Robert Guinsler, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

Vertin’s long experience in and deep commitment to South Sudan made him one of the best analysts there. A testament to his seriousness, sense of purpose, and focus. His is a rare record of how humanitarian goals can be communicated.

New York Review of Books - Rory Stewart

"Zach Vertin had a front row seat. With a journalist’s verve he takes us through the cast of characters—and forces—which put this country together and then tragically combined to dismantle it. This is a tale of leaders’ illusions and of a terrible violence consequently unleashed. And it’s a story that has not been properly told till now."

Lord Mark Malloch-Brown KCMG PC

"Ponders the extent of Western responsibility in the making—and breaking—of South Sudan...[and] points to a deeper question: what makes a nation? Vertin wonders whether, like the American Civil War, South Sudan’s misery will ‘ultimately prove an awful but formative part of its becoming a viable state."

The Economist

"Vertin offers unprecedented access to the full story...A vitally important, expert account of the little-understood founding of a struggling nation."

Booklist (starred)

"The still-unfolding tragedy of South Sudan is too little understood and too little known, even among foreign policy experts. Zach Vertin is a rare exception. He has spent his life not just explaining how the promise of this young nation, for which so many sacrificed, was broken so badly, but helping end the bloodshed for a people who have seen far too much of it. An important read."

John Kerry

"Vertin offers unprecedented access to the full story...A vitally important, expert account of the little-understood founding of a struggling nation."

Booklist

"Vertin offers unprecedented access to the full story...A vitally important, expert account of the little-understood founding of a struggling nation."

Booklist

Panoramic and absorbing...A masterful account of the birth and near-death of a nation.Vertin seams together a staggeringly complicated puzzle, re-creating the street battles and high-level diplomacy that has informed South Sudan’s infancy. But much of the book’s texture comes from beautiful portraits of the South Sudanese people.An invaluable contribution to the literature of global politics.

The Star Tribune

This book is a political roller coaster from Africa to the White House and back. Zach Vertin guides us through a war zone like no other. Vivid characters—the accidental president, the charismatic rebel, the deal maker, the Congressman—tell a tale of American idealism and misadventure abroad.

Bart Gellman

Without a doubt, the definitive account of South Sudan’s birth. Colorful and compelling, Zach Vertin matches expert analysis with a journalist’s knack for storytelling. I can think of no one better to tell this story.

Sir Nicolas Kay

2018-10-15

A keen observer of the unfolding South Sudan crisis and participant in the peace effort chronicles the making of the fledgling state and its subsequent disintegration.

Having worked in Sudan and South Sudan between 2009 and 2017, specifically as a government envoy on behalf of President Barack Obama's Department of State during the crucial South Sudan peace process of 2014-2016, Vertin displays enormous affection and concern for the fate of this fragile new state. Seceding from Africa's then-largest country, Sudan, by overwhelming popular referendum on July 9, 2011, after "generations of repression and neglect," South Sudan was created in a blur of U.S.-supported optimism. However, the new country, dominated by the ethnic groups Dinka and Nuer and led by the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, suffered the "resource curse" of many oil-rich African countries and descended quickly into corruption and poor nation-building strategies. Employing numerous interviews with key players, the author divides his work into two parts. In the first part, he chronicles the forging of the young country, initially under the Marxist rhetoric of "national liberation" formulated by the SPLM's founder, John Garang, whose first commitment was to the Soviet Union before its fall and subsequent reorienting of power dynamics. Following Garang's sudden death in a helicopter crash in 2005, there was "an eight-year factional battle inside an ethnically, ideologically, and professionally heterogeneous SPLM," henceforth steered by the "accidental president" Salva Kiir. The SPLM power struggle and continuing tension with Sudan propelled South Sudan into chaos and violence by the summer of 2013. The second part of the book examines the peace talks begun in January 2014, which lasted two years, largely forged by diplomats in the U.S., Ethiopia, and the U.N. The author deftly explores how the "deal left much to be desired" in terms of state formation.

Despite daunting challenges facing the new nation, Vertin offers hope that a viable state can prevail.

Kirkus Reviews