Oil profits are fueling South Sudan’s civil war

Impoverished South Sudan is rich in natural resources and oil revenue is the country’s main hard currency export income—it’s not a leap to suggest that oil revenues are funding its side of the war, but one NGO is claiming that it is this very oil money that South Sudan’s leaders are using to get rich and terrorize civilians, according to documents reviewed by The Sentry, an investigative initiative co-founded by George Clooney.

“Little has been known about the financial machinery that makes South Sudan’s continuing war possible, but these documents appear to shed new light on how the country’s main revenue source—oil—is used to fuel militias and ongoing atrocities, and how a small clique continues to get richer while the majority of South Sudanese suffer or flee their homeland,” The Sentry said in the Fueling Atrocities: Oil and War in South Sudan report published on Monday.