First Raise a Flag: How South Sudan Won the Longest War but Lost the Peace

by Peter Martell

When South Sudan's war began, the Beatles were playing their first hits and reaching the moon was an astronaut's dream. Half a century later, with millions massacred in Africa's longest war, the continent's biggest country split in two. It was an extraordinary, unprecedented experiment. Many have fought, but South Sudan did the impossible, and won. This is the story of an epic fight for freedom. It is also the story of a nightmare.
First Raise a Flag details one of the most dramatic failures in the history of international state-building. three years after independence, South Sudan was lowest ranked in the list of failed states. War returned, worse than ever. Peter Martell has spent over a decade reporting from palaces and battlefields, meeting those who made a country like no other: warlords and spies, missionaries and mercenaries, guerrillas and gunrunners, freedom fighters and war crime fugitives, Hollywood stars and ex-slaves. Under his seasoned foreign correspondent's gaze, he weaves with passion and colour the lively history of the world's newest country.

First Raise a Flag is a moving reflection on the meaning of nationalism, the power of hope and the endurance of the human spirit.

Genres: Africa, History, Nonfiction, South Sudan, Politics, War, Sudan

320 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2018

Reviews

[Sleepless Dreamer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before picking up this book, I knew that there was a war in Sudan and that South Sudan became independent in 2011. I also knew that Israel receives an influx of immigrants from Sudan. That's it. 

With clear and lucid prose, Martell describes South Sudan's history. This book is fantastic for beginners. It provides a detailed summary of everything, from colonialism to the war with North Sudan to all the way to independence and the following civil war.

The first few chapters detail the effects of the British colonialism. Now, obviously, slavery is bad. However, reading this book made me suddenly realize just how bad, as silly as saying that sounds. The sheer exploitation, the abuse, the violence, I've somehow never heard it described quite so detailed. It was really sickening.

The Brits left suddenly and abruptly after ruining South Sudan's social structure. North and South Sudan's fighting continued. With all of my ignorance, I did not know that Sudan is a Muslim country that identifies as Arab while South Sudan sees itself as Black and has a majority of Christians and animists. The fighting between South Sudan and Sudan was also very gruesome. World nations had tried to create one united Sudan however this continued to fail.

Fast forward to 2011 and South Sudan finally gets independence, after so many years of fighting for it. South Sudan's popular leader John Garang dies in a helicopter crash literally a few days before this happens, which is just so frustrating and ahhh. South Sudan receives a lot of international money, as well as oil money from their agreement with Sudan. Everything was supposed to be great. This was meant to be a successful birth of a nation.

However, the government was filled with corruption. It did not take long for the politicians to steal all of the money, leaving the South Sudanese with nothing. South Sudan was not a poor country but it was full of poverty. There were no civil societies which meant civilians didn't have much to protect them, other than UN organizations. From that, civil war began. And it is heartbreaking. Again, Martell does not hold back on describing the horrors that the Sudanese inflicted (and continue to inflict) on each other. 

At the end, Martell asks the much needed questions. How could this catastrophe happen? What went wrong? It seems that becoming a country needs more than an anthem and a land. South Sudan really shows the importance of a strong government. By the time they became independent, the violence was already so ingrained. With no education and not much protection, is it really surprising that such a war would erupt? 

As an Israeli, I feel embarrassed but I've never considered how African politics matter to us. We go on and on about European politics and their importance to us but Africa is right next to us. My Politics department doesn't offer any course about African politics but it does offer like 14 courses about European and Asian politics (yes, I found myself googling African studies and learning that there's a joint program for that, this is the first time I actually feel regret about picking PPE).

South Sudan received so much aid and yet, things haven't gotten better. I feel that this raises so many questions. What could have been done differently? How can the UN actually create peace? Was this bound to happen or could the international community have done something differently to stop it?

To conclude, this is a great beginners' book about the Sudan conflict. It doesn't mention Darfur nearly at all but it clarifies the fighting between South Sudan and Sudan as well as lucidly explains the impact of various international policies. It's well written and accessible. I definitely recommend it if you'd like to learn more about South Sudan!

What I'm Taking With Me
-So many world nations such as Israel, Norway, Britain to the USA were involved in the creation of South Sudan and it's just such a heartbreaking failure. 
- It makes you think about how racism is truly cultural. Those Americans that attempt to suggest that Black people can't be oppressors are only focusing on their own history when race is such an intricate topic elsewhere. 
- I feel upset that no one ever taught me about Israel's involvement. Like, it makes sense strategically but also, what? 
- Every South Sudan tag on social media is full of Nyakim Gatwech and I just can't get over how aesthetic everything she does is, what is this sorcery.

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Review to come! I'm off to study but hey, I've found the best study music ever so at least I have that. Behold!

[Letitia Mason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. A compelling and readable summary of both the written and oral history of South Sudan. Many strands of the recent coflicts are brought together in a lucid, analytical and compassionate way.

[Allison McHorse · Rating 5 out of 5]

I asked Tarpey if he had any books on South Sudan because I wanted to learn more after watching Khaman Maluach play for Duke and he suggested First Raise a Flag.

This book was absolutely brutal to read in the most important ways. Peter Martell does incredible work documenting generational traumas and atrocities, and the ways historical interference and colonialism created the foundation for both. It forces you to question what really makes a nation and who decides what makes a nation. I am very grateful to Martell for this book and echo his hope for peace.

[Nigel Kotani · Rating 4 out of 5]

My interest in this book stemmed from having had some peripheral involvement with the Government of South Sudan in 2005 shortly after their peace deal with the North. I actually chose the name of the company earmarked to be the state national oil company for South Sudan, White Nile Ltd.

I can absolutely assure anyone that they don't need to have any knowledge of or interest in South Sudan to enjoy this book. It is simply an excellent read.

It begins by tracing the history of the region from a few centuries back, through the Mahdi, Gordon and Kitchener to the British-Egyptian occupation. In a typical piece of divide-and-rule Britain ensured that the north of Sudan and the South of Sudan developed at a completely different pace, meaning that when the British left, the vastly more advanced North inevitably dominated the South. This eventually led to a secessionist movement in the South.

The book goes on to tell the story of the secessionist movement and its 50 year struggle for independence. In doing so, it lays the groundwork for its last section, which tells the story of the disintegration of the state within only a couple of years after it finally became fully independent in 2011. In particular, the back story of the history of South Sudan set out in the first two-thirds of the book makes the disintegration in the last third of the book seem, with the benefit of hindsight, like an inevitability.

The book is well-paced, mixing factual history with entertaining anecdote, personal experience and political analysis. It's absorbing and easy to read, almost to the point of being gripping, as befits a journalist's writing. It does, though, tell a very brutal and shocking story, though it manages to do so without ever becoming depressing, the author somehow managing to retain his optimism for South Sudan throughout, arguably against his better judgement. Interestingly, War Child by the musician Emmanuel Jal about his experiences as a child soldier in the same conflict, which I read about a year ago after seeing him give a concert and talk at a festival, also manages to combine shocking brutality with an uplifting optimism. I can only assume that the people of the region have an indomitable spirit.

If you like well-written books by intelligent people then I can highly recommend this.

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can’t rate a book like this.
The things that happened/are happening in South Sudan are the content of horror films and nightmares. But it’s worse because it’s real people doing those things to other very real people.
Peter Martell’s reporting is concise and informative without showing any obvious bias that I could tell. He doesn’t make any statement about placing blame, even as his accounting makes it very clear that there’s enough blame to go around. He does a good job of reporting the events as they happened as much as possible, inserting many statements made by those involved and those affected.
If you are interested in understanding world affairs and global conflicts, this is a good book to pick up.

[Musab · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unfortunate story of a nation that has probably seen the worst atrocities in recent history. The book lays out the history of South Sudan since colonial times and how it shapes its present day. Kudos to the author for providing a detailed and at times passionate account of events!

[Tristan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is incredible. More than a history, much of Peter Martell’s life work has been devoted to recording the horrors, heroism, and heart of the South Sudanese people. The themes of cyclical trauma, of irreconcilable violence, of achieving the unachievable only to watch it disintegrate, of perseverance and resilience, and the beauty of the human spirit, all engrossed me. Reading this book was informative, intimate, and profound. In the face of the worst atrocities humans can commit: intentional famine, mass sexual violence, and genocide, all on an unimaginable scale and timeline, there are human beings trying to live their lives. I hope for peace and reconciliation for the South Sudanese.

Favorite quotes:

“No, life was not cheap here, I wanted to shout at him. Survival here was the hardest fought thing in the world.”

“[The UN] did not offer a solution, only the troublesome illusion that things could be controlled. Peacekeepers, after all, need a peace to keep.”

“Sometimes the stories of suffering you are told can merge into one, and past pains bleed into the present. The horrors done are recounted with a sickening, resigned shrug of exhaustion: this has been done before; now it has happened to me; it will happen again. Tales are told as though in a cave crowded with echoes.”

“This is not a definitive history; that must be told by the South Sudanese themselves. It does, however, tell the story of how a nation emerged, and of how, for a moment, there was hope.”

“I told the gunner I felt seasick; he told me I was lucky to have seen the sea.”

[Kang-Chun Cheng · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this book was unbelievable. Would recommend this to anyone, even if you don't have a particular interest in South Sudan--amazing reporting from the ground level and analysis of western meddling and attempts at 'state-building.' the horrors that Martell documented, weaving in his own experiences with a light hand, culminate in lessons that we should all take to heart. i'm not a huge non-fic reader, but the narrative grace with which he navigates incredibly complex dynamics is a total feat.

[Jared · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it.” - Hannah Arendt.

TITLE OF THE BOOK
- General Joseph Lagu, the old Anya-Nya chief, raised his fist into the air... I asked him if he believed South Sudan would grow into a viable state... Lagu’s hands left his walking stick and clutched mine with a firm grip. ‘First raise a flag,’ he said. ‘Then we make the country.’

A NATION
- A nation is a mental and physical construct, not just a border line on a map. Violence in the process of state formation is the norm, not an aberration. What is strange is that anyone helping create South Sudan should have thought it would be any different.

DIVERSITY
- It is one of the most diverse lands in Africa—around 70 ethnic groups, most with their own language. There is no majority people. The Dinka make up around a third of the population, followed by the many Nuer groups, totalling about half that in terms of numbers.

LASTING IMPACTS OF SLAVERY
- So many from the South came through for sale in Khartoum that soon the very appearance of a Southerner became associated with that of being a slave. It left a dangerous legacy of the bitter belief in racial superiority.

- After so long at war, the legacy of hate resulting from centuries of raiding meant colonial officers thought it better for a time that the two lands remain separate. The Closed Districts Ordinances for the South were first introduced in 1922, limiting contact between North and South... it would forge a two-track system, developing the North but leaving the South in limbo.

- ‘This marked difference in development between two so different people of one country inevitably creates a feeling in the underdeveloped people, that they are being cheated, exploited and dominated.’

SUDAN’S INDEPENDENCE
- Sudan was the first country in Africa to win independence when European nations began pulling out of their colonies in the second half of the 20th century, the lowering of Britain’s Union Jack and Egypt’s flag on New Year’s Day 1956 marking the end of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.

SUDAN DOMINATES THE SOUTH AFTER INDEPENDENCE
- The British began drawing back, with a policy of ‘Sudanisation’ to replace them. For Southerners, that meant ‘Northernisation’.

- ‘Consequently it would be bullied by the North in an independent Sudan.’

THE SOUTH BEGINS TO REBEL OVER THE YEARS
- South Sudan marks the outbreak of the mutiny on 18 August as Heroes Day.

- The mutiny was a messy failure, but romanticised hindsight describes it as the pivotal moment that kicked off the struggle for the nation.

EARLY ON, WAS NOT MUCH OF A SOUTHERN ‘IDENTITY’
- There may have been little consciousness of a separate ‘Southern’ identity, but the songs in the cattle camps found a common cause across the many peoples—they sang of anger and hostility towards ‘Arabs’.

- ‘The common man didn’t think about a state of independence,’ Tarzan said. ‘They were fighting for survival.’

SOME AUTONOMY GAINED
- After so many years fighting for their own nation, independence was shelved. A self-governing ‘Southern Region’ was agreed, with limited tax raising powers, and autonomy over education, health and police. Defence, foreign policy and economic policy remained in the hands of Khartoum, and the rebels would be integrated into the army.

- In March 1972 the deal was signed. The ‘Seventeen-Year War’ had come to an end.

DISCOVERY OF OIL ADDS TO THE COMPLEXITY
- Oil changed the dynamics of power. The sudden arrival of such a valuable resource sharply increased the risk of violence. When the Anya-Nya took up arms in the 1960s, they did so for principles of freedom and rights. Now, there was a resource worth billions to fight for too—and fuel the war.

- Khartoum redrew borders of the key oil zone around Bentiu to prise it away from the South’s semi-autonomous rule.

WATER IS A PRIZED COMMODITY AS WELL
- South Sudan had another key resource that attracted interest: water.

- By the time the river emerges from the Sudd, half of the water has been lost to evaporation.

- Jonglei Canal, to divert the Nile and, alongside the new channel, water one of the largest irrigation schemes ever planned in the world... The digger was one of the first sites attacked and destroyed when war broke out.

THE POLITICS DON’T MAKE ANY SENSE
- With African allies fearful of encouraging separatist groups in their own nations, Garang made clear he was fighting for regime change, not the separation of the South.

- On paper, the politics made no sense, but the reality was about powers not true policy. Machar claimed to fight for the independence of South Sudan, but was backed by Khartoum, which fought for unity.

INFIGHTING AMONG THE REBELS (THEN AND NOW)
- ‘Personal rivalries and tribal and ideological differences cause infighting.’

- ‘Every revolution has its own power struggle within itself,’ he said. ‘What is important is to reconcile.’

- It turned the SPLA against itself. If the split was ideological at the start, it would soon divide the people along bitter ethnic lines.

THE US INTERESTED IN HELPING THE SOUTH
- Washington soon saw Sudan’s strategic importance, fearful of Soviet influence and then Libya’s Gadhafi.

- Yet by the early 1990s, politics shifted. The Soviet Union had collapsed, and Khartoum had backed both militant Islam and Saddam Hussein in the First Gulf War. The SPLA now battled a government that hated the US, and the rebels found a more sympathetic ear in Washington.

- Bush said finding peace in Sudan was his top Africa priority,

HELP FROM NORWAY
- left-wing solidarity group Norwegian People’s Aid, NPA, who ran frontline hospitals for the wounded rebels.

- NPA and friends operated outside UN control, helping channel aid from the US and other supporters keen to help the South. ‘We ignored the rules,’ Eiffe said. ‘We could get the pilots and the planes to go to any areas.’

- NPA as an organisation is adamant it never provided military support, but maverick aid workers crossed the line to actively support the SPLA’s cause. So NPA got a new nickname: Norwegian People’s Army.

- Cargo manifests were disguised; long boxes of rifles were called ‘cut flowers’, metal tins of bullets were ‘sardines’ or ‘typewriter parts’, and rockets were labelled ‘parts for construction’.

- International backing was given by the US, Britain and Norway, a grouping called ‘The Troika’,

CLOSER TO INDEPENDENCE IN EARLY 2000s
- Yet piece by piece, deals were made. A unity government in Khartoum was agreed, with a semi-autonomous regional government in Juba to run the South.

- The deal was given a grand title befitting its importance: the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, or CPA.

- But the deal had a fundamental clause. ‘The people of South Sudan have the right to self-determination,’ it read. After a six-year gap to show that unity was an attractive option, the South would choose if they wanted to forge a new nation of their own.

UNFORTUNATELY, GARANG DIES
- On 30 July 2005, flying towards Garang’s bush base at New Site, the Mi-172 Soviet-built chopper smashed into rugged mountains just after crossing over the Ugandan border into South Sudan.

- Garang’s deputy Salva Kiir, a battle-hardened general from the Dinka cattle herding lands of Bahr el Ghazal, had taken over.

SO MANY GUNS
- Foreigners were busy scrambling to provide services for the people, and that left the old soldiers able to concentrate on what mattered to them—guaranteeing that the army was strong enough to secure the referendum on independence, and to have the result respected. So they spent the cash on what they knew best. They expanded the army and bought more guns.

DESCENT INTO CHAOS
- Revenge followed revenge. Everyone blamed someone else for starting it.

- the violence here was fuelled by all-or-nothing political races for power in Juba.

PATRONAGE SYSTEM
- As long as the cash kept flowing Kiir could stay in control, but the demands continually expanded from an ever-increasing circle of paid loyalists. Their support only lasted as long as the next payment. It was a dangerous policy, because it now paid to rebel. Those who challenged the government, after battles, massacre and murder, found themselves rewarded. It swelled the massed ranks of the SPLA, a bush rebel force trying to turn into a regular, national, standing army.

- It only swapped the rulers. The new masters in Juba had learned from the worst. By purchasing support, they too exploited resources for their own self-serving pursuit of power. The generals followed in the steps of those they had ousted.

CORRUPTION
- Much was wasted on paying the salaries of a bloated civil service and army.

- Orders were made for a web of wide and smooth highways to improve trade, cut costs, encourage business and boost security... The cash was paid for tarmac, but only bulldozed dirt tracks were built. The massive difference was pocketed.

VOTE FOR INDEPENDENCE (2011)
- 98.83 percent had voted for a new nation.

THE NEW REBELS
- the rebel government, now named the ‘Sudan People’s Liberation Army—In Opposition’,

*** *** *** *** ***

INFO OPS
- rebels had no hope of defeating the government militarily. Winning wider support was critical, and that had to include persuading African nations that a separatist rebellion was a good cause. So Mossad added a propaganda wing.

- Mossad’s technique of children’s art to show the impact of war on the innocent remains popular among rights activists and aid workers.

SOCIAL NETWORKS
- Yet the reliance that people have on their community is not the cause of violence but, rather, because of it. It is the only security network that is durable enough to survive. Without a government who offer support, people have to care for themselves.

- In a land where government social security was an abstract concept, people depended on their clan for protection.

- Without a government social welfare system or national security forces they could trust, they looked to their own people for self-protection. The notion of the ‘tribe’ was not some ancient drive of primordial passion, but rather a necessary modern response of community defence and survival.

PERSPECTIVE
- I told the gunner I felt seasick; he told me I was lucky to have seen the sea.

IMPORTANCE OF GETTING FEEDBACK FROM THE PEOPLE
- So much needed to be done that few ever stopped to ask the people what they wanted and needed.

QUOTES
- ‘In a world of roving banditry there is little or no incentive for anyone to produce or accumulate anything.’ Mancur Olson

- ‘If a dog bites you and you don’t bite him back, it will say that you have no teeth.’ - Sudanese proverb

- ‘It is necessary for these sad conditions to be reported, because evil thrives best in quiet, untidy corners.’ - Chinua Achebe

- ‘Dum spiro spero; while I breathe, I hope,’

- ‘The domestic struggle over who ‘owns’ a new state does eventually come to an end—on average, after 60 years.’ Andreas Wimmer

- It was part of a poem I once heard Seamus Heaney read: History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme.

FACTOIDS
- The two Sudans, North and South together, are the size of the United States east of the Mississippi.

- The South was about the size of Afghanistan

- Hadrian’s Wall, that epic barrier marking the furthest north the Roman Empire stretched. In the Nile swamps, so very far away, the marshes demarcate the furthest point south the Romans reached.

- The name ‘Sudan’ comes from the Arabic Bilad al-Sudan, the ‘Land of the Blacks’. It was a loose term for everything south of Egypt, not a coherent state with fixed borders.

- Sudd, from the Arabic for barrier... One of the world’s great freshwater swamps, it swells to twice the size of Belgium or three times Florida’s Everglades after the rains.

- Even the names the foreigners have given are wrong. The Dinka call themselves the Jieng, the Nuer, the Naath, and the Shilluk, the Chollo.

- The Bari people tell a fireside legend of how when explorers came up the White Nile, they were greeted by villagers on the riverbank. They screamed at the foreigners for news of the daughter of their chief, Jubek, captured by slavers in a recent raid. ‘Jubek, Jubek,’ they cried in desperation at the boat, hoping somehow she’d reply. At the same time, the explorers were shouting to shore asking the name of the riverside village. ‘Juba,’ the explorers duly noted on their sketch map—and so it was that the future capital of South Sudan was named.

- Nuer ‘White Army’: Needing men, Machar equipped and armed the Nuer youth, co-opting the old militia called the White Army as his force. They were named for the glinting light on their shining spears and the white ash that fighters covered themselves in... With ash covering them like war paint, their attacks were utterly terrifying.

- Dinka vs Nuer: For generations, the multiple clans that made up the two biggest peoples of South Sudan, the Dinka and Nuer, were not clearly separated. They were, rather, overlapping peoples from the same ancient roots. Their languages now were different, but the peoples still intermarried and shared much of the same culture. Indeed, sometimes there was more difference between two distant Nuer clans, split by the great waters of the Sudd, than with a neighbouring Dinka clan. Extreme violence would change that, cementing differences into rival peoples.

- If they had the Nuer facial scarring, the horizontal lines across the forehead, they would be taken.

- V-shaped scars on his forehead that marked him out as a Dinka from Bor.

- Power bases in South Sudan rest on ethnicity, but there is no majority group and none offer monolithic support. The multiple clans of the Dinka are the largest, making up around a third of the population. The many Nuer groups come next, totalling about half that.

- One of Roosevelt’s hunting bases retains its name today, ‘Rhino Camp’ in Uganda, now home to the mass exodus of South Sudanese refugees who fled civil war in 2013.

- oil provided 98 percent of revenues—making South Sudan the most oil dependent land in the world.

- Kiir—or Salva as many called him, from his baptismal name Salvatore—

- In peace, the army was meant to shrink. In South Sudan, it grew fivefold. Soon there would be over 700 generals—more than the US—producing a higher ratio of generals to soldiers than any other army in the world.

- Since the main towns had now been destroyed, the Bentiu camp was so big that it counted as South Sudan’s second biggest city. It was beaten in size only by the capital Juba.

- over two-thirds of the country’s children are out of school, the highest proportion in the world.

- Assessments found that over half of the people suffered post-traumatic stress disorder, the sort of levels found in post-genocide Rwanda or Cambodia, up to five times higher than among US or British combat soldiers returning from Iraq or Afghanistan.

- More than a third of the entire population, some 4.5 million people, had been forced from their homes.

- In 2018, the highest ever number needed urgent aid: over seven million people, or two-thirds of the entire country.

- tukuls (huts),

HAHA
- ‘Today I have been holding a peace ceremony between the two tribes, which will, I hope, prove binding,’ Lyth wrote, who took off his clothes and smeared himself in excrement to join the ceremony, something I cannot imagine many UN negotiators would do for peace today.

- It was a no man’s land: you can come, you can rape, you can kill. Whatever you do, no one knows. Who else would have come? The UN? Hah! What would they have done with all their cars?’

- ‘The only vehicles available for hire in Nairobi at that time were minivans... Mossad went to war in a zebra safari bus.

- ‘Welcome to Juba, the village city of heat, filth, shit, booze, grub and raw sex.’

- The new capital was not even the most outlandish proposal—that was the trippy plan to develop the ten state capitals into animal and fruit shapes. Juba was to be redesigned in the shape of a rhinoceros, with the president’s office situated in the eye, and the police headquarters in its ear. The town of Yambio was to be a pineapple, while the town of Wau was unveiled as a giraffe. The elongated plan put the army barracks out of town in the giraffe’s head, and the sewage works in its bottom.

- African fish eagle... The eagle was the centre of the South’s new coat of arms. ‘It’s a kleptoparasite, did you know?’ the diplomat said. ‘They’re pirates. They steal fish from other birds.’ He took a hefty gulp of whisky. ‘They’ve only gone and chosen a thief as a national symbol,’ he said.

- The Presidential Guard were known as the Tiger Battalion, after Kiir’s old rebel codename.

BONUS
- Jonglei canal project: https://youtu.be/cBYnxEKwNK4

- Mass looting by government officials: https://youtu.be/9DXLoRMMVJ0

- Independence vote: https://youtu.be/yi9c8gaw9PM

[Adrian Bennetts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grim reading at points, but well written. The author mixes personal experience with the events that formed South Sudan.

[Henry Freeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book that has been very helpful for my Master's degree studies at SOAS in London this year. Happy to strongly recommend this!!

[W · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a perfectly fine book but for me it did not live up to its current record of almost 80% 5* ratings. There are books on similar topics that I have found considerably more insightful and interesting, and I am giving a 3* rating to allow for this. I'm thinking of, for example, This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan War or In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Horrible story, but a well written account of the making of the nation of South Sudan. The author takes you right into the heart of the politics, the violence, the mud, dirt and exploitation of the people. Also the people. He introduces refugees, by name and lets you see the situations from their points of view. Rey realistic. I had to take some breaks from reading, but if you want to know how a nation is birthed and miscarried all at the same time, read this book.

[Meital Kupfer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished this. As someone who's worked on the South Sudan context for a few years now (albeit from Uganda, primarily on the refugee crisis) this book parses out the complex and constructed conflict that has been pervasive beyond our knowledge of the 2016 (ongoing) crisis. While I had a good grasp of history from the 1990s - the ongoing split between machar and kiir, I did not know the extent of the Anyan rebellion, nor the dynamics between Khartoum and other powers (particularly during Nimeiri's time). This book is difficult to get through at times for the sheer fact of being faced with horrific stories that we (the West) have to reckon with as the bystanders and often instigators into the frailties of statebuilding. One of the best books I've read on the complexities of South Sudan so far.

[Ajang · Rating 5 out of 5]

A relatively short book, but Peter condenses the entire history of South Sudan into those pages from the encounter with the Romans to independence and the civil war. He plainly shows the bravery of those who gave their lives for South Sudan to become a nation, and the greed and immorality of the current leaders who have driven the country into the ground. It is a good introduction to the history of South Sudan - almost impossible to understand the current political climate and dysfunction without the history in this book.

[Mikko Liimatta · Rating 5 out of 5]

First Raise A Flag is a nonfiction book by Peter Martell. This book is about the history of South Sudan, mainly the civil war between the north and the south. The author talks with many figures on both sides including South Sudan general Joseph Lagu and Major General Paul Garang Deng. This book is really well written and giving both sides of the story really gives it more context I would rate this book to anyone 10+.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter martell is an excellent writer, any critique is of the content not the writing. The history he had to read and research was meh, honestly like most journalists. Once he could interview people who lived the history it became fantastic. He is also easier to digest than other authors on Sudanese atrocities because he can convey emotion without going into as specific detail about individual atrocities.

[Colton Brydges · Rating 5 out of 5]

A comprehensive and sobering overview of the history and birth of South Sudan, and it's rapid descent into one of the worst civil wars in the modern era. Made all the more depressing in that 7 years after this book was published, little has changed: the same people are in power, and ordinary people (women and children especially) suffer from their greed.

[Paul Harper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best introduction to South Sudan.

[Sam Maloney · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exquisite read to see how South Sudan has fallen into a dreadful trap

[Eric Randolph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptional first hand account from a journalist on the ground for the birth and collapse of the world's youngest nation, with lessons that go far beyond the region.

[Robert Carey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great non fiction depicting the history of South Sudan.