The world’s newest country is also among the most fragile and troubled. The jubilation of independence in 2011 quickly soured when a personal feud between President Salva Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar took an ethnic line and pit the two dominant tribes in the country against each other. Machar accuses the president of being a dictator; Kiir accuses Riek of treason. The result has been gross violations of human rights, which some describe as ethnic cleansing. Worse, the conflict is merging with the civil war in Sudan, which has paved the way for the Islamist government of Omar al-Bashir to indiscriminately attack Christians in the border region.