US scrambles to avert civil war in South Sudan

WASHINGTON (AP) — Three years after midwifing South Sudan’s birth, the United States is desperately trying to prevent the world’s youngest nation from falling apart.

Yet despite shared consternation by the Obama administration and Congress, no one is quite sure what the U.S. can do to bring peace to a country that in many ways owes its existence to the United States. The violence has killed more than 1,000 people and driven 180,000 from their homes in the last month, and spread to neighbors killing each other purely on tribal identification, threatening a place that until recently was viewed by Democrats and Republicans alike as an American success story in Africa.