The crystal balls are working overtime on South Sudan. Like soothsayers of old, commentators and journalists are feverishly writing their doomsday predictions. Bad days, everyone agrees, are coming.

The hard-fought Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the Government of Sudan looks undeniably fragile. Hostile sentiment is evident from both sides in the form of preparations for a return to war, with the catalyst being the pending 2011 referendum on secession for the South.

The simple fact is that the North and the South have failed to in implement key terms agreed in the CPA. But this failure comes as no surprise; many of the terms of the CPA never looked likely to succeed. Notably, the attempts at unification of the North and South by the Government of Sudan's National Congress Party (NCP) and the Government of South Sudan (GOSS) were doomed from the start with a clear lack of authentic political will from either side.

There is little love lost between the two parties in the wake of the two decades of brutal conflict that led up to the signing of the CPA. Although the CPA was ultimately signed and the outright conflict ceased, tensions have remained high.

Khartoum has accused the South of breaching the agreement by rearming. The GOSS Sudanese People's Liberation Movement politicians have accused Khartoum of arming proxy militia who have created major insecurity in the South. The political mistrust and deceit between the two is without obvious parallel, though Khartoum's relations with numerous political parties and opposition groups in Darfur and the Nuba mountains are similarly fraught.

Clearly, a return to war would be catastrophic. Most in the know believe it would likely take the South to the brink of collapse; and this some say, is an optimistic analysis. Nonetheless, it is popularly forecast as the most obvious scenario.

However, a major oversight in regard to the current commentary about the South is the situation existing right now. Though journalists are filling pages with what may happen politically and militarily, they are failing to clearly emphasize the current predicament of the South.

South Sudan is in crisis. It is in financial and humanitarian crisis.

Speaking recently at the London School of Economics, the UN Deputy Resident Coordinator for Sudan, Lise Grande, described the situation as "the humanitarian perfect storm", highlighting the present accumulation of a range of negative factors in the region, leading to a critically alarming humanitarian fallout. She is by no means alone in her analysis; humanitarians and regional experts support her claims.

The global financial crisis - and specifically the plummeting price of oil in particular - has hurt the South severely. If the South were a state in its own right, it would be, as the journalistic cliché goes, "one of the poorest countries in the world". More precisely, it would most likely be the second-poorest country in the world.

This year alone a reported 320,000 people have had to flee their homes for reasons linked directly or indirectly to conflict. Since January, over 2,000 people have been killed in armed conflict including attacks on civilians. There have been seven reported massacres, the vast majority of those slaughtered were women and children.

Intertribal fighting in the South is reportedly out of control, with the GOSS, traditional leaders and the ever-important Church unable to slow the attacks and reprisal attacks that are spiraling regions of the South into a state of chaos.

Militia leaders are getting arms en masse, easily and quickly. Also of concern, experts believe leaders are acquiring delusions of grandeur and wealth even more easily. These men are becoming significantly armed and dangerously intent on creating havoc.

The Ugandan militia known as the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) is one group creating mayhem, particularly in the state of Western Equatoria, attacking small villages, killing men and abducting women and children. Countries affected by LRA activity - the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan - have failed to reach any agreement on stopping the violence, so the LRA's leader, Joseph Kony (indicted by the International Criminal Court), still reportedly directs a relatively fragmented and broadly feared LRA.

When the GOSS has preemptively deployed troops in an attempt to curb the rapid increase in violent attacks, its soldiers have been slaughtered.

Humanitarian reports say the living conditions in many parts of the South are unacceptable and should be considered a humanitarian emergency.

There are some frightening facts being reported.

The UN says that, in humanitarian terms, approximately 40 per cent of the entire population of South Sudan is at serious risk.

The health situation is dire. One woman in seven dies from complications relating to pregnancy, the highest maternal mortality rate in the world. Polio has returned, despite having previously been eliminated in the South. Malnutrition in children has reached new peaks since the signing of the CPA. Cases of serious waterborne infections have dramatically increased. Vulnerability to disease is acute due to a lack of immunization. The UN expects a three-month gap in the availability of malaria prophylaxis across the entire South.

And, following an extended hunger gap caused by a failed harvest, thousands of families are reduced to eating just one meal every two or three days. The UN estimates 1.5 million people are facing severe food insecurity.

Further, the education system is woefully under-resource and the education infrastructure that does exist is inaccessible to most. The UN says a 15-year-old girl in Southern Sudan has a higher chance of dying during childbirth than she does of finishing school.

Likewise, vast areas of the South offer little hope of productive employment.

This is the period when humanitarians had expected - and budgeted for - handover of their projects to the GOSS. Clearly, that can't happen yet. Only donors, rigid in their nature, can avert the mass closure of medical clinics, feeding programs, immunization programmes and schools. An estimated $120 million is needed to maintain even the barest minimum of humanitarian operations until the end of the year.

The begging letters are being written frantically on a daily basis in the hope that they'll find proactive, capable readers. While waiting for that strategy to bear fruit, though, humanitarians will have to design and manage a coping strategy with the resources they have left, if they want to succeed where the GOSS is currently failing.

The achievements that have taken place in the South should not be overlooked, though. The fact the region has not collapsed already is to the enormous credit of its people and to some of their leaders. Humanitarian organizations have also done an extraordinary job to support the South through this critical period.

But now, at a time when the South needs to be strong, when political aggression from the North casts a long shadow over ambitions of independence, the South is seriously wounded.

The major problem in the South boils down to insecurity. If there were security, there would be access. If there were access there would have been better preparation and efficient management of resources, however limited, to facilitate returns. There could be widespread humanitarian operations coordinating with the GOSS, targeting vulnerable populations and delivering real results, even with severely reduced budgets.

But, as things stand, the aid effort and the GOSS have both been undermined.

For the Khartoum-based Government of Sudan, the problems in the South are not exactly inconvenient.

Analysts are looking north, wondering where the financial and military hardware support for tribal militias and the LRA comes from; the National Congress Party has long been accused of arming proxy militia for its own benefit.

Political seeds of doubt are rapidly and steadily being sown in the South, with turmoil being created and control being lost. The Government of Sudan knows all too well how to divide and conquer, both militarily and politically. It has decades of practice.

Forget the vote and for now forget the prospect of the reigniting of war.

If, in the present, the GOSS cannot maintain security and provide for its people as a state within a state, the South will not be in a position to either defend itself in conflict or to effectively express its will for independence in the coming referendum.

And Khartoum knows this all too well.

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