Slate
Last month, fear spread that South Sudan’s government would collapse. The president had just removed the country’s powerful army chief of staff, Paul Malong, a hard-liner widely cast as the architect of some of the East African nation’s worst bouts of violence. The shake-up risked dividing the military in a country already mired in a chaotic three-year civil war largely divided along tribal lines. The conflict has produced ethnic cleansing, famine, and the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world. After Malong’s removal, the army was put on high alert.
Then the fake news came.