South Sudan “on the brink” UN warns amid renewed violence

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa—Another conflict is looming in the world’s youngest country, South Sudan, which gained independence from Sudan in 2011 and saw civil war erupt shortly after its foundation.

A tenuous power-sharing deal is teetering on the brink. An evacuation of non-emergency US government employees is underway, and the United Nations has warned of a “regression” amid political infighting and escalating militia violence. Here’s all you need to know about the potential threat of all out conflict in this young East African nation –

How did we get here and who are the main protagonists?

Tensions broke out last month between President Salva Kiir and his rival-turned-deputy, Vice President Riek Machar, who fought a bitter war before agreeing to a 2018 peace deal and who are currently in a unity government.

But that alliance is fraying at the seams after Kiir fired Machar loyalists as part of a Cabinet reshuffle this year. Earlier this month government troops surrounded Machar’s home and also detained two ministers and several military officials allied with the deputy leader.

It comes as a militant group which Kiir claims is aligned with Machar, called the White Army, has clashed with government troops in the country’s Upper Nile state. The militants are said to mostly be from Machar’s Nuer ethnic group, while Kiir is an ethnic Dinka. Machar’s party denies any links.

Earlier this month the White Army overran a military encampment in Nasir county in Upper Nile State, near the border with Ethiopia and not far from Sudan. Then, more than two dozen members of the Sudanese military and a UN pilot were killed when a UN helicopter evacuating the troops came under fire.

This week an airstrike by South Sudan’s army killed at least 19 people in Nasir, Reuters news agency reported. The government has ordered civilians to evacuate the area.

Then, on Thursday, Kiir sacked the governor of Upper Nile State, who hailed from Machar’s party.

A young nation, with a troubled past.

The UN has a large mission to South Sudan, with some 20,000 peacekeepers. The head of that mission, Nicolas Haysom, warned Tuesday that “South Sudan is poised on the brink of relapse into civil war.”

During South Sudan’s five-year civil war that ended in 2018, more than 400,000 people were killed.

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan has warned “we are witnessing an alarming regression that could erase years of hard-won progress.”

The commission also said a humanitarian crisis is worsening. In a report on the situation in 2024 it said half the country was already suffering from food insecurity, there were two million people internally displaced, and another two million had fled to neighboring countries. To add to the misery, last week Doctors Without Borders warned there was a cholera outbreak in the country, with over 1,300 cases.

Why is neighboring Uganda involved?

The Ugandan government in Kampala has sent Ugandan special force troops to South Sudan’s capital Juba, to back up President Kiir.

The presence of the Ugandans has riled South Sudan’s opposition parties, and this week Machar’s SPLM-IO said it was partially pulling out of some of the security arrangements from the 2018 peace deal.

The threat of regional war

Alan Boswell, Horn of Africa Director at International Crisis Group, told NPR the war on the northern border in neighboring Sudan could also push South Sudan into deeper conflict.

“Because of the war in Sudan, South Sudan’s main oil export pipeline burst one year again and South Sudan is a petro-state that relies almost entirely on oil revenues, so for the past year South Sudan has been in a very deep fiscal crisis,” he said. “So, we’ve seen a lot of cracks in the politics and security alliances.”

He added that President Kiir has tried to keep both warring parties in neighboring Sudan onside — the army and the rebel Rapid Support Forces. However, he said, it’s becoming more difficult for him to keep neutral.

“Because of this war in Sudan, it’s very easy to see South Sudan slipping back into civil war internally, but that war is also merging with this war in Sudan and possibly looking like one big war in the horn of Africa region, and that’s our major worry right now,” Boswell added.