South Sudan is reeling from an escalation of conflict between the government-aligned military and opposition forces and allied groups that observers say risks returning the country to a full-blown civil war.
Violent clashes in the world’s youngest country between the military, loyal to President Salva Kiir, and insurgents supposedly allied with suspended Vice President Riek Machar, have increased in recent weeks.
On Sunday, at least 169 people were killed after armed youths from Mayom county in the north attacked a village in neighboring Abiemnom county, near the border with Sudan.
The victims included women, children and members of the government security forces, said James Monyluak Majok, information minister for the Ruweng administrative area, where Abiemnom is located.
The U.N. mission in South Sudan said it was sheltering more than 1,000 civilians at its base in the area and providing medical care to the wounded. Some 23 people were injured in the attack, he added.
Stephano Wieu de Mialek, chief administrator of Ruweng, said the assault was carried out by people linked to the White Army, a militia that was Machar’s ally during the civil war, along with forces affiliated with Machar’s political party and rebel group, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in Opposition (SPLM-IO).
The group denied all responsibility for the attack and said it had no military presence in the area.
On Monday, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said 26 of its staff were missing after recent violence in parts of Jonglei state, which has seen heavy fighting between government and opposition forces since December.
The humanitarian organization said on February 3 that its Lankien hospital had been hit by an airstrike by government forces and subsequently burned and looted, and that its Pieri health center had been looted.
Regarding the missing personnel, he said: “We have lost contact with them in the midst of the current insecurity.”
MSF said it had been forced to suspend medical activities in Lankien and Pieri due to insecurity.
Machar and Kiir were members of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army guerrilla movement that fought for Sudan’s independence, which it won in 2011, with Kiir becoming president and Machar first vice president.
South Sudan fell into a bloody civil war in 2013 after Kiir fired Machar and then accused him of plotting a coup.
Machar founded the SPLM-IO and both groups engaged in fighting that killed more than 400,000 people and displaced nearly half of the country’s population.
The fighting largely occurred along ethnic lines between Kiir’s majority Dinka community and Machar’s Nuer, the country’s second-largest ethnic group.
In 2018, Kiir and Machar signed a peace deal: ending the civil war, creating a two-party unity government, and returning Machar to the vice presidency. But implementation of the agreement has barely gotten off the ground, as the two sides constantly clash over power sharing.
Last September, Machar was charged with murder, treason and other serious crimes in connection with a deadly White Army attack on a government army garrison in Nasir county in the country’s northeast. Kiir then suspended him from office.
Machar is under house arrest while his trial continues. His supporters say the charges against him are politically motivated and observers have said Machar’s prosecution could jeopardize the peace deal.
Machar’s prosecution and removal have inflamed tensions and coincided with a dramatic rise in violence, particularly in the opposition stronghold of Jonglei state, where opposition forces captured government outposts in December and the government has been waging a counteroffensive since January.
Fighting between the government and opposition forces has displaced some 280,000 people in the past two months.
Daniel Akech, senior analyst for South Sudan at the International Crisis Group, said the government’s “attack” on Machar has unified the opposition. Akech said the latest fighting not only involved rebel groups loyal to him, but had also ensnared groups that had broken away from him in the past because they now saw him as a “symbolic unifying figure.”
“Even if he is detained, incommunicado or unable to give orders, he has become very effective,” Akech said.
Last Friday, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights called for urgent measures to preserve the peace agreement and avoid a return to all-out civil war.
“We are at a dangerous point, when rising violence is combined with growing uncertainty about South Sudan’s political trajectory, while the peace agreement is under serious strain,” Volker Türk told the UN Human Rights Council.
Additional reporting by Associated Press
