People carry their belongings as they arrive at the South Sudan People's Defense Forces headquarters after a night of violence in Juba, South Sudan, on Jan. 17.Florence Miettaux/The Associated Press
After days of violent clashes and military movements, South Sudan is in danger of sliding into another war among the same factions that have killed thousands in previous conflicts, analysts say.
South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, has been repeatedly consumed by deadly feuding among politicians and militia leaders since its independence from Sudan in 2011. An estimated 400,000 people died in prolonged fighting in the oil-rich African country from 2013 to 2018.
In a sign of international anxiety at the latest mounting tensions, the United States ordered the evacuation of all its non-emergency staff from South Sudan on the weekend. The decision followed an armed attack on a United Nations helicopter, a wave of arrests of cabinet ministers in the capital, Juba, and an outbreak of violent clashes between soldiers and militia fighters in Upper Nile state.
“South Sudan’s precarious political situation means these tensions can escalate into ethnically targeted mass killing,” said Brian Adeba, a South Sudan expert at The Sentry, an international investigative group that tracks corruption linked to war.
“Now is the time for the international community, especially regional powers, to step up mitigation efforts to prevent a looming disaster,” Mr. Adeba told The Globe and Mail.
The Ugandan government announced on Monday that it had dispatched troops to Juba in a bid to stabilize the situation and defend the government of its close ally, President Salva Kiir. The deployment came after Mr. Kiir had ordered his own troops to take positions on roads around the capital on Friday.
South Sudan’s government denied that any foreign troops had arrived in the city, but Ugandan officials released video of a heavily armed contingent of its soldiers disembarking from an airplane at Juba’s airport. South Sudanese media outlets also confirmed that the Ugandan troops had arrived in the city.
“We shall protect the entire territory of South Sudan like it was our own,” said Uganda’s military chief, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the son of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
Any move against South Sudan’s President will be “a declaration of war,” Gen. Kainerugaba said in a social-media post.
The clashes in Upper Nile state have pitted Mr. Kiir’s forces against the so-called White Army, largely composed of youths from the Nuer ethnic community who are allied to his rival, Vice-President Riek Machar. The war from 2013 to 2018 was waged between Mr. Machar’s supporters and those of Mr. Kiir, predominantly from the Dinka ethnic group.
In the latest fighting, the White Army overran a military garrison in Nasir, a major town in Upper Nile. In response, government troops in Juba surrounded Mr. Machar’s home and arrested several of his political allies.
The arrests and the eruption of violence have triggered widespread alarm.
“South Sudan is slipping rapidly toward full-blown war,” said Alan Boswell, Horn of Africa director at the International Crisis Group, an independent policy organization.
“Renewed civil war in South Sudan would merge with the war in neighbouring Sudan and prove very difficult to resolve,” Mr. Boswell said in a statement. “The region could slip into one large proxy war.”
UN officials warned that the rising violence could jeopardize the fragile 2018 peace agreement that ended the years of fighting between the forces of Mr. Kiir and Mr. Machar.
“We are witnessing an alarming regression that could erase years of hard-won progress,” said Yasmin Sooka, chairperson of the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan, in a statement on the weekend.
Leaders from a regional bloc of countries, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, are holding a meeting on Wednesday to seek solutions to the South Sudan crisis.
Nicholas Coghlan, a former Canadian ambassador to South Sudan, said the growing crisis is partly due to Mr. Kiir’s failure to implement key elements of the 2018 peace deal, including an agreement to hold elections. The elections have been repeatedly postponed, and none have been held at any level since South Sudan’s independence.
“Increasingly, Salva Kiir rules by decree,” Mr. Coghlan told The Globe. “Ministers are flipped or sacked frequently and apparently on a whim … the government is unrepresentative, and the country is ruled by a coterie of close advisers to President Kiir.”
Mr. Kiir has also failed to make any serious attempt to reorganize the armed forces on a non-ethnic basis, he said. Because most units are recruited and organized by ethnicity, South Sudan’s army is “a tinderbox,” Mr. Coghlan said.
Foreign donors, including Canada, have helped create a climate of dependency in South Sudan by paying for most of the country’s health and education services, he said, so “the government in Juba has never felt any great need of accountability.”
The country is now headed for a reckoning, as its oil revenue declines and several Western governments make deep cuts to their foreign-aid programs, Mr. Coghlan said.