Less than a week after warning the African Union (AU) that South Sudan was on the brink of civil war, the senior United Nations (UN) staffer in the country repeated himself as reports of First Vice President Riek Machar being detained surfaced.
In a statement, acting chair of the foreign relations committee of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO), Reath Muoch Tang, said the defence minister and chief of national security accompanied a convoy of more than 20 heavily armed vehicles, which forcefully entered Machar’s residence. There his bodyguards were disarmed and an arrest warrant issued. His detention effectively collapses the peace deal that ended the 2013-2018 civil war, Machar’s party said on Thursday.
Machar is being held with his wife at his home, accused of supporting the White Army militia which clashed with the military in Nasir, Upper Nile State, this month, Tang said.
UNMISS (UN Mission in South Sudan) Head Nicholas Haysom in a late Wednesday statement repeated his call for immediate and collective intervention to ensure war is averted.
In a statement Haysom, also special representative of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in the world’s youngest country, has it: “Tonight the country’s leaders stand on the brink of relapsing into widespread conflict or taking the country forward toward peace, recovery and democracy”. These three concepts were integral to the 2018 revitalised peace agreement, signed in “a spirit of consensus”.
According to him seven years of fragile progress stood to be lost and see South Sudan plunged “back into war which will not only devastate the country, it will affect the entire region”.
South Sudan, sited between the Central African Republic (CAR), Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), has been mired in conflict which started shortly after independence from Sudan in 2011. On one side are government forces led by President Salva Kiir with fighters loyal to his rival Machar, First Vice President since 2020 in a broad-based governing coalition, on the other.
Fighting escalated over the past 24 hours, the statement has it with clashes reported between government troops of the South Sudan People’s Defence Forces (SSPDF) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army in Opposition (SPLAO) near Rejaf, south of the capital Juba and in Wunaliet to the west.
The situation in Upper Nile remains volatile. Earlier this month the so-called White Army – a youth militia – overran South Sudanese army barracks in Nasir. In response, Government forces launched retaliatory aerial bombardments on civilian areas, using barrel bombs allegedly containing flammable accelerants.
An UNMISS helicopter – attempting to evacuate wounded SSPDF soldiers – in Nasir, region was attacked this month (March), killing a crew member as well as several South Sudanese soldiers, including an injured general.
@DefenceWeb
