The world’s youngest country is no stranger to conflict. South Sudan fought a two-decade war for its independence from Sudan, which it achieved in 2011. Then, just over two years later, a bitter civil war broke out.
That conflict ended in 2018 with a wobbly peace deal between the country’s two top leaders, President Salva Kiir and his rival, Riek Machar. But now, their power-sharing agreement is fracturing. And fighting has broken out between government forces and a local militia in the country’s northeast.
All of this brings the oil-rich nation to the brink of its second civil war in 15 years.
Why We Wrote This
With the world’s attention on wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, an uptick in violence across Africa – from South Sudan and Sudan to Congo – risks going ignored.
How did we get here?
First of all, South Sudan is in bad shape. The economic situation has been deteriorating since the country’s main oil export pipeline was damaged a year ago. At the same time, the military is fractured, lacking a unified command, and long overdue elections have been repeatedly postponed. Add to that widespread food insecurity and 2 million people displaced within the country, as well as the worst cholera outbreak since its independence.
All that means “The country is a powder keg waiting for a match,” says Moses Chrispus Okello, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, a think tank headquartered in South Africa.
That match? Mr. Kiir and Mr. Machar.
The two men have a long history of animosity. They fought a war that left some 400,000 people dead. In part, that conflict was drawn along ethnic lines. Mr. Kiir is Dinka, the country’s largest ethnic group, and Mr. Machar, is Nuer, the second-largest.
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