A Perfect Storm: A New Civil War in South Sudan Threatens Entire Region

When oil-rich South Sudan split off from Sudan in 2011, there were great hopes for the world’s youngest country.  

Two years later, those hopes were dashed by a civil war. 

Since then, a shaky peace established by an agreement in 2018 between President Salva Kiir’s South Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in Government (SPLM-IG), aligned with the Dinka people, and Vice President Riek Machar’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO), aligned with the Nuer ethnic group, has held. 

That’s now falling apart, as a standoff between Kiir and Machar is once again threatening to ignite a new round of ethnic killing that could destroy the fragile country and impact the entire region. 

“South Sudan is teetering on the edge of a relapse into civil war,” said Nicholas Haysom, the head of the United Nations mission in South Sudan. “A conflict would erase all the hard-won gains made since the 2018 peace deal was signed. And it would devastate not only South Sudan but the entire region, which simply cannot afford another war.”  

South Sudan broke off from Sudan and won independence in 2011 after years of internecine warfare pitting the mostly Muslim Sudan to the north against the mainly Christian and animist south.  

Two years later, civil war broke out in South Sudan after President Kiir and Vice President Machar began feuding. About 400,000 people died in the five-year conflict, more than 2.4 million people fled the country, and another 2.3 million were displaced internally. 

Much of the fighting stopped after the peace agreement in 2018, which divided power between the two sides. Still, not all of the groups that eventually became involved in the war signed on to the agreement, the Associated Press reported. And the peace agreement itself was not properly implemented, said analysts. 

“Make no mistake: War never stopped in South Sudan,” wrote Clémence Pinaud of Indiana University and author of War and Genocide in South Sudan in Foreign Policy magazine. “The peace agreement was already under threat.”  

The latest escalation of violence erupted in early March after a youth militia from the Nuer called the White Army overran South Sudanese army barracks in the city of Nasir, in the oil-rich Upper Nile province. It attacked a UN helicopter which was attempting to evacuate the captured soldiers and their leaders, killing 28 people. 

In response, Kiir blamed Machar and his forces and launched retaliatory aerial bombardments on civilian areas in Upper Nile State, using barrel bombs that allegedly contained highly flammable accelerants.  

Kiir has also cracked down on officials and communities associated with Machar and entered the vice president’s home to arrest him. Soon after, the party ousted Machar, deepening divisions within the Nuer community, too. 

Even before the attack in March, the conflict had been heating up. In the first few months of this year, for example, Kiir’s forces attacked opposition forces, politicians, Nuer people, and other ethnic communities in states such as Western Equatoria and Bahr el-Ghazal, as well as Nasir. 

Now, witnesses say soldiers are filling the streets around the capital, Juba, and surrounding areas as the White Army and national forces mobilize. Meanwhile, soldiers from Uganda are arriving to help Kiir’s forces.  

Observers say the situation is reminiscent of the eve of the civil war in 2013.  

“What happens in the coming days will determine the oil producer’s fate and that of the wider region,” wrote Bloomberg. “A return to fighting would mean active conflict with the potential for major civilian casualties engulfing a swathe of eastern Africa stretching from the Great Lakes to the Red Sea. That would have ripple effects, potentially drawing in Uganda … and Ethiopia, which shares a border with the nation.” 

And it could widen further, involving Sudan, where the government’s Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) continue to battle the Rapid Support Forces (RSF): Both are backed by an array of foreign actors including Russia, Turkey, Egypt, China, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, the International Crisis group warned.  

“From there, it risks merging with the war in Sudan, potentially triggering prolonged proxy fighting in South Sudan,” the think tank wrote, with SAF and RSF forces overrunning parts of South Sudan. “It could result in renewed massacres and ethnic cleansing, turn South Sudan’s territory into a free-for-all of various militias and illicit activity, and open a new arena for a proxy war in the region.” 

Before the breakdown of the peace agreement, the young country was already struggling with 2 million internally displaced people, 1.1 million refugees fleeing the war in Sudan, 7.7 million people facing “catastrophic” levels of hunger, and an economy that has all but collapsed, partly due to the war in Sudan. 

“All the dark clouds of a perfect storm have descended upon the people of the world’s newest country – and one of the poorest,” said UN Chief António Guterres. “Let’s not mince words … What we are seeing is darkly reminiscent of the 2013 … civil war.” 

South Sudanese say they can’t handle another one.  

“Another war will destroy our lives,” Choul Magil, whose brother and father were killed in the civil war, and which led him to flee the country for years, told the Wall Street Journal. “I can’t afford to run away again. I wish Kiir and Machar would resolve their differences and leave us in peace.”