The opposition in South Sudan claims that First Vice President Riek Machar’s overnight arrest, a long-term adversary of Salva Kiir, has racked up the country’s peace agreement and could lead to a country-wide civil war.
A member of Machar’s party said a convoy of 20 heavily armed vehicles had entered his home in the capital of Juba late on Wednesday and had taken him into custody. This marked a startling escalation of a conflict that has been raging there for weeks.
According to Al Jazeera’s Malcolm Webb, who was reporting from Nairobi, “military vehicles drove into his residence at night and forcefully disarmed all of his guards.” Only Machar is still at the residence after they remove all of the phones and laptops from the property, arrest the guards, and leave them in an unknown location.
According to Webb, “soldiers have been closing the area.” Life continues as usual in other areas of the city. This is the result of weeks of escalated violence that the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLM/IO) describes as a series of attacks by President Kiir’s forces in violation of the peace agreement.
Peace and stability in danger
A power-sharing agreement between Kiir and Machar has been slowly unraveling, putting the civil war that cost around 400,000 lives between 2013 and 2018 at risk.
According to Oyet Nathaniel Pierino, deputy chairman of Machar’s party, “the prospects for peace and stability in South Sudan have now been seriously endangered.”
UNMISS, one of the countries’ representatives, warned that the alleged arrest would put the nation “on the verge of relapsing into widespread conflict.”
In a post on X, the US Department of State on Thursday demanded that Kiir “reverse this action and stop further escalation.”
According to analysts, Kiir, 73, has been working with cabinet reshuffles to ensure Machar’s survival for months.
The agreement of 2018 was focused on two crucial issues, according to Daniel Akech, a senior analyst for International Crisis Group in South Sudan. One goal was to create a constitution that all parties would agree with. Power sharing was the other option that was crucial. And one of the power conflicts involved the opposing sides’ use of military power.
According to Akech, “the president had fired a governor in February who was supposed to be leading Machar’s opposition.” Additionally, he most recently fired the governor of Upper Nile, who was supposed to be working for the opposition.
He responded, “This is obviously a power grab.”
This process is no longer binary, Akech said. Although the president and vice president appear to be the only two actors in the debate, there are many opposition figures. Therefore, it might be very decentralized and involve multiple actors, making it difficult to extinguish the flames if this escalates into violence.
Source: Aljazeera
Leave a Reply