A power-sharing deal between Kiir and Machar is unravelling, threatening a return to South Sudan’s blood civil war.
South Sudan’s opposition has said that the overnight arrest of First Vice President Riek Machar, longtime rival to President Salva Kiir, has invalidated their 2018 peace deal and risked plunging the country back into war.
A convoy of 20 heavily armed vehicles entered Machar’s residence in the capital, Juba, late on Wednesday and arrested him, according to a statement issued by a member of his party – a dramatic escalation of a conflict that has been building for weeks in the world’s youngest country.
Al Jazeera’s Malcolm Webb, reporting from Nairobi, said that “military vehicles came to his [Riek Machar’s] residence in the night and forcibly disarmed all of his guards. They removed all of the phones and the laptops from the property, arrested the guards and took them away to an unknown location, leaving only Machar at the residence.”
Webb said that “the area has been cut off by soldiers. In other parts of the city, life is continuing as normal. This comes off the back of weeks of escalating violence which IO [the Sudan People’s Liberation Army In Opposition, or SPLM/IO] describes as a series of attacks by President Kiir’s forces, in breach of the peace deal.”
Peace and stability at risk
A power-sharing deal between Kiir and Machar has been gradually unravelling, threatening a return of the civil war that killed around 400,000 people between 2013 and 2018.
“The prospect for peace and stability in South Sudan has now been put into serious jeopardy,” said Oyet Nathaniel Pierino, deputy chairman of Machar’s party.
There was widespread international condemnation, including from the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), warning that the reported arrest left the country “on the brink of relapsing into widespread conflict”.
The US Department of State on Thursday called on Kiir to “reverse this action and prevent further escalation” in a post on X.
Analysts say that Kiir, 73, has been seeking to ensure his succession and sideline Machar for months through cabinet reshuffles.
Daniel Akech, a senior analyst on South Sudan for International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera that “the agreement of 2018 was centred on two key issues. One was to create a constitution acceptable to all parties. The other one, which was really the key, was power sharing. And part of the power sharing was about military power sharing between the opposing sides.”
Akech said that “the president had fired a governor in February who was supposed to be on the opposition led by Machar. He also recently fired the governor in Upper Nile – who was supposed to be with the opposition.”
“So, this is clearly a power grab,” he said.
“As we speak, this process is no longer binary,” Akech said. “We are talking about the president and vice president as though they are the only two actors, but there are plenty within the opposition who are opposed to the government. So, if this escalates to violence, this could be very decentralised with multiple actors, making it difficult to put the fire out.”
