South Sudan’s gloomy horizon 

It has been 20 years since South Sudan’s liberation war ended in 2005, making the region autonomous for six years within Sudan. However, it has been 14 years since it became an independent country, a euphoric occasion celebrated by almost the entire world. Yet, Africa’s newest state has remained trapped in a cycle of civil unrest and perpetual peace agreements that have not translated into real peace for its citizens. As it stands, all indications are that the fragile peace is in danger, as President Salva Kiir has ordered the house arrest of his rival, Vice President Riek Machar. His party has said the move ends the peace deal but it isn’t clear what is next. The country embodies the classic characteristics of what conflict researchers refer to as “conflict traps”—a situation where violent political disputes become self-perpetuating, creating conditions that make it difficult to resolve these disputes, leading to cycles of violence, instability, economic collapse, and poverty. 

 The most recent peace agreement, known as the Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS), was signed in Khartoum in 2018 and has served as the basis for governing South Sudan for the last seven years, holding the country together by a very thin thread. It established a government called the Revitalised Transitional Government of National Unity, a power-sharing arrangement between President Salva Kiir Mayardit’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), Vice president Riek Machar Teny’s SPLM-in Opposition, and a couple of other minority parties. In addition to power sharing, the agreement also called for the unification of armed forces, a constitution review process, and a roadmap to elections after the transitional period. 

However, President Kiir has since only begrudgingly cooperated with Machar, resisting the full implementation of the agreement and dragging his feet on its fundamental clauses. This has created gradual tensions within the Transitional Government of National Unity and threatened the collapse of both. The president retained and insisted on powers to act unilaterally, to appoint and dismiss members of the opposition in the unity government, always in total contravention of the principles of consultation with opposition leaders as enshrined in the agreement. For example, since February this year, the president has removed the SPLM-IO governor of Western Equatoria State, Alfred Futuyo, and the health minister, Yolanda Awel Deng, and more recently fired and replaced the governors of Jonglei State and Upper Nile State—both of which belonged to other parties in the unity government. These actions have heightened tensions, sending a clear message to opposition members of the unity government that the president intends to erode the cornerstones of the peace agreement. 

The opposition leaders have protested the move, but until Machar’s arrest, they did not threaten to leave the 2018 deal despite how unworkable it became. Contests over the implementation of the agreement have become almost mundane, a political game played by the parties who continue to share power and resources, only maintaining rhetorical confrontation, antagonistic media exchanges, and issuing statements of protest to the regional and international organisations that monitor the agreement. Even the regional governments and international guarantors of the agreement, such as IGAD, the TROIKA, the AU, and the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission, appear to have been taken in by this sham of a political pact, whose beneficiaries are the parties who enjoy power and resources, while ordinary citizens languish in endless communal violence, exclusion from public goods and services, and total misery, without any hope of salvation.

It has reached a point where many citizens have declared the peace agreement not just a failure but a deliberate stratagem by the peace partners to deceive the public. How else can one explain the slippage of agreement implementation timelines, the numerous extensions to the lifespan of the unity government, and the failure to move the country towards elections and a democratic transition? “These people do not want to relinquish power; they want to hold on to office by means of the power-sharing agreement,” one commentator told Geeska. “South Sudanese leaders seem to value their government seats more than the people and the future of the country… Why is war so important to them?” another person asked. 

These tensions came to a head more recently, with new political and security developments in Upper Nile State in the northeast of the country and subsequent reactions in the capital, Juba. In the middle of March 2025, clashes erupted in Nasir County, Upper Nile State, when a local Nuer tribal militia force called the White Army, which is loyal to Riek Machar, attacked and temporarily captured the barracks of the national army, South Sudan People’s Defense Forces (SSPDF), resulting in the routing of an entire battalion and death of large number of government soldiers, including their commander, a brigadier general, and the downing of a UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) rescue helicopter, resulting in casualties among the UN personnel. 

It is evident that this attack was a reaction to the increasing weakening of the SPLM-IO within the government by President Kiir and the frustration that rural and small-town populations have felt over the years about the lack of peace, continued communal violence, the failure of the government to take responsibility for welfare, collapse of the economy and increasing hopelessness among the youth about their future. Some of the militia fighters are in fact members of the national army who have deserted because South Sudan has not been paying salaries to public employees. It is a mystery how so many government soldiers remain in the force for years without pay! Some soldiers sell their weapons to civilians under duress, resulting in breakdown of security, law and order throughout the country, swelling the ranks of non-state armed actors, such as the White Army. Give this a slight ethnic hue and you have a country that is facing the risks of disintegration.   

In the wake of the attack on its army garrison, the government has suspected the SPLM-IO leadership in Juba of masterminding it and has rounded up its members, including ministers, members of parliament, and security personnel. Some are hiding within Juba, while others have fled the city and are reported to have rejoined their fighters in the bush of South Sudan, signalling ever more that the country is standing on the precipice of civil war. The vice president and his wife, the interior minister of South Sudan, Angelina Teny, are confined to their house in Juba, leading to all manner of speculation about the government’s intention to harm Machar. Social media platforms across all sides of the conflict are on fire, circulating rumours, hate speech, and incitement to war, a dangerous inflection point away from the quest for national unity. 

In retaliation for the White Army attack in Nasir, the government of Salva Kiir deployed the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF), who have recently been invited into the country, to launch aerial attacks over South Sudan’s eastern regions. Instead of adopting a tone of restoring order and seeking to hold accountable the citizens who killed the soldiers, the national army’s aerial bombings appear to be aimed at the collective punishment of the people in Nasir, Ulang, Longuchuk, and Maiwut, a development that has been heavily criticised due to the civilian casualties resulting from these bombings. Vice president Machar has called on the United Nations, the African Union, and IGAD to intervene over Uganda’s military presence in the country, which has only heightened the tense atmosphere in Juba. These factors will also present serious obstacles to national unity, as this deployment has already garnered an image of being an intervention in favour of the Dinka, the country’s largest ethnic group, and not in the national interest of the country and its sovereignty. 

Indeed, these events have left the local population worried that the country is inching towards civil war, a situation reminiscent of the events of December 2013, when South Sudan’s first post-independence civil war broke out in Juba under similar circumstances. This also concerns the entire Horn of Africa, East Africa, and Central Africa, a region already plagued by both old and emerging conflicts, from civil wars in Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, to threats by Islamic extremists in Kenya and Uganda, and Rwanda’s involvement in the DR Congo’s resource war. A return to all-out civil war in South Sudan would be a disaster not only for the local population but would also widen the geographic spread of war and humanitarian catastrophes in the wider region. As it stands, South Sudan is already contending with significant humanitarian challenges that have persisted for several years. This has been exacerbated by the civil war in Sudan and the block on oil flows out of the country. Many South Sudanese, foreign diplomatic missions in Juba, international agencies operating in the country and regional organizations are now expressing worries that South Sudan is at the risk of imploding into another round of civil war. The reports that Vice president Riek Machar has now been stripped of his powers and confined to his house by President Kiir’s orders have made the likelihood of renewed conflict all the more palpable. 

The gravity of the situation for the region can be gauged by the diplomatic efforts championed by the president of Somalia, the president of Djibouti, IGAD, and countries further afield, all attempting to diffuse the tensions and prevent another round of civil war in South Sudan. The escalating situation has prompted regional reactions, but the ability of the region to act collectively in ways that would strengthen their efforts is likely to be undermined by Uganda’s military involvement on the side of the government in South Sudan.