Africa Watch – Rumblings in the savanna

South Sudan President Salva Kiir and his vice president, Riek Machar, have agreed to resume talks about integrating their rival forces under a unified command after weeks of escalating conflict between the sides. Kiir and Machar’s forces signed a peace agreement in 2018 that ended five years of civil war. But implementation has been slow and the opposing forces have clashed frequently over disagreements about how to share power. Fighting has increased in recent weeks.

Machar’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army in Opposition (SPLM/A-IO) suspended its participation in the peace deal’s oversight mechanisms on March 23, citing attacks by government forces. At a signing ceremony on Sunday evening attended by a representative of neighbouring Sudan’s government, Kiir and Machar re-committed to the peace deal, agreeing to abide by a previous ceasefire and speed up the integration of their forces.

Opposition generals will be appointed to a unified command structure in the next week. The sides will then move on to graduating SPLM/A-IO soldiers from training centres to integrate them into the army. Details remain to be worked out, including the precise ratio of pro-Kiir to pro-Machar troops in the unified army. A spokesperson for the SPLM/A-IO said the ratio would be somewhere between 55:45 and 60:40.

South Sudan’s civil war from 2013 to 2018, often fought along ethnic lines, claimed an estimated 400,000 lives, triggered a famine and created Africa’s biggest refugee crisis since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Source:UNHCR

The integration of the rival forces would be a crucial first step to implementing the peace agreement signed in 2018 and restoring peace to the world’s youngest country that has spent more than half its existence in conflict since independence in 2011. This power tussle is a major reason why South Sudan has continued to lurch from crisis to crisis, battling natural disasters, hunger and violence.

This political bickering threatens to undo the limited progress made in the faltering peace process. The combination of these factors keeps landlocked South Sudan, despite having huge oil reserves, desperately poor; more than two-thirds of its almost 9 million people are dependent on aid relief. It is important to note that even if the forces’ integration is accomplished, whatever peace is achieved will hang by a thread as competitive elections next year loom.

The vote in 2023, paradoxical for a young democracy, would be the first since 2011 after the postponement of the 2015 vote due to an alleged coup attempt. Kiir and Machar will almost certainly be candidates and it is likely that they will keep their troops on standby or exert force in their strongholds to influence the election.

It is in light of this that the United Nations Security Council voted last month to extend its peacekeeping mission in the country, an expensive operation encompassing 17,000 soldiers, 2,100 police officers and an annual budget surpassing $1 billion. The tightrope all parties will need to thread to implement all agreements and ensure that lasting peace is the viable outcome looks too stretched to be realisable.