Several senior officials in South Sudan, including three leading politicians from the SPLM-IO party and a lieutenant general allied to Vice President Riek Machar, have been arrested amid signs of a coup aimed at one faction of the power-sharing government.
South Sudan’s petroleum minister, Puot Kang Chol, was arrested at his home in Juba, the country’s capital, along with several family members and bodyguards, according to a statement released by the ministry’s press secretary.
“The operation was conducted by personnel identified as members of the National Security Service,” the statement added.
The move came just hours after troops from the South Sudan People’s Defense Forces (SSPDF), the regular army allied to President Salva Kiir, arrested Lieutenant General Gabriel Doup Lam late on Tuesday and surrounded the residence of Vice President Machar, the leader of the SPLM-IO party.
Machar’s spokesperson said the general’s arrest “violates” the 2018 power-sharing agreement that ended five years of civil war.
“This act puts the entire agreement at risk,” he said in a statement. “We are also gravely concerned about the heavy deployment of SSPDF around [Machar’s] residence.”
Kiir’s troops accuse general of working with rebels
No official reason has yet been given for the arrests but observers have suggested that the moves could be related to violence in the Upper Nile state in the east of the country, where ethnic Nuer rebels have been fighting government troops in recent days.
The SSPDF have accused General Duop Lam and his troops, who are predominantly from the same ethnic Nuer community, of working with the rebels.
The UN Mission in South Sudan last month reported increased fighting between the army and “armed youth” in the region, involving “heavy weaponry which has, reportedly, resulted in deaths and injuries to civilians as well as armed personnel.”
South Sudan — a history of violence
Civil war broke out in South Sudan in December 2013 after Kiir sacked Machar, resulting in an estimated 400,000 deaths, driving more than 2.5 million people from their homes and leaving half of the 11 million total population facing starvation.
A peace deal put an end to the worst of the fighting in 2018, but the agreement has still not been fully implemented.
The power-sharing government has remained fragile, elections scheduled for last year were postponed due to a lack of funds, and the country remains mired in poverty and violence.
Following the arrests on Wednesday, President Kiir, who belongs to the Dinka ethnic group, has insisted that South Sudan will “not go back to war,” according to a government spokesman.
Edited by: Sean Sinico
