Newsfllash
Intense fighting has displaced large numbers of people in South Sudan, as the country’s main opposition movement and allied militias make gains against government forces, the New Humanitarian reports.
Citing government figures, the UN says around 180,000 people have fled their homes since last month in Jonglei state. Opposition forces have seized several towns in Jonglei and are now pushing towards the state capital, while fighting continues across multiple other states. Emboldened by their momentum, some opposition leaders have even begun talking about a march on Juba. The International Crisis Group says the speed of the advance has fuelled suspicions that the insurgency is receiving outside backing – possibly from the Sudanese Armed Forces, in what could be retaliation for Juba’s growing ties with the Rapid Support Forces. The fighting follows the collapse of a fragile power-sharing deal that was meant to end the civil war between forces aligned with opposition leader Riek Machar and President Salva Kiir. Kiir suspended Machar as first vice president last year and put him on trial for murder and treason, accusing him of backing a militia that overran an army barracks – an account that remains hotly contested. Critics note that Kiir had been steadily hollowing out the peace agreement long before that, courting defections and systematically weakening the opposition.
AP report today about what may have been behind a deal between the US and South Sudan:
After agreeing to accept deportees from the United States last year, South Sudan sent a list of requests to Washington that included American support for the prosecution of an opposition leader and sanctions relief for a senior official accused of diverting over a billion dollars in public funds.
The requests, contained in a pair of diplomatic communications made public by the State Department this month, offer a glimpse into the kind of benefits that some governments may have sought as they negotiated with the U.S. over the matter of receiving deportees.
In the documents, the U.S. expresses “appreciation” to South Sudan for accepting the deportees and details the names, nationalities and crimes for which each individual was convicted.
Details of the deal between the U.S. and South Sudan remain murky. It is still unclear what, if anything, South Sudan may have actually received or been promised. The documents only offer a glimpse into what the South Sudanese government hoped to get in return.
In other cases, Human Rights Watch said it saw documents showing the U.S. agreed to pay Rwanda’s government around $7.5 million to take up to 250 deportees. The U.S. will give Eswatini $5.1 million to take up to 160 deportees, according to the group.
But an eye-catching ask was for the lifting of U.S. sanctions against former Vice President Benjamin Bol Mel as well as Washington’s support for the prosecution of opposition leader Riek Machar, the now-suspended first vice president of South Sudan who faces treason, murder and other criminal charges in a controversial case.
The allegations against Machar stem from a violent incident in March, when an armed militia with historical ties to him attacked a garrison of government troops. Machar’s supporters and some activists describe the charges as politically motivated.
