Nairobi (Reuters) – South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir has dismissed the governor of Upper Nile state in the northeast, where clashes between government forces and ethnic armed groups he accuses of allying with his rival and First Vice President Riek Machar have escalated.
This latest development exacerbates the confrontation between the two men, which began after the “White Army” militia forced government troops to withdraw from the troubled town of Nasir near the Ethiopian border.
Kiir’s government responded by arresting several officials from Machar’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO), including the oil minister and the deputy army chief.
The escalating confrontation has fueled fears that the world’s newest country could slip back into conflict about seven years after emerging from a civil war that killed hundreds of thousands.
In a decree broadcast on state television late Wednesday, Kiir dismissed Upper Nile state governor James Odhok Oyay, who belongs to the SPLM-IO, and appointed James Koang Chuol, a lieutenant general from Nasir, in his place.
Oyay’s dismissal angered the SPLM-IO, which has already partially withdrawn from the 2018 peace agreement in protest of the arrests.
Machar’s spokesman, Puok Both Baluang, said in a statement that Oyay’s dismissal “constitutes another unilateral action and a serious violation of the revitalized peace agreement,” referring to the 2018 accord.
Information Minister Michael Makuei Lueth accused Machar’s party of endangering the peace agreement and told Reuters that Oyay was “dismissed to restore peace” in Upper Nile state.
The government accuses the SPLM-IO of having links to the White Army. The party denies these accusations.
The White Army consists mostly of armed Nuer youth who fought alongside Machar’s forces in the 2013-2018 war against Kiir’s predominantly Dinka troops.
The United Nations says the fighting around Nasir has displaced 50,000 people since late February, and the international organization warned this week that the country is “on the brink of returning to civil war”
