Briefing: the crisis in South Sudan

ON 16 DECEMBER 2013 THE PRESIDENT of the Republic of South Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit, appeared on state television in military uniform to announce that he had successfully put down a coup attempt in the capital, Juba. The coup attempt was said to have been led by former Vice-President Riek Machar and several ex-cabinet ministers and officials of the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), including Madame Rebecca Nyanding de Mabior, the widow of the SPLM’s first leader, John Garang. Eleven alleged coup plotters were arrested in their homes, but Riek Machar escaped from Juba, and, amid reports over the next few days of targeted killings of Nuer in Juba by men in uniform loyal to the President, the commanders of the 8th and 4th army divisions of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in Jonglei and Unity states announced their defection to Riek Machar and seized control of the state capitals of Bor and Bentiu. In telephone interviews from secure places Riek Machar denied that he had been involved in a coup but then urged the army to overthrow Salva Kiir and announced his plans to march on Juba. Despite the fact that the arrested ministers came from a variety of communities across South Sudan, Western media reports cast the political struggle exclusively in tribal terms, of Salva Kiir’s Dinka against Riek Machar’s Nuer. The targeted killings in Juba and revenge killings of Dinka by Nuer in Akobo and Bor in Jonglei state seemed to bear this out. The coup was said to have begun with a fight between Nuer and Dinka soldiers in the presidential guard following a meeting of the SPLM’s National Liberation Council (NLC), which Riek Machar and the alleged plotters had boycotted, and in which Salva Kiir had denounced Riek in strident terms. Yet while the government of South Sudan has kept to this version of events, they have presented little concrete evidence to support their claim