In bid to end civil war, South Sudan forges ‘unity government’
NAIROBI — Warring sides in South Sudan formed a “unity government” Saturday with rebel leader Riek Machar as vice president, launching the most serious bid in years toward ending a merciless civil war that has killed at least 400,000 people and left millions homeless.
The agreement between Mr. Machar and South Sudanese president Salva Kiir comes after two failed attempts that resulted in a return to war. International pressure had mounted on the two leaders after deadlines to reach a peace agreement over the past year. But key concessions were made in the past week clearing the way for a deal.
“This action signifies the official end of the war and we can now declare a new dawn in South Sudan,” Mr. Kiir said at the ceremony. “Peace has come to stay, not to be shaken ever again in this nation.”
Almost as many people have died in South Sudan’s civil war as in Syria’s, and in less time. Conflict has plunged parts of the country into famine, and driven more than 2.2 million people into neighboring countries, left 1.4 million without homes with South Sudan, and 190,000 living under direct U.N. protection.
“This agreement marks a turning point in our history,” said South Sudan’s foreign minister, Awut Deng Acuil, in a telephone interview. “The suffering of our people is going to end. We will facilitate the return of people from neighboring countries.”
The agreement hinged on two key sticking points.
The first was Mr.
Machar’s demand that South Sudan reduce its number of states from 32 to 10, contending that new borders had essentially been gerrymandered in a way that favored the Dinka ethnic group of President Kiir.
Mr. Kiir insisted that Mr. Machar not be allowed to bring his own personal security forces into the capital, Juba, fearing a repeat of violence that rocked the city in July 2016 after the last peace deal failed.
“This was the only foreseeable path forward. It is a momentous day,” said Alan Boswell, an analyst focusing on South Sudan at the International Crisis Group, who was in Juba for the ceremony Saturday and recently returned from areas where Mr. Kiir and Mr. Machar’s security forces were attempting to integrate into one unified army.
“In other ways, though, it is a crawling step forward and doesn’t drastically change the situation in the country,” he added. “South Sudan isn’t going to emerge from being a failed state overnight. It will take the work of generations to put its shattered pieces back together — even to get it back to where it was at independence.”
South Sudan became the world’s newest country in 2011 after a bloody conflict to secede from Sudan, now its neighbor to the north.
In 2013, the rivalry between Mr. Kiir and Mr. Machar, who was also vice president at that time, turned violent and spiraled into a full-blown war. Countless atrocities committed by both sides have been documented by journalists, human rights observers and the United Nations.
A U.N. report released this week details how despite moves toward peace, war crimes are likely still being committed by both sides.
The people of South Sudan have been “deliberately starved” in different parts of the country for ethnic and political reasons, and sexual violence against women and men as a weapon of war is ongoing, the authors of the report said on Thursday. Their report also details the siphoning off millions of dollars from government coffers by officials in Mr. Kiir’s administration.
In recent months, regional leaders, especially from South Sudan’s neighbors — Uganda, Ethiopia and Sudan — have met with Mr. Kiir and Mr. Machar to iron out the agreement.