Following escalating tensions that have endangered a tenuous peace deal, the Ugandan army chief announced Tuesday that special forces from Uganda had been sent to the capital of South Sudan.
Poor Although political unrest and insecurity have long existed in South Sudan, tensions have increased significantly in the last week due to battles between forces loyal to the country’s leaders in the northeast.
“As of 2 days ago, our Special Forces units entered Juba to secure it,” Ugandan army chief Muhoozi Kainerugaba said on X.
“We shall protect the entire territory of South Sudan like it was our own,” the son of Ugandan leader Yoweri Museveni and infamous for his incendiary X posts, added.
Ugandan army spokesman Felix Kulayigye confirmed that troops had been deployed in the capital “to protect the government”.
“We had instructions to deploy and we deployed the troops there,” he told AFP.
The forces were deployed in Juba two days ago, he added.
Before formally departing at the end of 2015, Uganda dispatched troops to South Sudan in 2013 to help then-President Salva Kiir at the start of a five-year civil conflict.
That war was resolved in 2018 by a precarious power-sharing arrangement between Kiir and First Vice President Riek Machar; however, the latest conflicts in Upper Nile State have put the accord in jeopardy.
In collaboration with the so-called White Army, a loose group of armed youths from the same ethnic Nuer community as the vice president, Kiir’s backers have charged Machar’s forces with inciting disturbance in the area.
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan said that the country was witnessing a “alarming regression” that threatened to reverse years of progress, highlighting the growing unrest’s international concern.
The International Crisis Group think tank has warned that “South Sudan is slipping rapidly toward full-blown war”.
*
Email *
Website
