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Following fighting in Juba in July 2016 and Riek Machar’s flight into the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the peace agreement between the Government of South Sudan and opposition forces has not only collapsed but has led to new conflict in Greater Equatoria, along the DRC border, according to a new report from the Small Arms Survey.
Spreading fallout: The collapse of the ARCSS and new conflict along the Equatorias-DRC border, a new Issue Brief from the Survey’s Human Security Baseline Assessment (HSBA) for Sudan and South Sudan, documents the period following July 2016 when then vice-president Riek Machar, leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army-in-Opposition (SPLM/A-IO), and hundreds of his forces fled Juba and reached Garamba National Park across the border in the DRC. Machar and his men were eventually airlifted by the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) from there to camps in the DRC, where many of them remain.
President Salva Kiir subsequently installed Taban Deng Gai as vice president, to which the international community largely assented—thereby isolating Machar in exile and effectively ending the prospects of the Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (ARCSS), the deeply flawed peace agreement that had enjoyed almost no political support from the government since its signature in August 2015.
Spreading fallout documents the further effects of the agreement’s collapse, with a focus on the growing unrest in Greater Equatoria. Taking advantage of cross-border ethnic ties, rising ethno-nationalism, and friendly DRC authorities, armed opposition groups are using DRC territory for transit and rear activities. They are also engaging in at least some recruitment among Congolese and South Sudanese on DRC territory. Meanwhile there is a risk of conflicts in Greater Equatoria intensifying, as the armed opposition forces continue to converge but also risk splintering. Against a backdrop of a shattered peace process, there is no foreseeable end to the conflicts in South Sudan.
Key findings include the following:
- The Addis Ababa peace process and the ARCSS itself were deeply flawed, resulting in a low chance of success combined with significant risks in the event of failure. President Salva Kiir’s supporters fiercely resisted the agreement and remain unwilling to give up their monopoly on power in exchange for national stability.
- The ARCSS’s security provisions and the agreement’s collapse contributed significantly to the spread of South Sudan’s civil war into Greater Equatoria. The cantonment provisions in particular led to a surge in opposition mobilization under the banner of the SPLM/A-IO.
- The SPLA’s pursuit of Machar pushed him and his men into DRC territory in a state of extreme deprivation and malnutrition, resulting in both a humanitarian crisis and a new security risk for the DRC. Prolonged deliberations within the UN system as to how to handle the combatants gave them time to return their weapons to the South Sudanese conflict rather than fully disarm.
- The UN extracted the SPLA-IO combatants who had fled to the DRC in the midst of a rapid change in Machar’s political status. When the extraction started in mid-August 2016 international and regional actors remained officially united in recognizing Machar as part of the peace process. By the time the extractions ended in mid-September he was marginalized, diplomatically isolated, and being pressured into exile.
- In the absence of any political process to end the conflict in South Sudan, there are no clear solutions for the SPLA-IO combatants in MONUSCO care. Hundreds of South Sudan’s best trained, most disciplined, and most aggrieved fighters remain stuck unhappily in insecure UN custody in one of the DRC’s most volatile regions.
- The SPLM/A-IO has established a new headquarters in Lasu near the DRC border, where it has established relations with DRC officials. Remnants of South Sudan’s Arrow Boys’ rebellion have crossed into the DRC and established a threatening presence near refugee camps. Kinshasa has little capacity or political will to proactively engage with or contain the fallout from South Sudan’s growing crisis.
- The collapse of the ARCSS dissolved the only working consensus among regional and international actors on how to resolve South Sudan’s civil war. In the resultant policy vacuum, conflicts in Greater Equatoria along the DRC border can be expected to continue and likely escalate, with the risk of an intensifying war that continues to spread into the wider region.
Download HSBA Issue Brief 28, Spreading fallout: The collapse of the ARCSS and new conflict along the Equatorias-DRC border. This Issue Brief is written by independent researcher and analyst Alan Boswell, based on fieldwork in South Sudan and the DRC in November and December 2016.
For questions, comments on content, or feedback, please contact:
Emile LeBrun
HSBA for Sudan and South Sudan
Small Arms Survey
emile....@smallarmssurvey.org
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