Tremors in South Sudan are a warning of worse to come
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John Ashworth
May 10, 2026, 12:11:55 AM (4 days ago) May 10
to Group
Tremors in South Sudan are a warning of worse to come
Hafed Al-Ghwell
May 09, 2026
Arab News
South Sudan is nearing a phase more dangerous than the civil war that
ended in 2018. Earlier violence revolved around elite competition in
Juba; now instability spreads from the collapse of the state’s
economic core and inward from a regional conflict system stretching
across Sudan, Chad, Libya, the Central Africa Republic, Ethiopia, and
the Red Sea corridor.
The pressure is not from a single front. Oil revenues have collapsed,
state salaries have evaporated, and armed groups finance themselves
through looting, cattle raiding, checkpoints, and remittances. Local
militias increasingly ignore leaders who once exercised authority over
them.
In effect, South Sudan’s crises resemble tectonic stress accumulation.
“Small” shocks traveling rapidly across oil infrastructure, ethnic
mobilization, border militarization, humanitarian collapse, and
succession struggles are making a wider rupture visible.
Economic collapse is at the heart of South Sudan’s maladies.
Oil accounts for roughly 90 percent of state revenues and nearly all
foreign exchange. Pipeline disruptions linked to Sudan’s war hit Juba
like a financial airstrike, cutting revenues by over 70 percent and
shredding the patronage system that tied commanders, governors,
militias, and civil servants to the center. Now, security forces and
civil servants have reportedly gone unpaid for seven to 11 months.
In a country where salaried employment sustains entire extended
families, it triggers cascading effects: reduced food access,
collapsed local markets, rising armed recruitment, and intensified
communal raiding. At the same time, currency depreciation and
inflation have rendered imported fuel, medicine, and food
unaffordable, corroding the social fabric. Unpaid soldiers now subsist
on extraction, and government offensives in Upper Nile and Jonglei
resemble mobile resource raids, confiscating cattle, grain, and river
commerce.
Juba’s response to fiscal collapse has worsened the long-term outlook.
A reported $13 billion financing arrangement linked to UAE-based HBK
DOP securitizes future oil production over nearly two decades, with
minimal parliamentary scrutiny. Terms remain opaque, and revenue
streams are being pledged before production stability exists.
Such oil-backed debt cycles have repeatedly transformed oil ministries
into repayment agencies for external creditors. Angola experienced
similar oil-backed debt cycles during earlier commodity booms, while
Congo-Brazzaville and Chad repeatedly mortgaged future production
against immediate liquidity needs. South Sudan risks the same fate.
Economic deterioration would be dangerous in isolation, but regional
militarization has made the situation combustible. A contiguous
instability corridor now runs from southern Libya through Chad and
Darfur into South Sudan and the Horn. Arms, fighters, fuel, gold, and
smuggled capital move through networks blending insurgency, commerce,
and statecraft. Libya’s “Kufra corridor,“ for instance, channels
weapons via Chad and Darfur, fusing militia economies and intelligence
services.
Meanwhile, Russian-linked Africa Corps networks accelerate
militarization along the Sudan-Central Africa Republic-South Sudan
border, where gold extraction and proxy relationships create hybrid
security-commercial systems that spread violence across nominal
borders.
South Sudan’s own geography favors fragmentation.
Marshlands, floodplains, and porous frontiers defy centralized
control. Large parts of Upper Nile and Jonglei already function
through negotiated local authority, and under stress, commanders,
cattle guards and ethnic militias eclipse ministries.
Sudan’s war further amplifies the pressure in South Sudan, even though
Juba officially maintains neutrality. Neither the Rapid Support Forces
nor the Sudanese army believes it; the army suspects Juba of
permitting RSF logistical movement, while South Sudanese opposition
groups search for external sponsors.
Worse yet, Juba’s political leadership is poorly positioned to manage
such a complex environment. President Salva Kiir Mayardit governs
through delay, fragmentation management, and selective coercion,
making credible December 2026 elections improbable: A census is
absent, constitutional reform stalled, security-sector integration
incomplete, and large sections of the opposition distrust electoral
mechanisms. Political postponement serves as both survival strategy
and destabilizing force.
Recent purges, vice presidential rearrangements, and reliance on
family networks signal intensifying succession anxiety inside the
ruling coalition. First Vice President Riek Machar’s authority has
crumbled under house arrest and treason proceedings, accelerating
command fragmentation. Younger commanders view the Sudan People’s
Liberation Movement-in-Opposition leadership as detached, and power
drifts toward localized armed entrepreneurs.
Gen. Simon Gatwech Dual’s Kit-Gwang faction, which quit peace
structures and declared renewed hostilities, typifies commanders who
see negotiated settlements as enriching elites while abandoning
fighters. Gen. Johnson Olony, nominally state-aligned but functionally
autonomous, embodies normalized punitive violence.
But the most consequential shift may be the rise of Makuach Tut. His
mobilization capacity reportedly numbers several thousand fighters,
rooted in spiritual legitimacy outside party structures. Young
fighters trust spiritual leaders embedded in community survival
systems over politicians. Tut’s movements toward Malakal generated
alarm; his followers appear motivated by defense, revenge, cattle
recovery, and resource access.
Such formations are neither fully political nor criminal, eluding
Western peacemaking frameworks that assume centralized command. The
White Army, for instance, operates through diffuse consensus and
sectional mobilization. Violence thus becomes self-replicating: Aerial
bombardment triggers self-defense mobilization, leading to retaliatory
raids, intensified ethnic fear and further recruitment, weakening
central authority.
Regional mediation has failed to adapt to this evolving context.
The Kenya-led Tumaini Initiative briefly offered an alternative
engagement channel but lost momentum; Juba saw it as a threat to
electoral timelines, and opposition factions rejected it without
security-sector reform and rollback of repressive laws.
Regional actors also lack coherence. The Intergovernmental Authority
on Development struggles to project authority because Ethiopia, Kenya,
Uganda, and Sudan are all consumed by domestic or bilateral pressures.
Elsewhere, international policy remains trapped in outdated
assumptions, fixated on elections despite conditions incompatible with
meaningful voting. Funding ballots without addressing armed
fragmentation and state insolvency would legitimize institutional
collapse.
Humanitarian indicators point to systemic failure with millions
requiring assistance, especially refugees and internally displaced
persons who, together, number almost half the population. Flooding,
food insecurity, and aid reductions compound the emergency.
Neighboring states have limited absorption capacity — Sudan at war,
Ethiopia volatile, Uganda strained — making secondary migration toward
Libya and the Mediterranean increasingly likely.
December 2026 is, therefore, less a democratic milestone than a
possible ignition point. Spoiler factions have little incentive to
trust electoral outcomes. Armed groups excluded from resource access
may see disruption as rational, while elite factions in Juba remain
divided over succession. Given the economic collapse, buying loyalty
becomes infeasible.
Preventing wider war requires abandoning comforting illusions.
Elections alone will not stabilize South Sudan. Elite bargains no
longer control violence, and humanitarian aid cannot substitute for
state functionality. At the same time, security-sector reform on paper
means nothing while soldiers survive through looting.
South Sudan is no longer merely a fragile post-conflict republic; it
is the convergence point of a broader regional fracture system.
Economic collapse, proxy warfare, militia autonomy, and political
exhaustion are simultaneously coalescing.
Tremors are already moving beneath the surface. The quake itself may
still be avoidable.
• Hafed Al-Ghwell is senior fellow and program director at the Stimson
Center in Washington and senior fellow at the Center for Conflict and
Humanitarian Studies.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2642951
END
______________________
John Ashworth
ashwor...@gmail.com
+254 725 926 297 (Kenya mobile, WhatsApp and Signal)
PO Box 403 - 00206, Kiserian, Kenya
Hafed Al-Ghwell
May 09, 2026
Arab News
South Sudan is nearing a phase more dangerous than the civil war that
ended in 2018. Earlier violence revolved around elite competition in
Juba; now instability spreads from the collapse of the state’s
economic core and inward from a regional conflict system stretching
across Sudan, Chad, Libya, the Central Africa Republic, Ethiopia, and
the Red Sea corridor.
The pressure is not from a single front. Oil revenues have collapsed,
state salaries have evaporated, and armed groups finance themselves
through looting, cattle raiding, checkpoints, and remittances. Local
militias increasingly ignore leaders who once exercised authority over
them.
In effect, South Sudan’s crises resemble tectonic stress accumulation.
“Small” shocks traveling rapidly across oil infrastructure, ethnic
mobilization, border militarization, humanitarian collapse, and
succession struggles are making a wider rupture visible.
Economic collapse is at the heart of South Sudan’s maladies.
Oil accounts for roughly 90 percent of state revenues and nearly all
foreign exchange. Pipeline disruptions linked to Sudan’s war hit Juba
like a financial airstrike, cutting revenues by over 70 percent and
shredding the patronage system that tied commanders, governors,
militias, and civil servants to the center. Now, security forces and
civil servants have reportedly gone unpaid for seven to 11 months.
In a country where salaried employment sustains entire extended
families, it triggers cascading effects: reduced food access,
collapsed local markets, rising armed recruitment, and intensified
communal raiding. At the same time, currency depreciation and
inflation have rendered imported fuel, medicine, and food
unaffordable, corroding the social fabric. Unpaid soldiers now subsist
on extraction, and government offensives in Upper Nile and Jonglei
resemble mobile resource raids, confiscating cattle, grain, and river
commerce.
Juba’s response to fiscal collapse has worsened the long-term outlook.
A reported $13 billion financing arrangement linked to UAE-based HBK
DOP securitizes future oil production over nearly two decades, with
minimal parliamentary scrutiny. Terms remain opaque, and revenue
streams are being pledged before production stability exists.
Such oil-backed debt cycles have repeatedly transformed oil ministries
into repayment agencies for external creditors. Angola experienced
similar oil-backed debt cycles during earlier commodity booms, while
Congo-Brazzaville and Chad repeatedly mortgaged future production
against immediate liquidity needs. South Sudan risks the same fate.
Economic deterioration would be dangerous in isolation, but regional
militarization has made the situation combustible. A contiguous
instability corridor now runs from southern Libya through Chad and
Darfur into South Sudan and the Horn. Arms, fighters, fuel, gold, and
smuggled capital move through networks blending insurgency, commerce,
and statecraft. Libya’s “Kufra corridor,“ for instance, channels
weapons via Chad and Darfur, fusing militia economies and intelligence
services.
Meanwhile, Russian-linked Africa Corps networks accelerate
militarization along the Sudan-Central Africa Republic-South Sudan
border, where gold extraction and proxy relationships create hybrid
security-commercial systems that spread violence across nominal
borders.
South Sudan’s own geography favors fragmentation.
Marshlands, floodplains, and porous frontiers defy centralized
control. Large parts of Upper Nile and Jonglei already function
through negotiated local authority, and under stress, commanders,
cattle guards and ethnic militias eclipse ministries.
Sudan’s war further amplifies the pressure in South Sudan, even though
Juba officially maintains neutrality. Neither the Rapid Support Forces
nor the Sudanese army believes it; the army suspects Juba of
permitting RSF logistical movement, while South Sudanese opposition
groups search for external sponsors.
Worse yet, Juba’s political leadership is poorly positioned to manage
such a complex environment. President Salva Kiir Mayardit governs
through delay, fragmentation management, and selective coercion,
making credible December 2026 elections improbable: A census is
absent, constitutional reform stalled, security-sector integration
incomplete, and large sections of the opposition distrust electoral
mechanisms. Political postponement serves as both survival strategy
and destabilizing force.
Recent purges, vice presidential rearrangements, and reliance on
family networks signal intensifying succession anxiety inside the
ruling coalition. First Vice President Riek Machar’s authority has
crumbled under house arrest and treason proceedings, accelerating
command fragmentation. Younger commanders view the Sudan People’s
Liberation Movement-in-Opposition leadership as detached, and power
drifts toward localized armed entrepreneurs.
Gen. Simon Gatwech Dual’s Kit-Gwang faction, which quit peace
structures and declared renewed hostilities, typifies commanders who
see negotiated settlements as enriching elites while abandoning
fighters. Gen. Johnson Olony, nominally state-aligned but functionally
autonomous, embodies normalized punitive violence.
But the most consequential shift may be the rise of Makuach Tut. His
mobilization capacity reportedly numbers several thousand fighters,
rooted in spiritual legitimacy outside party structures. Young
fighters trust spiritual leaders embedded in community survival
systems over politicians. Tut’s movements toward Malakal generated
alarm; his followers appear motivated by defense, revenge, cattle
recovery, and resource access.
Such formations are neither fully political nor criminal, eluding
Western peacemaking frameworks that assume centralized command. The
White Army, for instance, operates through diffuse consensus and
sectional mobilization. Violence thus becomes self-replicating: Aerial
bombardment triggers self-defense mobilization, leading to retaliatory
raids, intensified ethnic fear and further recruitment, weakening
central authority.
Regional mediation has failed to adapt to this evolving context.
The Kenya-led Tumaini Initiative briefly offered an alternative
engagement channel but lost momentum; Juba saw it as a threat to
electoral timelines, and opposition factions rejected it without
security-sector reform and rollback of repressive laws.
Regional actors also lack coherence. The Intergovernmental Authority
on Development struggles to project authority because Ethiopia, Kenya,
Uganda, and Sudan are all consumed by domestic or bilateral pressures.
Elsewhere, international policy remains trapped in outdated
assumptions, fixated on elections despite conditions incompatible with
meaningful voting. Funding ballots without addressing armed
fragmentation and state insolvency would legitimize institutional
collapse.
Humanitarian indicators point to systemic failure with millions
requiring assistance, especially refugees and internally displaced
persons who, together, number almost half the population. Flooding,
food insecurity, and aid reductions compound the emergency.
Neighboring states have limited absorption capacity — Sudan at war,
Ethiopia volatile, Uganda strained — making secondary migration toward
Libya and the Mediterranean increasingly likely.
December 2026 is, therefore, less a democratic milestone than a
possible ignition point. Spoiler factions have little incentive to
trust electoral outcomes. Armed groups excluded from resource access
may see disruption as rational, while elite factions in Juba remain
divided over succession. Given the economic collapse, buying loyalty
becomes infeasible.
Preventing wider war requires abandoning comforting illusions.
Elections alone will not stabilize South Sudan. Elite bargains no
longer control violence, and humanitarian aid cannot substitute for
state functionality. At the same time, security-sector reform on paper
means nothing while soldiers survive through looting.
South Sudan is no longer merely a fragile post-conflict republic; it
is the convergence point of a broader regional fracture system.
Economic collapse, proxy warfare, militia autonomy, and political
exhaustion are simultaneously coalescing.
Tremors are already moving beneath the surface. The quake itself may
still be avoidable.
• Hafed Al-Ghwell is senior fellow and program director at the Stimson
Center in Washington and senior fellow at the Center for Conflict and
Humanitarian Studies.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2642951
END
______________________
John Ashworth
ashwor...@gmail.com
+254 725 926 297 (Kenya mobile, WhatsApp and Signal)
PO Box 403 - 00206, Kiserian, Kenya
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