The construction of tension and violence threatens to disentangle the peace agreement which interrupted ethnic conflicts in 2018.
South Sudan is on the verge of renewed civil war while the violence between rival factions is intensifying, warned the United Nations.
The situation in the country is “disastrous”, said Nicholas Haysom, head of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (Unsiss), late on Monday, while the tension between the Allied forces to President Salva Kiir and those of Vice-President Riek Machar continues to build.
The efforts to negotiate a peace agreement would only be possible if Kiir and Machar were able to “put the interests of their people before their”, noted the UN official, warning that the disinformation and the speech of hatred move ethnic hatred and provoking increasing violence which has moved tens of thousands.
South Sudan, the youngest country in the world, fell into a bloody civil war shortly after its independence in 2011, while the forces aligned with Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, fought the faithful to Machar, an ethnic nuer.
The conflict killed more than 40,000 people before a 2018 peace agreement sees the pair forming a government of national unity. However, the tension was still exploded.
A group of fighters known as the White Army, which would be allied with Machar, invaded a military base in the county of Nasir, the northeast of the state of the Nile, earlier in March.
In response, the South Sudanese soldiers surrounded Machar’s home in the capital, Juba, and arrested several of his allies. Meanwhile, the military also targeted the Haut-Nile communities with air strikes, said Haysom.
“These blind attacks against civilians cause significant victims and horrible injuries, in particular burns,” said the UN official, adding that around 63,000 people were moved due to the fighting.
“Given this sinister situation, we do not find ourselves any other conclusion than to assess that South Sudan vacillates on the edge of a relapse in the civil war,” he said.
The UN official warned that Kiir and Machar have little confidence that the other would respect the terms of the peace agreement.
An election, which was to take place in 2023, has already been postponed twice and was only planned in 2026.
“Disinformation, disinformation and crawling hatred speech also increases the tensions and conduct of ethnic divisions, and fear,” concluded Haysom.
A Miss is working to prevent a new civil war and engages in “intense shuttle diplomacy” with regional partners, including the African Union, he noted.
