By Enyichukwu Enemanna
The United States authorities have ordered all staff not involved in emergency services to begin the process of leaving South Sudan as tension mounts over a political standoff between the President and his Vice.
The renewed fighting jeopardises the existing peace deal, though fragile, brokered in 2018 between President Salva Kiir and Vice-President Riek Machar, ending years of civil war.
“Due to the risks in the country, on 8 March 2025, the Department of State ordered the departure of non-emergency U.S. government employees,” the department said in a statement on Sunday.
The world’s youngest country descended into a five-year civil war shortly after gaining independence from Sudan in 2011. At least 400,000 people were feared dead, and relations between the two leaders have remained icy.
Fighting is ongoing in the country between various political and ethnic groups, and “weapons are readily available to the population”, the U.S. State Department added.
On Saturday, the UN Human Rights Commission for South Sudan raised concern over an “alarming regression” that threatened to undo years of progress towards peace.
President Kiir has called for calm and assured that the country would not return to its dark days of war and anarchy.
In recent weeks, ministers loyal to Vice-President Machar were arrested by the state security forces, which an opposition spokesman termed a “grave violation” of the existing peace deal.
They were arrested following clashes in the country’s Upper Nile state between government forces and a militia known as the White Army, which had fought alongside Machar during the civil war.
The 2018 power-sharing agreement between Kiir and Machar stopped the fighting, but key elements of the deal have not been implemented, including a new constitution, an election, and the reunification of armed groups into a single army.
Last year, Kiir postponed a delayed election, citing the need for logistics and time.
