Issue No. 91

The Theatre of Disarmament in South Sudan

On 5 June, South Sudanese President Salva Kiir declared a six-month state of emergency in Warrap State and Mayom County in Unity State, authorising sweeping security powers justified under 'restoring stability' after a spate of violence in late May. Following intense political violence in Nasir against the White Army earlier this year, the latest emergency decree – and the disarmament campaign that followed – are part of a broader strategy aimed at violently consolidating regime control in the fractious peripheries. And so, amid Kiir's regime succession planning, the ruling clique of Dinka politicians has sought to quash any remaining opposition through its mass arrests and military campaigns in Juba and outside its control, and simultaneously redirecting resource flows to the capital. 

Although Dinka-majority Warrap, Kiir's own home state, has faced deadly intercommunal clashes in recent months, the inclusion of Mayom in Unity State has been particularly notable, a historic centre of Nuer resistance and a former stronghold of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement in Opposition (SPLM-IO). After careful and persistent abrogation by the ruling party, the power-sharing logic of the 2018 Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) between the SPLM and SPLM-IO has all but collapsed. Nowhere is this more evident than in security sector reform, with the peace agreement stipulating a gradual transition to unified forces under a single command. Instead, the South Sudan People's Defence Forces (SSPDF) remain an unpopular, demoralised, and unpaid coalition, and other rival armed groups have been induced to defect to the Kiir regime through bribery or force-- in contravention of the peace agreement. Subsequently, it is hard to take the government's proclamations of restoring stability and disarming groups seriously when it has been the single largest generator of insecurity in the country for years. In particular, areas of Nuer majority and where sympathies towards the SPLM-IO and the White Army have been prevalent have faced intense government-sanctioned violence. With First Vice President and SPLM-IO leader Riek Machar under house arrest and his party long sidelined from key decision-making processes, Kiir has seized the opportunity to further consolidate his authority in Warrap and undermine opposition in Unity State.

Under the emergency provisions, the SSPDF were handed power to conduct warrantless searches, impose curfews, establish checkpoints, and conduct mass arrests without charge. And on 9 June, the SSPDF issued a one-week ultimatum ordering armed youth to surrender their weapons or face forceful disarmament. Such a deadline was far too short to permit any meaningful negotiations or engagements with remote communities. Seemingly buoyed by the violence in March, Juba did not even bother to give the pretence of voluntary disarmament or any best practice in disarming non-state armed groups in a fractious political context. 

The subsequent campaign's reliance on military force became evident as soon as SSPDF units were deployed to the field. Checkpoints were immediately erected-- a vital source for revenue for Juba's army, civilians intimidated and arrested en masse, and soldiers went house-to-house looking for weapons. Some complied, with Juba quickly crowing that progress was being made, citing the surrender of 4,000 weapons in Tonj East on 16 June. During past failed attempts at disarmament, tribes have simply surrendered old and defunct weapons, and it is highly likely that such a dynamic has been at play once again in the past weeks. But many others have resisted, warning that such deliberately selective disarmament would expose them to attacks from still-armed neighbouring communities in cyclical cattle-rustling. Hundreds-- if not thousands-- of people have already been killed this year in South Sudan amid a grim surge in the activity.

Another rationale behind the disarmament campaign is almost certainly related to South Sudan's checkpoint economy, which remains one of the principal ways Kiir's regime profits and projects force into the peripheries. For armed youth, manning checkpoints is one of the only sources of income available – extracting transit fees and warding off threats to their cattle herds. Dismantling such checkpoints provided the flimsy rationale behind the government-sanctioned destruction in Nasir earlier this year against the White Army as well, arguing that they were hindering humanitarian delivery. The painful irony is, of course, that the subsequent military campaign produced another massive humanitarian emergency in a country where around 8.3 million people are estimated to require assistance this year. The Nasir crisis-- and the current disarmament campaign-- are part of the same strategy to recapture revenue streams that had slipped from the government's grasp and restructure the flow of wealth back toward Juba. With little to no healthcare, education, humanitarian assistance, or justice being provided by the government, it is only these predatorily extractive checkpoints that even display Juba's existence in many places.

This is not to deny that there is a serious issue with arms proliferation in South Sudan, with the country awash with weapons and ammunition markets where AK-47s and assault rifles can be picked up for a few hundred dollars. One such market in Akobo near the border of Ethiopia has been implicated in the arming and trading of weapons, cows, and people by the Murle tribe, which continues to conduct cross-border raids into Ethiopia's Gambella region, for instance. Quantities of arms in now-South Sudan soared during the Sudanese Second Civil War between 1983 and 2005, with weapons distributed amongst civilians in the existential war against Khartoum by the Sudan People's Liberation Army. And particularly since the 1990s, new imperatives for self-defence have come into play amid deteriorated relations between Nuer and Dinka politicians, and by extension, their communities. 

Today, senior government officials are well-known to be intimately connected in the cross-border arms trade, not least with funnelling Emirati weapons to the neighbouring Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan. And it is not just the plethora of tribe-based militias that are aligned with the various competing power centres with access to small arms. In the pastoralist nature of South Sudanese society, where cows are regarded as central to men's social and economic worth, the proliferation of arms has profoundly altered community dynamics —just as it has in parts of rural Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Spear-led cattle raids governed by codes protecting women and children have transformed into cyclical, deadly confrontations with automatic rifles and high casualty rates.

Though the prevalence of weapons in South Sudan certainly exacerbates the deadliness of inter-communal cattle rustling and raiding, it is not the root cause-- nor indeed the most serious threat to many communities today. That danger would be from Juba, whose repeated offensives against its own populations have caused widespread suffering since late 2024 and before, with the offensive last year initially targeting communities in parts of Upper Nile, Western Equatoria, and Western Bahr el Ghazal. Indiscriminate aerial bombardment, including incendiary bombing in March in Nasir against communities aligned with the White Army, has taken place, with many tens of thousands displaced. In the same breath, Juba has heavily armed its own supporters and government-aligned militias against these Nuer community defence forces. Such arming and disarming communities to maintain dominance over restive peripheries and to protect the economic interests of a narrow ruling elite is a tried-and-tested method. Maintaining insecurity through a variety of means has long been the bedrock of the Kiir regime.

Juba has not sought to disarm these communities because it has a grand vision for the country, one of genuine service delivery and a reformed political settlement--quite the reverse. The current disarmament campaign coincides with President Kiir's quiet manoeuvring to elevate the newly appointed Vice President Benjamin Bol Mel as his likely successor. A sanctioned and highly controversial figure, Bol Mel, already at the centre of South Sudan's patronage economy through the oil-for-roads programme has emerged as both financier and enforcer of the regime's strategic violence. 

Only a broad national settlement that brings together all parties and opposition can begin paving the way for a genuinely sustainable disarmament campaign. But such a settlement would require the government in Juba to begin acting contrary to its very nature.

The Horn Edition Team