Ethnic violence in South Sudan
In 2010, Dennis Blair, the United States Director of National Intelligence, issued a warning that "over the next five years... a new mass killing or genocide is most likely to occur in southern Sudan.
"[3][4] In April 2017, Priti Patel, the Secretary of the United Kingdom's Department for International Development, declared the violence in South Sudan as genocide.
[12] Much of the worst atrocities committed were blamed on a group known as "Mathiang Anyoor" (Brown caterpillar) or "Dot Ke Beny" (Rescue the President), a militia of Dinka formed to protect Kiir and Paul Malong Awan, while the SPLA claim that it is just another battalion.
[16] On 18 August 2011, an attack in Uror County, northern Jonglei was reportedly launched by Murle tribesmen after armed groups infiltrated into the Peiri and Pulchuol Districts (Payams) at about 5 a.m.
[18] The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) deployed peacekeepers to Pibor on 30 December in an effort to avert an attack by 6,000 armed Lou Nuer youths.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and UNMISS head Hilde Johnson called on Lou Nuer and Murle fighters alike to lay down their arms and allow the government of South Sudan to work with them toward a lasting solution to the crisis.
[23][24] The healthcare charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said that it lost contact with 130 of its staff who were forced to flee into the bush due to the attack.
[28] The United Nations estimated a total death toll of 900 between December 2011 and February 2012 as a result of the Nuer-Murle clashes, prior to the South Sudanese government's disarmament campaign in March.
[35][36] Ethiopian troops killed about 60 gunmen and crossed over the border with the South Sudanese government's permission to track the kidnappers in what some felt is the spilling over of fighting into Ethiopia.
[45] In 2013, after a year of escalating changes in government and in the party, including the dismissal of Vice-President Riek Machar and the entire cabinet in June, fighting between Nuer and Dinka SPLA soldiers broke out in Juba on December, igniting the South Sudanese Civil War.
[49] In the Gudele neighborhood, about 200–400 Nuer men were rounded up in to a room in a police station and were shot at through the windows over two days if the soldiers noticed signs of life.
[53] Official death toll has not been released as Human Rights Watch has noted the South Sudan government troops had blocked access and were heavily guarding Gudele and other affected, now abandoned suburbs of Juba.
On 25 April 2014, ethnic tensions between Nuer trainees of the SPLA and Dinka civilians escalated in Mapel, at the time part of Western Bahr el Ghazal, resulting in altercations and murders.
[57] As early as 1963, during the First Sudanese Civil War, Khartoum began arming the Murle tribe, traditional enemies of both Dinka and Nuer, to fight the southern rebellion.
Sometimes, whole tribal territories became affiliated with one side or the other, and the vicious north–south war became a defining factor in relations between tribes, infusing old hostilities with a new, political dimension.
However, he defected again in April 2012 citing SPLA abuses in Pibor county in the March–October 2012 disarmament campaign that followed the Murle-Nuer clashes, called Operation Restore Hope.
[62][65] In November 2017, Murle gunmen attacked a Dinka village of Duk Payuel county in Jonglei, killing 45 people and abducting about 60 women and children.
[4] Over 10,000 people were displaced in the midst of the rainy season and sent fleeing into the forest, often naked, without bedding, shelter or food, with many children dying from hunger and cold.
[84] During the Second Sudanese Civil War, many from the Fertit, which refers to the various Bantu groups in the Bahr el Ghazal region such as the Banda and Binga,[85] fought on behalf of the central government in Khartoum against the SPLA.
In March 2011, a clash between Dinka pastoralists of Lakes State[88] and Jur farmers from Western Equatoria over land issues left 7 people dead and 5 injured.
In 2016, about a year after the Compromise Peace Agreement was signed, groups of ethnic Dinka youth and the SPLA targeted members of the Fertit in Wau, killing dozens and forcing more than 120,000 to flee their homes.
In Western Equatoria, after Dinka cattle herders, allegedly backed by the SPLA, occupied farmland, Zande youth rose up into armed groups, notably the Arrow Boys.
[1] A new rebel faction calling itself the South Sudan Federal Democratic Party (different from but related to the larger similarly named rebel faction led by Peter Gadet, Gabriel Chang and Gathoth Gatkuoth), made up mostly of Lotuko people formed during this time due to growing perceptions of mistreatment by the "Dinka" government and took over a SPLA outpost in Eastern Equatoria.
[98] On 4 April 2017, a pro-government militia reportedly led by Major Gen. Gildo Oling attacked mostly Acholis[99] in Pajok and SPLA-IO claimed 200 civilians were killed.
[104] By the end of the month, the African Union disclosed that a tentative agreement was reached, establishing a preliminary 20-kilometre ceasefire line and demilitarized region in Abyei.
[106] In March 2011, an armed clash over a land dispute in Twic East County, Jonglei between members of the Ayuel and Dachuek Dinka, killed 22 people, including one SPLA officer.
[109] In the Lakes Region, clashes between Ruop and Pakam clans in Malek County in 2018 killed at least 170 according to government officials, with 342 houses burnt and 1,800 people displaced.
[113] Around this time, the largely Dinka South Sudan Patriotic Army (SSPA) was formed in Northern Bahr el Ghazal, with the backing of powerful figures such as former presidential adviser Costello Garang Ring[114] and allegedly Malong Awan.
[120] In April 2018, Awan announced the launch of a rebel group named South Sudan United Front (SS-UF), which claimed to push for federalism.
[124] The main Nuer led opposition, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-in-Opposition, had a split with those loyal to Taban Deng Gai, called the Juba faction of the SPLM/A-IO, joining with the government to fight the rebels.
