Vice-President, wife placed under house arrest

South Sudan’s vice president, Riek Machar, has been placed under house arrest, according to his party, escalating tensions that the United Nations has warned are pushing the world’s youngest country to the brink of civil war.

The country’s defense minister and the chief of national security “forcefully entered” Mr. Machar’s residence late on Wednesday, disarmed his bodyguards and “delivered an arrest warrant to him under unclear charges,” according to Mr. Machar’s political party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in Opposition.

Mr. Machar’s wife, Angelina Teny, who is the interior minister, was placed under house arrest, too, the party’s deputy leader said in a statement. All of Mr. Machar’s aides and protection officers “were arrested and moved to separate locations,” he added.

The arrests threaten the fragile peace agreement signed in 2018 between Mr. Machar and President Salva Kiir, which ended a five-year civil war that killed nearly 400,000 people. A return to war in South Sudan could draw neighbouring nations into the conflict and exacerbate the already-dire conditions for the country’s more than 11 million people.

The peace deal established a power-sharing agreement between the country’s largest ethnic groups, Mr. Kiir’s Dinka and Mr. Machar’s Nuer, which fought a bloody civil war that erupted roughly two years after South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011.

But all that has appeared to be coming undone in recent weeks, as deep-seated political and ethnic tensions have flared up and forces allied with both sides have clashed in the northeastern Upper Nile State. The violence has displaced at least 50,000 people since February, the U.N. said, with 10,000 of those crossing the border into Ethiopia seeking safety.

On Wednesday, the U.N. said that South Sudan’s military and opposition forces had been clashing just south and west of the capital in recent days.

“Mr. Machar’s detention effectively killed the peace deal, his party’s deputy leader”, Oyet Nathaniel Pierino, said in a statement. Another senior party official, Reath Muoch Tang, called it a “blatant violation of the Constitution.”

In a statement posted on social media, he added that arresting Mr. Machar “without due process undermines the rule of law and threatens the stability of the nation.”

The U.S. State Department said it was concerned about reports that Mr. Machar was “under house arrest” and, in a post on social media, called on Mr. Kiir “to reverse this action & prevent further escalation of the situation.”

Both the United States and Britain said they would reduce staffing at their embassies in South Sudan because of the increasing insecurity in the country.

The U.N. mission in South Sudan said in a statement that Mr. Machar’s detention risked “returning the country into a state of war,” adding, “This will not only devastate South Sudan, but also affect the entire region.”

Last month, Mr. Machar’s political party accused the authorities of persecuting its supporters and arresting some of the vice president’s close associates, including the deputy army chief, Gen. Gabriel Duop Lam, and the petroleum minister, Puot Kang Chol.

At least 22 political and military leaders connected to Mr. Machar have been detained in recent weeks, with the whereabouts of some of them still unknown, Human Rights Watch said.

In the Upper Nile State in the northeast of the country, South Sudan’s national army has also clashed with an armed force believed to be allied with Mr. Machar.

This month, a U.N. helicopter evacuating wounded soldiers from the state was attacked, leading to the death of one crew member and several military officers, including a general.

Mr. Machar’s detention came days after he wrote a strongly worded letter to the U.N. and African Union expressing concern over the deployment of Ugandan troops in the country. Their presence, he said, violated the peace deal. Uganda’s defense minister, Jacob Oboth, told Parliament last week that Mr. Kiir had asked for the Ugandan troops to be deployed.

President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda has been a longtime ally of Mr. Kiir. Uganda is worried that a large-scale conflict in the neighbouring country could result in a surge of refugees crossing the border and wider regional instability.

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