KAMPALA: Ugandan special forces have been deployed to South Sudan’s capital, the Ugandan army chief said Tuesday, after rising tensions that have threatened a fragile peace agreement.
Impoverished South Sudan has long been plagued by political instability and insecurity, but concerns have risen sharply in the past week after clashes between forces allied to the country’s leaders in the northeast.
“As of 2 days ago, our Special Forces units entered Juba to secure it,” Ugandan army chief Muhoozi Kainerugaba said on X.
“We shall protect the entire territory of South Sudan like it was our own,” the son of Ugandan leader Yoweri Museveni and infamous for his incendiary X posts, added.
Ugandan army spokesman Felix Kulayigye confirmed that troops had been deployed in the capital “to protect the government”.
“We had instructions to deploy and we deployed the troops there,” he told AFP.
The forces were deployed in Juba two days ago, he added.
Uganda sent troops to South Sudan in 2013 at the onset of a five-year civil war to support now President Salva Kiir, before officially withdrawing at the end of 2015.
A fragile power-sharing agreement between Kiir and first Vice President Riek Machar ended that conflict in 2018, but the deal has been threatened by the recent clashes in Upper Nile State.
Kiir’s allies have accused Machar’s forces of fomenting unrest in the region, in league with the so-called White Army, a loose band of armed youths from the same ethnic Nuer community as the vice-president.
The rising unrest has sparked international concern, with the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan warning the country was seeing an “alarming regression” that threatened to undo years of progress.
The International Crisis Group think tank has warned that “South Sudan is slipping rapidly toward full-blown war”.
