South Sudan ex-rebel leader fires possible rival

JUBA, South Sudan – South Sudan’s vice president and former rebel leader Riek Machar has fired a minister suspected by his group of being tapped by the government to replace him.

Machar has not been seen in public since he left the capital Juba after clashes that threatened to destroy a 2015 deal to end the country’s civil conflict.

His movement, the SPLM/A (IO), on Friday, July 22, accused the government of seeking to replace Machar with Taban Deng Gai – the former rebels’ chief negotiator during the peace talks.

Any attempt to force out Machar would inflict “a devastating blow” to the unity government and the August 2015 peace accord, it warned.

In a statement addressed to President Salva Kiir and received by Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Saturday, July 23, Machar said he had fired Teng Deng Gai as minister for mines in the transitional government.

“I will nominate his replacement as soon as I return to Juba once the security arrangement is put in place by a 3rd party force”, he said.

This is a reference to an eventual deployment in Juba of a contingent of African troops as part of the UN mission in the country.

In the run-up to the latest developments, Kiir had appealed for Machar to return to Juba and work together towards rebuilding peace. 

He had pledged to guarantee his rival’s safety.

“There is no point to come back to be assassinated,” Machar’s spokesman Goi Jooyul Yol told AFP on Friday, speaking from the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.

“Dr Machar is still being hunted around Juba,” he said, adding that “we don’t trust” Kiir’s security pledge.

Juba was rocked by days of heavy fighting in early July between government forces and fighters loyal to Machar which erupted as he was meeting Kiir in the presidential palace.

More than 300 people were killed.

The violence escalated fears of a return to the brutal civil war that erupted just over two years after independence in 2011.

Kiir has rejected a proposal by the African Union to deploy a robust protection force in South Sudan and is also against beefing up the mandate of the UN peacekeeping mission UNMISS.

But the SPLM/A (IO) is in favor of an independent force. – Rappler.com