In accordance with the 2015 peace deal, which received worldwide backing, Machar returned to Juba, the capital, in April to resume his post as deputy to his rival, President Salva Kiir.
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The United Nations secretary-general is launching an independent investigation into allegations that UN peacekeepers did not respond to prevent multiple cases of abuse and sexual violence against civilians and foreigners in South Sudan’s capital. More than two years after fleeing the capital, Machar returned to Juba in April and was reinstated as the president’s deputy under the terms of the peace deal.
The chaos has dismayed regional and world powers who helped broker South Sudan’s secession from Sudan in 2011, and had hoped its independence would draw a line under decades of war and instability that spread across east Africa.
In just the most recent documented atrocity a South Sudanese journalist was killed by government soldiers because of his tribe and foreign aid workers were shot, beaten and raped in an attack on a hotel during last month’s fighting in Juba. The surge of violence in South Sudan has angered various human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, as they feel it marks yet another occasion where the United Nations failed to step in where they should have, and used the pretense of “peacekeeping” to stand back and allow atrocities to happen.
Machar led a rebellion against his rival President Salva Kiir before a peace deal installed him as vice president past year.
Last week, the U.N. Security Council approved a USA -sponsored plan to send 4,000 regional peacekeepers to Juba.
In a new report, the International Crisis Group says South Sudan likely will not accept international mediation again and will try to “manage the ongoing conflict on its own”.
Power struggle between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Machar evolved into a military conflict in December 2013, killing thousands and displacing more than two million people. Kiir welcomed the rebel leader, whom he even called “brother”, during the swearing-in ceremony.
Peacekeepers retrieved Machar and his group from the town of Dungu, near to the border of South Sudan, sources told VOA’s South Sudan In Focus.
Taban Deng is a former chief negotiator of the SPLM-IO in the August peace deal, which was being brokered by the IGAD-Plus countries. In a Facebook post, the spokesman said Machar left South Sudan after a “botched attempt to assassinate” him.
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The U.S. has spent $1.6 billion trying to quell the escalating violence, with little success.
