South Sudan’s Vice President Riek Machar has been arrested, according to his party, amid escalating tensions in the world’s youngest country that the United Nations warned could blow up a fragile peace deal and has pushed the country back to the brink of civil war.
Mr. Machar was detained late on Wednesday by the National Security Service, his acting press secretary, Puok Both Baluang, said. The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement In Opposition, Mr. Machar’s political party, said the country’s defense minister and the chief of national security “forcefully entered” Mr. Machar’s residence alongside an armed convoy, disarmed his bodyguards and “delivered an arrest warrant to him under unclear charges.”
It was not immediately clear where Mr. Machar was on Thursday morning, and spokespeople for the government and the opposition could not immediately be reached for comment.
“This act is a blatant violation of the Constitution,” Reath Muoch Tang, a senior official in Mr. Machar’s party, said 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 arrest threatens the fragile peace agreement signed in 2018 between Mr. Machar and President Salva Kiir, which ended a five-year war that killed nearly 400,000 people.
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 President 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.”
The 2018 peace deal demilitarized the capital, Juba, created a power-sharing agreement between the country’s largest ethnic groups, Mr. Kiir’s Dinka and Mr. Machar’s Nuer. It also set up measures to ensure both sides shared profits from oil exports.
But all of that has appeared to be coming undone in recent weeks, as deep-seated political and ethnic tensions flared up and forces allied with both sides clashed. The violence has displaced at least 50,000 people since February, the U.N. said, and at least 10,000 people have crossed the border into Ethiopia seeking safety.
On Wednesday, the United Nations said that South Sudan’s military and opposition forces have been clashing just south and west of the capital in recent days.
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 has 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 just days after he wrote a strongly worded letter to the United Nations 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 neighboring country could result in a surge of refugees crossing the border and wider regional instability.
