Uganda Sends Troops to South Sudan Amid Growing Concerns About Civil War

As a tense rivalry with his deputy threatens a return to civil war in the east African country, Uganda has sent an unspecified number of troops to South Sudan to defend President Salva Kiir’s tenuous government.

According to Maj. Gen. Felix Kulayigye, a Ugandan military spokesperson, Ugandan special forces have been sent to Juba, the capital of South Sudan, “to support the government of South Sudan” against a potential rebel push on the city.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni acted as a guarantor of the peace process that maintains Kiir and Machar together in a fragile government of national unity by sending Ugandan troops to Juba, Kulayigye told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Museveni and Kiir are allies, and to maintain Kiir’s hold on power, Museveni has already stepped in to end the fighting in South Sudan. Ugandan forces’ deployment to South Sudan highlights escalating tensions in the oil-producing nation, which has seen political unrest and bloodshed since separating from Sudan in 2011.

The United States instructed non-emergency government employees to evacuate Juba on Sunday. In South Sudan, the United Nations is warning of “an alarming regression that could erase years of hard-won progress.

Fighting between government troops and a rebel group known as the White Army, which is generally assumed to be affiliated with Machar, is the source of the most recent tensions in the country’s north.

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