In December 2024, Kiir’s regime took control of SPLM/A-IO checkpoints in Western Equatoria and Western Bahr el Ghazal (Craze, 2025b). This engagement was the precursor to a political dismemberment of the opposition. In February 2025, Kiir dismissed Futuyo as the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO) governor of Western Equatoria. He was eventually replaced by a Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM)-loyalist, in an abrogation of the peace agreement. In Western Bahr el Ghazal, Sherif Daniel Sherif, a member of an opposition faction in Juba, was appointed governor in September 2025.[1] With the opposition politically decimated, the government’s campaign against the SPLM/A-IO returned to a military footing.
Oscillations between violence and politics form part of a continuum. During the South Sudanese civil war (2013–18), Kiir’s regime inflicted a series of military defeats on Riek Machar’s SPLM/A-IO (Craze, 2023a). The era (2018–25) inaugurated by the signing of the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (R-ARCSS) in 2018 (IGAD, 2018) enabled Kiir’s regime to extend its domination by strategically stalling the peace agreement (Craze and Marko, 2022). Opposition fighters wasted away waiting for an integration into the Necessary Unified Forces that never occurred (Craze, 2020). The opposition haemorrhaged support. Meanwhile, Kiir’s regime built a fractious coalition by turning politicians against each other (Craze, 2025a). This political strategy was twinned with violent government incursions into opposition-held territory, particularly in southern Unity state, designed to immiserate SPLM/A-IO supporters (UNHRC, 2023).
Diplomats in Juba are concerned with how to ‘get the peace agreement back on track’.[2] Yet the current conflict in South Sudan is part of the logic of the peace agreement, not an exception to it. The R-ARCSS was not designed to be fully implemented. Instead, it was intended to be a form of creative unsettlement, in which Kiir’s regime strategically manipulated violence and interruptions in state function to create a system in which disorder became a means of rule (Pospisil, 2025). From this perspective, South Sudan’s conflict does not represent a crisis but a continuity. Machar’s arrest and trial for the March 2025 events in Nasir town[3]—during which the white armies took over the barracks of the South Sudan People’s Defence Forces (SSPDF)—came after seven years of Kiir’s regime marginalizing the opposition in Juba and fracturing its support base elsewhere.[4] The removal of almost every opposition figure from the government in recent months is part of a coherent regime strategy.
Clashes in Western Bahr el Ghazal and Western Equatoria do not represent a breakdown of order; they fulfil a political purpose. In Juba, Kiir’s regime intends for Machar’s trial to continue for as long as possible.[5] The government’s strategy is for Machar to be found guilty and then pardoned by Kiir, in a conditional ‘magnanimous’ gesture that would require him to withdraw from political life. It is unclear what Machar’s response would be to such a demand. The government wants to prolong the trial, giving the opposition leader minimal time to prepare for the 2026 elections that Kiir—if he can overcome the hesitancies of those around him (Craze, 2025a)—hopes will finally occur. Continued attacks on the opposition on the ground serve a political function. They keep the SPLM/A-IO harassed while the trial continues.
The point of the conflict is not to win. Kiir’s regime cannot clear the SPLM/A-IO from areas where the government has no legitimacy. Instead of eliminating the opposition, the government wants to create an enemy—an insurgency it can then repress. Aerial bombardments and assassinations foment anger that drives mobilizations. These mobilizations allow the government to instantiate counterinsurgency as a modality of rule. Counterinsurgency enables commanders to be rewarded with positions, looting to sustain loyal militias, and defections that pit opposition forces against each other. This process has no final goal; it constitutes its own end.
[1] Stephen Par Kuol formed his own SPLM-IO splinter group in April 2025, which was not recognized by either the SPLM/A-IO on the ground or the interim chairperson of the movement, Nathaniel Oyet. Kiir’s regime has, however, recognized the SPLM-IO under Par Kuol, in a transparent attempt to create a fictional faction of the opposition that is subservient to the government. This manoeuvre repeats its prior attempt to install Taban Deng Gai as the SPLM/A-IO chairperson in 2016 (Craze, 2016).
[2] Author conversations with diplomats and UN staff in Juba, South Sudan, July to October 2025.
[3] Towns that share the same name as a county, state, or area will be referenced as towns to avoid confusion with the counties to which they belong.
[4] The white armies in Nasir, South Sudan, acted independently of Machar (Craze, forthcoming).
[5] Author interviews with government politicians and figures in the SPLM hierarchy, September to October 2025.
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