The AAKG, a monoethnic Azande militia based in CAR’s Haut-Mbomou prefecture, has taken an increasing role in the South Sudan conflict. Formed in 2023 following attacks by the Union for Peace in the Central African Republic (UPC) on Zande settlement, the AAKG emerged in the context of latent tensions between the pastoralist Puehl, a majority within the UPC, and the agrarian Azande.[1] In March 2023, the group captured Bambouti, gaining control of gold mines and cross-border weapons flows to Nando.
In the AAKG, President Faustin-Archange Touadera’s CAR regime saw an opportunity. In March 2024, it dispatched the Wagner Group to Obo to conduct a disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration programme. Instead, the Wagner Group trained and armed the AAKG, which then fought alongside CAR’s army to take Mboki and Zemio from the UPC. By August, relations between the AAKG and the Wagner Group had soured, and the Azande militia expelled its trainers. Despite this, the AAKG now operates as ‘Wagner Ti Azande’. It is active in South Sudan.
The integration of ‘foreign’ Azande fighters into Nando’s ranks marks a reversal by the Avongara elite (Craze 2023c). Once a powerful royal kingdom spanning parts of southern Sudan, CAR, and the DRC (Hillary, 2024), the Zande were last united under King Gbudwe, who was killed in 1905 by British colonialists. While he was feted by the Azande for his military prowess, he was feared by other groups for the same reason. In 2022, a century after Gbudwe’s death, the Zande monarchy was restored, with Atoroba Peni Rikito crowned king, leading to apprehension among Western Equatoria’s other ethnic groups. While the restoration of the monarchy was a cause for great celebrations among the Azande, it also created questions about the nature of the new kingdom. It would have to exist within the nation-state of South Sudan, without military or political sovereignty, and alongside a rivalrous Zande SPLM political elite ensconced in positions of power in Juba (Craze, 2024). The AAKG was formed the year after the Azande Kingdom’s reconstitution, as tensions immediately arose between Juba and some members of the kingdom. One dispute concerned a South Sudanese Azande community defence force, founded in 2023, which claimed to be the kingdom’s army. It was dissolved by Avongara leaders in Juba, who were wary of alienating Kiir.
In 2025, integrating such militias into the government coalition has bolstered, rather than undermined, Kiir’s strategy. The SSPDF in Western Equatoria is demoralized and underfunded. Lacking a coherent national army, the government’s counterinsurgency consists of conjoining two forces. Aerial superiority provided by government-aligned forces is combined with militia forces that undertake the actual fighting. These forces include the Agwelek in Upper Nile state, as well as the AAKG and Nando’s militia in Western Equatoria. While these militias have their own local aims that are not Juba’s, they form an uneasy partnership with the national government when their interests overlap.
On 4 September 2025 in Western Equatoria, the AAKG deputy commander in CAR, Umeko Duandugu, was killed by the SPLA-IO in Tambura.[2] The CAR-based AAKG offered its condolences to the South Sudanese AAKG and directed its units in CAR and the DRC to join the conflict. Audio recordings from Nando echoed these appeals, calling for a pan-Zande force to liberate Azande areas held by the SPLM/A-IO. By late September, a combined AAKG force—including recruits from the DRC—was active in Obo and Zemio on the CAR side of the border, where they ambushed commercial vehicles.
Nando, who was previously an ‘Arrow Boy’ commander and later an SPLM/A-IO member, leads a militia whose objectives align with Kiir’s regime—at least for now. It is possible that this force could foment their own rebellion in the future and turn against the government.
[1] Relative peace in CAR’s Haut-Mbomou was upended in 2015 when the UPC moved into the area, taking control of Bambouti, Mboki, and Zemio by 2019 on the border with South Sudan, opposite the Source Yubu village.
[2] Duandugu was also an officer in the SSPDF.
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