SSPDF attacks on SPLM/A-IO checkpoints in Jur River county in Western Bahr el Ghazal in December 2024 did not spark wider conflict. Tensions resurfaced, however, in September 2025, when SPLA-IO defections triggered clashes. On 9 October 2025, the SPLA-IO ambushed an SSPDF convoy on the Wau–Tonj Road. The SSPDF division five commander in Wau county, Jiel Mangok Yel, ordered troops to secure the area. The reappointment of Paul Nang Majok as the chief of defence forces on the same day presaged an intensification of hostilities. On 12 October, Nang ordered SPLA-IO forces to report to SSPDF barracks or be considered hostile forces. Airstrikes followed on 14 October, targeting Jur River opposition positions and villages linked to SPLA-IO commanders. These airstrikes, seemingly intended to secure the Wau–Warrap transport corridor, followed SSPDF incursions targeting civilians and SPLA-IO positions, as if trying to incite a conflict.
Under Sarah Cleto Rial’s gubernatorial reign, there was relative stability in the state (Craze, 2023b). Although the security services remained under Dinka control, and her governorship was unpopular among members of the SPLM/A-IO, Cleto maintained peace by managing ties with her SPLM deputy, Joseph Zachariah, a protege of Rizik Zachariah Hassan, the state’s central powerbroker. In November 2024, under pressure from SPLM/A-IO Secretary General Regina Joseph Kaba, Machar replaced Cleto with Emmanuel Primo Okello, a Kaba supporter and her cousin. Primo and Cleto are Fertit from Wau. Primo’s appointment angered Luo SPLM/A-IO commanders from Jur River, who felt the governorship should come to their area. These commanders already felt marginalized, after a Chinese-built bridge to the Jur River was named after a Fertit politician, Clement Mboro. Following Primo’s appointment, opposition commander Gabriel Bol Wek (TwalTwal) barred Primo from entering Jur River and urged resistance. These developments upended the state’s historical ethnic-political balance, in which the SPLM/A had always been able to rely on Dinka and Luo support.
After the Nasir town incident, Primo prevaricated on Par Kuol. While Fertit politicians in Wau saw joining his faction as a way to retain control of the state capital, they worried about Par Kuol’s unpopularity. The SPLM/A-IO’s strong support among the Fertit is rooted in memories of the 2012 violence that followed the government’s attempt to relocate Wau’s headquarters to the Baggari payam[1]—a move people feared would entrench Dinka dominance in Wau. Baggari remains off-limits to the government and is a wellspring of opposition support in the state. Some politicians, however, sensed an opportunity in the changing political climate. Valentino Akech—the state minister of agriculture and deputy SPLM/A-IO chair—backed Par Kuol, as did Cleto, who became the national minister of health. Primo also eventually backed Par Kuol.
By September, Kiir’s regime had grown increasingly concerned about the security situation in Western Bahr el Ghazal, particularly regarding the links between the state’s opposition and Balanda commanders in Western Equatoria.[2] On 2 September 2025, Primo was replaced by Sherif, a battle-hardened officer who had served with the SAF during the second civil war. He later joined Machar’s SPLM/A-IO as a senior intelligence officer. Sherif’s appointment, along with changes in the National Security Service (NSS) leadership that brought in officers from Yirol, Lakes state, and Gogrial, Warrap state, placed Wau on a war footing.
The government has sought to recruit in Western Bahr el Ghazal, principally among unemployed youth in Wau, to buttress its forces there. It has had little success. The opposition discouraged enlistment, while some new conscripts deserted. In Jur River, the government reported 2,100 SPLM/A-IO defections in late October 2025 (Radio Tamazuj, 2025). Realistically, only a few hundred did so—mostly civilians who joined the SSPDF to avoid airstrikes and army destruction of their crops.
Kiir’s regime has had more success in using former opposition military commanders. Joseph Arop, who defected in 2020, now commands troops on the road to Baggari. Charles Uchalla Muong, a Jur River commander long warehoused in Juba, has been deployed to counter TwalTwal’s influence. Sherif also appointed a new mayor of Wau, Joseph John Andrea from Baggari, who has been tasked with identifying SPLM/A-IO figures who might defect to Par Kuol’s faction.
The opposition has recruited far more effectively, especially in Baggari, where more than 1,000 young men have joined SPLM/A-IO commander Benson Joseph. Community leaders have also attempted to repair his relationship with Abdullah Ujang, the head of SPLM/A-IO Division 6A, who is under house arrest in Wau. Both men are Balanda, albeit from different areas, and they are divided over revenue collection and historical animosities. Despite these divisions, the SPLM/A-IO remains relatively unified. In April 2025, Futuyo, TwalTwal, Joseph, Musa Dakumi—the SPLA-IO commander for Raga county—and Ujang’s deputy, Peter Ngoli, held a coordination meeting in Baggari. While the opposition is prepared for war, they are reluctant to fight, reflecting the state’s weariness.
Raga remains central to the state’s stability. Its population is deeply loyal to the SPLM/A-IO, locally led by Dakumi and Addison Arcangelo, the SPLM-IO commissioner who retained his post even after other opposition figures in the state government were dismissed. The opposition elite are integrated into a cross-border war economy. Rapid Support Forces (RSF) gold flows from Sudan’s South Darfur Songo mine to Raga, then to Wau, and onward to Juba on NSS-operated commercial flights. Gold from Raga follows similar routes, managed by NSS and SPLM/A-IO security officials, while petrol and cars move in the opposite direction, sustaining the RSF’s war effort in the Darfur region of Sudan. This trade has united fractious military commanders, including two Kresh from Raga—Sherif and Hassan.
Foreign actors reinforce this precarious alliance. The RSF now maintains a presence in Wau, where its chairperson is accompanied by an SSPDF military intelligence minder, serving as both a bodyguard and a lookout to ensure that the RSF does not make common cause with the SPLM/A-IO. Between August and September 2024, the Uganda People’s Defence Force deployed to Boro Medina in Raga to secure NSS-linked mining operations, much to the chagrin of local miners. Nearly four dozen Ugandan soldiers have since rotated into Boro Medina.
For Juba, Wau remains a central commercial hub, and recent airstrikes aim to keep open the roads that connect it with the rest of the country. Yet some figures inside the SPLM stand to profit from renewed war. Most notably, Deputy Governor Zachariah, who seeks the SPLM governorship of the state, has repeatedly provoked the SPLA-IO. He is deeply unpopular in Wau and is thought of as a force for disorder. Several members of the SPLM elite in the state, including the SPLM state secretary, Viola Alexander, are angling to replace him. Zachariah could yet push Western Bahr el Ghazal into an all-out war.
[1] South Sudan is divided into ten states (and two administrative areas). Each of those states is divided into counties, which are further divided into payams, and payams, into bomas.
[2] The Fertit is an umbrella term for several ethnic groups in Western Bahr el Ghazal, South Sudan, one of which is the Balanda.
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