Ethnic violence in South Sudan has a long history among South Sudan's various ethnic groups. South Sudan has 64 tribes with the largest being the Dinka, who constitute about 35% of the population and predominate in government. The second largest are the Nuers. Conflict is often aggravated among nomadic groups over the issue of cattle and grazing land and is part of the wider Sudanese nomadic conflicts.
In 2010, Dennis Blair, the United States Director of National Intelligence, issued a warning that "over the next five years... a new mass killing or genocide is most likely to occur in southern Sudan." In April 2017, Priti Patel, the Secretary of the United Kingdom's Department for International Development, declared the violence in South Sudan as genocide.
Background
Nomadic raiding
Members of the Murle and Lou Nuer ethnic groups are largely nomadic cattle herders. Cattle are used as food and are used as a store of wealth. It takes 20 cows to buy a bride if a young man hopes to marry, which encourages cattle raiding. Violence between the two groups goes back generations, exacerbated by tensions over land and water. The attacks often target an entire village, burning them in their round thatched huts. Militias frequently abduct children during cattle raids, who are then forcefully adopted into the tribe. This is seen as a method, notably among the Murle, to increase the numbers of the small minority group. In past generations, attackers used machetes and sticks. However, after decades of civil war, the region is awash with guns, and young men are now armed with high-powered weapons. In 2017, local organizations said that more than 5,000 people had been killed since 2011 in cattle raids in South Sudan.
Sudan People's Liberation Army
The governing party, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), and the army, the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), have been accused of being dominated by the Dinka. Many refer to the dominance of the Dinka as the "Dinkocracy". A Dinka lobbying group known as the "Jieng Council of Elders" is often accused of being behind hardline SPLM policies. While the army used to attract men from across tribes, during the South Sudanese Civil War the SPLA came to be dominated by soldiers from the Dinka stronghold of Bahr el Ghazal, home region of President Salva Kiir and the Chief of Staff. The army was often referred to within the country as "the Dinka army". Many of the worst atrocities committed were blamed on a group known as "Mathiang Anyoor" (Brown Caterpillar) or "Dot Ke Beny" (Rescue the President), a Dinka militia formed to protect Kiir and Paul Malong Awan, though the SPLA claims that it is just another battalion.
South Sudan Democratic Movement
The South Sudan Democratic Movement (SSDM) is a rebel group founded in 2010 by George Athor after he lost a contested election. The group also incorporates and supports other factions as part of a broad coalition of those who complain of neglect by the Dinka dominated SPLA. This notably includes those composed of ethnic minorities such as the Murle people who lead the Cobra faction and the Shilluk people who lead the Upper Nile Faction. In a strategy of co-option known as "big tent", the government often buys off community militia and pardons its leaders. Others call the use of rebellion to receive public office as "bad culture" and an incentive to rebel.
Murle-Nuer fighting
Uror massacre (2011)
On 18 August 2011, an attack in Uror County, northern Jonglei was reportedly launched by Murle tribesmen after armed groups infiltrated into the Peiri and Pulchuol Districts (Payams) at about 5 a.m. The attack is believed to have been a revenge operation against the Lou Nuer tribe after an attack on the Murle the previous June in Pibor County. At least 640 people were killed and the attackers burned down over 3,400 houses and the hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières. An initial estimate showed that 38,000 heads of cattle were stolen and 208 children were kidnapped.
Pibor massacre (2011–2012)
By 25 December 2011, the Nuer White Army released a statement stating its intent to "wipe out the entire Murle tribe off the face of the earth as the only solution to guarantee long-term security of Nuer's cattle" and attack United Nations and SPLA personnel if they interfered. The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) deployed peacekeepers to Pibor on 30 December in an effort to avert an attack by 6,000 armed Lou Nuer youths. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and UNMISS head Hilde Johnson called on Lou Nuer and Murle fighters alike to lay down their arms and allow the government of South Sudan to work with them toward a lasting solution to the crisis. Activists, including Minority Rights Group International, warned of genocide in the conflict.
At 3 pm on 31 December, between 3–6,000 Lou Nuer tribesmen attacked a part of Pibor not protected by the UN peacekeepers. Houses were reported to have been set on fire and much of the town, including the airport and main hospital, were occupied. The Lou Nuer were said to have pursued members of the Murle who were fleeing southwards. The South Sudanese government promised to send more army personnel and 2,000 police to the town to reinforce the 800 troops already there. The healthcare charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said that it lost contact with 130 of its staff who were forced to flee into the bush due to the attack. MSF said that a hospital and two outreach clinics were overrun, with some reports stating that the hospital had been set on fire. Looting was said to have taken place at MSF facilities.
By 2 January, the majority of the Lou Nuer forces were said to have left Pibor and started to move to the southeast with a UN spokesman saying they were "almost certainly looking for cattle". The UN said that it had successfully held the main part of Pibor alongside South Sudanese army troops. The UN was advising people in the area to "disperse into the bush for their safety". Estimates for the number of displaced ranged up to 50,000, and more than 30 were killed with as many as 80 left injured. The SPLA dispatched 3,000 soldiers and 800 police to support the government's garrison in Pibor. On 5 January, Joshua Konyi, the commissioner of Pibor County and a Murle, estimated that 2,182 women and children and 959 men were killed, 1,293 children were abducted, and 375,186 cows were stolen. The United Nations estimated a total death toll of 900 between December 2011 and February 2012 as a result of the Nuer-Murle clashes, prior to the South Sudanese government's disarmament campaign in March.
A peace deal was signed in May 2012 by representatives of six ethnic communities in Jonglei state.
Akobo county attack (2013)
In February 2013, an attack by a group of armed Murle youth killed more than 100 civilians at Walgak and 14 SPLA soldiers.
South Sudanese Civil War
The Greater Pibor Forces split off from the Cobra Faction, which had signed a peace agreement with the government. They joined opposition forces and one of their disagreements with the government was the alleged encouragement of the Murle, as a method of divide and rule, to fight against Nuer groups in Jonglei, as some groups such as the Nuer White Army have fought against the government.
2016 Gambela raid
On 15 April 2016, Murle fighters in South Sudan crossed over to the Jikawo and Lare areas of the Gambela Region (which hosts about 300,000 South Sudanese refugees) in Ethiopia and killed at least 208 people, stole 2,000 cattle and kidnapped at least 108 women and children from the Nuer tribe. Ethiopian troops killed about 60 gunmen and crossed over the border with the South Sudanese government's permission to track the kidnappers in what some felt is the spilling over of fighting into Ethiopia. By 2017, about 100 children had been retrieved.
2017 Gambela raid
In March 2017, about 1,000 Murle gunmen from Boma State raided the Gambela Region in Ethiopia and abducted 43 children. They were pursued by the Ethiopian military.
2020 Uror County massacre
In February 2020 in Jonglei, over 200 women and children were believed to have been abducted. At least 287 people were killed in Murle-Nuer clashes starting on 16 May 2020. As part of the deal to end the civil war, the number of states was reduced back to 10. However, there were disagreements over who should be the new governors and, even though the deal decreased political violence, the spike in inter-communal violence was attributed to the resulting power vacuum.
Dinka-Nuer fighting
Second Sudanese Civil War
During the Second Sudanese Civil War, several factions split from the SPLA often along ethnic lines and were funded and armed by Khartoum. The most notable was SPLA-Nasir founded in 1991 by Riek Machar as an attempt by the Nuer to replace John Garang.
The South Sudan Liberation Movement (SSLA) was formed in 1999 as a Nuer-dominated faction in the civil war.
Bor massacre (1991)
As a result of the infighting, more southerners died at each other's hands than were killed by northerners during the war. In the Bor massacre in 1991, an estimated 2000 civilians were killed by SPLA-Nasir and the Nuer White Army and another estimated 25,000 died from the resulting famine in the following years.
South Sudanese Civil War
In April 2011, The SSLA, now led by Peter Gadet, announces its formation as a rebel army fighting against the main SPLA forces. In 2011, SSLA clash with tribal cattle herders in Warrap State, south of Abyei. Southern authorities accuse the rebels of being backed by al-Bashir's Khartoum government, and say that the rebels are mobilizing the Misseriya against the SPLA in Unity State. To put down the rebellion, it was alleged that the SPLA set fire to over 7,000 homes in Unity state in May 2011.
Anti-Nuer pogroms (2013)
In 2013, after a year of escalating changes in government and in the party, including the dismissal of Vice-President Riek Machar and the entire cabinet in June, fighting between Nuer and Dinka SPLA soldiers broke out in Juba on December, igniting the South Sudanese Civil War. A rebellion rapidly spread around the country, with defected troops loyal to Machar and the SSLA taking over Bentiu, Malakal and Bor.
Immediately after the initial mutiny in Juba, Nuer soldiers, overpowered and on the run, made off toward Terekeka, north of Juba, leaving no Nuer soldiers left in the city. SPLM Dinka troops, led by Lieutenant General Marial Chanuong, were assisted by guides in house to house searches for Nuers in Nuer areas of the Juba. In the Gudele neighborhood, about 200–400 Nuer men were rounded up in to a room in a police station and were shot at through the windows over two days if the soldiers noticed signs of life. There were about 12 survivors. An African Union report cited Nuers being tortured, such as being forced to eat human flesh and blood and to jump into fires. Official death toll has not been released as Human Rights Watch has noted the South Sudan government troops had blocked access and were heavily guarding Gudele and other affected, now abandoned suburbs of Juba. The Guardian report also reported that 21 Nuer youths as well as three women were killed in two other incidents while Human Rights Watch cites eyewitness accounts of truck loads of bodies carried to undisclosed site on 18 December 2013. Government officials have not announced a list of the dead or the location of the bodies and have denied knowledge of any killings. Much of the killings were carried out by Mathiang Anyoor. Similar door to door searches of members of the Nuer ethnicity have been reported in the government held capital city of the Upper Nile State, Malakal.
Estimates for the death toll range as high as 15,000 to 20,000.
Bentiu massacre (2014)
During the South Sudanese Civil War, forces identified by the UN as SPLM-IO massacred about 200 mostly non-Nuer civilians in April 2014.
Mapel massacre (2014)
On 25 April 2014, ethnic tensions between Nuer trainees of the SPLA and Dinka civilians escalated in Mapel, at the time part of Western Bahr el Ghazal, resulting in altercations and murders. In response, Dinka soldiers of the SPLA's 5th Division, led by Bak Akoon Bak, massacred their Nuer comrades at the local training center, killing between 40 and 200 Nuer. The surviving Nuer soldiers fled into the bush, with some joining local SPLM-IO rebels or starting to escape northward. Joined by hundreds of other Nuer deserters from Wau and later Northern Bahr el Ghazal, the Nuer deserters marched all the way to Sudan to escape ethnic prosecution and loyalist SPLA forces.