This is the script for my video posted on June 29, 2026. Watch it on TikTok.
South Sudan became an independent state in 2011, and since then it has experienced a violent civil war, persistent ethnic violence, and rampant human rights abuses that you might have heard about. But you probably haven’t heard about the fact that South Sudan is collapsing. The 2018 power-sharing agreement between the government and the opposition is falling apart, putting the country on the brink of relapsing into widespread conflict. But why?
The South Sudanese civil war was mostly triggered by a political power struggle between President Salva Kiir and the Vice President he dismissed, Riek Machar, but this had an inherent ethnic aspect to it. The country’s largest ethnic groups are the Dinka and the Nuer, and these groups have been fighting each other for decades over pastures and cattle raids, because both groups are heavily reliant on livestock. Of course, it’s worth being precise here that ethnic strife is not the main factor, but rather something politicians have weaponized. President Kiir is a Dinka while Vice President Machar is a Nuer, so when Machar was removed from office, fighting broke out among the presidential guard. Kiir accused Machar of plotting a coup, and the rest is history. About 400000 people died, many in ethnically motivated mass atrocities, and over 4m people were displaced. In 2018, Kiir and Machar agreed to a peace deal and to the formation of a unity government.
About 90% of South Sudan’s state budget comes from oil production. The war had halted most of South Sudan’s oil production because infrastructure around the country was badly damaged, and though it resumed in 2019, South Sudan is landlocked, meaning that it relied almost completely on two oil pipelines running north into neighboring Sudan and ultimately to a marine export terminal on the Red Sea coast. In 2023, a civil war kicked off in Sudan between the military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, and in February 2024 the main pipeline ruptured in territory contested by the RSF, creating a solid asphalt plug in the line because pumping stations couldn’t get the fuel needed to keep it heated. This caused South Sudanese oil revenues to tank, and it set the stage for what South Sudan is experiencing now.
In March 2025, a Nuer community militia called the White Army overran a South Sudanese army garrison in Upper Nile state to defend their local communities against what they perceived as a predatory state and rival militias. Between 250 and 400 soldiers were killed, including crew members on a UN helicopter who came under fire attempting to evacuate wounded soldiers, and the result of all this was that President Kiir ordered the detention of Vice President Machar’s top allies and placed Machar himself on house arrest, eventually indicting him on charges of treason and murder related to the White Army uprising, even though White Army fighters themselves said that Machar didn’t command them. With Machar detained and his party declaring the unity government and peace agreement void, the power-sharing architecture is now broken.
As of 2026, South Sudan faces extreme currency depreciation and an explosion of government credit. The economy is struggling without consistent oil revenues, and the government has not been paying its soldiers and security forces as a result. South Sudan’s total oil-backed debt runs around 2.2b USD, or over half of the country’s GDP, and though the government has largely not paid since 2018, it has sought billions of dollars in new oil-backed loans, with some oil reportedly pre-sold years into the future on the promise that oil exports can get back up and running.
Meanwhile, South Sudan was founded fundamentally as a kleptocracy. Since its founding, it has had a heavily militarized and corrupt system of government sustained only by distributing oil revenue through patronage networks, leaving almost nothing for public services, development, or the building of actual institutions. This system no longer works without oil money, and the factors at play make full-scale war increasingly likely, all while the country already faces extreme food insecurity, some of the world’s largest outbreaks of cholera, deadly floods and droughts, and a collapse in humanitarian funding thanks to the US’s dismantling of USAID and its Food for Peace program.
The geopolitical dynamics surrounding this whole thing are quite complex. Sudan obviously would need to fix the pipelines running through its territory for South Sudan’s oil revenues to return, and fortunately they have some incentive to do this because they need the oil transit fees just as much as South Sudan needs the transit itself. In 2013, Sudan gave limited support to Machar, but it’s trying to stay neutral this time even as the rival RSF smuggles gold and weapons via South Sudanese territory.
Uganda intervened in South Sudan during the civil war, supporting Kiir against Machar’s forces then and again from 2025 onward, in large part because the two countries share a 435km border and Uganda is afraid of refugees and instability spilling over into northern Uganda. Yoweri Museveni, Uganda’s dictator, also has a personal interest in Kiir’s survival, to the point that he’s willing to violate the UN’s arms embargo to provide support.
China is the dominant oil investor in South Sudan, holding huge stakes in Dar Petroleum, the country’s largest producer. They’re the country’s primary oil buyer, and Kiir has gone to Chinese financiers for a lot of the loans he’s requested. All of this is why China is a major contributor to the UN Mission in South Sudan, because they are simultaneously an investor, creditor, customer, and security guarantor and they have a vested interest in South Sudan’s stability.
There are many other factors at play, but suffice it to say that South Sudan faces one of the most difficult periods of its modern history. Like so many conflicts, its people will unfortunately experience the brunt of the impact, and if a new civil war kicks off, we should expect to see horrifying things come out of it, just like we did last time.
Keep reading
- Why isn’t modern Egypt powerful like Ancient Egypt was?
- Why has the DRC experienced Africa’s deadliest conflicts?
- How does South Africa’s history feed into its geopolitical dynamics?
I’m writing a book called Groundwork about the buried history beneath geopolitics. Join the waitlist to hear when it has a publisher, a cover, and a release date.