
Riek Machar was sacked from his post as South Sudan's vice-president in July. Photograph: Philip Dhil/EPA
Riek Machar, the politician accused of trying to seize power in South Sudan[1], has denied plotting a coup and said he was forced to flee for his life from the capital, Juba.
Machar, the former vice-president dubbed the "prophet of doom" this week by South Sudan's president, Salva Kiir, told the Guardian he was being made a "scapegoat" for the wave of violence that has swept the country.
Two days of street battles between rival factions in South Sudan's army have left parts of Juba in ruins and left at least 500 people dead.
The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, warned on Wednesday of the danger of the violence spreading as the US and UK withdrew non-essential embassy staff.
"This is a political crisis and urgently needs to be dealt with through political dialogue," Ban told reporters. "There is a risk of this violence spreading to other states [in South Sudan] as we have already seen some signs of this."
In his first interview since going into hiding, Machar said a rebellion against his ex-boss had begun in the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Army (SPLA), and was spreading across the new nation.
"There is a rebellion against Salva Kiir in the SPLA," he said. "The SPLA are fed up with Salva Kiir and want him out."
He denied trying to seize power illegally and said he and his supporters remained loyal to the ruling party and were now the real leaders of the country: "We are democrats, we cannot fight against the state we created, the state we liberated."
Machar refused to say whether he was leading the rebels but did say they "were acting in the right direction". He also warned that the violence was "turning tribal and they are killing people in Juba".
Machar's claims came as Brussels-based monitor the International Crisis Group confirmed clashes in half of South Sudan's 10 provinces. The death toll was expected to rise sharply and 20,000 civilians were sheltering in two UN bases in Juba.
"Ethnically targeted violence is ongoing in Juba, with reports of killings and arbitrary detentions of Nuer civilians," said the ICG's South Sudan analyst Casie Copeland. "Civilians sheltering with the UN mission in Juba do not feel secure enough to leave and state that they are targets for violence due to their ethnicity."
South Sudan's church leaders warned that the factional fighting had taken on a dangerously ethnic dimension in some places and appealed for calm.
Machar said he had fled from his residence in the capital in the early hours of Monday morning after it came under attack from forces loyal to the president.
"My life was in danger, my colleagues were being arrested for no reason. They are not plotters, it was not a coup. Nobody wants that."
Since his departure he claims that his bodyguards have been "summarily executed" and his house flattened by tanks.
"They attacked it with tank shells and then burned it," he said by telephone from an undisclosed location inside South Sudan. "It is rubble now."
Machar first came to prominence during Sudan's long civil war which eventually split Africa[2] largest country along a north-south divide. He switched sides during the conflict against the Arab-led government in Khartoum before rejoining the SPLA in 2002. His dalliance during the 1990s with Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir has left a lasting enmity with many leaders in the Dinka community, South Sudan's largest tribe, from which Kiir hails.
The pair have been locked in a power struggle while serving in the same government and were not on speaking terms prior to Machar being sacked as vice-president in July. Machar said the violence was really a crackdown against reformists to "cover for his [Kiir's] inefficiency in running the government and the army".
"The grassroots have lost confidence in Salva Kiir over the last six months," said Machar. "He is no longer the legitimate leader."
Machar, a burly guerrilla leader turned politician, was born in what is now the oil-rich Unity State and comes from the Nuer, the country's second biggest ethnic group. After studying engineering in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, he undertook a PhD at Bradford University and later married Emma McCune, a British aid worker whom he met during the civil war. She died two years later in a car crash in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, while pregnant with his child.
The end of the civil war in 2005 and the secession of South Sudan in 2011 ended a cycle of war with the north but it has not ended divisions among the communities of the south. Since independence the government in Juba has broadly reflected the balance of power between different ethnic groups, but the president has in the past six months removed many important tribal leaders in what appears to be his determination to hold on to power.
Machar accused his rival of "dictatorial tendencies" and said that members of his Nuer community were being targeted.
"Salva Kiir is actually inciting ethnic killings and tribal divisions," he claimed. "That's why the two UN bases are full of women and children."
"I call on South Sudanese not to support him."
References
- ^ More from the Guardian on South Sudan (www.theguardian.com)
- ^ More from the Guardian on Africa (www.theguardian.com)
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