Uganda Deploys Troops in Tense South Sudan

March 13, 2025

(3 Minutes Read)

The deployment of Ugandan troops to South Sudan underscores rising tensions in the oil-producing country that has been plagued by political instability and violence since it gained independence from Sudan in 2011.

Uganda has deployed an unknown number of troops to South Sudan in a bid to protect the fragile government of President Salva Kiir as a tense rivalry with his deputy threatens a return to civil war in the East African nation.

Ugandan special forces have been deployed to Juba, the South Sudanese capital, to support the government of South Sudan” against a possible rebel advance on the city, said Maj. Gen. Felix Kulayigye, a spokesperson for the Ugandan military.

In deploying Ugandan soldiers to Juba, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni moved as a guarantor of the peace process that keeps Kiir and Machar together in a delicate government of national unity.

Kiir and Museveni are allies, and Museveni has in the past intervened in the South Sudan conflict to keep Kiir in power. The deployment of Ugandan troops to South Sudan underscores rising tensions in the oil-producing country that has been plagued by political instability and violence since it gained independence from Sudan in 2011.

The U.S. recently ordered nonemergency government personnel to leave Juba. The U.N. is warning of “an alarming regression that could erase years of hard-won progress” in South Sudan.

The latest tensions stem from fighting in the country’s north between government troops and a rebel militia, known as the White Army, that’s widely believed to be allied with Machar.