South Sudan's Game of Veeps
Is the U.S. a Player?
This newsletter was co-authored with my terrific research assistant Aidan Ryan.
There is a vice-presidential angle to South Sudan accepting eight U.S. deportees this spring and offering to take more—and it isn’t about J.D. Vance.1
When nations agree to accept U.S. deportees, they are both under pressure from Washington and seeking U.S. favor. South Sudan is asking for expected things: investments in South Sudan’s mineral wealth, continuation of humanitarian aid, and removal of U.S. visa restrictions on South Sudanese citizens.
South Sudan also wants Magnitsky Act sanctions on their second Vice President Benjamin Bol Mel removed and American help prosecuting their first Vice President Riek Machar, who has been under house arrest since March 2025.
How did the fates of their vice presidents become so important to South Sudan? And why does the world’s newest recognized nation-state have so many Veeps?
A core intuition of this project, of Veepology, is that the vice presidency is a unique way to understand a nation’s politics and history. There are institutionalist questions, such as how the vice president is selected and what are their formal powers and informal roles. There are historical and social questions, such as who becomes vice president and why?
South Sudan is a fascinating case study.
South Sudan: Born of Tragedy
Sudan is a vast region in north-eastern Africa, more than 3.5 times the size of Texas. In a recent article in the Atlantic Monthly, Anne Applebaum writes:
To understand Sudan, as the British Sudanese writer Jamal Mahjoub once wrote, you need a kind of atlas, one containing transparent cellophane maps that can be placed on top of one another, like the diagrams once used in encyclopedias to show the systems inside the human body. One layer might show languages; the next, ethnic groups; the third, ancient kingdoms and cities: Kush, Napata, Meroe, Funj. When the maps are viewed simultaneously, “it becomes clear,” Mahjoub explained, that “the country is not really a country at all, but many.” Deborah Scroggins, a foreign correspondent who once covered Africa for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution—a job that’s hard now to imagine ever existed—wrote in 2002 that a version of Mahjoub’s cellophane atlas could also help explain how Sudan’s wars and rebellions are provoked not just by ethnic and tribal divisions but by economic, colonial, and racial divisions, each one layered onto the next so as to create a “violent ecosystem capable of generating endless new things to fight about without ever shedding any of the old ones.”
South Sudan’s secession reduced one vector of conflict, between the overwhelmingly Muslim north and the predominantly Christian south. American Christian groups had worked in South Sudan and advocated on its behalf. The remaining state of Sudan, as Applebaum describes, is home to the incomprehensible tragedy of Darfur.
South Sudan, however, has not been spared civil war and tragedy since its 2011 independence from Sudan. The roles and actions of the South Sudan’s vice presidents have reflected this tragedy.
The Original President and VP
South Sudan has a framework constitution that was created in 2011 and then further revised in 2013. The document lays out the role of the president and vice president. The president is responsible for appointing a vice president, which is not exactly what happened in 2011. The many peace agreements concluded with the compromise that both extreme rebel leaders would hold office. The functions of the vice president include taking the place of the president (death, illness, vacancy), sitting on the council of ministers/security council, and taking on tasks as directed by the president. Vice President Machar appears to have spent the majority of his time attending peace meetings and speaking to the general assembly of South Sudan.
Foreign Policy published this excellent description of the current state of play in South Sudan and here’s another from the International Crisis Group. The long and the short is that Salva Kiir Mayardit (generally known as Salva Kiir), South Sudan’s first, and only, president is ailing and consolidating power. He leads the Dinka tribe, the most numerous in South Sudan, and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM). Kiir, a Sudanese army officer, left the army and joined the SPLM and its armed wing the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), in 1983. It was ostensibly Communist and then Socialist, but was in practice the political-military force of the people of southern Sudan. In July 2005 south Sudan gained autonomy and the SPLM/SPLA leader John Garang died in a helicopter crash. Kiir had risen to head of the SPLA and took on Garang’s roles as SPLA leader, president of the Southern Autonomous region of Sudan, and Executive Vice President of Sudan. When South Sudan voted for independence, Kiir became president.
Riek Machar is from the Nuer tribe, the second most powerful tribe in South Sudan. He had also been a member of the SPLM but openly split with Garang in 1991. There was bloody fighting between the factions, but ultimately Machar rejoined the dominant SPLM. Machar became the first vice president of the Southern Autonomous region and then, when South Sudan obtained independence, Machar became its first vice president. Conflict between the two factions resulted in constant war. Machar and Kiir don’t trust each other, often accusing one another of plotting against the other one. The multiple wars between 2011 and 2018 left approximately 400,000 civilians dead.
In 2017, the UN declared the country to be in an extreme and dire famine, which affected around 40% of the country. President Kiir and Vice President Machar signed a peace agreement in 2015, which allowed for the re-election of Machar as the official vice president. Due to political opposition, Machar was forced to step down as VP during the UN intervention. Fighting continued, and a final peace treaty was signed by all parties in 2018.
Musical Veeps
The 2018 peace treaty allowed South Sudan to appoint five vice presidents to represent different tribes and factions. Machar was reappointed as first vice president.
In February 2025, Kiir fired two of the five vice presidents (James Wani Igga and Hussein Abdelbagi Ako). Both of these vice presidents were representatives of different government parties and had been a part of the cabinet since 2018. James Wani Igga is a senior member of the SPLM. On February 12th, Dr. Benjamin Bol Mel and Josephine Joseph Lagu were sworn in as replacement vice presidents. The urgency with which President Kiir moved came as a shock South Sudan’s capital of Juba.
Bol Mel, another member of the Dinka tribe, is a prominent businessman and has been Kiir’s personal secretary and financial advisor. Before his elevation to the vice presidency, Bol Mel was appointed Deputy Secretary-General of the SPLM. Since December 2017, Bol Mel has also been under Magnitsky Act sanctions which target individuals linked to human rights abuse and corruption. Bol Mel’s company, ABMC received tens of millions of dollars in South Sudanese government contracts through an uncompetitive process to conduct maintenance on roads. South Sudan’s Constitution prohibits government officials engaging in business or earning outside income.
On March 27, 2025, Vice President Riek Machar was arrested in the middle of the night. The arrest had to do with conspiracy in connection with a rebel group planting bombs around the country. Machar remains under house arrest with his wife. The arrest comes with no comment from the government as to the official charges.
Kiir is setting up Bel Mol as his successor. He has arrested his obvious successor, the first vice president. Kiir also removed VP James Wani Igga, a senior SPLM official who might also have been a successor.
Machar continuing to be a viable figure and Bel Mol tainted by U.S. sanctions complicates this scheme. Hence South Sudan’s willingness to accept U.S. deportees. It gives Kiir something to offer in exchange for switching sanctions from Bel Mol to Machar. It’s a clever gambit. Will it work? Possibly? Will it be any good for South Sudan? Unlikely.
Geo-Veepology
The vice presidential drama in Juba is just the surface level of South Sudan’s turmoil. With Machar’s arrest, Nuer militia and the South Sudanese military have resumed fighting. There is some popular sentiment throughout the country that the Dinka tribe has held power long enough. The country’s main export is oil (South Sudan is potentially very wealthy), but the oil flows through a pipeline in war-torn Sudan and is subject to theft by the militias there.
Outside players are becoming involved in South Sudan’s turmoil. President Kiir has relied on Ugandan troops to maintain power. But the ability of Uganda to sustain this level of military deployment is in doubt. Kiir has also built a relationship with the United Arab Emirates, which has involved itself in east African conflicts.2 Kiir may have received medical treatment on his frequent trips to the UAE, and Bel Mol’s first major trip as VP was to Doha.
Other neighbors may get involved if South Sudan slides back into civil war including Ethiopia and Kenya. Tribal affiliations straddle borders between South Sudan and its neighbors. Sudan’s civil war could also spill back into South Sudan and bring a whole array of unsavory players both within the region and beyond into the fray.
The Trump administration does not appear very interested in African affairs, but American evangelicals, who helped establish South Sudan, may be and may press for administration action. The most likely interventions are diplomacy to bring representatives of the different tribes together and attempt to update and reinstate the 2018 agreement. This would probably include releasing Machar and creating a sort of succession plan that the various parties could—maybe—accept.
A critical part of this plan will probably include the appointments and roles of the vice presidents. One can only hope it works. It is probably not a great sign for any nation that the vice presidency is so critical to its survival.3
South Sudan recently repatriated one of the detainees to Mexico and is working to repatriate the others. They have also held discussions with Israel about accepting Palestinians who leave Gaza. Not much has come of these talks, but even the willingness to discuss this abominable plan speaks to the South Sudanese government’s desperation for outside support.
The vice president of the UAE is playing a complex role as liaison to UAE-supported militias in East Africa.
I am no expert on the politics or South Sudan or the geo-politics of East Africa. The excellent analysis from the International Crisis Group cited above has been a leading source for me.