South Sudan’s deposed vice president, now the leader of a rebel group fighting the government, has fled the East African nation, throwing the viability of the fledgling country further into doubt just a few years after it was touted as one of the Obama administration’s top foreign policy triumphs.
Former Vice President Riek Machar — in hiding since early July when forces supporting him engaged in fierce clashes with government troops — was in a safe location in neighboring Congo on Thursday, according to a statement by the United Nations.
But the security situation in South Sudan continued to teeter on a knife edge after a round of violence last month resulted in hundreds of civilian casualties in the capital of Juba.
The U.N. Security Council this week voted to send 4,000 regional peacekeepers into Juba, but the government of President Salva Kiir — Mr. Machar’s rival — has refused to accept the force on grounds that it would violate the nation’s sovereignty.
The developments mark a twist in what has for years been a heated rivalry between Mr. Kiir and Mr. Machar, the most prominent players in South Sudan, which achieved independence with U.S. backing from Sudan in 2011 but has been gripped by civil war for the past three years.
While Washington initially put its full weight behind the Kiir government, the relationship began to sour when the South Sudanese president sacked his entire Cabinet, including Mr. Machar, in 2013.
After civil war broke out, the White House scrambled to play peacemaker, pushing for the two sides to reconcile lest the world’s youngest independent nation fall into chaos.
The conflict has left nearly 3 million people homeless and forced 1 million Sudanese to flee to neighboring countries. The Wall Street Journal noted Thursday that oil production has dropped by half in South Sudan to 120,000 barrels a day, leaving the oil-export-dependent nation struggling for revenue to pay troops and finance basic imports, including food.
Under pressure from Washington and the United Nations, Mr. Kiir and Mr. Machar in 2015 signed a power-sharing accord that would allow Mr. Machar to return to Juba and resume his role as vice president with the Kiir government. The catch is that the rebel leader brought with him some 1,000 armed followers, and clashes soon ensued between those forces and government troops loyal to the president.
After July’s violence in Juba, Mr. Machar went into hiding and his forces withdrew from South Sudan’s capital. His whereabouts was unknown until Thursday, when reports emerged that he was in Congo.
The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo became aware of Mr. Machar’s presence in the country on Wednesday and contacted the Congolese government, which then asked the mission to extract Mr. Machar from his location, U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters in New York.
“Riek Machar has been handed over to the authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We’re not in a position to confirm his location,” Mr. Haq said.
A Machar spokesman said the rebel leader was airlifted to the capital of Kinshasa and planned to travel on to Ethiopia. In a Facebook post, the spokesman said Mr. Machar left South Sudan after a “botched attempt to assassinate” him, according to The Associated Press.
A South Sudanese presidential spokesman, Ateny Wek Ateny, told the AP that Mr. Kiir had no reaction to U.N. help for Mr. Machar.
Although speculation has surged, Obama administration officials have called on the Kiir government to accept the U.N. peacekeepers in the hope that their presence might restore security and open the way for a renewal of peace talks.
“We want to see that U.N. Security Council resolution adhered to,” Deputy State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Wednesday. “Such a force, we believe, needs to be able to ensure free and safe movement in Juba, as well as the protection of vital infrastructure.”
Mr. Toner made the comments roughly a year after a top representative of the Kiir government told The Washington Times that the U.S. should have done more to support the democracy it helped create in South Sudan and asserted that the Obama administration and the international community unfairly blamed the leadership in Juba for delaying a peace deal with Mr. Machar.
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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