JUBA: The government of South Sudan said on Friday that First Vice President Riek Machar was “under house arrest”, two days after he was detained, as a former Kenyan premier arrived in Juba to mediate the crisis threatening to end the fragile peace deal between rival factions.

Machar’s arrest by forces loyal to President Salva Kiir prompted UN chief Antonio Guterres to call on warring parties to “put down the weapons” and “put all the people of South Sudan first”, as the conflict risks plunging the world’s youngest nation back into civil war.

Kiir “directed the placement of Dr Riek Machar under house arrest”, information minister and government spokesman Michael Makuei Lueth said in a statement, in the first official comments since Machar’s detention.

Despite the arrest, Juba appeared calm on Friday, with shops open and people on the streets.

Makuei blamed Machar for clashes in recent weeks in Nasir county, accusing him of “agitating” his forces “to rebel against the government with the aim of disrupting peace so that elections are not held and South Sudan goes back to war”.

He called on the public “to be calm and maintain peace,” adding that Machar and his allies “will be investigated and brought to book”.

The unravelling power-sharing deal between Kiir and Machar risks a return of the civil war that killed around 400,000 people in five years.

The deputy chair of Machar’s party said his arrest “abrogated” the agreement.

“The prospect for peace and stability in South Sudan has now been put into serious jeopardy,” Oyet Nathaniel Pierino said in a statement on Thursday.

But Makuei insisted the peace agreement still stood. A convoy of 20 heavily armed vehicles entered Machar’s residence in the capital Juba late on Wednesday and arrested him, according to a statement issued by a member of his party.

On Friday, Machar’s party, condemned his “unlawful house arrest,” calling it a government tactic to “derail the peace process and consolidate power through unconstitutional means”.

The party’s foreign relations committee chairman, Reath Muoch Tang, said Kiir’s party was planning to dissolve the government “under the pretext of a state of emergency”.

Published in Dawn, March 29th, 2025