Governor accuses Machar of stoking ethnic tension despite reform claims  

JUBA — The governor of South Sudan’s Jonglei State, Riak Gai Kok, has accused First Vice President Riek Machar of presenting himself as a reformist in the capital while fueling ethnic divisions in rural areas, alleging the opposition leader is reviving grievances that have driven the country’s most violent conflicts.

Gai, an ethnic Nuer from Greater Akobo, made the accusations on Wednesday while addressing residents in Poktap, the administrative capital of Duk County. He stated that Machar employs sharply divergent political narratives depending on his audience.

“When he is in Juba, he claims [his war] is not between the Nuer and the Dinka. He says it is [a war] for reforms,” Gai said. “But when he is in Greater Lou-Nuer he says, ‘there is a problem between the Dinka and the Nuer.’”

Gai said the ethnic fault lines created during Machar’s split from the liberation movement in 1991 had never been fully resolved and resurfaced during the civil war that erupted in December 2013.

“The [ethnic] strife Riek Machar created in 1991 was still strong,” the governor said, adding that Machar “divided South Sudan into Dinka and Nuer.”

Poktap lies approximately 40 km (25 miles) southwest of Pajut, a strategic town north of Bor which Machar’s main armed opposition Sudan People’s Liberation Army in Opposition (SPLA-IO) captured two days after the governor’s visit.

During his visit, Gai held talks with Makuach Tut, a prominent Nuer spiritual leader who wielded significant influence over the “White Army” youth militia during the 2013–2018 conflict.

Makuach has since defected to President Salva Kiir’s side, a shift Gai cited as evidence that parts of the region were attempting to move beyond past divisions.

Challenging widely held historical accounts of the 1991 violence, Gai questioned the role of the Dinka Bor community during the conflict. He argued that people in Bor had fled before the fighting reached the town and that the brunt of the resistance was borne by communities elsewhere.

“The whole problem was here,” he said, referring to Duk County. “If you ask someone in Bor, no single person was killed because as you were fighting here, the Bor people already fled.”

In framing the events this way, Gai credited the Hol and Nyarweng Dinka of Duk with confronting advancing Nuer fighters, while contrasting this with the evacuation of Bor. Historical records and rights groups have documented mass killings of civilians during the 1991 attack on Bor.

That violence followed a split within the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), when Machar and his allies formed the Nasir faction.

Fighters aligned with the faction, including the White Army—a militia composed largely of Lou and Gawaar Nuer youth—attacked Bor in an event that remains a major source of grievance in South Sudan’s history.

Machar has consistently denied ordering the attack, stating the fighters acted independently of his command. Although he issued a public apology to the Dinka Bor community in 2011, his political opponents – including Kiir – argue that ethnic mobilization continues to underpin his support base.

Gai pointed to current cooperation between local communities as evidence that ethnic hostility was not inevitable. He noted that Nyarweng Dinka residents in Poktap were currently sheltering Nuer civilians who had fled hunger and insecurity in neighboring Uror County.

“If they consider the Dinka as their enemy, they would not have come here,” Gai said. “Now you have received them. No U.N. is giving them food now. It is Nyarweng [Dinka] that is giving them food.”