During the second Sudanese civil war (1983–2005), a military elite emerged in Northern Bahr el Ghazal that used the dislocations of the conflict to control flows of labour and goods. Displacement and recruitment became means of exercising coercive force over the population (Craze, 2018). The Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA)—under the command of Malong, with the current SSPDF chief of defence forces, Santino Deng Wol, as his deputy from 1994—instrumentalized gelweng cattleguards as auxiliary forces and built a war-time administration in the east of the state (Boswell, 2019). Meanwhile, murahaleen militias, recruited from Baggara cattleguards in Kordofan and Darfur, fought a counter-insurgency for Khartoum, razing fields, poisoning water wells, and directly creating the conditions that led to a famine in Bahr el Ghazal from 1986 to 1988 (Keen, 2008).
Malong’s influence has diminished. The current power brokers in Northern Bahr el Ghazal instead stem from the very forces that inflicted such horrific. damage on the state in the 1980s and 1990s. Abdel Bagi, one of Kiir’s five vice-presidents, is the son of a powerful chief, Abdel Bagi Ayii Akol, who spent much of his life in South Darfur, recruiting militias backed by the Sudanese government during the. second civil war (RVI, 2020a). Ayii Akol established connections with Misseriya and Rizeigat pastoralist groups in Kordofan and with Sudanese security elites in Khartoum, which enabled him to build a. trading empire on the borders of southern Sudan.[1] The wealth of Northern Bahr el Ghazal’s elite families can be traced to this period, and stems directly from the immiseration of the population (Kindersley and Majok, 2019).
Following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, Malong—who would serve as the governor of Northern Bahr el Ghazal from 2008 to 2014—quickly became the most powerful figure in the state, assisted by an oil-soaked expansion of the security sector payroll (Craze, 2020). Many of the people displaced by the famines and conflicts of the 1980s–90s returned to a transformed Northern Bahr el Ghazal, increasingly dependent on markets and money (Thomas, 2020). Such precarity forced youthful populations into labour migration, or conscription by the security services (Kindersley and Majok, 2020). In response to border disputes with Sudan in the 14-Mile Area (2010–12) and Hejlij (2012), Malong—alongside Deng Wol, now the head of SPLA Division 3—recruited the Mathiang Anyoor, a mono-ethnic Dinka militia.[2] As the South Sudanese political compact fell apart in December 2013, the Mathiang Anyoor functioned as shock troops for Kiir’s regime under the control of the new SPLA chief of staff—Malong.
Malong’s ascendency in South Sudan was undermined by Kiir’s fear that he would launch a coup. By 2017, Malong had been removed. He went into exile in Nairobi and began his own rebel group—the SSUF/A. Kiir subsequently co-opted Malong’s lieutenants and marginalized his allies. His successful dismissal of Malong was enabled by a regional rapprochement that saw the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) ally itself with its erstwhile enemies in Khartoum.
This realignment is exemplified by the imbroglio around the selection of South Sudan’s fifth vice-president. After the signing of the R-ARCSS in 2018, five vice-presidents were to be selected by their respective parties, but the South Sudan Opposition Alliance (SSOA) failed to agree on a candidate. Kiir, together with Abdel Fattah al-Burhan—then the chairperson of Sudan’s Transitional Military Council and leader of the Sudan Armed Forces—interceded and chose Abdel Bagi, the secretary-general of the South Sudan Patriotic Movement/Army (SSPM/A), which was a continuation of the militia formed by the Abdel Bagi family during the second civil war. Abdel Bagi’s elevation to vice-president strengthened ties between Juba and Khartoum.
Abdel Bagi, though a member of the SSOA, played a key role in the appointment of Tong Akeen as the SPLM governor of Northern Bahr el Ghazal (RVI, 2020b). Tong Akeen had worked as an intelligence officer for the National Congress Party (NCP) of Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir during the second civil war and, like Abdel Bagi, had strong ties to the Sudanese security establishment. Despite these similarities, the two men are not particularly close. Abdel Bagi selected Tong Akeen because he was a relatively weak candidate with little popular support, who the vice-president felt could be easily controlled. As elsewhere in South Sudan, the formal architecture of the R-ARCSS has promoted the appointments of putatively weak gubernatorial candidates that the Juba-based elite believes it can easily dominate (Craze and Markó, 2022).
From 2020 to 2023, Kiir endeavoured to keep Abdel Bagi close as a means of maintaining control of the borderlands. With the outbreak of the current Sudanese civil war in April 2023, Abdel Bagi’s importance lessened and Tong Akeen began to assert his independence. In the run-up to South Sudan’s elections scheduled for December 2024, Tong Akeen has been conducting rallies, detaining opposition politicians, and securing his position against a possible challenge from Abdel Bagi.[3]
[1] This Situation Update will refer to ‘South Sudan’ as the nation-state created on 9 July 2011, following the secession of southern Sudan from Sudan, and to ‘southern Sudan’ as the area roughly proximate to the nation-state of South Sudan prior to its declaration of independence.
[2] For details on these border disputes, see Small Arms Survey (2012; 2014).
[3] Interviews with informants in Northern Bahr el Ghazal state, January–May 2024.
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