Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon

In a country beset by misinformation and disinformation the anniversary was further overshadowed by (inaccurate) rumours that the SPLA had been officially renamed the South Sudan Liberation Army the very name used by rebel-in-chief and ex-Vice-President Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon for his Sudan-allied militia during the liberation war...

BTP also advised and lobbied on behalf of South Sudanese President Salva Kiir Mayardit against his opponent Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon in 2016...

Around 100 000 people are on the verge of starvation (significantly most in Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon's home area of Leer near the currently non-operational Unity State oilfields) one million children are suffering acute malnutrition half the population need food aid before the harvest and over three million have been displaced by fighting half of them abroad...

Africa Confidential now understands that Schulman and Amalo have also been involved in attempts to sell aircraft to South Sudan's former Vice-President Riek Machar now exiled in South Africa...

The existing strategy is to isolate exiled Sudan People's Liberation Movement-in-Opposition leader Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon who is marooned in South Africa after Congo-Kinshasa Sudan and Ethiopia all refused to let him return to cause trouble along the borders and we hear after US pressure...

Raising further concern was a statement in early December by a South Sudanese rebel group claiming affiliation to the Sudan People's Liberation Army-in-Opposition led by Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon that it had captured two ex-M23 fighters in a raid on an SPLA-IO convoy near the Congolese border in Ituri Province...

Meanwhile showing the link between corruption and conflict the Sentry project released on 12 September is a no-holds-barred forensic audit of some of the assets of General Salva former Vice-President Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon and a general from each of their factions of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A)...

After disappearing for nearly five weeks First Vice-President Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon resurfaced last week with UN peacekeepers in Congo-Kinshasa then re-emerged in Khartoum in intensive care...

The replacement of First Vice-President (FVP) Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon by his former chief negotiator with the government Taban Deng Gai on 23 July has thrown regional and international mediators into disarray: they fear it could finally scupper August's internationally brokered peace agreement...

'The government is trying to eliminate Riek Machar but he is being protected by his forces...

The Taban takeover Will Taban Deng Gai's takeover of Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon's job as First Vice-President (FVP) on 23 July usher in a new peace or just create another armed faction...

Yet the AU is meant to head the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission chaired by the Botswana ex-President Festus Mogae which has presided over the failure of last August's peace deal between President Salva and Vice-President Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon...

However the powerful security services may have scored an own goal by arresting the godfather of local journalism former BBC Sudan correspondent Alfred Taban Logune for calling on both key protagonists President Salva Kiir Mayardit and Vice-President Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon to stand down for the sake of the nation...