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JUBA, South Sudan — After more than a year in exile, five former political detainees arrived in South Sudan’s capital city of Juba this week for several days of talks with President Salva Kiir. Their return offered a rare moment of hope in the country’s long-faltering peace process.
The new nation erupted in conflict in December 2013 after Kiir accused a group of government officials he had sacked earlier that year of trying to stage a coup. One of them was former Vice President Riek Machar, who fled the capital and has been leading forces fighting the government ever since. Another 11 senior officials were thrown in jail for treason and exiled to Kenya in early 2014 — including the five former officials who returned for the first time on Monday.
Their visit to South Sudan is a rare tangible development in eighteen months of fruitless peace talks. There was cautious hope in the capital that the former detainees’ short visit would be able to help negotiate a permanent return for them and the rest of the exiles, and to form a new government that can end the war.
The former officials stepped off the plane on Monday into the embrace of waiting friends lined up outside Juba airport.
