Qualla: 2025 Nasir clashes

2025 Nasir clashes: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The town of Nasir sits on the Sobat River in Upper Nile State, 26 kilometres from the Ethiopian border. It is a Nuer town - homes, markets, grazing land, a small airstrip - and it has been a place of repeated violence for more than a decade. On 3 March 2025, around four in the afternoon, a Nuer White Army member was killed by soldiers of the South Sudan People's Defence Forces. Within days, the army garrison had fallen, a United Nations helicopter had been fired on, and the 2018 peace agreement that had ended the country's civil war was being described, across every news wire, as near collapse.

Read more: 2025 Nasir clashes on Qualla

2025 Nasir clashes: Why Nasir

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The R-ARCSS peace agreement had been signed in 2018. By 2024, cracks were showing. Clashes in February of that year between White Army members and SSPDF soldiers over a dispute about fishing nets left several dead. A year later in February 2025, four SSPDF soldiers were killed in...

Read more: 2025 Nasir clashes on Qualla

2025 Nasir clashes: The Barracks Fall

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The fighting on 3 and 4 March unfolded in stages. White Army fighters first secured parts of Nasir and briefly occupied the Wec Yar Adiu barracks three kilometres west of town before pulling back for ammunition. They returned on 4 March and took the barracks for good. On 7 March,...

Read more: 2025 Nasir clashes on Qualla

2025 Nasir clashes: Airstrikes and Civilians

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Uganda deployed special forces to Juba on 9 March. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, Uganda's Chief of Defence Forces, posted on X that his country recognised only one President of South Sudan, Salva Kiir, and that any move against Kiir would be a declaration of war against Uganda. Then the a...

Read more: 2025 Nasir clashes on Qualla

2025 Nasir clashes: A Vice President on Trial

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

SSPDF soldiers surrounded the Juba home of First Vice President Riek Machar, the longtime Nuer leader and head of the SPLA-IO. On 4 March, General Gabriel Duop Lam, the SPLM-IO chief of staff, was arrested. Near midnight on 5 March, Petroleum Minister Puot Kang Chol was detained....

Read more: 2025 Nasir clashes on Qualla

2025 Nasir clashes: A Tactical Withdrawal

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 20 April, with local leaders mediating, the White Army executed what the SSPDF spokesman called a tactical withdrawal. The army reoccupied Nasir without further fighting; the following day, the Chief of Defence Forces, Paul Nang Majok, visited to congratulate the troops. The G...

Read more: 2025 Nasir clashes on Qualla