Editor\u2019s note: This article originally stated that more than 10,000 Nuer civilians were killed in Juba in 2013. Local media and experts say closer to 20,000 people were killed, while a 2014 United Nations report cited the killing of least 300 in one incident. The article has since been updated to reflect the uncertainty about the numbers. <\/em><\/p>\n Juba, South Sudan \u2013<\/strong> As he was ushered into a barred holding cell inside an events hall turned courtroom on a morning in mid-October, the bright smile and relaxed demeanour of Riek Machar, South Sudan\u2019s embattled first vice president and opposition leader, belied both the severity of the charges against him and the immense stakes for his country.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n In September, Machar and 20 co-defendants from his Sudan People\u2019s Liberation Movement\/Army-in-Opposition (SPLM\/A-IO) party were indicted on charges of terrorism, treason, and crimes against humanity for their alleged role in a March attack on a military garrison that the government says killed more than 250 soldiers.<\/p>\n Machar has denied the charges while the SPLM-IO has called the accusations \u201cbaseless\u201d and \u201cpolitically motivated\u201d.<\/p>\n As more than 1,000 people streamed into the venue to watch the proceedings \u2013 which began in late September and have been open to the public \u2013 several observers told Al Jazeera they were concerned by what they saw as the government\u2019s weaponisation of the justice system to sideline President Salva Kiir\u2019s chief political rival. They warned that the trial was deepening resentment among communities that revere Machar, and risked intensifying violence already unfolding across rural swaths of the country.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a political trial. The state is using the court against its opponents,\u201d said Lincoln Simon, a 37-year-old nonprofit director who says he\u2019s attended every session out of a sense of civic duty. He thinks Machar is being scapegoated to hide broader government failures, like spiralling inflation. \u201cOur leaders have failed, and now they are looking for someone to pin the blame on.\u201d<\/p>\n William Tong, 62, a retired factory worker, is a longtime supporter of Machar\u2019s opposition party who has also been attending the proceedings. \u201cWe are watching this trial to see whether or not this is a country run by the rule of law,\u201d he said, adding that he is keeping an open mind but hasn\u2019t yet seen evidence that he finds compelling. \u201cThe people are eager to see evidence. We can be convinced, but we aren\u2019t yet.\u201d<\/p>\n Others, like James Majok, support the trial. Majok says the proceedings have divided people in his hometown of Aweil, approximately 780km (500 miles) north of the capital Juba, into \u201cthose that want the trial to continue and those that object\u201d. For Majok, it is a first step towards broader accountability for public officials.<\/p>\n \u201cAnyone that is accused should be tried,\u201d said the 37-year-old, adding that the defendants should be presumed innocent until proven guilty. \u201cOur hope is that this is the first but not the last. The law should apply to everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n The three men, like other members of the public who spoke to Al Jazeera about the trial, provided a pseudonym out of fear for their safety. Justice Minister Joseph Geng Akech has publicly warned that commenting on the ongoing trial of Machar and his co-accused could amount to contempt of court.<\/p>\n While Machar, 73, cannot legally face the death penalty \u2013 the constitution bars capital punishment for individuals older than 70 \u2013 many of his co-defendants are eligible, and Machar faces life in prison and disqualification from holding political office.<\/p>\n Yet the wider implications are likely to reverberate far beyond the court, analysts say.<\/p>\n The trial is in many ways the culmination of decades of mistrust between Machar and Kiir, who between 2013 and 2018 led opposing armies during a civil war that killed an estimated 400,000 people. A peace agreement brought the two men into a unity government, but its provisions have gone largely unimplemented while economic and humanitarian crises have expanded in the years since.<\/p>\n Like that war, many feel that the trial has taken on ethnic overtones. Kiir and much of his inner circle are Dinka, the largest of the country\u2019s 60-plus ethnic groups, while all 21 of the accused are Nuer, the second largest ethnic group. In the shadow of recent bloody intercommunal strife, Simon believes the trial will \u201cdivide the country along ethnic lines\u201d.<\/p>\n The trial also comes amid renewed fighting between an array of armed groups, including Machar\u2019s forces, government soldiers, and community-based militias across the country, prompting warnings from the United Nations and conflict monitors that the 2018 peace deal is collapsing.<\/p>\n \u201cThe stakes of this trial are existentially high for South Sudan,\u201d said Daniel Akech, a South Sudan expert with the International Crisis Group. \u201cIf the process is not managed with extreme political care, the fallout could shatter the country\u2019s fragile cohesion and trigger a collapse of the state.\u201d<\/p>\n Through decades of armed rebellion and reconciliation, Machar has become both a political institution and one of South Sudan\u2019s most divisive figures.<\/p>\n In the 1980s, before the country gained independence from Sudan, Machar was a senior commander in the Sudan People\u2019s Liberation Movement\/Army (SPLM\/A), a rebel movement led by the charismatic US-educated economist John Garang that fought for decades against the government of Sudan.<\/p>\n In 1991, at 38 years old, Machar split from the SPLM and formed his own faction. He called Garang a \u201cdictator\u201d and claimed the movement was dominated by the Dinka ethnic group, and turned to Khartoum for military support. Garang, a Dinka, said Machar would \u201cgo down in history as the man who stabbed the movement in Southern Sudan in the back\u201d, and many of his critics still regard him as such.<\/p>\n That same year, forces linked to Machar massacred at least 2,000 civilians in the town of Bor, a Dinka population centre near Garang\u2019s birthplace, an atrocity that has continued to plague Machar\u2019s reputation despite public apologies.<\/p>\n After more than a decade, Machar reconciled with Garang \u2013 who died in a helicopter crash in 2005 \u2013 rejoined the movement, and became South Sudan\u2019s\u00a0vice president in 2011, the year the country gained its independence.<\/p>\n Two years later, a power struggle within the SPLM erupted into war. After Machar was sacked and government troops massacred a number of Nuer civilians (a UN report cited at least 300 killed in one incident though some estimates say as many as 20,000 were killed over the course of a few days) in Juba, Machar rebelled under the banner of a new group, the SPLM-IO, that fought a five-year war against the government. That conflict saw numerous atrocities carried out by both sides, often along ethnic lines. Machar framed his movement as a fight for more inclusive governance.<\/p>\n The 2018 peace agreement brought Machar back to Juba to rejoin a unity government as the most senior of five vice presidents.<\/p>\n The agreement \u2013 named the Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan, or R-ARCSS \u2013 set out benchmarks intended to shepherd the country to national elections.<\/p>\n In the post-war years, as politicians in Juba lost legitimacy amid persistent insecurity, economic crisis, and virtually nonexistent service provision, Machar maintained what support he had left from his base by casting himself as a democratiser and bulwark against Dinka nationalism, analysts and opposition supporters say.<\/p>\n \u201cMachar represents the face of resistance,\u201d said Paul Bayoch, a cultural historian and community leader from Akobo, an opposition stronghold about 550km (350 miles) from the capital. \u201cToday, he looks like a victim of the Juba regime. The same suffering that people are feeling, now they see Machar being victimised in the same way.\u201d<\/p>\n Although Machar\u2019s popularity had waned in recent years, owing to what some see as his abandoning of the grassroots to pursue personal political goals, he is still widely viewed as the figurehead of South Sudan\u2019s Nuer population and the only opposition leader with sufficient political heft to implement the peace agreement. His prosecution, some analysts say, has buoyed his support once again.<\/p>\n \u201cTo some extent, Machar\u2019s arrest has renewed his legitimacy,\u201d said Joshua Craze, an independent researcher on South Sudan. \u201cI say to some extent because many people might not be willing to fight over the fact that he\u2019s been detained. But if something bad were to happen to him, that could be a spark for more widespread fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n At the heart of the trial are questions about the viability of the 2018 agreement, which is regarded by many as the glue holding the state together.<\/p>\n Analysts have long criticised the peace deal for sidelining grassroots institutions and consolidating power within a small class of armed elites. Its defenders maintain that it has mitigated conflict between the main signatories and remains the best route to stability, though key provisions, such as the integration of forces into a national army, have gone unimplemented.<\/p>\n During early sessions, Machar\u2019s defence argued that the trial was unlawful under conditions in the peace agreement and should be stopped. The attack on the garrison, they said, was a ceasefire violation that should be investigated by a neutral monitoring body overseen by an East African bloc, as stipulated in the accord.<\/p>\n The government has argued that the special court has jurisdiction over the alleged crimes under domestic law. It says it plans to present forensic and financial evidence and call more than two dozen witnesses to show how the defendants incited and aided the attack.<\/p>\n But several lawyers, civil society members, and trial observers who spoke to Al Jazeera believe that by trying Machar in a South Sudanese court, President Kiir is abrogating the agreement.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is not just the defendants that are on trial, but the entire peace agreement,\u201d said a lawyer working on Machar\u2019s defence team, who spoke on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n \u201cCharging Machar while he still occupies his constitutionally recognised office of first vice president violates the agreement\u2019s core equilibrium, that neither side could unilaterally dominate the other during the transition,\u201d said Remember Miamingi, a South Sudanese legal scholar and former adviser to the African Union\u2019s political affairs, peace, and security department.<\/p>\n He added that the effect of the government\u2019s unilateral action could also deter opposition groups from participating in future peace talks. \u201cIf former insurgents know that participation in government exposes them to prosecution by institutions controlled by their rivals, they will rationally choose continued insurgency over integration,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n But even as observers debate whether the peace agreement is alive or dead, relations between the government and opposition have already deteriorated into open conflict across at least half of South Sudan\u2019s 10 states.<\/p>\nRecommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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