President Obama Orders US Troops to South Sudan

President Obama on Thursday announced that he has sent a team of combat-ready soldiers to the country of South Sudan amid growing violence and increasing talk of “civil war” in the African nation.

The death of several UN peacekeeping soldiers this week and reports of large numbers of civilian casualties as fighting intensified between militias and government soldiers on opposite sides of a recent coup attempt have stirred international focus on the country, with Obama telling Congress in a written statement that the recently formed country is “at the precipice” and the UN Security Council scheduled to hold an emergency meeting in New York on Friday to address the worsening situation.

As South Sudan analyst James Copnall writes, the politics of the country are complicated, but “just over two years after it became independent,” with refugees fleeing the violence and over 500 people already reported killed this week, “South Sudan is living out some of its worst fears.”

Though framed as a both a political and ethnic power struggle, one of the clear fault lines in the growing tensions is centered around control of the country’s oil fields that are located in the north, as Reuters indicates:

Deutsche Welle reports:

Offering additional background, the Guardian reports:

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