Is Stephen Par Kuol writing his political obituary?

From left: Mr. Stephen Par Kuol, Dr. Riek Machar & President Salva Kiir

I like Stephen Par Kuol. Not doubt. I have watched him over the years as minister in Jonglei State, as a member of SPLM-in-Opposition, and as a minister responsible for peace in the central government. His interviews about leadership and the prospects for peace in South Sudan were level-headed. 

Today, however, I think Par is on the wrong side of history. But this is not because he's replaced Dr. Riek Machar (provisionally he says). That's not it. He's wrong, I believe, because he's committing the same historical-political sins Dr. Riek Machar has committed.

Even when Riek Machar knew President despises him with a visceral intensity, he still believed, somehow, that Kiir will implement the peace agreement with him. 

Like Riek, Par believes he's doing the right. Dr. Riek has consistently believed he was doing the right thing in the manner he dealt with President Kiir as a reluctant peace partner. We know what it has got him into. 

Par is unwittingly playing into President Kiir's agenda to dismantle SPLM-IO, the only formidable political opposition to his SPLM. in South Sudan.

He's also playing into the hands of Nuer elite inside and outside SPLM, who feel overshadowed by Riek Machar for more than three decades. They want out of Riek's shadows. Nuer leadership in South Sudan has become synonymous with Riek Machar. These Nuer elite resent that. 

For these Nuer elite discrediting Dr. Riek Machar is welcome news. It provides anyone of them a fruitful opportunity to rise above the crown as the political voice of the Nuer nation. 

For President Kiir, the emergence of Par provides him with political arsenals to make Riek Machar completely irrelevant on the South Sudan's political scene. 

Kiir has resisted Dr. Riek Machar's reintegration into the SPLM since 2003. But political consensus in the SPLM and the wise counsel drowned out his opposition. Kiir also tried from as early as 2008 to remove Dr. Riek Macahr from the SPLM. He failed. 

He tried in 2013 and 2016 to get rid of Riek either from the face of the earth or at least from South Sudan's political scene. Again, he failed. 

From February 2025, the White Army unwittingly came to President Kiir's rescue. They played into Kiir's plans. The attack on SSPDF in Nasir by the White Army, whose instigation we still don't know, provided President Kiir with a golden opportunity to banish Riek Machar from politics in South Sudan once and for all.

So, Stephen Par Kuol is the unwitting ally in the conspiratorial detention of Dr. Riek Machar. Unless of course Par is part of the conspiracy. After all, he may become the SPLM-IO chairperson and the First Vice President of South Sudan. Until elections of course. After that, Par's SPLM-IO becomes irrelevant as a political tool.

While Par may bask in the spotlight now as the recognized leader of the SPLM-IO, he fails to see that President Kiir is not only trying to destroy Dr. Riek Machar politically. He is also trying to destroy SPLM-IO. Why does Par think Kiir would support a party that will compete with him in an election? Kiir is only supporting Par because of Dr. Riek Machar. Once Dr. Riek is gone from the political scene, something we know will be next to impossible, President Kiir and his SPLM will come after the remaining vestiges of SPLM-IO. 

Kiir's problem is not Riek Machar per se. No. Not really! Kiir's resentment comes from the political threat Riek causes to the political dynastic Kiir and Jieeng elite want to establish. Par should therefore watch out. 

Meaning Stephen Par risks writing his own political obituary. Kiir's SPLM will not want to create a strong rival opposition. They have already closed down SPLM-IO offices in some states. 

Riek's support base will never forgive Par. Nuer who feel let down or targeted by the government of South Sudan will always regard Par as a quisling, a turncoat. 

Now, what is Par's end game? Turning against other members of SPLM-IO, like Nathaniel Oyet, does not make for a strong, united party? It fractures and weakens the party. If he's saying he is an interim chairperson until Dr. Riek is released, then he is not acting like it. Cozying up to President Kiir who arrested his boss does not show Par is interested in having Dr. Riek released. 

If he is planning to be the SPLM-IO flag-bearer in December next year, then he'll have started his political life with a deception SPLM-IO base will resent. 

It is time for Mr. Stephen Par Kuol to be explicit and stop obfuscating political actions. He cannot say he's interested in having Dr. Riek Machar released and then cozy up to those who have his boss under detention. 

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Kuir ë Garang (PhD) is the editor of TPR. 

Donald Trump is the west looking at itself in the mirror

Kuir ë Garang, PhD*

When the South Sudanese embassy officials in Washington, D.C. made an honest mistake in April and accepted a Congolese national, who was deported with South Sudanese deportees to Juba, officials in Juba corrected the mistake. They refused the Congolese entry to South Sudan after doing more background checks than was possible in Washington. 

The Trump administration responded with threats. Bullying. Infantilization.  Their argument was that Juba did not accept the deportees in a "timely manner." 

The Trump administration, through Marco Rubio, did not care that South Sudanese officials were not rejecting South Sudanese deportees. They were only rejecting a Congolese who was masquerading as South Sudanese. 

Even when South Sudan accepted its citizens, the Trump administration revoked visas and threatened to withhold pending visa applications for South Sudanese nationals. 

It was bullying! No room for negotiations and reason.

Accept what we say we, the mighty US say, or we punish you. South Sudan had to cave in. What else could South Sudan do? Nothing! They accepted the Congolese, a non-national. 

The Congolese is a fellow African so the issue was not really about rejecting a fellow African. It was about protocols, diplomatic protocols and respect, and the fact that Congo (Democratic Republic) exists.

But why negotiate with people you can easily bully into submission? As American lawyer, Leon Fresco, told Aljazeera on April 6, the Trump administration was using South Sudan as an example to send a message to the rest of the world. It is a colonial attitude. 

Now, South Sudan seems to have become a dumping ground for American deportees for the Trump administration. 

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Many western leaders seem horrified by what Trump is doing to United States institutions and society and to the global order. Trump's actions are not really unprecedented. Yes, they are devious, self-serving, at times immoral, and more so, destabilizing. 

But should we be surprised. No. Not really! The rest, non-westerners, or those who know a bit of the history of the west, know that Trump is a western man (with a capital 'M') through and through. He is treating the west and his own fellow citizens in the same way the west has been treating the rest of the world for the last five centuries.

We are not surprised. Westerners have been feeling superior and entitled as, somehow, super-humans, whether overtly or covertly. 

Before the collapse of the racist and eugenicist regime in the 1960s, westerners' opinion of the rest of the world was overt. It was taught openly and proudly in university lecture halls and auditoriums, preached at the pulpits, acted out on theatre stages, joked about at dinner tables...etc.

After the above regimes collapsed, the attitude did not disappear. It morphed into new forms through which it manifested without betraying the fact that these regimes only collapsed in forms only but not function. 

Meaning western colonial bullying went underground. It became formal in monetary policies, fiscal policies, international trade laws, terms of borrowing through International Monetary Funds and the World Bank...etc. It was a clever obfuscation.  I

In these new social forms, Africans were still considered inferior. But African inferiority was not spoken out loudly by the sane majority. It was whispered or joked about in racially exclusive country clubs or book clubs. 

When Trump called African countries 'shitholes' and supported policies that appeared callous or behaving as if Africa is inhabited by beings no one should care about, he was not inventing a social consciousness. He was joining an established tradition. 

To westerners, Africa is always that place where resources are exploited and the people forced to remain painfully silent.

What is different now in Trumpism is that Trump has become explicit and overt in his denigration regime. Denigration is now shamelessly aimed openly', not through inadvertent 'hot mics' moments or in recordings not meant for public consumption. 

Meaning President Trump was joining the likes of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan who have insulted African.

Post-World War Two changes were forced on the west by geopolitical conditions. Westerners resented those changes. 'The good old days!' we hear regularly from the social and political right are part of that resentment.

But westerners seem surprised by Trump's actions? Why are westerners surprised? 

We shouldn't be surprised that the west is surprised. The attitude Trump has turned against the west has never been historically aimed at the west in the way Trump is doing. 

Hitler was considered an outlier when his gleefully genocidal attitude toward Jews was first considered a socio-political fad. It turned out Hitler meant business. The Hitler we now know was not considered a possibility for a westerner, a German. Yet there was World War One from which the west could learn. No learning. 

So there was Hitler and World War Two from which the west could learn.

By the 1970s, the west had already forgotten the war and Hitler. (Laws against Neo-Nazis are either weak or Neo-Nazi hate is trivialized or moralized as free speech).

Franco Spain was local. Fascist Italy was also local. So Trump seems like a tragic novelty. But history shows he is not.

While some people in the west see Trumpism as something new, those who have borne the brunt of similar attitudes and actions over the years would tell the west, 'Welcome to feeling human!' 

Europeans on the continent and in the diaspora have always ignored how the rest the world feel. They didn't feel inferiorized, infantilized, belittled or bullied. They considered genuine experiences moral panic, moral pedestal or a needless cry for attention when all we should do is to toughen it up in the real world.  

Trump belittling of Americans and westerners, his dictatorial actions, and his solipsistic projections, are westerners looking themselves in the mirror. Trump is a western product. He is an embodiment of the western Man, the Nietzschean Übermensch, the westerns 'supermanism' the western male has considered himself to be or becoming.

It's time for Europeans, continental or diasporic, to be humble and ask those of us the question renown African-American sociologist and historian, W.E.B Du Bois, encountered in Jim Crow America as he related it in The Souls of Black Folk: 'How does it feel to be a problem?'

Today, Trump is asking everyone the same question: 'How does it feel to be a problem?' Europe now knows what it feels to be considered a ‘problem’ when one is not; how to feel belittled unnecessarily.

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*Kuir ë Garang is the editor of The Philosophical Refugee.