Salva Kiir Mayardit

Salva Kiir Mayardit (born 1951, Akon, Sudan [now in South Sudan]) southern Sudanese rebel leader who in 2011 became the first president of the newly independent country of South Sudan. He had served as president of the semiautonomous region of southern Sudan while simultaneously holding the position of first vice president in the Sudanese national government (2005–11), and he has held the chair of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) since 2005.

Kiir, a Christian, was born into a family of the Dinka ethnic group in the southern region of Sudan. In the 1960s, during the first (1955–72) of Sudan’s two civil wars, he joined the Anya Nya, a southern separatist movement, in the fight against the northern-based Sudanese government. After fighting ended, he was absorbed into Sudan’s national army and eventually attained the rank of lieutenant colonel. When the hostilities resumed in 1983, Kiir and others, including Col. John Garang de Mabior, defected from the Sudanese army. Along with Garang, Kiir helped form the SPLM and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), which would become the primary southern rebel group fighting against the northern-based government. Within the SPLA Kiir was one of Garang’s top deputies and eventually held the position of commander and deputy to the SPLA council; he also held the portfolio for domestic and foreign affairs/intelligence. When divisions within the SPLM and SPLA surfaced in the 1990s and early 2000s, Kiir was a vital conciliator and handled negotiations between disagreeing factions. He also was an important participant in negotiations with the northern government, which ultimately led to the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended Sudan’s second civil war.

Per the terms of the CPA, the semiautonomous region of southern Sudan was established in 2005. On July 9, 2005, Garang was named president of the region as well as first vice president in the Sudanese national government. After his unexpected death later that month, Kiir succeeded him in both positions. Prior to the 2010 national and regional elections, there was much speculation on whether Kiir would choose to run for president of the country or president of the region; he chose the latter. Kiir received almost 93 percent of the vote to continue serving as southern Sudan’s president; he also continued in his capacity of first vice president of the national government.

Another provision of the CPA was that a referendum would be held on whether southern Sudan should remain part of Sudan or become an independent country. The southern Sudanese people voted in January 2011, with the results overwhelmingly in favour of independence. Upon the south’s secession on July 9, 2011, Kiir became the first president of an independent South Sudan.

As president—first of the semiautonomous region, then of the independent country—Kiir was faced with many challenges, including the daunting task of creating much-needed infrastructure to support the nascent state, dealing with food insecurities, and handling the influx of refugees returning after the decades of war. He also had to deal with lingering skirmishes between the SPLA and other southern rebel groups and escalating ethnic violence within the country as well as navigate South Sudan’s precarious relationship with the Sudanese government, particularly with regard to contested regions along their common border, which proved to be contentious in the years following independence.

Kiir also faced growing tensions within the SPLM, signs of which were evident throughout 2013 and culminated in an incident on December 15 that Kiir claimed was a coup attempt by his former vice president and SPLM rival, Riek Machar. Machar denied the accusation but soon took lead of rebels fighting against Kiir and the SPLM-led government. Fighting quickly took on an ethnic hue when tensions were inflamed between Kiir’s ethnic group, the Dinka, and Machar’s ethnic group, the Nuer, and the conflict spiraled into a civil war that, despite international mediation efforts in 2014 and 2015, showed little sign of ending, in spite of a peace agreement signed by both Kiir and Machar in August 2015. Presidential and legislative elections were due in 2015, but, because of the ongoing violence, Kiir’s term as president was extended by three years, as were the terms of legislators.

Some progress in ending the civil conflict appeared to have been made in April 2016 when, after much delay, the transitional government, outlined in the August 2015 peace agreement, was finally established. It included the return of Machar to the government, in the position of first vice president.