The MAAPSS Update No. 5 provides an overview of new appointments and developments in Unity State. Following the establishment of the Ruweng Administrative Area, Unity state is now a mono-ethnic Nuer state, as well as in theory being the well-spring of SPLA-IO support, as well as the birthplace of Riek Machar, the opposition’s leader.  In much of the state, the government and the variety of South Sudanese oppositions that operate in Unity are increasingly unified. SPLA-IO cadres appointed to positions of power within the state administration or as county commissioners are drawn from a small circle of Machar loyalists and family members, and their appointments are designed to be politically palatable to the Montyuils in Bentiu. This means that the opposition county commissioners in southern Unity, like the government appointments to the same region, are external impositions, without popular support on the ground—a situation that does not suggest that those commissioners have the capacity to control recent outbreaks of revenge raiding in Mayendit and Payinjiar counties, or that the SPLA-IO can maintain meaningful levels of political support in the region over the long term.

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