The Trump administration’s decision over the weekend to revoke visas for all South Sudanese passport holders has added to the mounting political and humanitarian challenges of a country on the brink of civil war, officials and observers said on Monday.
Tensions between the two political leaders of South Sudan have escalated in recent weeks, especially after the authorities put the vice president under house arrest in late March. Millions of people are also facing hunger, displacement and disease as violence intensifies and the United States cuts aid.
Observers say the sweeping visa ban shows how Washington is retreating from South Sudan — a nation the United States helped bring into existence nearly 15 years ago — at a time of immense need.
“A massive storm is forming over South Sudan, and the visa ban only adds to the anxiety people have about all that could go wrong,” said Daniel Akech, the senior South Sudan analyst at the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit organization.
On Saturday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was revoking visas for South Sudanese nationals and preventing any more from entering the United States. The deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, said on social media that South Sudan had refused to accept the repatriation of one of its nationals.
The Trump administration has not said whether it would seek to deport South Sudanese nationals whose visas had been revoked. South Sudan’s government has not responded to the announcement of the visa ban, and a government spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.
South Sudan sends relatively few travelers to the United States. Just 46 nonimmigrant visas were issued to its nationals in January, compared with more than 2,500 to people from neighboring Kenya, according to U.S. government data.
The visa cancellations come amid deepening political rifts between President Salva Kiir and his vice president, Riek Machar. The schism threatens the fragile 2018 peace agreement ending a five-year civil war that killed nearly 400,000 people and displaced millions.
In recent months, the Sudanese military and opposition forces allied with Mr. Machar have clashed outside Juba, the capital, and in other parts of the country. In March, a U.N. helicopter evacuating wounded soldiers from Upper Nile State in the northeast was attacked, resulting in the death of a general, several military officers and a crew member. The violence in the state has uprooted tens of thousands of people, some of whom have fled into Ethiopia, according to the United Nations.
Uganda’s government has deployed troops to South Sudan at the request of President Kiir, a move that incensed Mr. Machar and his allies. Regional diplomatic efforts to quell the discord have failed so far, raising fears of a potential collapse of the government.
U.S. aid cuts are also hurting efforts to rebuild after years of conflict. The United States spent $705 million on food, health, education and other programs in the country last year. But much of that funding has vanished since the Trump administration came to power, aid groups say, forcing them to scale back programs responding to floods, cholera outbreaks and food shortages.
“South Sudan is quickly becoming the forgotten crisis of the world,” Denish Ogenrwot, the advocacy lead for the aid agency Action Against Hunger, said by telephone from Juba.
Mr. Akech of the International Crisis Group said the sudden visa revocations could disrupt the lives of South Sudanese nationals in the United States.
Many of those people are students or individuals working to support families back home or in refugee camps, Mr. Akech said. They also include rising stars like Khaman Maluach, a basketball player who represented South Sudan at the Olympics last year and just finished his freshman season as a center for Duke University.
Mr. Akech said the visa revocations should have targeted those responsible for worsening the situation in South Sudan, not the broader population. “The pain will be felt by those who should not be punished,” he said.
South Sudanese opposition officials in the United States said on Monday that they were worried about the people who could be deported.
“We are gravely concerned that individuals who are repatriated may face severe harm or even death at the hands of the very government responsible for these failures,” Reath Muoch Tang, a Washington-based senior official in Mr. Machar’s party who is a legal permanent resident of the United States, said in a statement to The New York Times.
Future U.S. action, he said, should “focus on promoting accountability among leaders while safeguarding the lives and interests of ordinary South Sudanese citizens.”
