title: Cody Bellinger

text: During a particularly frustrating Freeway Series game on July 24, Bellinger received his first MLB game ejection after arguing with home plate umpire Dan Iassogna over balls and strikes. Bellinger justified his decision by saying, "I'm trying to do the best I can to get on base, and it's hard to hit like that." On August 2, Bellinger hit his 100th career home run off of Eric Lauer of the San Diego Padres; he did so in only his 401st game, breaking Mike Piazza's Dodgers record of 422 games to 100 home runs. Two weeks later, Bellinger became both the first MLB player of the 2019 season and the youngest Dodger in franchise history to record his 40th home run of the year. Outside of these records, Bellinger's production began to slow after the All-Star break; he batted just .256 in the second half of the season, with a .906 OPS and only 13 home runs in the final 51 games of the year. Part of this was due to conversations with Dodgers staff about ignoring the MVP race in favor of staying calm and building to the postseason. Additionally, pitchers began avoiding throwing strikes to Bellinger where possible; he had 86 walks by September 5, a league-leading 19 of which were intentional. During that year's NLDS, the Washington Nationals bullpen capitalized on areas where Bellinger was comparatively weaker: he faced predominantly left-handed pitchers, who avoided throwing middle-of-the-road fastballs in favor of low and outside pitches that would let Bellinger either swing and miss, foul out, or take a walk.


title: Cody Bellinger

text: Bellinger finished the 2019 season with career highs in batting average (.305), home runs (47), and RBIs (115). He also received a trifecta of MLB awards, taking home the MVP award, the NL Gold Glove Award, and the NL Silver Slugger Award. He was the first Dodger in club history to take home all three honors in the same season. He also received two Fielding Bible Awards for his performance both in right field and as a multi-positional player in right field, center field, and at first base. With these titles, he became the first Dodgers outfielder to win any Fielding Bible Award and the first MLB player to pick up two in the same season. Bellinger rounded out the 2019 awards season with a selection to the inaugural All-MLB First Team, joining Yelich and Mike Trout in the outfield.


title: Cody Bellinger

text: During the 2019–20 MLB offseason, Bellinger signed an $11.5 million contract with the Dodgers for the 2020 season, breaking Kris Bryant's record for the largest single-season contract for a player in his first year eligible for arbitration. When MLB announced the indefinite suspension of the 2020 season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Bellinger went back to Arizona and focused on tweaking his swing in a "stress-free environment". When the pandemic-shortened season began, Bellinger had a slow start, going 5-for-36 in his first eight games. Unlike in previous years, Bellinger was making weak contact with pitches, leading to a large number of groundouts. His numbers for the whole season saw a drop-off from the previous year: in 56 games of the shortened season, Bellinger hit only .239, with a .789 OPS and only 12 home runs. The 2020 season proved to be a struggle for many of MLB's top hitters: five of the 15 batters who showed the largest drop in slugging percentage were previous MVP winners or finalists, including Bellinger. Bellinger's drops in batting average and slugging percentage, the latter of which fell from .670 in 2019 to .354 in 2020, was explained by his constant experimentation with his swing, which prevented him from locking into pitches the way he had the season prior. Bellinger was once again a finalist for a Gold Glove Award in the outfield, but the award ultimately went to Trent Grisham of the San Diego Padres.


title: Cody Bellinger

text: The Dodgers were the first team to clinch a playoff berth in the 2020 season, developing a commanding lead over the NL West by September 16. They finished at the top of their division and went on to sweep the Brewers at the 2020 National League Wild Card Series. From there, the Dodgers faced the Padres in the 2020 NLDS, where Bellinger's defensive play in Game 2 allowed Los Angeles to hang onto their 4–3 lead and take the game. In the seventh inning, with Grisham on second base, Bellinger made a jumping catch to rob Fernando Tatis Jr. of a two-run home run. The 2020 NLCS started with the Dodgers down 3–1 in four games, but they were able to mount a comeback and push the series to seven games. Bellinger scored the go-ahead home run in that final game, clinching the Dodgers' place in the 2020 World Series. There, the Dodgers defeated the Tampa Bay Rays in six games for Bellinger's first World Series championship and the Dodgers' first since 1988. Despite injuring his shoulder during the NLCS, Bellinger continued to play in the World Series, and he celebrated his Game 1 home run by foot-tapping his teammates rather than high-fiving them. After the season, Bellinger signed a one-year, $16.1 million contract with the Dodgers for the 2021 season.


title: Cody Bellinger

text: Bellinger, who had repeatedly injured his right shoulder by diving for ground balls throughout his professional baseball career, underwent surgery for the affected arm in November 2020. He revealed later that, while celebrating his NLCS-winning home run that October, he had dislocated his shoulder by connecting too strongly with teammate Enrique Hernández' arm. Bellinger's recovery from the arthroscopic glenoid labrum surgery progressed ahead of schedule, and he was able to join the Dodgers for spring training in 2021. He suffered another serious injury on April 6 after colliding with Oakland Athletics pitcher Reymin Guduan. Bellinger was initially placed on the 10-day injured list before medical scans revealed that he had suffered a hairline fracture in his left fibula. He returned on May 29, going 0-for-4 with two strikeouts in an 11–6 loss to the Giants, but a sixth-inning walk allowed Bellinger to extend his on-base streak to 20 games.


title: Cody Bellinger

text: Bellinger's return from injury was marked by a career-worst offensive performance. In his first 11 games back, he struck out 14 times while recording only one extra-base hit. While his defense remained sharp in center field, by July 23, Bellinger was batting under .200 both at home and on the road. He admitted in August that his poor batting was due to lingering pain and weakness from both the shoulder and leg injuries, and Bellinger's batting grew stronger as he continued to exercise the affected areas. At the end of the month, Roberts made the decision to relegate Bellinger to a platoon role in the outfield, starting A. J. Pollock, Mookie Betts, or Chris Taylor against left-handed pitchers. Injuries to Pollock and Taylor, however, forced the Dodgers to renege on that platoon system shortly after its introduction. Bellinger suffered his third major injury of the season in September, when a collision with teammate Gavin Lux resulted in a fractured rib. By the time of the collision, Bellinger had already missed 46 games that season with his fractured fibula, and an additional seven with hamstring tightness. Bellinger finished the regular season batting a career-low .165, with ten home runs and 36 RBIs in 315 at bats.


title: Cody Bellinger

text: In the Wild Card Game against the St. Louis Cardinals, he reached base three times and stole twice. In Game 2 of the NLDS match against division rivals the San Francisco Giants, Bellinger's two-RBI double provided the go-ahead runs for an ultimate 9–2 rout of San Francisco. Bellinger's game-winning RBI single in Game 5 of the NLDS not only helped the Dodgers to defeat the Giants and advance to the NLCS, but it helped him tie Manny Ramirez and Gene Tenace's record of three career go-ahead hits in winner-take-all games. In Game 3 of the NLCS, the Dodgers were down 5–2 against the Atlanta Braves when Bellinger hit a three-run home run in the eighth inning. After Bellinger tied the game and cleared the bases, a single and stolen base from Chris Taylor, followed by an RBI double from Mookie Betts, helped the Dodgers win the game 6–5. The home run pitch from Luke Jackson, a fastball, crossed the plate while above the ground, making it very difficult to hit. It was Bellinger's first home run of the season that had been thrown outside the strike zone. Dave Roberts told reporters after the game that "it's just hard to imagine a bigger hit". Although the Dodgers went on to lose to the Braves in six games, Bellinger recorded 12 hits and seven RBIs in 34 postseason at bats.


title: Cody Bellinger

text: On December 23, Bellinger signed a $17 million contract with the Dodgers, avoiding salary arbitration. In 2022, Bellinger had the lowest on base percentage of all qualified hitters in the majors at .265, he also had a .210 batting average with 19 home runs and 68 RBIs and struck out 150 times in 504 at bats. After the season, the Dodgers non-tendered him, making him a free agent.


title: Cody Bellinger

text: On December 14, 2022, Bellinger signed a one-year contract with a mutual option for 2024 with the Chicago Cubs.


title: Cody Bellinger

text: Bellinger, originally much weaker while batting than fielding, became a power hitter after making a change to his batting stance during the 2014–15 offseason. Working with Shawn Wooten and Damon Mashore, Bellinger incorporated a small hand and wrist movement into his "load phase", which prepared him to make strong contact with the ball. In response to concerns that he was "standing too tall and straight-legged" in the batter's box during the 2018 season, making it difficult to build momentum, Bellinger made a number of other changes during the 2018–19 offseason, including adopting a more relaxed position at the plate and aiming to hit under breaking balls rather than over. These changes, coupled with showing greater discretion in choosing when to swing, helped Bellinger make contact more frequently and with greater power during his MVP season.


title: Cody Bellinger

text: Bellinger has one brother, Cole, who is four years his junior. A standout pitcher for Hamilton High School, Cole was selected by the San Diego Padres in the 15th round of the 2017 MLB Draft. Cole played for two seasons in the Padres farm system before retiring from baseball in 2021. Bellinger has one child with girlfriend Chase Carter, a daughter who was born November 2021.


title: Cody Bellinger

text: A character inspired by Bellinger makes a cameo appearance in the video game "Assassin's Creed Valhalla". The player character must defeat Viking Otta Sluggasson, who wields a tree trunk like a baseball bat, during one story section. Bellinger, an avid gamer, recorded his movements using motion capture technology, with his own baseball bat serving as Sluggasson's weapon.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: The South Sudanese Civil War was a multi-sided civil war in South Sudan between forces of the government and opposition forces. In December 2013, President Kiir accused his former deputy Riek Machar and ten others of attempting a coup d'état. Machar denied trying to start a coup and fled to lead the SPLM – in opposition (SPLM-IO). Fighting broke out between the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) and SPLM-IO, igniting the civil war. Ugandan troops were deployed to fight alongside the South Sudanese government. The United Nations has peacekeepers in the country as part of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS).


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: In January 2014, the first ceasefire agreement was reached. Fighting continued and would be followed by several more ceasefire agreements. Negotiations were mediated by "IGAD +" (which includes the eight regional nations called the Intergovernmental Authority on Development as well as the African Union, United Nations, China, the EU, USA, UK and Norway). A peace agreement known as the "Compromise Peace Agreement" was signed in August 2015. Machar returned to Juba in 2016 and was appointed vice president. Following a second breakout of fighting within Juba, the SPLM-IO fled to the surrounding and previously peaceful Equatoria region. Kiir replaced Machar as First Vice President with Taban Deng Gai, splitting the opposition, and rebel in-fighting became a major part of the conflict. A rivalry between the President and Paul Malong Awan, former army chief, also led to fighting. In August 2018, another power sharing agreement came into effect. On 22 February 2020, rivals Kiir and Machar struck a unity deal and formed a coalition government.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: About 400,000 people were estimated to have been killed in the war by April 2018, including notable atrocities such as the 2014 Bentiu massacre. Although both men had supporters from across South Sudan's ethnic divides, subsequent fighting had ethnic undertones. Kiir's Dinka ethnic group has been accused of attacking other ethnic groups and Machar's Nuer ethnic group has been accused of attacking the Dinka. More than 4 million people have been displaced, with about 1.8 million of those internally displaced, and about 2.5 million having fled to neighboring countries, especially Uganda and Sudan. Fighting in the agricultural heartland in the south of the country caused the number of people facing starvation to soar to 6 million, causing famine in 2017 in some areas. The country's economy has also been devastated. According to the IMF in October 2017, real income had halved since 2013 and inflation was more than 300% per annum.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: The Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed on 9 January 2005 between the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the government of the Sudan ended the war for independence that started in 1983. Under the terms of the peace agreement, a Southern Sudan Autonomous Region was created and run by the SPLM with a promise that a referendum would be held on independence in 2011. During the six years period of autonomy, the desire for independence kept in-fighting within the SPLM in check, but disputes arose over how to share the oil revenues. One consequence of the war's end was the oil fields in southern Sudan could be developed far more extensively than was possible during the war and began to be pumped. Between 2006 and 2009, sales of oil brought in an annual average of US$2.1 billion to the Southern Sudan Autonomous Region. Disputes between leading personalities in the SPLM over how to appropriate the oil revenues led to recurring tensions. A system emerged during the autonomous period where SPLM leaders used the wealth generated by the oil to buy the loyalty of not only the troops, but the people at large, creating intense competition to control the oil. After the 2011 referendum led to 98% of voters choosing independence from the Sudan, on 9 July 2011 South Sudan became an independent nation.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: In 2010, after a disputed election, George Athor led the South Sudan Democratic Movement in rebellion against the government. The same year, a faction of the South Sudan Democratic Movement, called the Cobra Faction, led by David Yau Yau rebelled against the government they accused of being prejudiced against the Murle. His faction signed a cease-fire with the government in 2011 and his militia was reintegrated into the army but he then defected again in 2012. After the army's notorious 2010 disarmament campaign with widespread abuses of the Shilluk people, who were alleging persecution by the ruling Dinka, John Uliny from the Shilluk people began a rebellion, leading the Upper Nile faction of the South Sudan Democratic Movement. Gabriel Tang, who led a militia allied to Khartoum during the Second Sudanese Civil War, clashed regularly with the SPLA until 2011 when his soldiers were reintegrated into the national army. In 2011, Peter Gadet led a rebellion with the South Sudan Liberation Army, but was reintegrated into the army the same year. In a strategy of co-option known as "big tent", the government often buys off community militia and pardons its leaders. Others call the use of rebellion to receive public office as "bad culture" and an incentive to rebel.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: After rumors about a planned coup surfaced in Juba in late 2012, South Sudanese President Salva Kiir began reorganizing the senior leadership of his government, party, and military in an unprecedented scale. In January 2013, Kiir replaced the inspector general of the national police service with a lieutenant from the army and dismissed six deputy chiefs of staff and 29 major generals in the army. In February 2013, Kiir retired an additional 117 army generals but this was viewed as troublesome in regards to a power grab by others. Kiir had also suggested that his rivals were trying to revive the rifts that had provoked infighting in the 1990s. In July 2013, Kiir dismissed Vice President Riek Machar, one-time leader of the Nasir revolt, along with his entire cabinet. Kiir suspended the SPLM Secretary-General Pagan Amum Okech and forbade him from leaving Juba or speaking to the media. The decrees elicited fears of political unrest, with Machar claiming that Kiir's move was a step towards dictatorship and announcing that he would challenge Kiir in the 2015 presidential election. He said that if the country is to be united, it cannot tolerate "one man's rule." Kiir disbanded all of the top-level organs of the SPLM party, including the Political Bureau, the National Convention and the National Liberation Council in November 2013. He cited their failed performance and the expiration of their term limits.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: For millennia, human society in the South Sudan region operated as a barter economy, with cattle being the primary medium of exchange. Cattle raids between different ethnic groups were an accepted and honorable way to acquire more cattle. However, there were widely accepted limits on the amount of violence permissible in cattle raids, and tribal elders would intervene if cattle raid violence became excessive. Furthermore, the antiquated weapons used in cattle raids were not likely to inflict mass casualties. During the second war of independence from the Sudan, the government in Khartoum, beginning in 1984, began a deliberate policy of "divide and rule" by arming young men with assault rifles and ammunition and encouraging them to engage in unlimited violence on cattle raids, hoping the resulting ethnic violence would cause so much disunity as to end the rebellion. This policy failed to end the rebellion, but it did cause the breakdown of accepted norms regarding violence on cattle raids and an increase in ethnic tensions between the peoples of southern Sudan, leaving a legacy of distrust and bitterness that continues to this day. In 2010, Dennis Blair, then United States Director of National Intelligence, issued a warning that "over the next five years...a new mass killing or genocide is most likely to occur in southern Sudan." In 2011, there was fighting between the Murle and the Lou Nuer, mostly over cattle raids and abductions of children to be raised into the other tribe. The Nuer White Army released a statement stating its intention to "wipe out the entire Murle tribe on the face of the earth as the only solution to guarantee long-term security of Nuer's cattle". Notably, in the Pibor massacre, an estimated 900 to 3,000 people were killed in Pibor. Although Machar and Kiir are both members of the SPLM, they stem from different tribes with a history of conflict. Kiir is an ethnic Dinka, while Machar is an ethnic Nuer.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: It began on the evening of Sunday, 15 December 2013, at the meeting of the National Liberation Council in the Nyakuron neighbourhood of Juba, South Sudan's capital, when opposition leaders Dr. Riek Machar, Pagan Amum and Rebecca Nyandeng voted to boycott the meeting.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: The South Sudanese "Sudan Tribune" reported clashes breaking out in the Munuki neighbourhood late on 14 December in Juba between members of the presidential guard. Kiir also claimed that the fighting began when unidentified, uniformed personnel started shooting at a meeting of the SPLM. Former Minister of Higher Education Peter Adwok said that on the evening 15 December after the meeting of the National Liberation Council had failed, Kiir told Major General Marial Ciennoung to disarm his soldiers of the "Tiger Battalion," which he did. Adwok then controversially claims that the officer in charge of the weapons stores, opened them and rearmed only the Dinka soldiers. A Nuer soldier passing by questioned this and a fistfight then ensued between the two and attracted the attention of the "commander and his deputy to the scene." Unable to calm the situation, more soldiers got involved and raided the stores. It culminated in the Nuer soldiers taking control of the military headquarters. The next morning, he says that Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) reinforcements arrived and dislodged the mutineers. He then explained standard procedure:Military doctrine dictates that once a contingent of mutinous troops have been dislodged, appeal is made for their surrender and then disarmed. Those who remained loyal (to the president) are also disarmed to prevent bad blood. The loyal troops of Tiger, hailing mainly from Warrap and Aweil, have not been disarmed. In fact, they are the ones rampaging Juba, looting and shooting to kill any Nuer in the residential neighbourhoods."


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: Adwok was then placed on a list of wanted politicians, to which he said "this may be my last contribution, because, as I said, I'm waiting for the police in order to join my colleagues in detention." On Christmas Day, five days after his controversial publication, Adwok was arrested and held for two days. He was later detained at the Juba airport when attempting to leave the country. His passport was also confiscated.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: The military headquarters near Juba University was then attacked with fighting continuing throughout the night. The next day heavy gunfire and mortar fire were reported, and UNMISS announced that hundreds of civilians sought refuge inside its facilities Aguer said that some military installations had been attacked but that "the army is in full control of Juba," that the tense situation was unlikely to deteriorate, and an investigation was under way. Several people were also injured during the fighting. Juba International Airport was closed indefinitely; Kenyan airlines Fly540 and Kenya Airways indefinitely suspended flights to Juba after the airport closed. A dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed until further notice. State-owned SSTV went off-air for several hours. When it returned to broadcasting, it aired a message by President Salva Kiir. The dissident group was said to include Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) founder John Garang's widow, Rebecca Garang.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: Foreign Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin claimed that those that were a part of the coup were "disgruntled" soldiers and politicians led by Machar and that at least ten people were confirmed to have been detained, seven were confirmed as former ministers including former Finance Minister Kosti Manibe and Pagan Amum was later reported to be held in house arrest. Other arrests included those of Kiir's critics. Information Minister Micheal Makuei Leuth claimed that Machar had left Juba with some soldiers and stolen cattle.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: President Salva Kiir spoke on national television on 16 December, having abandoned his signature suit and cowboy hat for military fatigues, and said, while surrounded by government officials, that the coup had been foiled and that it was orchestrated by a group of soldiers allied with the former vice president. On 21 December, the government announced its unconditional readiness to hold peace talks with any rebel group, including Machar In a Christmas message, Kiir warned of the fighting becoming a tribal conflict. Chief Whip and MP from the large state of Eastern Equatoria, Tulio Odongi Ayahu, announced his support for Kiir. The SPLM-affiliated youth group condemned the attempted overthrow of Kiir.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: Machar spoke for the first time since the crisis began on 18 December in which he said he was not aware of any coup attempt, but instead blamed Kiir for fabricating such allegations of a coup in order to settle political scores and target political opponents. He accused Kiir of inciting ethnic tensions to achieve his ends. He also said the violence was started by the presidential guard, which was founded by Kiir and told to report directly to him instead of the military. He refused to deny or acknowledge support for Gadet but that "the rebels are acting in the right direction." On 22 December, Machar said he wanted to be the leader of the country and that "his" forces would maintain control of the country's oil fields.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: Former undersecretary of culture, Jok Madut Jok, warned that the violence could "escalate into tragic acts of ethnic cleansing".


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: Fighting also occurred near the presidential palace and other areas of Juba. Ajak Bullen, a doctor at a military hospital, said that "so far, we have lost seven soldiers who died while they were waiting for medical attention and a further 59 who were killed outside." The International Crisis Group (ICG) also reported that Machar's house had been bombarded and "surrounded, including with tanks", while "parts of Juba have been reduced to rubble". The local "Radio Tamazuj" suggested UNMISS were absent from the streets in Juba and that December 2013's president of the UN Security Council had announced that the peacekeepers would not intervene in the fighting. A semblance of calm returned to Juba by 18 December. The UN reported that 13,000 people were taking refuge from the fighting in its two compounds in Juba. Violence in Juba reportedly calmed, though there were unconfirmed reports of several students killed by security personnel at Juba University on 18 December. On 10 February 2014, the UN base in Juba was surrounded by armed government troops and policemen, who demanded that the UN surrender Nuer civilians sheltering there.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: The UN announced that thousands of people had sought refuge within the UN's compounds. Two Indian peacekeepers were killed helping to protect 36 civilians in Akobo, Jonglei, when they were attacked by about 2,000 armed Nuer youths. The attackers were apparently intending to kill the civilians sheltering at the UN base, in a move condemned by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: About 200 employees of petroleum operators, of which the three largest were China National Petroleum Corp, ONGC Videsh and Petronas, sought refuge at an UN compound in Bentiu. This followed the deaths of 16 such workers, five workers at a field in Unity State on 18 December and another 11 at the Thar Jath field the next day. Government soldiers then took control of the fields and said that production continued normally. The rebels had reportedly taken over at least some of the country's oil fields amidst fears of Sudan intervening in the country.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: Fighting broke out in Pariang on 20 December, when some SPLA troops defected to the rebels. On 24 December, an estimated 400 defectors moved southwards from Jaw, the SPLA's northernmost operating base towards positions held by SPLA forces loyal to Koang Chuol.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: As of 26 December, the SPLA claimed they had destroyed 37 rebel vehicles in Pariang county, which remains in the hands of the SPLA.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: Following calls from the government of South Sudan, Uganda deployed its troops to Juba to assist in securing the airport and evacuating Ugandan citizens. On 21 December a flight of three US Air Force V-22 Osprey aircraft en route to evacuate US nationals from Bor took small arms fire from the ground, injuring four Navy SEALs. South Sudan blamed the rebels for the incident. A second evacuation attempt by four UN and civilian helicopters succeeded in evacuating about 15 US nationals, Sudanese-Americans and those working in humanitarian operations, from the United Nations base in Bor on 22 December. Although the base was surrounded by 2,000 armed youths, a rebel commander had promised safe passage for the evacuation. In total 380 officials and private citizens as well as about 300 foreign citizens were flown to Nairobi. The United States military announced a repositioning of its forces in Africa to prepare for possible further evacuations as the United Nations warned of the planned strikes. Many of these reports have come from the hundreds of foreign oil company employees gathered at the airport to leave. Five Ugandan and ten Kenyan citizens were also evacuated from Bor and then Juba before leaving the country. The Kenyan government said that there were 30,000 of its nationals in the country and that 10,000 had applied for emergency documents.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: On 22 December 2013, U.S. and Nigerian envoys were on their way to Juba to try to negotiate a solution. The U.S. envoy to the country, Donald Booth, saying that having spoken to Kiir, the latter was committed to talks with Machar without preconditions. Machar said that the rebel side was ready for talks that could possibly occur in Ethiopia. He said he wanted free and fair elections and that it is best if Kiir leaves. His conditions for talks were that his "comrades", including Rebecca Garang and Pagan Amum, be released from detention to be evacuated to Addis Ababa. Information minister Makuei said those involved in the coup would not be released and dismissed claim that the rebels had taken the major oil fields.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: Fighting had spread to Bor by 17 December, where three people had died and over 1,000 people sought refuge in the UN base. The situation escalated when around 2,000 soldiers led by Peter Gadet revolted and attacked the city of Bor on 18 December. The rebels quickly seized much of the settlement. Ethnically targeted violence was also reported and the Dinka feared a repeat of the Bor massacre. On 23 December, Aguer said the army was on its way to Jonglei and Unity to retake territory. On 24 December, the government of South Sudan claimed to have recaptured Bor. Most of Gadet's troops had left by the end of the day. On 27 December, Machar condemned Ugandan interference, claimed Ugandan air forces bombed their positions in Bor. There was also tension at the UN compound in the city as armed fighters had entered it and about 17,000 civilians seeking protection were at the location. The UN also reported that their base was being reinforced with additional protective barriers, including the area hosting the displaced civilians. On 29 December, a UN helicopter spotted a group of armed youths from Bor but could not confirm their numbers. On 30 December, South Sudanese government troops clashed with ethnic White Army militiamen and other rebel factions loyal to Machar late on Monday near Bor. By 31 December, the rebels were reaching the center of Bor and by 2 January, Nhial admitted government withdrawal from the city and Kiir declared a state of emergency in Unity and Jonglei states, where rebels controlled the capitals. On 4 January intense battles involving tanks and artillery were reported on the outskirts of Bor, which by this time had changed hands three times since fighting in as many weeks.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: Rebels claimed that a South Sudanese army general has been killed in the fighting, as his convoy approaching Bor was ambushed. The SPLA brought large numbers of reinforcements bringing the total SPLA troops Bor close to 2,000.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: On 25 December, fighting continued in Malakal, according to Ateny, who added that the oil fields were secured and denied rebels had taken over the city. On 27 December, the army said it had taken back full control of Malakal, the administrative center of Upper Nile, a state which currently supplied all of South Sudan's crude oil, after fighting shut down oil fields in other areas. By February 2014, the UN compound in Malakal housed around 20,000 people who had fled the conflict. Rebel forces claimed to have recaptured Malakal from the army, while army forces claimed to have held the city after heavy fighting. The UNMISS reported that on 14 January heavy fighting broke out near the UN compound in Malakal. One civilian was killed and dozens of civilians were wounded in that attack. Civilians emptied out of the town, and at least 200 drowned when their overcrowded boat sank as they tried to flee across the Nile. On 15 January, fighting continued in the streets of Malakal with both sides claiming to control the town. On 18 February 2014, fighting between members of various ethnicities broke out within the UN Mission in the capital city of Upper Nile State, Malakal, resulting in ten deaths.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: In Bentiu, capital of Unity State, SPLA 4th Division divided along factional lines with troops, including division commander James Koang, clashed with loyal troops, who retreated from their barracks on 20 December 2013. The next day, Koang announced allegiance to Machar and declared an 'interim government' of the state and state governor Nugen Monytuel fled Mayom county. The loyal soldiers retreated to the outlying Abiemnom County and were reinforced by Western Bahr el Ghazal's 5th division and the Northern Bahr el Ghazal's 3rd division to take back Bentiu. South Sudan Liberation Movement (SSLA) militia forces, led by the Bul Nuer commander Matthew Puljang, decided to support them. By 27 December, a combined force of SSLA and SPLA seized Mayom, 90 kilometers from Bentiu, on 29 December. Peter Dak, the rebel commander in Mayom, announced that he fled the town on 7 January. Around 8 January 2014, the SPLA forces advanced on Bentiu, which had been mostly evacuated, securing the city on 10 January 2014.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: In January 2014, direct negotiations between both sides, as mediated by "IGAD +" (which includes the eight regional nations as well as the African Union, United Nations, China, the EU, USA, UK and Norway), began. In order to ensure a stronger negotiating position, South Sudanese troops fighting alongside Ugandan troops retook every town held by the rebels, including Bor on 18 January and Malakal on 20 January. Government troops were assisted by Ugandan troops, against the wishes of IGAD who feared a wider regional conflict. Uganda announced they had joined the fight in January after previously denying it, saying the troops were to only to evacuate Ugandan nationals. On 23 January 2014, representatives of the Government of South Sudan and representatives of rebel leader Riek Machar reached a ceasefire agreement in Ethiopia. The deal also stipulated that 11 officials close to rebel leader Machar should be released.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: Only a few days later, the rebels accused that a government takeover of Leer was a deliberate attempt to sabotage the second round of talks that were to start later in February. The rebels threatened to boycott the second round talks, demanding the release of four remaining political prisoners and the withdrawal of Ugandan troops. Later in February, the rebels attacked the strategic government controlled Malakal and the government admitted withdrawal and then, in March, the rebels admitted withdrawal, changing hands for the fifth time. In April, rebels claimed once again to have seized Bentiu and by 19 April South Sudan's army admitted to have "lost communication" with commanders battling in Unity state. The 2014 Bentiu massacre occurred on 15 April in Bentiu when more than 200 civilians, all said to have been Dinkas, were massacred by Nuer rebels. A mosque, hospital, and church were targeted where civilians had sought refuge from the fighting. After the fall of Bentiu, Salva Kiir sacked Army chief James Hoth Mai and replaced him with Paul Malong Awan.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: In May 2014, the government signed a peace agreement called the Greater Pibor Administrative Area peace agreement with the largely Murle group, the Cobra Faction of the South Sudan Democratic Movement, led by David Yau Yau. As part of the agreement, a semi-autonomous area called the Greater Pibor Administrative Area was created to increase the minority populations within its borders and David Yau Yau was appointed chief administrator, equivalent to state governor. In February 2015, a largely Murle group, unhappy with the agreement with the government, split off from the Cobra Faction to form the Greater Pibor Forces and declared allegiance to Machar. One of their disagreements with the government was the alleged provoking of the Murle to fight against anti-government Nuer groups in Jonglei. In April 2016, Murle fighters in South Sudan crossed over to Gambela in Ethiopia and killed more than 200 people, stole 2000 cattle and kidnapped more than 100 children from the Nuer tribe.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: On 9 May 2014, President Salva Kiir and Riek Machar signed the second ceasefire in Addis Ababa, a one-page agreement recommitting to the first ceasefire. Hostilities were to end in 24 hours while a permanent ceasefire would be worked on and it promised to open humanitarian corridors and allow "30 days of tranquility" so farmers can sow crops and prevent famine. Hours after the ceasefire was to be in effect, both sides accused each other of violating the ceasefire. On 11 June 2014, both parties agreed to begin talks on the formation of a transitional government within 60 days and to a third ceasefire refraining from combat during this period. However, the talks collapsed as both sides boycotted the talks, and by 16 June, the ceasefire was reported to have been violated. In August 2014, Kiir and leaders of South Sudan's neighbouring states sign a roadmap leading to a transitional government of national unity. Machar refuses to sign up, accusing leaders in the IGAD, a regional group involved in the negotiations, of tilting the process in favour of Kiir. In November 2014, both parties renew the much-broken ceasefire and IGAD mediators give them 15 days to reach a power-sharing deal, threatening sanctions if they fail. This third ceasefire breaks down 24 hours later with fighting in the oil-rich north. In January 2015, rival factions sign a reunification agreement in Arusha, Tanzania, but fighting continued. In February 2015, Kiir and Machar signed a document on "Areas of Agreement" for a future transitional government of national unity and recommitted themselves to the ceasefire. The talks later collapsed and fighting broke out in March.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: Arms dealers sold weapons to both sides. A series of shadowy networks emerged to sell weapons with the principal sources of arms being Egypt, Uganda, Ukraine, Israel and China. In July 2014, the Chinese arms manufacturer Norinco delivered a shipment of 95,000 assault rifles and 20 million rounds of ammunition to the government, providing enough bullets to kill every person in South Sudan twice over. Not content with the arms shipment from Norinco, the government asked if it was possible for Norinco to set up a factory in South Sudan, a request that was declined. An American arms dealer, Erik Prince, sold to the government for US$43 million three Russian-made Mi-24 attack helicopters and two L-39 jets. The aircraft were flown by Hungarian mercenaries with one of the mercenaries, Tibor Czingali, posting photographs on his Facebook account of bullet holes in his jet. In Spain, the police arrested a Franco-Polish arms dealer, Pierre Dadak, at his luxury villa in Ibiza. Documents found at the villa showed that Dadak had a contract with the rebels to sell them 40,000 AK-47 assault rifles, 30,000 PKM machine guns and 200,000 boxes of ammunition. The government's National Security Service in July 2014 signed a contract worth US$264 million with a Seychelles-based shell company to buy 50,000 AK-47s, 20 million bullets and 30 tanks. The demand for weapons had a disastrous impact on the elephant population as the rebels slaughtered elephants to sell their tusks on the black market to earn money to buy arms. In China and other east Asian nations, tusks are mistakenly believed to have medical qualities, leading to a flourishing and profitable black ivory trade market. It was reported there was a "crisis" for elephants who were decimated. The number of known elephants in South Sudan declined from 2,300 in 2013 to 730 in 2016. The arms-buying spree took place against the economic collapse of South Sudan. By end of 2014, South Sudan achieved the dubious honor of being ranked the number one failed state in the entire world.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: Johnson Olony led a militia that planned to be integrated into the SPLM government forces, but he switched to oppose the government when the government announced plans to carve up new states which the Shilluk felt was to divide their homeland. On 16 May 2015, Olony's militia and elements of the SPLM-IO captured Upper Nile's capital, Malakal, as well as Anakdiar and areas around Kodok. His Shilluk militia group now called itself the 'Agwelek forces'. The group said they want to run their affairs independently from others in Upper Nile State, and SPLM-IO backed away from claims that it is in charge of Olony's group and stated that Olony's interests simply coincides with theirs. SPLM-IO said they understood the feeling from the Shilluk community that they wanted a level of independence and that that was the reason the SPLM-IO last year created Fashoda state for the Shilluk kingdom and appointed Tijwog Aguet, a Shilluk, as governor.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: On 11 August 2015, Gabriel Tang, Gathoth Gatkuoth, the former SPLM-IO logistics chief, and rebel commander Peter Gadet, announced that they and other powerful commanders had split from Riek Machar, and rejected ongoing peace talks, announcing that they would now combat Riek Machar's forces in addition to government forces. Gathoth Gatkuoth states he wishes for a President who is neither Dinka nor Nuer and intended to register his group as a political group called the "Federal Democractic Party" and that their forces would be called the "South Sudan National Army".


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: In late August 2015, Salva Kiir signed a peace agreement previously signed by Riek Machar called the "Compromise Peace Agreement" mediated by IGAD +. The agreement would make Riek Machar the vice-president again. The agreement established the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (JMEC) responsible for monitoring and overseeing implementation of the agreement. On 20 October 2015, Uganda announced that it will voluntarily withdraw its soldiers from South Sudan, in accordance to that peace agreement. In January 2016, David Yau Yau dissolved the Cobra Faction of the South Sudan Democratic Movement and joined the SPLM. In January Gathoth Gatkuoth joined with the government but was dismissed by his Federal Democratic Party for doing so. In April 2016, as part of the peace deal, Machar returned to Juba with troops loyal to him and was sworn in as vice-president.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: On Christmas Eve 2015, Salva Kiir announced he was going forward with a plan to increase the number of states from 10 to 28 and then, five days later, swore in all new governors appointed by him and considered loyal to him. The new borders give Kiir's Dinkas a majority in strategic locations. Some observers feel that the government is holding on to the peace deal to maintain international aid while backing campaigns to increase Dinka control over land and resources traditionally held by other groups. As the predominantly Shilluk Agwelek forces joined, in July 2016, with the SPLM-IO, which entered the peace agreement with the government, some Shilluk felt dissatisfied. After the establishment of the new states, a new group made up of mostly Shilluk formed the "Tiger Faction New Forces" (TFNF) in October 2015, led by General Yohanis Okiech. They rejected joining the SPLM-IO or the peace agreement and called for the restoration of the original 1956 borders of the Shilluk territories.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: By this point, the Dinka militia leaders loyal to Kiir had grown rich by South Sudanese standards by confiscating cattle (still the main currency unit in rural areas) from the Nuer, giving them a vested interest in keeping the Nuer down. In South Sudan, ownership of cattle is closely tied to a sense of masculinity and a man who does not own cattle is not only poor, but also felt to lack manliness. Nuer men, deprived of their cattle, thirsted for revenge together with a burning desire to reclaim lost wealth, status and their sense of masculine pride, leading them to join rebel groups. Furthermore, many of the Dinka leaders, now flushed with cattle, began to push into the province of Equatoria to seize the rich farmland for their cattle herds, causing the local farmers to fight back. The British journalist Peter Martell wrote the war had started out as a conflict within the elite over control of the oil revenue, but had "evolved into anarchy, opportunism, and revenge" as the violence had acquired a momentum of its own with multiple clan leaders raising their own militias to battle over control of the cattle herds and land, struggles fought with little reference to either Kiir or Machar.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: Notably, the war ceased to be an ethnic struggle, instead becoming a clan conflict as both Dinka and Nuer clans were fought each another. There were Dinka and Nuer clans professing loyalty to Kiir and Dinka and Nuer clans professing loyalty to Machar. However, these protestations of loyalty should not be taken at face value. One clan leader who raised a militia, James Koach, who was nominally loyal to Machar told Martell in 2016: "I don't care what deal they sign in Juba. The deals are with the government and where is the government? They mean nothing to us and make no difference here. They took our wives and killed our children. My family's gone, so what do I care if I live or die? They took our cows. You who come from outside don't know what that means. Our cows are everything, because without them how do we survive? They are trying to wipe us out, to remove us from the earth". By 2016, it was estimated that there were at least 20,000 child soldiers fighting in South Sudan, and many experts on the subject such as the retired Canadian General Roméo Dallaire who campaigns against the use of child soldiers warned that having so many child soldiers would have a long-term deleterious impact on South Sudan.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: When Dinka cattle herders, allegedly backed by the SPLA, occupied farmland, Azande youth rose up into militias mostly with the Arrow Boys, whose leader Alfred Karaba Futiyo Onyang declared allegiance to SPLM-IO and claimed to have occupied parts of Western Equatoria. A new rebel faction calling itself the South Sudan Federal Democratic Party (different from but related to the larger similarly named rebel faction led by Peter Gadet, Gabriel Chang and Gathoth Gatkuoth), made up mostly of Lotuko people formed during this time due to growing perceptions of mistreatment by the "Dinka" government and took over a SPLA outpost in Eastern Equatoria. In February 2016, Dinka SPLA soldiers attacked a UN camp targeting Nuer and Shilluk who accused the government of annexing parts of their ancestral land. About a year after the peace agreement was signed, groups of ethnic Dinka youth and the SPLA targeted members of the Fertit in Wau, killing dozens and forcing more than 120,000 to flee their homes. As result, local Fertit tribal militias and groups allied with the SPLM-IO rose in rebellion, causing heavy clashes in the originally relatively peaceful Wau State, which continued for months.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: Violence erupted in July 2016 after an attack outside of where President Kiir and Riek Machar were meeting in Juba. Fighting spread throughout the city. Over 300 people were killed and over 40 people were injured, including civilians. In the following week, 26,000 fled to neighboring Uganda. Indian Air Force evacuated Indian citizens from the country under Operation Sankat Mochan. A spokesman for Riek Machar announced that South Sudan was "back to war" and that opposition forces based in areas of Juba had been attacked by forces loyal to the President. Fighting involving heavy machine guns, mortars and tanks was reported in several parts of Juba on 10 July. Gun battles broke out near the airport and a UN base forcing the airport to close for safety reasons. President Salva Kiir and first Vice-President Riek Machar ordered a ceasefire after days of intense violence. Machar fled Juba after the clashes.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: After a 48-hour ultimatum given by Kiir for Machar to return to Juba to progress with the peace agreement talks passed, the SPLA-IO in Juba appointed lead negotiator Taban Deng Gai to replace Machar and the government accepted him as acting vice-president. Machar said any talks would be illegal because Machar had previously fired Gai. Machar, with assistance from the UN, went to exile, first to Kinshasa then to Sudan and then to South Africa, where he was allegedly kept in house arrest.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: After Machar's flight, Kiir sent his soldiers to rob the Central Bank of South Sudan at night, and put up $5 million US dollars stored in the central bank's vaults as a reward to anyone who could kill Machar. Kiir's spokesman admitted to what had been done, claiming it was justified under the circumstances.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: In September 2016, Machar announced a call for armed struggle against Kiir and in November, he said SPLM-IO would not participate in a workshop organized by JMEC, saying the peace agreement needs to be revised. In September, Lam Akol, leader of the largest opposition party, Democratic Change, announced a new faction called the National Democratic Movement (NDM) to overthrow Kiir. Yohanis Okiech, who led the largely Shilluk Tiger Faction New Forces, which split from Uliny's Agwelek forces, joined the predominantly Shilluk NDM as deputy chief of general staff. In the same month, the Cobra Faction of the South Sudan Democratic Movement, now led by Khalid Boutros declared war against the government.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: On the international front, the African Union, after the Juba clashes, backed plans for the deployment of troops from regional nations with a strong mandate similar to that of the United Nations Force Intervention Brigade that swiftly defeated the M23 rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo as UN troops presently within the country have struggled to protect civilians. In August 2016, the UN Security Council authorized such a force for Juba. The government initially opposed the move, claiming a violation of sovereignty. With a resolution threatening an arms embargo if it blocked the new deployment, the government accepted the move with conditions such as the troops not being from neighboring countries, claiming they have interests at stake. They also accepted a hybrid court to investigate war crimes. The US pushed for an arms embargo and sanctions on Machar and army chief Paul Malong Awan through the Security Council, but it failed to receive enough votes to pass in December 2016. After an independent report into UNMISS's failure to protect civilians in the Juba clashes, Secretary-General Ban sacked the commander of the UN force Lt Gen Johnson Mogoa Kimani Ondieki in November and then the general's native Kenya declared that it would pull out of the key role it plays in the peace process and withdrew its more than 1,000 peacekeepers from UNMISS before sending the troops back in with the start of the new UN secretary general's tenure. On 30 April 2017, the first batch of the Regional Protection Force arrived under Brigadier General Jean Mupenzi of Rwanda with the first phase of troops arriving in August.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: Among regional powers, Kiir met, in January 2017, with Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi who also met with Kiir's ally Ugandan President Museveni. Egypt had previously rejected the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam that Egypt feels would diminish its share of the Nile river and Ethiopian Prime Minister, Hailemariam Desalegn had accused Egyptian institutions of supporting terrorist groups in Ethiopia. SPLM-IO alleged that a "dirty deal" was struck between Kiir and Egypt against Ethiopia while Kiir denied any diplomatic row. SPLM-IO accused the Egyptian Air Force of bombing their positions on 4 February 2017 while Egypt denied it. As a result of Sudan's effective counterinsurgency strategy in the War in Darfur, the biggest rebel faction, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), retreated to South Sudan and became involved in mercenary and criminal activities according to a UN report. SPLM-IO accused JEM as well as another rebel group in Sudan, SPLM-North of joining the conflict on the side of Juba.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: Since the July clashes, the fighting spread from the Greater Upper Nile to include the previously safe haven of Equatoria, where the bulk of SPLM-IO forces went for shelter from the clashes in Juba, located in Equatoria. As Equatoria is the agricultural belt of the country, the number of people facing starvation soared to 6 million. In November 2016, SPLM-IO claimed to have taken of the towns Bazi, Morobo and Kaljak. While the rebels were mostly in retreat in the Upper Nile front, the rebels had gained ground on the Equatorian front where the SPLA was mostly restricted to its garrisons. This was attributed to local self-defence militias becoming increasingly integrated and the depopulation of towns resulting in the army having fewer supplies even while the rebels were already adapted to the bush. However, after the fall of the main rebel headquarters of Pagak in the summer, the Southern headquarters in Lasu fell on 18 December 2017. In late May, Kiir declared a unilateral ceasefire, which was taken with suspicion by others as it came after the late April government offensive that retook much territory and before the rainy season that would have anyway reduced fighting. Three days after the government retook Lasu it signed another ceasefire with the rebels in December 2017.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: The other major front of the conflict remained the Greater Upper Nile, where government forces mostly fought John Uliny's SPLA-IO allied Agwelek forces. In a study of casualties up to April 2018, the deaths from violence peaked during this time between 2016 and 2017. In October 2016, the rebels attempted to take Malakal and by January 2017, fighting there had led to civilians deserting the country's second-largest city. In fighting in the Bahr el Ghazal region, pro-government militia Mathiang Anyoor attacked Wau killing up to 50 civilians in April 2017. In the same month, SPLA-IO captured Raja, the capital of Lol State, while state governor Hassan claimed the city was immediately retaken. A counteroffensive by the government starting in late April 2017 reversed most rebel gains, captured the capital of the Shilluk kingdom, Kodok, from Uliny and closed in on Pagak, which had been the SPLA-IO headquarters since 2014. In July 2017, SPLA along with forces loyal to Taban Deng Gai took over the rebel-held town of Maiwut. The government took over Pagak in August 2017 while the IO rebels still held territory in traditional Nuer areas of Panyijar Country in Unity state and rural areas of Jonglei and Akobo state. SPLA-IO forces under Machar counterattacked Taban Deng Gai's force, in an attempt to retake Pagak.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: An additional dimension of the conflict became the fighting between the opposition loyal to Machar and those supporting Taban Deng, largely within the Nuer majority former state of Unity. Observers felt that Kiir had given up on negotiations by talking with Taban Deng instead of Machar during the peace talks, as Taban is seen by many in the opposition as a traitor. As part of the "National Dialogue" initiated by Kiir in December 2016 where any former rebels who return to the capital will be given amnesty, about a dozen SPLM-IO officials defected to the government in January 2017. Gabriel Tang, who was one of the generals to have defected from Machar during the peace talks in 2015, now allied with Lam Akol's largely Shilluk NDM and became its chief of staff. In January 2017 Tang was killed in clashes with the SPLM-IO allied Agwelek forces led by John Uliny, a move the SPLM-IO proclaimed as a warning to rival rebel factions. Two days later, Olony's forces ambushed and killed Yohanis Okiech, destroying the Tiger Faction New Forces.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: In February 2017, Deputy head of logistics Lt. Gen. Thomas Cirillo Swaka resigned, accusing Kiir of ethnic bias. This led to a series of high ranking resignations, including minister of Labour Lt. Gen. Gabriel Duop Lam who also pledged allegiance to Machar. Swaka formed a new rebel group called the National Salvation Front (NAS) in March 2017. In March 2017, Cirillo, a Bari from Equatoria, got additional support as SPLM-IO's Western Bahr al Ghazal commander, Faiz Ismail Futur, resigned to joined NAS while there are reports of six SPLM-IO shadow governors from Equatoria defecting to NAS. In the same month, head of the Cobra Faction Khalid Boutros dissolved the Cobra Faction and merged it with Gen. Thomas Cirillo's NAS and claimed opposition groups are in consultation to unite their ranks. In July 2017, John Kenyi Loburon, SPLA-IO's commander of Central Equatoria state switched to join NAS, claiming favoritism towards Nuers in SPLA-IO and then as NAS general in the same month, fought with SPLA-IO in Central Equatoria in the first clashes between the two groups. By November 2017, NAS captured areas in Kajo Keji from SPLM-IO, before both groups were routed by the government. With broad support at its inception, by 2018, many had come to view NAS as simply "the Bari".


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: Cracks were appearing along clan lines among the ruling Dinka. Kiir's Dinka of Warrap were in a feud with the Dinka of Paul Malong Awan's Aweil, who contributed the bulk of the government's fighting force in the war. Around this time, the largely Dinka South Sudan Patriotic Army (SSPA) was formed in Northern Bahr el Ghazal, with the backing of powerful figures such as former presidential advisor Costello Garang Ring and allegedly Malong Awan. In May 2017, Kiir reduced the power of the chief of staff position and fired its powerful Dinka nationalist Malong Awan and replaced him with General James Ajongo Mawut, who is not a Dinka but a Luo. Awan left Juba with most of his Mathiang Anyoor militia while other militia members reportedly joined SSPA. By the end of 2017, SSPA had claimed to have captured territory around Aweil and was seen as one of the biggest threats to Juba. Awan was accused of plotting a rebellion and was detained but then released following pressure from the Dinka lobbying group, the Dinka Council of Elders. SPLM-IO rebels who were loyal to Malong Awan raided Juba in January 2018. In April of that year, Awan announced the launch of a rebel group named South Sudan United Front (SS-UF), which claimed to push for federalism.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: By March 2018, nine opposition groups, including NAS, NDM of Lam Akol, FDP of Gabriel Chang, SSPA of Costello Ring and SSLM but notably not including SPLM-IO, had joined to form the South Sudan Opposition Alliance (SSOA) to collectively negotiate with the government.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: The United States put additional pressure on Juba by successfully passing an arms embargo on South Sudan in July 2018 through UN Security Council, following a 2016 failure, with Russia and China abstaining from voting this time. Additionally, with neighboring Sudan facing economic troubles and relying on revenue from transporting oil from South Sudan, the Sudanese government, with a mix of incentives and coercion, brought Kiir and SPLA-IO to hold talks in Khartoum. In June 2018, they signed another ceasefire where they agreed to form a transitional government for the 36 months leading to national elections and to African Union and IGAD peacekeepers to deploy to South Sudan and state boundaries would be drawn by commission chaired by a non-South Sudanese; this ceasefire was violated just a few hours after coming into effect, when pro-government forces attacked rebels in Wau State. SPLM-IO protested when the Parliament, where the President's party holds a majority of seats, extended the President's term and that of other officials by three years. However, they eventually agreed to share power in what was called the "Revitalised transitional government of national unity (R-TGoNU)" with Machar again to be one of five Vice Presidents and the 550 seat parliament to be divided with 332 going to Kiir's faction, 128 to Machar's group and the rest to other groups. An SSOA faction led by NAS's Thomas Cirillo rejected the deal citing their small share in the power sharing agreement. As part of amnesty offered to groups following the peace deal, in August 2018, Brigadier General Chan Garang, claiming to lead a group of rebel soldiers from Malong's SS-UF, came back to the government along with 300 rebel soldiers in what was seen as a weakening of SS-UF. In September 2018, South Sudan's President Salva Kiir signed a peace deal with main rebel leader Riek Machar formally ending a five-year civil war. Celebrations in Juba happened on 31 October 2018; however, there were criticisms of the peace deal that it failed to address the underlying issues of the conflict—the concentration of power in the hands of the president—and that the status quo will continue to produce violence. As part of the agreement, Machar was supposed to return to Juba in May to become vice president again, citing security concerns, and asked for an extension of six months, which was accepted by Kiir. Six months later, both sides agreed to delay the formation of a transitional unity government by 100 days. The most contentious issue delaying the formation of the unity government was whether South Sudan should keep 32 or return to 10 states. On 14 February 2020, Kiir announced South Sudan would return to 10 states in addition to three administrative areas of Abyei, Pibor and Ruweng, and on 22 February Riek Machar was sworn in as first vice president for the creation of the unity government. The dissolution of parliament in order to bring a new parliament that shares power with the rebel groups, as called for by the 2018 peace deal, occurred in May 2021 after much delay.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: NAS became the main antagonist of the government, clashing with the government in the Central and Western part of Equatorial province starting in January 2019, leading to about 8,000 people fleeing Yei State. NAS and FDP also alleged being attacked by SPLM-IO in Upper Nile State. The government continued to import arms. In August 2019, three rebel groups who were not signed up to the peace agreement—that of Cirillo's, whose rebel group was now known as South Sudan National Democratic Alliance (SSNDA), SS-UF of Paul Malong and the Real Sudan People's Liberation Movement (R- SPLM) of Pagan Amum, resolved to unite their activities under "United South Sudanese Opposition Movements" (SSOMA). In January 2020, the Community of Sant'Egidio mediated a Rome Peace Declaration between the SSOMA and the South Sudanese government.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: Disarmament campaigns led by the government has led to resistance, with clashes killing more than 100 people in two days in north-central Tonj in August 2020. Localized inter-ethnic conflict reduced during the civil war but escalated in the last few years as it is argued political elites bound by the deal have instead channelled weapons to community militias as a proxy war while others argue the power vacuum caused by the change in number of states led to violence. While cattle raiding has been going on for years, some residents stated militias are targeting civilians more such as one attack that killed 287 people in Uror County in May 2020.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: In August 2021, Machar was deposed as head of the SPLM-IO and its chief of staff, First Lieutenant Simon Gatwech Dual was declared interim leader. Later in the month, clashes between forces loyal to Machar and Dual led to both sides reporting dozens of deaths.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: The government was accused by the US and aid groups among others of using starvation as a tactic of collective punishment for populations that support rebels by intentionally blocking aid.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: Ateny Wek Ateny, president's spokesman told to news conference, claimed that rebel troops went into the hospital in the town of Bor and slaughtered 126 out of 127 patients. Apparently an elderly man was blind and rebels spared him. On 31 January 2014 in violation of the cease fire agreement, the signed Government troops attacked town of Leer in Unity State, forcing 240 Staff and patients of Doctors Without Borders in Leer to flee into the bush. Thousands of civilians fled to the bush. Doctors Without Borders lost contact with two thirds of its staff formerly located in Leer. It is believed that the town was attacked by government troops as it is the home of former Vice President Riek Machar.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: On 18 April, UN said that at least 58 people were killed and more than 100 others wounded in an attack against one of its bases in South Sudan sheltering thousands of civilians. On 17 April 2014, 58 people were killed in an attack on the UN base in Bor. Forty-eight of those killed were civilians, while 10 were among the attackers. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon emphasised that any attack on UN peacekeepers constituted "a war crime", while the UN Security Council expressed "outrage" at the attack. In late 2016, in a government attack on Yei, three villages were destroyed with 3,000 homes burned in a single village.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: There were ethnic undertones to the conflict with the SPLM and SPLA, which has been accused of being dominated by the Dinka. A Dinka lobbying group known as the "Jieng Council of Elders" was often accused of being behind hardline SPLM policies. While the army used to attract men from across tribes, during the war, the SPLA had largely constituted soldiers from the Dinka stronghold of Bahr el Ghazal, and the army was often referred to within the country as "the Dinka army". Much of the worst atrocities committed are blamed on a group known as "Dot Ke Beny" (Rescue the President) or "Mathiang Anyoor" (brown caterpillar), while the SPLA claim that it is just another battalion. Immediately after the alleged coup in 2013, Dinka troops, and particularly Mathiang Anyoor, were accused of carrying out pogroms, assisted by guides, in house to house searches of Nuer suburbs, while similar door to door searches of Nuers were reported in government held Malakal. About 240 Nuer men were killed at a police station in Juba's Gudele neighborhood. During the fighting in 2016-17 in the Upper Nile region between the SPLA and the SPLA-IO allied Upper Nile faction of Uliny, Shilluk in Wau Shilluk were forced from their homes and Yasmin Sooka, chairwoman of the Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan, claimed that the government was engaging in "social engineering" after it transported 2,000 mostly Dinka people to the abandoned areas. The king of the Shilluk Kingdom, Kwongo Dak Padiet, claimed his people were at risk of physical and cultural extinction. In the Equatoria region, Dinka soldiers were accused of targeting civilians on ethnic lines against the dozens of ethnic groups among the Equatorians, with much of the atrocities being blamed on Mathiang Anyoor. Adama Dieng, the U.N.'s Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, warned of genocide after visiting areas of fighting in Yei. Khalid Boutros of the Cobra faction as well as officials of the Murle-led Boma State accuse the SPLA of aiding attacks by Dinka from Jonglei state against Boma state, and soldiers from Jonglei captured Kotchar in Boma in 2017.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: The SPLM-IO is predominantly Nuer and its head, Machar, had previously committed the Bor massacre of mostly Dinka civilians in 1991. In 2014, the Bentiu massacre occurred when Bentiu was recaptured by rebels April 2014 and 200 people were killed in a mosque. Rebels separated the people and picked out those from opposing ethnic groups who they then executed.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: Since the conflict began, more than 17,000 children were used in the conflict, with 1,300 recruited in 2016.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: Reported incidents of sexual violence rose 60% in 2016, with Mundri in Equatoria's Amadi State being called the epicenter of the problem. A UN survey found that 70% of women who were sheltering in camps had been raped since the beginning of the conflict, with the vast majority of rapists being police and soldiers, and that 80% had witnessed someone else getting sexually assaulted. The SPLA were reported to have recruited militias and young men in Unity state to take back rebel-held areas. They were given guns and their pay was what they could loot and rape the women they captured. Martell described the rampant sexual violence as not incidental to the war, but an integral and central part of the strategies of both sides, as "a tool for ethnic cleansing, as a means of humiliation and revenge". Nor were foreign aid workers safe, with gunmen belonging to Kiir's Tiger Force stormed an UN relief camp at the Terrain Hotel on 11 July 2016, killed the journalist John Gatluak for being a Nuer, and proceeded to gang-rape five foreign aid workers as a "punishment" for foreign criticism of Kiir. The UN peacekeepers from China who were supposed to be guarding the Terrain Hotel camp did nothing, despite being only a three-minute walk away from the hotel. The UN's Special Envoy for Sexual Violence, Zainab Bangura, reported that nowhere in the entire world had she had ever seen a place with worse sexual violence than South Sudan. The same study also reported that rape was not only common against women and children, but also against men as well, through the reluctance of men to admit that they had been raped made it difficult to place a precise number on the cases of male rape.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: It has been argued that with increased tension with the UN and outside powers over the government's actions there was a new shift in violence by the government against foreign peacekeepers, aid workers and diplomats. NGOs are viewed with suspicion, with the Minister of Cabinet Affairs claiming "most of the [humanitarian] agencies are here to spy on the government." During the 2016 Juba clashes, 80 to 100 South Sudanese troops entered the Terrain hotel facility and gang raped five international aid workers, with nearby peacekeepers from China refusing to help the victims. In July, soldiers ransacked a World Food Programme warehouse, stealing enough food to feed 220,000 people for a month, worth about $30 million. In July, a rocket-propelled grenade was fired near a UN peacekeepers' vehicle with two Chinese peacekeepers dying after the government refused passage to a clinic away. In December 2016, two staff members of the Norwegian Refugee Council were expelled from the country without a formal explanation. In the deadliest attack on aid workers, six aid workers were killed in an ambush on 25 March 2017 bringing the number of aid workers killed since the start of the war to at least 79.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: Violence came from the rebel side as well. On 26 August 2014, a UN Mi-8 cargo helicopter was shot down, killing three Russian crew members, and wounding another. This occurred nine days after rebel commander Peter Gadet threatened to shoot down UN aircraft, which he alleged were transporting government forces.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: During the first two days of fighting after 15 December, reports indicated that 66 soldiers had been killed in clashes in Juba, and at least 800 injured. By 23 December, the number of dead had likely surpassed 1,000 people while an aid worker in the country estimated that the death toll was most likely in the tens of thousands. The International Crisis Group reported on 9 January 2014 that up to 10,000 people were estimated to have died. In November 2014, the International Crisis Group estimated the death toll could be between 50,000 and 100,000. A senior SPLA officer stated in November 2014 that the number of government soldiers killed and wounded topped 20,000, with 10,659 soldiers killed from January to October 2014 and 9,921 seriously wounded, according to a report by Radio Tamazuj. By March 2016, after more than two years of fighting, some aid workers and officials who did not want to speak on the record said the true figure might be as high as 300,000. A study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine of deaths leading up to April 2018, reported that about 383,000 people are conservatively estimated to have died as a result of the war, while the actual may be considerably higher, with 190,000 deaths directly attributed to violence and most of the deaths in Jonglei, Unity and Equatoria.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: Two Indian UN peacekeepers were killed on 18 December when their base was stormed by rebels, and three US military Osprey aircraft were fired upon leading to four American service personnel being wounded. On 21 January 2014 Ankunda said that 9 Ugandan soldiers died in a rebel ambush at Gemeza a week before, and 12 others had been killed in total since 23 December.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: More than 4 million people have been displaced, with about 1.8 million internally displaced and about 2.5 million having fled to neighboring countries, especially Kenya, Sudan, and Uganda. This makes it the world's third-largest refugee population after Syria and Afghanistan. About 86% of the refugees are women and children. Uganda, which took more refugees in 2016 than all of those who crossed the Mediterranean into Europe, has had a notably generous policy. Refugees are allowed to work and travel and families get a 30-metre by 30-metre plot of land to build a home with additional space for farming. In just six months since being built, the Bidi Bidi Refugee Settlement in Uganda became the single largest refugee settlement on earth. However, the Ugandan government is seen as an ally of Kiir's crackdown on rebels, although with an increasing refugee population, Uganda has pressured Kiir to make peace. The largest contingent of the Refugee Olympic Team at the 2016 Summer Olympics came from South Sudan, including its flag bearer.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: After the second Juba clashes, fighting intensified in the Equatoria region. As this is the agricultural heart of the country, the number of people facing starvation in the already food insecure nation soared to 6 million. In February 2017, famine was declared in Unity state by the government and the United Nations, the first declaration of famine anywhere in the world in six years. Days after the declaration of famine, the government raised the price of a business visa from $100 to $10,000, mostly aimed at aid workers, citing a need to increase government revenue.


title: South Sudanese Civil War

text: In late 2020, with continued fighting and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as massive flooding, a report by international food security experts reported that five counties are on the brink of starvation and one county, Western Pibor, is in likely famine, meaning that at least 20% of households are facing extreme food gaps and at least 30% of children are acutely malnourished. In 2021, a "famine likely" announcement was made as not enough information was available to give a definite declaration of famine.


title: Abductive reasoning

text: Abductive reasoning (also called abduction, abductive inference, or retroduction) is a form of logical inference formulated and advanced by American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce beginning in the last third of the 19th century. It starts with an observation or set of observations and then seeks the simplest and most likely conclusion from the observations. This process, unlike deductive reasoning, yields a plausible conclusion but does not positively verify it. Abductive conclusions are thus qualified as having a remnant of uncertainty or doubt, which is expressed in retreat terms such as "best available" or "most likely". One can understand abductive reasoning as inference to the best explanation, although not all usages of the terms "abduction" and "inference to the best explanation" are exactly equivalent.


title: Abductive reasoning

text: In the 1990s, as computing power grew, the fields of law, computer science, and artificial intelligence research spurred renewed interest in the subject of abduction.


title: Abductive reasoning

text: Deductive reasoning allows deriving formula_1 from formula_2 only where formula_1 is a formal logical consequence of formula_2. In other words, deduction derives the consequences of the assumed. Given the truth of the assumptions, a valid deduction guarantees the truth of the conclusion. For example, given that "Wikis can be edited by anyone" (formula_5) and "Wikipedia is a wiki" (formula_6), it follows that "Wikipedia can be edited by anyone" (formula_1).


title: Abductive reasoning

text: Inductive reasoning is the process of inferring some general principle formula_1 from a body of knowledge formula_2, where formula_1 does not necessarily follow from formula_2. formula_2 might give us very good reason to accept formula_1, but does not ensure formula_1. For example, if all swans that we have observed so far are white, we may induce that the possibility that all swans are white is reasonable. We have good reason to believe the conclusion from the premise, but the truth of the conclusion is not guaranteed. (Indeed, it turns out that some swans are black.)


title: Abductive reasoning

text: Abductive reasoning allows inferring formula_2 as an explanation of formula_1. As a result of this inference, abduction allows the precondition formula_2 to be abducted from the consequence formula_1. Deductive reasoning and abductive reasoning thus differ in which end, left or right, of the proposition "formula_2 entails formula_1" serves as conclusion.


title: Abductive reasoning

text: As such, abduction is formally equivalent to the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent because of multiple possible explanations for formula_1. For example, in a billiard game, after glancing and seeing the "eight" ball moving towards us, we may abduce that the cue ball struck the eight ball. The strike of the cue ball would account for the movement of the eight ball. It serves as a hypothesis that explains our observation. Given the many possible explanations for the movement of the eight ball, our abduction does not leave us certain that the cue ball in fact struck the eight ball, but our abduction, still useful, can serve to orient us in our surroundings. Despite many possible explanations for any physical process that we observe, we tend to abduce a single explanation (or a few explanations) for this process in the expectation that we can better orient ourselves in our surroundings and disregard some possibilities. Properly used, abductive reasoning can be a useful source of priors in Bayesian statistics.


title: Abductive reasoning

text: In logic, explanation is accomplished through the use of a logical theory formula_22 representing a domain and a set of observations formula_23. Abduction is the process of deriving a set of explanations of formula_23 according to formula_22 and picking out one of those explanations. For formula_26 to be an explanation of formula_23 according to formula_22, it should satisfy two conditions:


title: Abductive reasoning

text: In formal logic, formula_23 and formula_26 are assumed to be sets of literals. The two conditions for formula_26 being an explanation of formula_23 according to theory formula_22 are formalized as:


title: Abductive reasoning

text: Among the possible explanations formula_26 satisfying these two conditions, some other condition of minimality is usually imposed to avoid irrelevant facts (not contributing to the entailment of formula_23) being included in the explanations. Abduction is then the process that picks out some member of formula_26. Criteria for picking out a member representing "the best" explanation include the simplicity, the prior probability, or the explanatory power of the explanation.


title: Abductive reasoning

text: A proof-theoretical abduction method for first order classical logic based on the sequent calculus and a dual one, based on semantic tableaux (analytic tableaux) have been proposed. The methods are sound and complete and work for full first order logic, without requiring any preliminary reduction of formulae into normal forms. These methods have also been extended to modal logic.


title: Abductive reasoning

text: Abductive logic programming is a computational framework that extends normal logic programming with abduction. It separates the theory formula_22 into two components, one of which is a normal logic program, used to generate formula_26 by means of backward reasoning, the other of which is a set of integrity constraints, used to filter the set of candidate explanations.


title: Abductive reasoning

text: A different formalization of abduction is based on inverting the function that calculates the visible effects of the hypotheses. Formally, we are given a set of hypotheses formula_46 and a set of manifestations formula_47; they are related by the domain knowledge, represented by a function formula_48 that takes as an argument a set of hypotheses and gives as a result the corresponding set of manifestations. In other words, for every subset of the hypotheses formula_49, their effects are known to be formula_50.


title: Abductive reasoning

text: Abduction is performed by finding a set formula_49 such that formula_52. In other words, abduction is performed by finding a set of hypotheses formula_53 such that their effects formula_50 include all observations formula_47.


title: Abductive reasoning

text: A common assumption is that the effects of the hypotheses are independent, that is, for every formula_49, it holds that formula_57. If this condition is met, abduction can be seen as a form of set covering.


title: Abductive reasoning

text: Abductive validation is the process of validating a given hypothesis through abductive reasoning. This can also be called reasoning through successive approximation. Under this principle, an explanation is valid if it is the best possible explanation of a set of known data. The best possible explanation is often defined in terms of simplicity and elegance (see Occam's razor). Abductive validation is common practice in hypothesis formation in science; moreover, Peirce claims that it is a ubiquitous aspect of thought:


title: Abductive reasoning

text: It was Peirce's own maxim that "Facts cannot be explained by a hypothesis more extraordinary than these facts themselves; and of various hypotheses the least extraordinary must be adopted." After obtaining possible hypotheses that may explain the facts, abductive validation is a method for identifying the most likely hypothesis that should be adopted.


title: Abductive reasoning

text: Subjective logic generalises probabilistic logic by including degrees of epistemic uncertainty in the input arguments, i.e. instead of probabilities, the analyst can express arguments as subjective opinions. Abduction in subjective logic is thus a generalization of probabilistic abduction described above. The input arguments in subjective logic are subjective opinions which can be binomial when the opinion applies to a binary variable or multinomial when it applies to an "n"-ary variable. A subjective opinion thus applies to a state variable formula_58 which takes its values from a domain formula_59 (i.e. a state space of exhaustive and mutually disjoint state values formula_60), and is denoted by the tuple formula_61, where formula_62 is the belief mass distribution over formula_59, formula_64 is the epistemic uncertainty mass, and formula_65 is the base rate distribution over formula_59. These parameters satisfy formula_67 and formula_68 as well as formula_69.


title: Abductive reasoning

text: Assume the domains formula_59 and formula_71 with respective variables formula_58 and formula_73, the set of conditional opinions formula_74 (i.e. one conditional opinion for each value formula_75), and the base rate distribution formula_76. Based on these parameters, the subjective Bayes' theorem denoted with the operator formula_77 produces the set of inverted conditionals formula_78 (i.e. one inverted conditional for each value formula_60) expressed by:


title: Abductive reasoning

text: The advantage of using subjective logic abduction compared to probabilistic abduction is that both aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty about the input argument probabilities can be explicitly expressed and taken into account during the analysis. It is thus possible to perform abductive analysis in the presence of uncertain arguments, which naturally results in degrees of uncertainty in the output conclusions.


title: Abductive reasoning

text: The American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce introduced abduction into modern logic. Over the years he called such inference "hypothesis", "abduction", "presumption", and "retroduction". He considered it a topic in logic as a normative field in philosophy, not in purely formal or mathematical logic, and eventually as a topic also in economics of research.


title: Abductive reasoning

text: As two stages of the development, extension, etc., of a hypothesis in scientific inquiry, abduction and also induction are often collapsed into one overarching concept — the hypothesis. That is why, in the scientific method known from Galileo and Bacon, the abductive stage of hypothesis formation is conceptualized simply as induction. Thus, in the twentieth century this collapse was reinforced by Karl Popper's explication of the hypothetico-deductive model, where the hypothesis is considered to be just "a guess" (in the spirit of Peirce). However, when the formation of a hypothesis is considered the result of a process it becomes clear that this "guess" has already been tried and made more robust in thought as a necessary stage of its acquiring the status of hypothesis. Indeed, many abductions are rejected or heavily modified by subsequent abductions before they ever reach this stage.


title: Abductive reasoning

text: Before 1900, Peirce treated abduction as the use of a known rule to explain an observation. For instance: it is a known rule that, if it rains, grass gets wet; so, to explain the fact that the grass on this lawn is wet, one "abduces" that it has rained. Abduction can lead to false conclusions if other rules that might explain the observation are not taken into accounte.g. the grass could be wet from dew. This remains the common use of the term "abduction" in the social sciences and in artificial intelligence.


title: Abductive reasoning

text: Peirce consistently characterized it as the kind of inference that originates a hypothesis by concluding in an explanation, though an unassured one, for some very curious or surprising (anomalous) observation stated in a premise. As early as 1865 he wrote that all conceptions of cause and force are reached through hypothetical inference; in the 1900s he wrote that all explanatory content of theories is reached through abduction. In other respects Peirce revised his view of abduction over the years.


title: Abductive reasoning

text: Writing in 1910, Peirce admits that "in almost everything I printed before the beginning of this century I more or less mixed up hypothesis and induction" and he traces the confusion of these two types of reasoning to logicians' too "narrow and formalistic a conception of inference, as necessarily having formulated judgments from its premises."


title: Abductive reasoning

text: He started out in the 1860s treating hypothetical inference in a number of ways which he eventually peeled away as inessential or, in some cases, mistaken:


title: Abductive reasoning

text: In 1867, Peirce's "On the Natural Classification of Arguments", hypothetical inference always deals with a cluster of characters (call them "P′, P′′, P′′′," etc.) known to occur at least whenever a certain character ("M") occurs. Note that categorical syllogisms have elements traditionally called middles, predicates, and subjects. For example: All "men" [middle] are "mortal" [predicate]; "Socrates" [subject] is a "man" [middle]; ergo "Socrates" [subject] is "mortal" [predicate]". Below, 'M' stands for a middle; 'P' for a predicate; 'S' for a subject. Peirce held that all deduction can be put into the form of the categorical syllogism Barbara (AAA-1).


title: Abductive reasoning

text: In 1878, in "Deduction, Induction, and Hypothesis", there is no longer a need for multiple characters or predicates in order for an inference to be hypothetical, although it is still helpful. Moreover, Peirce no longer poses hypothetical inference as concluding in a "probable" hypothesis. In the forms themselves, it is understood but not explicit that induction involves random selection and that hypothetical inference involves response to a "very curious circumstance". The forms instead emphasize the modes of inference as rearrangements of one another's propositions (without the bracketed hints shown below).


title: Abductive reasoning

text: Peirce long treated abduction in terms of induction from characters or traits (weighed, not counted like objects), explicitly so in his influential 1883 "A theory of probable inference", in which he returns to involving probability in the hypothetical conclusion. Like "Deduction, Induction, and Hypothesis" in 1878, it was widely read (see the historical books on statistics by Stephen Stigler), unlike his later amendments of his conception of abduction. Today abduction remains most commonly understood as induction from characters and extension of a known rule to cover unexplained circumstances.


title: Abductive reasoning

text: Sherlock Holmes used this method of reasoning in the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle, although Holmes refers to it as "deductive reasoning".


title: Abductive reasoning

text: In 1902 Peirce wrote that he now regarded the syllogistical forms and the doctrine of extension and comprehension (i.e., objects and characters as referenced by terms), as being less fundamental than he had earlier thought. In 1903 he offered the following form for abduction:


title: Abductive reasoning

text: The hypothesis is framed, but not asserted, in a premise, then asserted as rationally suspectable in the conclusion. Thus, as in the earlier categorical syllogistic form, the conclusion is formulated from some premise(s). But all the same the hypothesis consists more clearly than ever in a new or outside idea beyond what is known or observed. Induction in a sense goes beyond observations already reported in the premises, but it merely amplifies ideas already known to represent occurrences, or tests an idea supplied by hypothesis; either way it requires previous abductions in order to get such ideas in the first place. Induction seeks facts to test a hypothesis; abduction seeks a hypothesis to account for facts.


title: Abductive reasoning

text: Note that the hypothesis ("A") could be of a rule. It need not even be a rule strictly necessitating the surprising observation ("C"), which needs to follow only as a "matter of course"; or the "course" itself could amount to some known rule, merely alluded to, and also not necessarily a rule of strict necessity. In the same year, Peirce wrote that reaching a hypothesis may involve placing a surprising observation under either a newly hypothesized rule or a hypothesized combination of a known rule with a peculiar state of facts, so that the phenomenon would be not surprising but instead either necessarily implied or at least likely.


title: Abductive reasoning

text: Peirce did not remain quite convinced about any such form as the categorical syllogistic form or the 1903 form. In 1911, he wrote, "I do not, at present, feel quite convinced that any logical form can be assigned that will cover all 'Retroductions'. For what I mean by a Retroduction is simply a conjecture which arises in the mind."


title: Abductive reasoning

text: In 1901 Peirce wrote, "There would be no logic in imposing rules, and saying that they ought to be followed, until it is made out that the purpose of hypothesis requires them." In 1903 Peirce called pragmatism "the logic of abduction" and said that the pragmatic maxim gives the necessary and sufficient logical rule to abduction in general. The pragmatic maxim is:


title: Abductive reasoning

text: It is a method for fruitful clarification of conceptions by equating the meaning of a conception with the conceivable practical implications of its object's conceived effects. Peirce held that that is precisely tailored to abduction's purpose in inquiry, the forming of an idea that could conceivably shape informed conduct. In various writings in the 1900s he said that the conduct of abduction (or retroduction) is governed by considerations of economy, belonging in particular to the economics of research. He regarded economics as a normative science whose analytic portion might be part of logical methodeutic (that is, theory of inquiry).


title: Abductive reasoning

text: Peirce had, from the start, seen the modes of inference as being coordinated together in scientific inquiry and, by the 1900s, held that hypothetical inference in particular is inadequately treated at the level of critique of arguments. To increase the assurance of a hypothetical conclusion, one needs to deduce implications about evidence to be found, predictions which induction can test through observation so as to evaluate the hypothesis. That is Peirce's outline of the scientific method of inquiry, as covered in his inquiry methodology, which includes pragmatism or, as he later called it, pragmaticism, the clarification of ideas in terms of their conceivable implications regarding informed practice.


title: Abductive reasoning

text: 2. Induction is inference through an "index" (a sign by factual connection); a sample is an index of the totality from which it is drawn.


title: Abductive reasoning

text: 3. Deduction is inference through a "symbol" (a sign by interpretive habit irrespective of resemblance or connection to its object).


title: Abductive reasoning

text: In 1902, Peirce wrote that, in abduction: "It is recognized that the phenomena are "like", i.e. constitute an Icon of, a replica of a general conception, or Symbol."


title: Abductive reasoning

text: At the critical level Peirce examined the forms of abductive arguments (as discussed above), and came to hold that the hypothesis should economize explanation for plausibility in terms of the feasible and natural. In 1908 Peirce described this plausibility in some detail. It involves not likeliness based on observations (which is instead the inductive evaluation of a hypothesis), but instead optimal simplicity in the sense of the "facile and natural", as by Galileo's natural light of reason and as distinct from "logical simplicity" (Peirce does not dismiss logical simplicity entirely but sees it in a subordinate role; taken to its logical extreme it would favor adding no explanation to the observation at all). Even a well-prepared mind guesses oftener wrong than right, but our guesses succeed better than random luck at reaching the truth or at least advancing the inquiry, and that indicates to Peirce that they are based in instinctive attunement to nature, an affinity between the mind's processes and the processes of the real, which would account for why appealingly "natural" guesses are the ones that oftenest (or least seldom) succeed; to which Peirce added the argument that such guesses are to be preferred since, without "a natural bent like nature's", people would have no hope of understanding nature. In 1910 Peirce made a three-way distinction between probability, verisimilitude, and plausibility, and defined plausibility with a normative "ought": "By plausibility, I mean the degree to which a theory ought to recommend itself to our belief independently of any kind of evidence other than our instinct urging us to regard it favorably." For Peirce, plausibility does not depend on observed frequencies or probabilities, or on verisimilitude, or even on testability, which is not a question of the critique of the hypothetical inference "as" an inference, but rather a question of the hypothesis's relation to the inquiry process.


title: Abductive reasoning

text: The phrase "inference to the best explanation" (not used by Peirce but often applied to hypothetical inference) is not always understood as referring to the most simple and natural hypotheses (such as those with the fewest assumptions). However, in other senses of "best", such as "standing up best to tests", it is hard to know which is the best explanation to form, since one has not tested it yet. Still, for Peirce, any justification of an abductive inference as "good" is not completed upon its formation as an argument (unlike with induction and deduction) and instead depends also on its methodological role and promise (such as its testability) in advancing inquiry.