On December 15, 2013, fistfighting erupted in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, between the government of South Sudan and the South Sudanese leading rebellion party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM). The SPLM consists of political party, a liberation group and a private army. The two main ethnic groups in South Sudan are the Dinka and the Nuer. The leader of the Dinka is the elected South Sudanese President Salva Kiir Mayardit. The leader of the Nuer is former vice president Riek Machar. There are many assumptions of how the fighting started, but the government of South Sudan claims that it began when Riek Machar and the SPLM were plotting to overthrow President Kiir. Machar denied this, arguing that Kiir was trying to destroy all of his political opposition. President Kiir arrested eleven of the top party members, some of them being government officials. However, Riek Machar managed to escape from Juba and on December 18, 2013, he publicly called for the overthrowing of the South Sudanese government. By December 23, forces claiming loyal to Machar had taken control of two states: Jonglei and Unity, as well as the oil fields in Unity and Upper Nile. Riek Machar is currently the political leader of the SPLM. The rebel army mainly contains ex-government and military leaders that are tired of President Kiir and they are aided by other smaller militias. The fighting which started in December 2013 in Juba, took to the rest of the country, killing over ten thousand people by April 2014, and caused the homelessness of approximately a million South Sudanese people. The cause of this conflict can be traced all the way back to the second Sudanese war, also known as the war of independence, which started in 1983 and ended in 2005. The South Sudanese were divided between conflicting ethnic groups. However, these groups shared a common enemy, Sudan. The two groups joined forces to form the SPLM. The war ended under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which gave the SPLM six years to transform its liberation movement into a political party capable of governing after receiving independence in 2011. The aim was for the SPLM to give representation to the various ethnic groups under its control. Once the war was over, the common goal of independence disappeared, and tensions resurfaced between groups in South Sudan. However the SPLM leadership neglected their duty of nation building. What started as a political struggle turned into an ethnic conflict. The majority of the Dinka population supports President Kiir, while the majority of the Nuer population supports Machar. In South Sudan, political affiliations often follow ethnic lines. In between this major divide, young fighters from other ethnic groups have been called into the fight, and are responding to attacks to community members all around the country. There have already been two unsuccessful attempts at a ceasefire made by the government of Ethiopia. However, at the beginning of June 2014, Kiir and Machar agreed to a truce, forcing the parties to form a government in 60 days. Both parties failed to agree to any terms, causing the war to continue. Neighboring countries as well as the United States got involved in the endless fighting, hoping to draw a conclusion.