A contingent of Japanese troops landed in South Sudan on Monday, an official said – a mission that critics say could see them embroiled in their country’s first overseas fighting since World War Two.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told a parliamentary committee early last week that Tokyo is send a combat-ready military unit to the young African nation and that the fully-equipped Japanese peacekeepers will respond to urgent calls from the UN personnel and employees of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) anywhere in South Sudan.
The soldiers will join U.N. peacekeepers and help build infrastructure in the landlocked and impoverished country torn apart by years of civil war.
The 350 contingent is mandated by recent Japanese law to use force to protect civilians, UN staff, aid workers, and themselves will replace the Japanese peacekeeping unit already serving under the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS).
South Sudan seceded from Sudan in 2011 – a development greeted at the time with mass celebrations in the oil-producing state. Aid agencies and world powers promised support.
But fighting, largely along ethnic lines, erupted in 2013 after President Salva Kiir sacked his longtime political rival Riek Machar from the post of vice president.