The U.N. Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) force commander, Lt. Gen. Johnson Mogoa Kimani Ondieki, right, of Kenya in Juba, South Sudan, in September. (Justin Lynch/AP)

The Kenyan government on Friday deported a senior South Sudan opposition member as tensions rose over its peacekeeping efforts in its war-scarred neighbor.

Kenyan authorities have reacted angrily to a U.N. decision this week to dismiss the Kenyan general in charge of the peacekeeping force there, for failing to protect civilians during a recent spasm of violence. Kenya has been an important force for stability in South Sudan, contributing about 1,000 troops and absorbing refugees.

James Gatdet Dak, the official deported Friday, has served as a spokesman for the main South Sudanese rebel group led by former vice president Riek Machar. Since December 2013, that group has fought on and off against government forces led by President Salva Kiir. The conflict has killed tens of thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands more.

Some Kenyan officials suggested that Dak’s deportation was related to a Facebook post in which he expressed support for the removal earlier this week of Lt. Gen. Johnson Mogoa Kimani Ondieki, the Kenyan top officer in the U.N. mission in South Sudan, known by the acronym UNMISS.

In the post Wednesday, Dak wrote: “We welcome the change in the UNMISS Force Command in South Sudan. The peacekeepers failed to protect civilians during the crisis right in the capital, Juba, and in other parts of the country.”

A U.N. report this week blamed Ondieki for a “lack of leadership” and a “chaotic and ineffective response” to the surge of violence in Juba in July. During that fighting, dozens of South Sudanese civilians were raped and killed, mostly by government forces. Several foreign aid workers were also brutally raped.

In a statement Friday, Machar said he told the Kenyan government that Dak “should not be deported to Juba due to profound fear for his life.” It said Dak had been “arrested from his residence” in Nairobi.

With government forces controlling Juba and bitter tensions between the two groups, human rights experts say the threat to Dak is very real.

“In colluding with South Sudan and deporting James Gatdet Dak, Kenya has exposed him to a serious risk of persecution,” said Gerry Simpson, senior refugee researcher at Human Rights Watch.

After Ondieki’s dismissal, Kenyan officials threatened to withdraw its peacekeeping troops from South Sudan, calling the deployment “no longer tenable.” Kenya’s contingent is important because of its size and because it has proved difficult to recruit soldiers in the rest of the world for the mission. There are 16,000 U.N. peacekeepers in South Sudan.

The Kenyan Foreign Ministry said Ondieki was fired unfairly and used as a scapegoat for the mission’s institutional failings.

“Regrettably, instead of addressing these shortcomings directly, the United Nations has instead opted to unfairly attribute them to a single individual,” the ministry said in a statement.

The row between the United Nations and the Kenyan government underscores the often tense relations between the world body and the countries that deploy troops to peacekeeping missions. While U.N. officials say they have a responsibility to dismiss poorly performing soldiers, they are often reluctant to do so, for fear of alienating the few countries willing to send forces to far-flung missions.

Kenya also hosts tens of thousands of South Sudanese refugees, mostly in its Kakuma camp. Earlier this year, Kenya threatened to shutter the camp. Though the government later withdrew that plan, its threat was enough to rattle the humanitarian community.

Since July, when battles between the forces of Kiir and Machar broke out in the capital, fighting has resumed across much of the country, even as Machar and other opposition leaders fled the country. Machar is in South Africa.

The United States and other Western intermediaries have lobbied futilely for the restoration of a peace agreement that was only tenuously enforced before the July fighting.

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Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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