Sudan civil war: Still no end in sight - opinion

The war in Sudan is a fierce struggle for power between army chief and de facto president, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. More than five million people have been displaced, including 2.8 million who have fled the relentless airstrikes, artillery fire, and street battles in Khartoum’s densely populated neighborhoods. Millions who could not or refused to leave Khartoum remain in the city, where water, food, and electricity are rationed. Millions have been plunged into acute hunger.

Now, with the RSF controlling large parts of Khartoum, including key government buildings, Burhan has been forced to relocate to Port Sudan, which has become an alternative capital. He had been besieged in the military headquarters in Khartoum until August, when he managed to leave.

On September 13, Volker Perthes, the UN Special Representative for Sudan, addressed the Security Council. He told members that both the SAF and the rival RSF are responsible for abhorrent rights violations as they battle for supremacy.

“There is little doubt who is responsible for what,” he said. “Often indiscriminate aerial bombing is conducted by those who have an air force, which is the SAF. Most of the sexual violence, looting, and killings happen in areas controlled by the RSF. Both sides are arbitrarily arresting, detaining, and even torturing civilians, and there are reports of extrajudicial killings and detentions.”

Straight speaking like this has meant that Perthes – who has headed the UN’s Sudan mission since 2021 – has been declared “persona non grata” by the Sudanese authorities, a declaration rejected by the UN as contrary to Sudan’s obligations under international law.

But Perthes has had enough, and this was his resignation speech. Warning that the violence has “worsened dramatically,” leaving a “tragic legacy” of human rights abuses, Perthes called on the council to “impress on the warring parties that they cannot operate with impunity, and there will be accountability for the crimes committed.”

A tragic legacy of human rights abuses

It was in April 2019 that a pro-democracy uprising in Sudan led to the collapse of the 30-year regime of Omar al-Bashir. In the transitional civilian-military collaborative administration that followed, Burhan – representing the military arm – became head of the ruling Sovereignty Council. He was powerful but, as he saw it, not powerful enough.

Burhan’s role, which was perfectly legitimate, was embedded in the power-sharing agreement of August 2019 between the military and the civilian element within Sudan. Under that agreement, the powers concerned pledged themselves to move the country in an orderly fashion toward democracy, and specifically to parliamentary elections in 2023.

However, popular feeling began to grow increasingly impatient with the obvious lack of progress toward any form of democracy and with the administration’s failure to deal with the country’s severe economic problems. On October 22, 2021, national frustration erupted in a mass protest in the capital, Khartoum, in support of civilian rule.

Together Burhan and Dagalo orchestrated a military coup and took over control of the country. Three days later, Burhan dissolved the country’s civilian cabinet, arrested prime minister Abdalla Hamdok and other leading figures, and declared that the country was under military governance.

The grab for power did not last long. Widespread opposition, ranging from the Arab League to the US secretary of state, was too great. Burhan pulled back, reinstated Hamdok, and pledged to “maintain the path of the democratic transition.”

It was not long before Burhan was challenged by his deputy in the Council of Generals, Dagalo. Dagalo, who had spent some 20 years in the RSF, now headed the paramilitary force. He had built it up into a powerful militia that had intervened in conflicts in Yemen and Libya. The RSF has been accused of human rights abuses, including the massacre of more than 120 protesters in June 2019. Such a strong force outside the army was seen as a source of instability in the country, and Burhan announced a plan to merge the RSF with the nation’s formal armed services. Dagalo was having none of it and challenged his erstwhile colleague for control of the country.

Burhan sees himself as the legitimate leader of Sudan, underlining the point by flying to New York and addressing the UN General Assembly on September 22. Yet many observers believe that the RSF are close to becoming the real ruling power in Sudan.

The nearest comparison is with Russia’s Wagner group when it started on its ill-fated march on Moscow, and in fact there have been reports of Wagner mercenaries supporting RSF forces. If the RSF succeed, they will form a new kind of regime¬ – a multinational mercenary force that has captured a state. Their commander, Dagalo, was appointed leader of the force when it was formally established by decree of then-president Bashir in 2013, but their core of 5,000 militiamen had been armed and active long before then under Dagalo’s command.

Sudan is nominally one of Israel’s new Arab partners under the Abraham Accords. Where does this chaotic state of affairs leave its normalization deal with Israel?

Shortly after the overthrow of the Bashir regime in April 2019, the US and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) brokered contacts between Israel and Sudan’s transitional administration dominated by Burhan. He and his military supporters wanted to distance themselves from the old Bashir regime, which had hosted Hamas and Islamic jihad and had allowed Sudan to become an open conduit for weapons and supplies passing to Hamas in the Gaza Strip. So Burhan seized the opportunity to join the new regional order that was emerging, predicated on opposition to Iran and a working partnership with Israel.

It was in February 2020 that then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Burhan, head of Sudan’s Sovereignty Council, in Uganda, where they agreed to normalize the ties between the two countries. An initial agreement on October 23, 2020, saw Sudan removed from the US government list of countries promoting terrorism; and on January 6, 2021, in a quiet ceremony in Khartoum, Sudan formally signed up to the Abraham Accords.

Just how substantive is the Israel-Sudan normalization deal? Whatever the outcome of the conflict between Burhan and Dagalo, Sudan is a nation in transition, on the road to parliamentary elections intended to usher in full democratic civilian rule. The then military leadership that concluded the normalization deal with Israel was acting perfectly legitimately on behalf of the state of Sudan. A democratic government, once in power, could doubtless either endorse or renounce it.

It is an unfortunate fact of history that civil strife seems endemic to Sudan. Even as Sudan achieved independence from colonial rule in 1956, the country was in the throes of a conflict between north and south over demands by the southern Sudan region for more autonomy. It took a second protracted period of warfare, starting in 1983, to finally lead to the independence of South Sudan in 2011.

In the midst of the struggle, Darfur, a region in the west of the country, was the subject of what has been called “the first genocide of the 21st century.” The systematic killing of ethnic Darfuri people led to prosecutions in the International Criminal Court (ICC). The current civil strife has seen an upsurge in the targeting of ethnic Darfur civilians, and families have been streaming over the border seeking refuge in neighboring Chad. The BBC was told by refugees that the RSF were specifically targeting young men and boys in West Darfur, forcing them out of their hideouts and killing them.

The entire Sudanese nation is a victim of this pitiless and uncompromising struggle for power, and the two warlords, in their relentless conflict, are inflicting mass misery on their fellow citizens and incalculable damage to their nation. As Volker Perthes told the Security Council: “Each side is still waiting for the other side to be weakened into surrender.”

There is, as yet, no end in sight, no light at the end of the tunnel.  ■

The writer’s latest book is Trump and the Holy Land: 2016-2020. Follow him at www.a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com