2023-04-17 22:25:19
It is a country ravaged by violence for more than decades, where the embers of conflict never seem to go out. Fighting broke out on Saturday in several cities in Sudan, the direct result of a struggle between the two holders of military power. Clashes are taking place at strategic locations in the capital, Khartoum, between paramilitaries – the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – and regular army soldiers. A new conflict that could destabilize the entire region.
By Monday evening, at least 185 people had been killed and more than 1,800 injured since the fighting began, according to the head of the UN mission in Sudan, Volker Perthes. The ambassador of the European Union (EU) in the country was “attacked” at home, said Monday on Twitter the vice-president of the European Commission, Josep Borrell.
What are the forces involved?
The Rapid Support Forces were created in 2013 and have their origins in the “Janjaweed” militia, which brutally fought rebels in Darfur, another bloody conflict in the country’s recent history. Since then, General Daglo, alias “Hemedti”, has built up a powerful force which has also intervened in the conflicts in Yemen and Libya, and which controls some of the gold mines in Sudan, according to the BBC.
The RSF are accused of human rights violations, including the massacre of more than 120 protesters in June 2019. Such a powerful force outside the regular army is considered by diplomats to be one of the sources of instability from the country. Since Saturday, “Hemedti” has chained interviews to the continuous news channels of the Gulf countries, of which several states are its allies. He multiplied the insults against his rival, qualified among other things as “criminal”.
This rival is Abdel Fattah al-Burhane. This general is the head of the armed forces and the de facto ruler of Sudan. He served under former President Omar Al-Bashir, who was overthrown in April 2019. The latter had been deposed by the army under pressure from the streets, after months of daily demonstrations. After the agreement signed that year between civilians and soldiers, Abdel Fattah al-Burhane took the reins of the “sovereign council”, a body supposed to oversee the transition to democracy. But, on October 25, 2021, it was he who this time overthrew the civilian government and its Prime Minister, Abdallah Hamdok.
A rivalry between “Hemedti” and Al-Burhane
One of the first decisions of the putschist power was to put to sleep the committee in charge of dismantling the former military-Islamist regime. “All our progress went up in smoke with the putsch,” bitterly regretted Mohammed al-Fekki, its leader sacked at the time. General Burhane had also pledged before this military coup to hold elections in mid-2023. Since the fighting began on Saturday, Al-Burhane has made no public statement.
Since the coup, Sudan has been ruled by a council of generals. General Al-Burhane is the head of the armed forces and, in effect, the president of the country. His deputy is the leader of the FSR, General Daglo. The two men are today in frontal opposition, in particular on the transition to a democratic regime promised after the putsch. The other stumbling block concerns the plan to integrate 100,000 FSR men into the regular army. The outstanding question being, in the event of integration, who would they obey?
“A Marriage of Convenience”
For the researcher Hamid Khalafallah, it was “a marriage of convenience” for the needs of the putsch. “They never had a sincere partnership but common interests against civilians.” And the breaches in the sacred union quickly came to light: Hemedti repeatedly denounced the “failure” of a putsch which restored Bashir’s “old regime”.
The conflict intensified when it was necessary to sign the conditions for the integration of his men into the regular troops, within the framework of the agreement with the civilians which was to relaunch the democratic transition. For experts, this agreement has opened Pandora’s box: by letting the military negotiate among themselves, “Hemedti has gone from the status of second to that of equal of Burhane”, affirms Kholood Khair, who founded the Confluence research center Advisory in Khartoum.
Feeling “more autonomous in the face of the army”, Hemedti saw an opportunity to achieve “his very great political ambitions”, abounds Alan Boswell, in charge of the Horn of Africa at the International Crisis Group.
Can the conflict get worse?
If the fighting continues, it risks further fragmenting the country and worsening political turmoil. The current fights are “an existential struggle for the belligerents”, continues the expert. And, according to Kholood Khair, “neither side will come out unscathed.” “It is highly unlikely that they will return to the negotiating table before one or both suffer heavy losses”, agrees the specialist.
“The two camps are strong enough for a war between them to be very costly, very deadly and very long”, further analyzes Alan Boswell. And above all, even if one of the two parties wins, particularly in Khartoum, “the war will continue elsewhere in the country”, creating rival strongholds. “We are already in the worst-case scenario and we will go towards even more dramatic events”, with possible repercussions throughout the region, he warns.
It is in this context that the international community has been increasing calls for a ceasefire since Saturday. On Sunday, the Arab League and the African Union met urgently to call for a cessation of hostilities and a return to a “political solution” – an option that has so far failed to lead to a return to democratic transition in Sudan. , yet emerged in 2019 from thirty years of Islamic-military dictatorship.
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