Ending Sudan's civil war may require help of the very countries inflaming it

The suffering Sudan's dev‐ astating conflict has in‐ flicted on millions of peo‐ ple made a slight dent in global indifference last week as the one-year an‐ niversary of its start came and went.

It nudged its way into the headlines with the help of an international donors confer‐ ence hosted by France that raised $2 billion US worth of pledges in humanitarian aid half of what the United Na‐ tions says is needed.

French President Em‐ manuel Macron called the gathering a "duty to make it clear that we are not forget‐ ting what is happening in Su‐ dan."

Yet critics say that is ex‐ actly what's happening in the absence of a more concerted effort by the international community to get the war‐ ring sides to a negotiating ta‐ ble.

"The more generous view is that there are lots of other things going on. You've got Gaza, you've got Ukraine, and so the international attention is elsewhere," said Yassmin Abdel-Majied, a Sudanese writer and activist based in London.

"But I think, unfortunately, some of this is also the fact that people see Sudan as an African country and think, oh, this is just another part of the story of, you know, these post-colonial nations that have warring generals, and so on."

"What people don't un‐ derstand is that this is one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world," AbdelMajied said. "It will have an effect beyond the borders of

Sudan."

Players beyond the bor‐ ders of Sudan - from its African neighbours to the Gulf States and beyond - are influencing the course of the conflict for their own pur‐ poses and increasing the chances of it metastasizing, analysts say.

Their involvement is seen both as a complicating factor and a potential key to resolv‐ ing the conflict.

A tale of 2 generals

Sudan descended into war last April when the two gen‐ erals who staged a joint coup in 2021 to overthrow a gov‐ ernment transitioning to civil‐ ian rule turned on each oth‐ er.

Gen. Abdel Fattah alBurhan, head of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), and Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who leads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), have been locked in a brutal war ever since.

Eight million people have been displaced by fighting and 18 million people are suffering acute food insecu‐ rity, according to the UN. Both sides have been ac‐ cused of widespread human rights abuses, including sys‐ temic rape.

"We have a famine warn‐ ing on top of all the protec‐ tion issues around human rights abuses," said Justin Brady, who heads the UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

"The other problem we're facing is an access problem, with both parties to the con‐ flict creating some obstacles for us to be able to reach those in dire need right now," he said in a Zoom interview from Port Sudan.

That means aid agencies and engaged diplomats have no option but to deal directly with parties accused of hu‐ man rights abuses.

WATCH | Sudan pushed to famine by civil war, lack of aid:

Echoes of 2003-2004

Dagalo's

Rapid

Support

Forces grew out of the noto‐ rious Janjaweed militias ac‐ cused of genocide in Sudan's western Darfur region in 2003 and 2004.

Twenty years later, the RSF and Arab militias stand accused of repeating the past, targeting members of the Masalit community and other non-Arab groups, set‐ ting villages across Darfur on fire and slaughtering people as they flee.

"Every bit of talking and cajoling these actors, in an attempt to get humanitarian access or to advance the peace talks, tends to give them more political credibil‐ ity and just legitimacy in the eyes of the Sudanese," said Sharath Srinivasan, co-direc‐ tor of the Centre of Gover‐ nance and Human Rights at Cambridge University.

"That's a very, very severe price to pay."

Last Friday, the UN's un‐ der-secretary-general for po‐ litical and peacebuilding af‐ fairs, Rosemary Anne DiCar‐ lo, told the UN Security Coun‐ cil that weapons from "exter‐ nal actors" were fuelling the war.

"This is illegal, it is im‐ moral and it must stop," she said.

She didn't name names, but Sudan shares borders with seven countries, and its plentiful gold reserves and strategic position along the Red Sea make it an attractive prospect for neighbouring countries and those seeking

to expand their influence in the region.

Outside interests

For example, the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) has long been accused of sending weapons to Chad for transit across its border to Darfur, where the RSF militias are mostly in control.

The U.A.E. has insisted regular flights to a remote border crossing between Chad and Darfur are humani‐ tarian in nature.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia are both said to be support‐ ing the other side - al Burhan and the SAF. And Iran has al‐ legedly been providing the SAF with drones credited with assisting the army's ad‐ vances in Omdurman, the country's second-most popu‐ lous city before the war.

Ahmed Soliman, a region‐ al specialist with Chatham House, a London-based think-tank, says Iran's ap‐ parent interest in a potential foothold in Sudan could well be a catalyst for stronger en‐ gagement from Washington.

"In order to get the U.S. to get the regional states who are involved in the conflict to act with the level of seniority and high-level diplomacy re‐ quired, it seems that it has to be connected in some way to these greater global shifts and threats, particularly to the West," said Soliman.

The U.S. special envoy for Sudan, Tom Perriello, told Reuters fear of greater influ‐ ence for Iran or Islamic ex‐ tremist elements in Sudan was one reason the U.S. be‐ lieved there was momentum for a peace deal.

Yassmin Abdel-Majied says she's beyond caring why the international community might engage more. She just wants the needle to move.

"Both [generals] have enough backing from outside to continue the conflict, right? It's like it's not just who can get them to the table, but it's who can turn the faucets off," she said.

Grassroots movement sidelined

It raises the question of whether or not peace talks can progress when some of the countries offering to facil‐ itate negotiations are those so intrinsically engaged with one side or the other.

"The mediation, on the one hand … is ill-served by the likes of U.A.E., Saudi Ara‐ bia, Egypt being around the table, because it compro‐ mises neutrality and impar‐ tiality," said Srinivasan. "On the other hand, there is no resolution to this conflict without those actors in the room."

Absent from that room, say critics, have been the democracy advocates and civil society actors whose massive street protests and campaign of civil disobedi‐ ence beginning in 2019 sig‐ nalled the fall of former pres‐ ident Omar al-Bashir after 30 years in power.

WATCH | Canada opens immigration pathway for Sudanese fleeing war:

Abdel-Majied worries they will be left out of any peace negotiations when - or if they come in earnest.

"The people that have the real power from the ground the resistance committees, the emergency response rooms, true civilian leaders they are actually still on the ground," she said.

She says that grassroots movement inspired the world with its courage five years ago, only to be forgotten.

Srinivasan sees the inter‐ national community's failure to pay more attention to pro‐ tecting those hard-fought changes in Sudan as the greatest moment of neglect.

"In the years afterwards, when that precious chance was there, it wasn't met with tremendous energy and ef‐ fort from the part of interna‐ tional actors who, in some senses, had been waiting for this moment for decades," said Srinivasan.

"Partly [it was] driven by the pandemic, partly driven by the war in Ukraine. But certainly it was a period of a squandered opportunity. And that's really regretful when we see what's happening in Sudan," he said.

"But the resilience and courage of the Sudanese has not been extinguished."