190 - Saving Humanity in a Post-Unipolar World: Exercising a Robust Responsibility to Protect, II: Rescuing Sudan from Warlords
There once was a unipolar world where Washington could effectively shut down uncomfortable internecine conflicts and compel makers of military coups to retreat to their barracks. No longer, especially because Russia’s game-changing invasion of Ukraine preoccupies the Pentagon and the National Security Council and exhausts the energies and much of the expertise of the State Department. Supporting, supplying, and funding Ukraine’s freedom struggle rightly is our first priority. That is why it has been difficult to focus on a sea of far-ranging and difficult problems such as Haiti’s state capture by gangs (discussed here Monday), Sudan’s devastating internal war between competing military warlords (discussed today), Ethiopia’s resumed battles between ethnic militias and the central state, and West Africa’s most recent army putsch in Niger (a critical segment of the Islamist resurgence in the Sahel). Nevertheless, such varieties of mayhem demand attention and strong responses.
Sudan
Already, after more than 100 days of absolute mayhem, the two contending sides in Sudan’s vicious internal war have killed at least 3,000 civilians caught in crossfires. Fully 4 million Sudanese have been displaced from their homes, with nearly 1 million fleeing to Egypt, to Chad, or across the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia.
Reports yesterday from Omdurman, across the Nile River from Khartoum, the nation’s capital, say that last week’s brief pause in the internecine battles ended; residents of Omdurman are once again pinned down in their homes, unable to seek food or medical assistance. The situation is equally precarious in Khartoum (nearly 8 million of Sudan’s 48 million people live in both cities).
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are in control of much of Khartoum, except for three strategic sections held by Sudan’s regular army. Both sides are fighting this week to gain full control over a bridge that connects the two cities; the RSF has been moving troops and supplies into Khartoum across the bridge. Both the RSF and the army are accused of massive looting everywhere.
The RSF, which occupied much of the capital at the outbreak of fighting in April, has responded forcefully against the army, resulting in heavy clashes in residential neighborhoods and serious civilian casualties and displacements. Both sides have claimed military advances, but there are no indications of a decisive breakthrough.
Sudan’s already precarious healthcare system is close to complete collapse after months of fighting. The United Nations has reported at least 53 attacks on health facilities across the country since the beginning of the conflict. Major disease outbreaks are likely, especially since heavy rains have contributed to sewage overflows. Corpses still litter the streets of both Khartoum and Omdurman.
A combination of rotting bodies, severe potable water shortages, electrical power outages, non-functioning sanitation services, and lack of sewage treatment options give rise to fears of a major cholera outbreak.
Outside of the two metropolitan centers, much of the fighting between both militaries takes place in Darfur, Sudan’s westernmost province, bordering Chad. There the RSF (then known as janjaweed) had its origins as an instrument of repression and as a perpetrator of genocide. The janjaweed were mostly Arabs preying, killing, and ousting at least 200,000 Darfuri Africans in a genocidal outburst in 2003-2006. About 3 million Africans were displaced, finding refuge mostly in impoverished Chad.
The janjaweed were organized and led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti. He now leads the RSF in its forceful struggle against the regular army. Its commander is General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who also participated in the Darfuri genocide as a regular Army leader; he now is Sudan’s nominal head of state and the chief of its army and air force.
Both men ousted Gen. Omar al-Bashir, who ruled Sudan after a military coup in 1989 until his overthrow by Burhan and Hemeti in 2019. Bashir was indicted by the International Criminal Court in 2009 and again in 2010 for his genocidal actions but has never been brought to trial internationally. He has been in Sudanese detention since 2019, convicted of corruption.
Burhan and Hemeti ruled Sudan together, nominally with civilians, from 2019 to 2021, despite almost continual civil society physical protests in Khartoum. Then both leaders pushed out a technocratic prime minister and began jousting for total power within Sudan.
That competition turned deadly this year, when Burhan tried to force the RSF into the regular army, gaining full control over its movements and actions. Hemeti, known for his ruthlessness, refused to put his (mostly) men under Burhan and the army’s chain of command. But the deeper reason that Hemeti battles to maintain his autonomous authority and Burhan wants to rein in a rival is their greedy quest for limitless acquisition of material riches.
There is abundant gold in eastern and western Sudan. Both men, and their followers, are anxious to exclude rivals from such spoils. Hemeti has until recently largely had privileged access to the gold deposits, profits, and exports thanks to his alliance with Russia’s Wagner Group and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). (He sent an RSF contingent to fight for the UAE in Yemen, being paid well for its actions.)
Burhan has been backed more modestly by Egypt, and his air force’s bombing runs in Khartoum have had some Egyptian support. But, on the ground, the much larger regular army has not been able to limit the RSF hegemony in Khartoum or to overcome the RSF’s advantages in most of Darfur. (At least 377,000 African Darfuris, fearing another genocide, have fled across its border to bleak refugee camps in Chad.)
Sudan’s civil war is totally in thrall to the ambition and avarice of two leaders seeking full power and the personal wealth that each can acquire. Their followers are also bedazzled by the same presumed gains. There are few other differences between the two groups; both are thoroughly Muslim, without any Islamist overtones. Ideological differences are not relevant.
So far, valiant efforts by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) — the recognized regional authority in the Horn of Africa, the African Union, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. to halt the slaughter and arrange even a semi-permanent end to Sudan’s conflict have come to naught. The Russians and the Wagnerites obviously want the RSF to win, thus enabling them to consolidate their rising influence athwart the Red Sea. (Hemeti has agreed to let the Russians build a naval base near Port Sudan.) Despite efforts by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and American envoys to the region, the two armies have paid little heed to outside overtures.
Destroying the chief cities of Sudan and forcing probably 20 percent of all Sudanese to live in daily fear of annihilation are hardly recipes for nation-building and development. What Sudan needs is an outside force to separate the two battling armies. But the African Union has no muscle and seems overly reluctant to try to intervene despite its several peace and conflict resolution organs. It thus may take Blinken’s team, in concert with Egypt and the UAE (and possibly the Saudis) to provide robust alternatives to Burhan and Hemeti that neither can refuse.
Next: Coping with Islamism in the Sahel after the Niger Coup
It seems conflict is always about 💰💰💰; sometimes ideology but Sudan’s situation is tragic indeed. I do hope some outside influences can bring some peace to the exhausted people who only want to enjoy what lives they have. Great report. Thank you!