Issue No. 19

Framing Sudan
 

On 5 January 2024, the Government of Sudan withdrew its ambassador to Kenya, one day after Kenyan President William Ruto received the Sudanese paramilitary leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo in Nairobi. In a bid to reset his international image. 'Hemedti,' as Dagalo is more commonly known, also paid visits to three other East African states and South Africa early in the New Year. President Ruto and the Kenyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs must surely have expected retaliation from the Sudanese Foreign Ministry in response to Hemedti’s visit. That the invitation was nevertheless extended is significant for two reasons.

First, the withdrawal of the Sudanese ambassador to Kenya dampens the likelihood that any state that welcomed Hemedti can now help foster talks between the RSF and the current Government of Sudan. Until as recently as December 2023, Kenya had tried to do just that. In the early stages of the armed conflict, President Ruto called for Hemedti and Sudanese Commander-in-Chief Abdul Fattah al-Burhan to "stop the nonsense." Brutal armed conflict nonetheless continued, substantiating President Ruto's claim that "The African Union has] no capacity to stop this nonsense in our own continent." Indeed, the AU has demonstrated little substantial leverage over the two sides since the war began.

As meetings organised by Saudi Arabia and the US faltered in Jeddah last year, Kenya and Djibouti turned to the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) to facilitate talks. Yet after initial promises, this peace track has also collapsed, after Sudanese Armed Forces withdrew from the regional bloc this week, aggravated by Hemedti's invitation to attend an IGAD summit intended to help establish a ceasefire. Similar to words used to describe Hemedti's visit to Nairobi, Sudan's Foreign Ministry framed the IGAD invitation as a "violation of Sudan's sovereignty."

Hemedti's meeting with Ruto was also significant for a second reason. During the visit, Ruto went on record saying, "Kenya is not looking for anything other than a peaceful resolution and a stable neighbour." The term "stable neighbour"; is telling, indicative of calculations made by several regional capitals that Hemedti is likely to become the next leader of Sudan. Hemedti's marauding paramilitary forces have undoubtedly taken the upper hand in the war. That leaders seemingly recognise Hemedti's conceivable triumph without mention of RSF war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur and elsewhere, is revealing. President Ruto had, in fact, previously warned of "signs of genocide" in Darfur, but these warnings have since quieted.

Despite Hemedti's talk of security reform and democracy, the war is far from over as yet more civilians are pulled into the conflict. Thousands of youth from central and eastern Sudan are still being recruited by SAF to establish hasty defences of major urban centres. SAF-aligned River Nile Governor Mohammed Badawi, just days before he announced a ban on pro-democracy resistance committees, proclaimed that his administration was arming youth "so that they can defend their lands and their honour, and protect [their] families." The RSF remains deeply unpopular – civilians can hardly be blamed for wanting to defend themselves, though there are questions over forced recruitment. The continued fracturing of the armed conflict, and divisions within the civilian movement, pose further complications for negotiators and even a temporary ceasefire.

Meanwhile, the continued framing of the war as one between two warring generals has created a false dichotomy, that the only political choices are between Hemedti and al-Burhan. This logic is predicated on a possible return to the precarious antebellum state of Sudan; it ignores the role of Sudanese civilian groups. As a recent UN report has revealed, both RSF and SAF were manoeuvring arms and personnel in the months before war broke out in April 2023. Even if a return was possible, the crises facing Sudan are far deeper and more complex than the analysis much of the international community has landed upon. The post-colonial history of Sudan has been dominated by the Riverain exploitation of the country's peripheries, be they in Darfur or pre-independence South Sudan. The latest war is a continuation of this history. It is now time to think outside the box in response to the current devastating war, as peace tracks and negotiations have yet done little to halt the march of Hemedti.

By the Horn Edition team