Issue No. 30

Marking a year in Sudan's forgotten war

On 15 April 2023 in Sudan, a simmering power struggle erupted into open warfare on the streets of Khartoum between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Who fired the first bullet is contested, but in the months since the violence began, the conflict has warped and expanded, creating the world's largest displacement and hunger crises. Over 8.6 million people have been internally displaced, while 18 million are estimated to be experiencing acute levels of food insecurity. Heinous human rights violations have been recorded across the country, particularly in Darfur, where the RSF and allied militias have brutally targeted the non-Arab indigenous communities. All the while, the African and international powers that have previously helped steer peace in Sudan are either missing in action or subsumed by the rise of influential Middle Eastern actors.
 
In the last 12 months, the momentum of the conflict has see-sawed between the RSF and the SAF, establishing a rough east-west territorial divide across the country. The former, initially better armed and with greater fighting experience, put the army on the back foot for much of the first 8 months of the conflict. The paramilitaries marauded across most of Darfur, expanded into the Kordofans, and seized Wad Madani in Gezira State in late 2023. Fresh injections of weaponry into the SAF, including Iranian drones, as well as the arrival of large numbers of armed volunteers or coerced civilians, have helped tip the security balance towards the SAF in recent weeks, however. The army is now preparing for a fresh offensive to re-take Wad Madani, once the breadbasket of Sudan.
 
The posturing of SAF Commander Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his lieutenants further suggests that the army is confident that it will be able to consolidate its growing hold on Omdurman and Khartoum. With the RSF supply lines seemingly overstretched, a Libya-style scenario may be on the horizon, where the east-west split is formalised. What is clearer is that the SAF has little interest in paying lip service to the notion of a return to a military-civilian government, having recently charged former Sudanese prime minister and leader of the civilian Tagaddum movement Abdalla Hamdok with crimes punishable by death.
 
More broadly, any serious hopes for a return to the status quo ante bellum have long since evaporated, which was still defined by the tensions between the RSF and SAF. The principled aspirations of the 2019 revolution that brought together young and old, men and women, and Sudan's diverse ethnicities have been left in tatters. Many of the neighbourhood resistance committees that formed the backbone of the peaceful sit-ins and demonstrations have either taken up arms or fled. And as the war has expanded, the SAF has continued to imprison pro-democracy activists and its critics.
 
The longer the conflict drags on, and it shows no sign of abating, the harder it will be to bring the multiplying armed forces together once they have tasted the spoils of war. Sudan's conflicts have a history of lasting several years, and the current war bears the hallmarks that this may well continue to be the case. It is simply wishful thinking that these two armed forces will suddenly become amenable to peace negotiations without concerted high-level pressure on and from those that hold sway over the belligerents, principally their respective Arab backers. Moreover, the growing role of Russia and Iran in Sudan further threatens to mire the country deeper into the 'Great Game' of geostrategic interest across the Gulf and Horn.
 
Indeed, the war in Sudan is arguably the culmination of several concerning elements of modern warfare. The withdrawal of the international community and any discourse of 'Responsibility to Protect,' assertive Middle Powers ploughing weapons to their favoured actor, the weaponisation of humanitarian aid, the splintering of armed actors, jihadism, and drones, to name just a few issues. Of course, nothing in war is truly new, but the conflict in Sudan is proving to be a particularly toxic cocktail that is not only tearing the country apart but also destabilising its neighbours, most notably Chad and South Sudan.
 
It is a lack of imagination that presumes the situation cannot get worse– it surely will. Recent satellite imaging revealed that 30 settlements had been set ablaze in March, the highest total since May 2023, when 39 were torched. Most of these settlements are in Darfur and were pillaged and burned by the RSF and their allied militias. And in just a handful of days earlier this week, 40,000 people were reported to have fled El Fasher in North Darfur after the western outskirts of the city were raided by the RSF. Much like Wad Madani, many thousands of displaced people had sought refuge around El Fasher, having been uprooted by prior violence. And with vast tracts of agricultural land either unploughed or destroyed, the coming harvest in Sudan will be the worst in years.
 
Therefore, any negotiations and international diplomacy must first address how to prevent the utter collapse of the Sudanese state, work to choke off weapon supplies, and seek to prevent the worst-case scenario of famine. The perfect should not be the enemy of the good in any possible ceasefire talks, be they at Jeddah or elsewhere. Nor should an understandable queasiness about the heinous conduct of the RSF and the SAF prevent concerted efforts to get the two sides in the same room. Both sides have been allowed to pick and choose their favoured tracks at whim and break humanitarian promises without consequences. But this is just one problem among many of the splintered peace tracks. While hopes for any talks are still low, the renewed diplomatic push on the first anniversary of the war should be directed towards bringing the belligerents, and their respective backers, with realistic and enforceable objectives. 

By the Horn Edition team