Issue No. 49

500+ Days of War in Sudan

Tuesday, 26 August, marked 500 days since a full-blown war erupted in the streets of Khartoum, Sudan, between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in April 2023. Since then, over 12 million people have been displaced, famine now rages in Darfur, genocidal and indiscriminate violence has been conducted against minorities, sexual violence has been deployed as a weapon of war, and principal elements of Sudan's economy have been obliterated, all as the war has expanded and continues to drag new areas and communities into the firestorm. Against this backdrop, the world's largest humanitarian and displacement crisis has gone largely overlooked, with diplomatic attempts to resolve the conflict uncoordinated and still lacking the necessary buy-in from those in the Gulf driving the conflict.
 
The latest set of peace talks organised by the US, pushed by the Special Envoy for Sudan Tom Perriello, and co-hosted by Switzerland and Saudi Arabia ended on Friday without serious progress. Only ever briefly suggestive about his force's attendance, SAF Commander Abdel Fattah al-Burhan eventually refused to dispatch any senior representatives, resulting in hurried meetings in Cairo between the military and the US that also collapsed. While some have consequently blamed the increasingly influential Islamist faction within the SAF for its avoidance of the latest set of peace talks, and there is little doubt that those like former Foreign Minister Ali Karti are opposed to negotiations with the RSF, others in Switzerland-- Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE-- all still fixed on backing their respective allies. Without these countries bringing their pressure to bear on the RSF for the UAE and SAF for Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the high bar of reaching a ceasefire was unlikely to make any significant headway.
 
Still, in part due to the international pressure on SAF to reopen Sudan's key crossing points into Chad amid the onset of famine, on 15 August, for the first time in months, the military-controlled Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC) directed the opening of the Adre border near El Geneina in West Darfur, allowing a handful of trucks with life-saving humanitarian assistance to enter. This should be celebrated, but almost as soon as the first trucks entered, laborious, bureaucratic measures were imposed on over 100 more. Many of these trucks have since been granted permission. Still, the measures, including necessitating scanners and other unrealistic proposals, signal that the internally divided military leadership has not had a sudden about turn over supporting starving communities in RSF-held territory. And while critical humanitarian relief has entered, it has also arrived amid intense flooding that has washed away arterial roads and bridges, such as into Kreinek, an area at risk of famine that hosts thousands of displaced people. Traversing through hundreds of miles of RSF-held areas to the internally displaced camps like Zamzam, where famine has been declared, is no simple task and will not be enough to stave off further starvation deaths-- now estimated at over 100 per day.
 
Inside Sudan, significant cross-line humanitarian aid delivery remains frozen and is unlikely to be restarted soon. Convincing the SAF to allow the resumption of cross-border aid delivery into areas where it has no presence proved immensely challenging, and the currently unambitious UN machinery appears unwilling to rock the boat lest the military withdraws permission again. Notably, however, while cross-line humanitarian aid has stopped, commodities, particularly gold and livestock, continue to travel between RSF and SAF areas for export to the Gulf. While Rizeigat fighters under the RSF and Zaghawa troops directed by Sudan Liberation Army-Minni Minawi are still fighting for control over El Fasher at immense humanitarian cost, there is still money to be made and patronage that must be dispensed. These overlooked economic incentives for both the RSF and SAF remain one of the principal drivers of the armed conflict that is ripping apart the country.
 
While Perriello has appealed to SAF and RSF that the world is watching, US officials and the belligerents are speaking wholly different languages. For the RSF and SAF, this is an existential conflict that they believe has a military conclusion-- that the two armies are unable to co-exist in Sudan and that no legal agreement will be able to facilitate the return to the status quo ante bellum, which was inherently unstable in the first place. And their promises of humanitarian access and civilian protection are lip service to deny the realities of their atrocities still being committed on the ground.

These pledges will continue to be broken until the US and others begin speaking the language of power and influence, bringing targeted sanctions and prosecutions against those responsible for the violence and showing serious consequences for their failure to turn up in Jeddah or Geneva. These are not US-proposed sanctions at the UN against RSF leaders Osman Mohamed Hamid Mohamed and RSF West Darfur Commander Abdel Rahman Juma Barkalla, which is instead related to Washington's attempt to prevent Russia and China from ending the UN's sanctions regime. The talks in Switzerland confirmed the grim reality that neither the RSF nor the SAF are seriously interested in a ceasefire-- over 500 days into the war, it is long overdue to make these belligerents feel the consequences of that reality.

by the Horn Edition team