A forgotten war
Summary: Sudan is into its ninth month of a civil war that has
brought the country to the edge of disintegration but the war is
receiving little attention even as diplomatic efforts to end it continue
to flounder.
Several sessions of the just concluded Doha Forum focussed, appropriately, on the war in Gaza. But on Monday there was one session
that dealt with the Sudan war, a conflict that has raged since April
with catastrophic consequences for the country of 46 million. The
fighting between two generals -
Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, otherwise known as
Hemedti - has left at least 10000 killed and many more thousands
injured. The number of people displaced by the fighting now numbers 7
million with about 1.5 million fleeing into neighbouring countries,
mostly into Chad which itself is highly unstable. 19 million children
are unable to attend classes. Large parts of the capital Khartoum have
been damaged and fighting in Darfur has seen the nightmarish return of
what the Economist is calling the “genocidal militia” of Hemedti’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF.)
Mike Hammer the US Special Envoy
to the Horn of Africa had just arrived at the Doha Forum from a meeting
in Djibouti. He said that he had returned with “some sense of optimism”
citing the fact that General Burhan the head of the army turned up in
person and Hemedti, who has gained the upper hand in the war, was
“contacted by phone.” The ambassador said that both had agreed to an
unconditional ceasefire and to a one to one meeting in two weeks time to
“try to bring an end to this conflict.” He took heart from the fact
that the meeting was held as a result of an initiative of the
Djibouti-headquartered Intergovernmental Authority on Development
(IGAD.)
He noted the stalling of the Saudi-led Jeddah talks which he
attributed to the failure to follow through on commitments. (Both sides,
as we noted in our 26 May newsletter,
accepted calls for ceasefires that they then assiduously ignored.)
Ambassador Hammer decried the civilian death toll and was at pains to
denounce “atrocities that are reprehensible, atrocious, the sexual-based
violence against women is abhorrent”. He added “we in the
international community must all rally together in support of these
African efforts” that include IGAD and the African Union (AU.) He also
argued that the belligerents “don’t have a future in Sudan” a statement
that struck a rather naïve note.
The moderator, International Crisis Group president Comfort Ero,
asked him how it would be possible to achieve the goal of getting rid of
the rival generals. It was a question that the US envoy left hanging in
the air while reiterating that “there is no acceptable military
solution” and there must be a return to civilian governance. He did
allow, however, that he was pleased to see the engagement of the UAE (a
principal backer of Hemedti) and the African nations in pursuing a
resolution to the conflict, prompting Ero to comment that the US “had
grabbed the leadership and then dropped the ball.” That, said the
ambassador with a chuckle, was “the price of leadership.”
![]()