Can
I take you back to 11 April 2019. On that day, it was the military who
removed Omar al- Bashir, a dictator in power for 30 year. But it was the
people who had engaged in six months of peaceful protest who were most
responsible for his overthrow. At that time, what were your thoughts and
your hopes for a democratic Sudan?
It's difficult to overstate just how euphoric people in Sudan were at
the time. Because, as you say, the military were in the end the ones to
remove him,but they never would have if it hadn't been for the very
large scale, and more importantly, sustained protests. So the 2018-2019
revolution was the coming together of such a broad spread of the
Sudanese public, really underscoring the extent to which the Bashir
regime had by the end become very hated but also the way in which that
regime had entrenched itself in so much of Sudanese political, economic
and social life, as to bring about such a response, I think, from such a
broad range of people.
We saw people chanting about the unity of Sudan and about places that
had been experiencing very acute violence by the state, places like
Darfur. We had seen a large proportion of the protesters come out that
were women, women of all ages, of all backgrounds, and I would credit
the sustained political action of the 2018-2019 revolution to the large
presence of women, whether it was the young women who were working on
educational sit-ins, whether it was the tea ladies who spent so much
time not just providing refreshments, but also cooking for people,
particularly during Ramadan, whether it was the moms or grandmas who
came out to say we support you and we will make sure that the security
services understand that we support you and that they can't vilify you
and that we can sometimes even use our own bodies to protect you. They
played such a big role. And that is, I think, what provided the
lifeblood of such a sustained protest.
As a result of pressure from the African Union and Western powers
and from the Sudanese people themselves the military forces were
compelled to agree to a transitional governance structure with General
Burhan as armed forces head and Hamdan Dagalo, aka Hemedti as his
deputy ostensibly sharing power with a civilian prime minister. What can
you tell us about them?
Burhan is someone who was not the first pick, when Bashir was removed
from power by the Sudanese Armed Forces in collaboration with the Rapid
Support Forces. They had chosen Awad Ibn Auf, a general who was one of
Bashir's deputies, but he fell within 24 hours, immediately the streets
realised what the military was trying to do, effectively to replace one
general with another and they absolutely rejected it. And so the
military was scrambling to find someone in the summer of 2019, to
replace both Bashir and Ibn Auf, and they settled on Burhan. He didn't
seem to many people to be the top pick, even after Ibn Auf fell. But he
seemed to be someone who, at least within SAF, could command enough
respect. And he's someone who, again, seemed to be quite an anodyne
figure and someone who perhaps would be reasonably palatable for the
Sudanese public.
And the boss of the Rapid Support Forces Hemedti ?
He's had something of a Napoleonic rise from a camel trader in Darfur
some 20 something years ago to today being one of the most powerful men
in Sudan and one of the richest and you don't have that kind of rise to
power unless you are indeed very strategic and able to play politics
very well. I think he's always been underestimated. And to some degree
that may have irked him but actually it worked in his favour because he
was so underestimated by Bashir. He managed to inveigle himself into the
Islamist, Islamo-military regime of Bashir, without actually being an
Islamist, per se and without being a member of the traditional military
elite. He has never gone to SAF college, he was not part of the rising
in the ranks with other soldiers. He is reported to not have even
finished primary school, let alone high school, or indeed had any sort
of tertiary education. And so he's very much an outlier in many ways.
And that has massively worked in his favour, because of course, being
underestimated means that he could work quite covertly. And indeed he
did, in fact, do that with great success becoming someone who, as we see
right now playing out in very dramatic fashion, could challenge the
state and could challenge the institutions of the state including the
most enduring institution of state that Sudan has, which is the armed
forces. You know, he has created the kinds of linkages with
international entities, a kind of war chest and recruitment drives that
have enabled him to wage this war in many ways more successfully than
the Sudan Armed Forces.
He is tied, isn’t he, to the atrocities in Darfur that we are seeing both today and that we saw several years ago?
Absolutely. He was the spear, if you will, of the Bashir regime's
genocidal campaign in Darfur in 2003 to 2005. He and his colleagues, for
want of a better word, were known as the Janjaweed, the Devils on
Horseback, and they led to terrible campaigns in Darfur on behalf of
Khartoum. He is someone who is absolutely responsible for many of the
atrocities that we've seen in Sudan not just 20 years ago but today; and
of course, the violence in Darfur today, though it is linked to the
broader national picture, is also very much linked to the Darfur
conflict that started at least 20 years ago in 2003 and was never really
resolved.
In his war with Burhan does Hemedti have the upper hand?
War is won through blood and treasure, you need soldiers and you need
money. And it seems like the RSF currently can command more of both
than the Sudan Armed Forces. The general picture is that the RSF has
been able to leverage its pre-war assets, both diplomatic and financial,
a lot more than SAF has. SAF has regional and international backers
too. But (Burhan) is not able to rely on them to the same extent that
the RSF can.
Outside powers have played a significant role in the events
leading up to the war and in the war itself, among them, Egypt and I
think particularly the United Arab Emirates, can you talk about those
outside players?
Egypt has been run by its military for a very long time. And it has
found an easy counterpart in Sudan's military and has always supported
Sudan's military. Just before the war, we saw the Egyptian military and
Sudan's military engaged in combat exercises together. Partially that
was in response to the Ethiopian Grand Renaissance Dam that Egypt feels
very threatened by but also it gave SAF a way of saying that we have
very reliable, dependable friends in the region.
For the RSF, they have a long-standing relationship with the United
Arab Emirates, because of course, the RSF made a lot of their money by
being the go to mercenaries for the Emirates’ adventures, or
misadventures, perhaps might be a better word, in Yemen. And so the RSF
has these connections, financial and political connections with the
Saudis and the Emiratis, due to the war in Yemen. And Hemedti has been
able to forge or I should say, the Dagalo family not just Hemedti but
his brother Abdelrahim, his other brother, Algoney, who has resided in
the UAE for a long time, they as a family, and as a political and
security enterprise, and of course, economic enterprise have entrenched
themselves in the UAE very deeply and particularly with the Emirati
ruling family of Mohammed bin Zayed.
The war has been described as the worst humanitarian disaster in
the world. Millions of people displaced, tens of thousands injured and
killed. What needs to be done right now so that the struggle and the
dream of the Sudanese people that you described so well as we began our
conversation, that dream of democracy can finally be realised.
I think we need to get real about what this war is and what it's
about. And also how long it may take, looking at Sudan's history which
is a very, very long history of war. Conflicts of this nature between
the central military and any other group, be they rebel groups or
paramilitary groups tend to last decades. And so we have seen a lot of
diplomatic pressure invested in a quick ceasefire or a quick agreement
without actually also looking at some of the longer-term issues. A
ceasefire will end the fighting; in all likelihood, it will not end the
war. And so we need to be investing, the international community as a
whole needs to be investing alongside the Sudanese people in both a
short-term end to the fighting, but also long-term ways to end the war.
And that involves asking difficult questions about international
financing, about transitional justice, and actually narrowing down what
kind of Sudan we as Sudanese want and want to live in, one that doesn't
create these kinds of marginalisations that, frankly, see the different
groups contesting the state, rather than investing in a mutually
beneficial state. But in the meantime, we also have to look at what
issues resonate with ordinary people in Sudan right now who are fleeing
for their lives, who are under constant bombardment. Protection of
civilians, I think, is one of the key investments that needs to be made
now, not just a search for a ceasefire. And that can look like lots of
things: it can look like safe zones and safe passages to get to those
safe zones, it can look like a regional military force that is brought
in to do protection of civilians work, it can look like working through
other regional and diplomatic and human rights infrastructures to bring
about better documentation that will lead to prevention and not just
identification of civilian abuses. But we also need to look at the
humanitarian picture. You know, currently, we have over 80% of Sudan's
health facilities are not functioning. We have 23 million children in
Sudan, over 19 million of whom are out of school with no outlook on the
horizon for a return to education. Those are the things that will have
generational impacts. In fact, they already are starting to. And unless
we look at those very immediate concerns alongside a search for a
ceasefire, we're going to allow that suffering to continue until such
time as we're able to secure a very elusive ceasefire.
So many challenges and so many questions that need urgent
answering, and, of course, there is the great determination of the
Sudanese people in their efforts to achieve the democratic society that
they deserve.
Can I just add that what we've seen in Sudan, and I would credit the
revolution with this, or at least the political infrastructure and the
resistance infrastructure that was put in place by resistance groups,
particularly the neighbourhood resistance committees during the
revolution, you know, we see them functioning today. We see them in the
emergency response rooms, we see them in the groups that are able to
find a safe passage for people fleeing bombardment or harassment by
the belligerents, we see it in the mobile clinics that are set up
through volunteer networks, in the mutual aid infrastructure that is
being put up by these very same resistance groups. And these are the
same groups that were pushing for democracy in the first place. And I
think that we need to recognise exactly what a treasure trove of
activity that is. You know, oftentimes when you have a humanitarian
situation of this scale, you have the international community through
its aid infrastructure respond in a very much tried and tested, business
as usual way. And what I think would make much more sense for Sudan,
because it has this localisation infrastructure in place, is to break
those aid habits that frankly aren't working. There is no access for aid
workers, there is no money that can be counted on, not just because
it's going elsewhere to Ukraine and to Gaza but also because aid
envelopes have been getting smaller and smaller. So we need to make use
of what already exists and what is already working. And that does mean
faithfully following a localisation agenda and letting these groups that
have already demonstrated that they can function in these incredibly
difficult circumstances in Sudan, giving them the chance to maximise on
what already works. And frankly, we haven't seen enough of that.
You can find Kholood Khair’s podcast here.