The Sudanese armed forces conducting an airdrop of military
equipment in North Darfur state, April 2024 [photo credit: @Sudan_tweet]
When we last talked to you in early January you described the
humanitarian catastrophe then unfolding as the worst in the world. Tens
of thousands killed, 9 million displaced 25 million in need of urgent
humanitarian aid. What is the situation today?
I think it's fair to say it's gotten much worse in a very short space
of time. The famine that we've been warning about for months now has
definitely come upon us. There has been a reticence from international
organisations particularly the UN to announce a famine. We're hearing
heart-breaking stories from IDP camps in Darfur, in the streets of the
capital Khartoum and in different parts of the country that people are
facing acute hunger and malnutrition, children in particular. The
numbers that you have described have only increased. Over 80% of health
services are still very much non-functioning, And we haven't got solid
numbers the numbers of people dead but estimates reach around 100,000,
if not more. This war is becoming far more entrenched and the
consequences of it are becoming graver and graver.
Why is the UN hesitant to use the word famine?
Saying the word famine carries responsibilities. According to UN
Security Council resolution 2417, the world has a responsibility to act,
once food insecurity of this type, once famine of this sort, has been
identified. And the UN frankly is uninterested in meeting that
responsibility, as are many international actors, bilateral actors, etc.
We were hearing in February that the UN was very close to announcing a
famine in Sudan and in Gaza concurrently. And neither of those has
happened. And the fact is that in the current climate speaking about one
conflict invariably leads to conversations about another conflict. And
the reason we haven't seen the declaration of famine in Sudan is
possibly linked to the fact that the international community does not
want to do that for Gaza. Similarly, we're seeing an unwillingness to
call the genocide in Sudan a genocide because that would also draw
attention to the genocide in Gaza. And so we're seeing this relational
aspect of two distinct conflicts. The world has, I think, recognised
that the humanitarian legal structures that we once relied on are
actually not robust enough to survive the sort of doublespeak we're
seeing currently play out in conflicts across the world with the
exception of course of Ukraine.
The prism through which this war is explained is, oftentimes,
binary. It's a war between two generals, Hemedti, and his Rapid Support
Forces and al- Burhan and the Sudanese Armed Forces. But that ignores
outside influences. So let's look at those influences beginning with
Hemedti and his backers. Who are they? And who among them are the most
influential?
I think the issue about the two generals narrative was something that
journalists hung on to very easily at the start of the war because they
had very little foundational knowledge of Sudan. And my issue with that
framing isn't necessarily that it's wrong. It's just incomplete. Yes,
at the centre of this are two generals who were brothers in arms for a
very long time and who have since turned against each other in a very
Cain and Abel-like story. They were armed actors, both parts of the
security state that fought hand in glove against the people of Darfur in
the genocide 20 years ago. But since then, they have created and
cultivated international relations and engagements that have allowed
them to be in a position to wage this current war.
For the RSF the strongest benefactor has been the United Arab
Emirates, for several reasons. The RSF has framed itself as anti-regime
and therefore anti-Islamist and that chimes in well with the UAE foreign
policy in the region. Most importantly, though, I think their
relationship is underwritten by gold and the extent to which the United
Arab Emirates, the world's largest gold market, is able to tap into
smuggled gold from the regions the RSF controls. But it also goes beyond
Sudan for the UAE as the RSF opens up an opportunity to the rest of
Africa. We think about the RSF as a transnational criminal franchise
much more than it is a military force. The UAE, in the RSF, has a guard
that can open and pave the way to other African countries, particularly
in the Sahel and particularly in West Africa, which it has done. If you
look at the way that the United Arab Emirates is engaging in investments
across the continent, it is very much working in the regions where
non-state actors like the RSF also have influence, where there is a lot
of challenges to the state and where the UAE has oftentimes not picked
the side of the states but is very much more comfortable working with
non-state actors.
What about al-Burhan the general who runs the SAF, the Sudanese Armed Forces. Who's backing him?
The SAF, headed by al-Burhan, is much less about the personality at
the top and much more about the institution. The SAF is really the only
remaining institution in the country and that is of course by design.
And the SAF has attracted the kind of supporters that are very much in
favour of backing state institutions. So for example, you have the
Egyptians who have been steadfast supporters of SAF, the institution.
Similarly, the Saudis have claimed a preference for the SAF mostly
because they also favour working with the institution. And you have
other entities in the region, the Algerians, the Qataris, the Turks, who
yes may have some sympathy towards the Muslim Brotherhood and the
Islamic ideological connections that the Sudanese Armed Forces has. But
mostly it's the favouring of the central institution. And that can be
seen as a much more profitable, much more robust guarantor of their
foreign policy.
Currently, the biggest prize in Sudan today is the Red Sea coastline.
And so the Sudanese Armed Forces, which controls the coastline is able
to get a lot of support, particularly from Iran. And, to some degree,
from the Saudis who are only across the water from Sudan's coastline.
And historically the SAF has support from the Russians. And because the
war of attrition that has been waged since the beginning seems to be
becoming more and more entrenched, I think different actors, both within
the region and further afield are seeing that there is this
increasingly Libya-style scenario where the Sudanese Armed Forces will
be in charge of the Red Sea coastline, while the RSF will be much more
in control of the western part of the country closer to the Sahel. This
means depending on what your foreign policy interest in the North East
Africa region is, whether it's linked to the Red Sea or to the Sahel is
how you will choose your preferred Sudanese security guarantor.
What's interesting, I think, is three countries in particular have
been able to cultivate relationships with both SAF and the RSF and have
historically done so in order to be able to have access to both of those
things. The Russians have mastered this. The Kremlin has remained very
close to Burhan and the Sudanese Armed Forces while the Wagner group has
been very close to the RSF and has secured their interests in the
Sahelian region.
And the other two countries?
Israel is a notable one; we have seen how the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs has been very close to Burhan and Burhan of course, met with
Netanyahu initially to start the normalisation process a few years ago.
And at the same time, we see Mossad has historically been closer to the
RSF. And there were some conversations around the degree to which there
would be security engagement and exchange between the two.
And until very recently, the United Arab Emirates was very good at
doing this. The UAE is not a monolith. You have several members of the
greater royal family as well as, of course, the different monarchies of
the different emirates within the UAE. And either they had been closer
to Burhan or to Hemedti which allowed the UAE as a country to be able to
engage with both of them. Now, because gold is Sudan’s biggest export
and the UAE is effectively the world's biggest gold market both SAF and
the RSF had been doing business with the UAE on gold. What we're seeing
now is the UAE’s inability to maintain ties to both the SAF and the RSF.
It's dogged support of the RSF and the way that it has helped the RSF
to humiliate the Sudanese Armed Forces on the battlefield has meant that
Burhan and the SAF have pulled away from relying so much on the UAE
economically speaking. Just in the past week we have seen that the
Sudanese Armed Forces have opened up a channel with the Qataris who are
not on very good terms diplomatically and politically speaking with the
UAE and they've opened up that pathway to help them process their gold,
very much the service that the UAE was doing.
When you were here last time you spoke about the role civilians
in the midst of this war are playing: civilian resistance committees,
emergency response rooms. Talk about those civilians, the ordinary
Sudanese who are showing extraordinary courage and resilience in the
face of this horrific conflict.
Absolutely, I think the resistance committees, in particular, the
emergency response rooms are by far the greatest hope we have in the
country. You know we have a very young population in Sudan and a
population that remembers the December Revolution of 2018-2019. And it's
a population that despite everything they've been going through in this
war has demonstrated huge resilience. Part of that is that there has
been a reliance, not on formal political structures, not on two
belligerent sides, but a reliance on community cohesion. That is
critical, not just for the delivery of aid but for the peaceful
coexistence that needs to be at the forefront right now to help heal
this very acute trauma of an unprecedented nature. It’s bone deep at
this point. And people are finding it very difficult to overcome that.
Many of the stories we're hearing now are of people dying within a
community space or dying in proximity to armed actors related to, for
example, somebody being considered to be from an ethnic group loyal to
another group. And that's (what) suspicion breeds, a sort of a
Rwanda-style scenario that I hope we very much avoid. But increasingly,
the characteristics are there that tell us perhaps that is a way that
we're going and the biggest defence we have against that is the sense of
community woven by these volunteer groups. It is not by politicians, it
is not by the belligerent parties trying to exonerate themselves from
their atrocities, it is absolutely by these volunteer groups. And for
that reason, they are being targeted by both sides in very different
ways. They're either being put in prison or being killed. But what I
think is very encouraging is that those of them who have left the
country still continue to organise and still continue to support and try
to send financial help or help of another nature from outside of the
country and that gives me the greatest hope.
Can you provide a snapshot of the resistance committees, how they came about and what they do?
So let's go back a little to when the revolution started in
2018-2019, there were a series of neighbourhood resistance committees,
which function at the community level, at the neighbourhood level, going
door to door spreading the word about protests, about the need to end
the military regime of Omar al-Bashir which by that point had lasted 29
years. And they were able to get a lot of support from within the
neighbourhoods but they were also able to work within networks across
the entire country. The neighbourhood resistance committees were
absolutely the backbone of the revolution. And after the coup in 2021,
they were really the backbone of the resistance as well. And when the
war started last year in April, they immediately - having already had
those structures in place - set up neighbourhood emergency response
rooms which basically had groups of volunteers focused on a key area be
that nutrition or protection or evacuating people or setting up shelters
within schools or soup kitchens for the community. And really, they're
the only ones right now delivering aid to any great degree. It's not
your usual international NGOs, who have largely left, particularly urban
areas like Khartoum, it is absolutely these emergency response rooms
and they pull together their resources much of which comes from the
diaspora.
What are the steps that need to be taken right now to move towards ending this brutal war in Sudan?
Well, I think it is complex in that it's multi-layered and the actors
are so many. I wouldn't say we're exactly at proxy levels right now but
I would say that increasingly the war in Sudan is behaving as a proxy
conflict. However at the heart of it we have to also look at the
domestic elements. Can these different belligerent groups - and there
are not two anymore - can they get to a place where they reach some
level of consensus that the war must end? And once they do, can the
international actors that support them also get to that place? And
potentially can those international actors be more persuadable and get
to that place before them and help to convince them to put down their
weapons. So the first step for me has to be building consensus. If there
is no diplomatic effort being put to building the consensus that the
war must end we won't get into a position where the war has any chance
of doing so. Of course, we won't get everybody, this whole mosaic of
different actors, to agree. But I think a critical mass on both sides
should be enough to at least get the conversation started. Once you have
this consensus, the next step would be to build an incentive structure
and a disincentive structure and leverage to be able to make this
consensus into something more tangible, into the beginnings of an
agreement that discusses what do you do with the main triggers of this
war, issues of impunity and transitional justice, issues of what happens
with the money and who has access to it? And who has control over the
state finances and other natural resources? And what happens with the
troops? Should they be integrated or not? These are the real questions
that unless they are dealt with, there will be no end to this war. And
in order to be able to have sufficient answers to those questions, there
needs to be much more attention put to what will the different sides
agree to, what will communities agree to victims.
That's going to take a lot of work to figure out what all these
moving parts want. Where we are with the leverage being put into
position, how long for some of these processes to take place? What
exactly constitutes transitional justice? Is it Burhan and Hemedti being
sent to the ICC? Or is it much more of a collection of different
transitional justice instruments such as truth and reconciliation
commissions, etc. Once that is all figured out, and that will take some
time, then you can formalise them into a mediation platform. And really
work out the kinks and make sure that the different constituency groups
are represented and ensure that the international community, those that
support the war but also those who support the peace, are able to get on
board. Now, for those three things to happen you need to have a
strategy on Sudan, which no country, or no institution, including the
African Union, IGAD (East Africa Intergovernmental Authority) or the UN
has.
You need to have sufficient diplomatic weight being brought to bear
and we haven't really seen that, we've seen very little diplomacy, not
just in Sudan but in the entire Horn of Africa region. We have to ensure
that there are enough resources being put into this. We have several
envoys on the file right now who don't have a team, who don't have
staff, who don't have resources to be able to fly around, etc. So it
takes a lot of investment, it takes a lot of intentionality to get those
three steps in order and we don't have them. You know, what we've seen
right now is at least five different mediation platforms. We've all gone
straight to step three, straight to the mediation phase, without having
locked out a. the consensus and b. the leverage incentive structures.
And that is a reason that every single one of them has failed.
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