Sudan, a nation that has long been gripped by political instability and violent episodes, has become embroiled in a destructive internal conflict that has already claimed many innocent lives. Much of the violence is centred around the capital Khartoum and elsewhere in the North African nation, the result of a fierce power struggle between the army and the paramilitary “Rapid Support Forces”, or RSF.
Since Sudan’s 2021 coup, the country has been run by a military junta led by a council of generals. The two leading members of the council are battling for supremacy as Sudan transitions to a civilian government, each of them vying for military hegemony as Sudan transitions to democracy.
Generals Abdel Fattah al-Burhan of the regular Army and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, aka “Hemedti”, of the paramilitary RSF, worked together on multiple occaisions; in 2003, government forces employed ethnic militias known as the Janjaweed to carry out the first genocide of the 21st century against the native Darfuri population. Burhan had control of the military in Darfur province, and Hemedti was a leading member of the Janjaweed whose forces, who later became the RSF, are known to have carried out massacres and mass rapes against the Darfuri populace. They have also fought in the civil conflicts in Yemen and Libya where it was similarly accused of war crimes.
Before his overthrow in 2019, military dictator Omar al-Bashir came to rely increasingly upon the RSF as a paramilitary force. Hemedti, Burhan, and other Sudanese generals overthrew Bashir, and together with civilian protest leaders formed a provisional government with Burhan as its leader and Hemedti as his deputy.
This did not last long, however. in 2021, the military seized full control of the country, and Burhan started filling his cabinet with Islamist former Bashir loyalists. Hemedti wanted to maintain control of the RSF when it became a formal part of the army, and thus control of the military, which is something Burhan and his allies could not allow.
No one knows who fired the first shot, but it was fired on the 15th of April in Khartoum. Hundreds of civilians have already died and the fighting shows no signs of slowing thus far. Violence has been brimming since 2019, but hasn’t come to fruition until now. Both sides claim to be fighting for democracy, and have committed to civilian government, but with Burhan’s links to Bashir and Hemedti’s track record of war crimes and genocide, neither of these claims can be taken seriously.
The situation in Sudan is dire for the civilians caught in the cross fire. Khartoum has been turned into an active warzone, creating a refugee crisis as hundreds of thousands of Sudanese flee from the fighting. Those that remain huddle in their houses away from the empty streets, with street-to-street fighting cutting off access to hospitals, which are themselves overflowing with injured, understaffed, and liable to be hit by artillery themselves.
The fighting across the country has created a wider refugee crisis, with the borders surrounding Sudan inundated with those fleeing the violence. Sudan already hosted more than a million refugees, one of the most in Africa, most of them South Sudanese. These people are now being made to flee further from home to Egypt, or Chad, or many of them back to South Sudan, but none of these nations have much to offer.
Calls for a stop to hostilities have been pouring in from nation states and international organisations steadily, and the UN and other refugee agencies already have boots on the ground. However, the situation in Sudan was already dire before the fighting erupted. Now, unless there is a dramatic increase in funding, there is not much hope for these refugees.
This fighting is not likely to stop anytime soon. It is a battle between two men’s ambitions and egos, both vying for the position of utmost power in a country they are seeking to have a hand in forging. Neither side will give an inch at the negotiating table or on the battlefield unless directly threatened. Until one side breaks, or until the international community steps in, the people of Khartoum and Sudan live in fear and doubt.
The situation in Sudan is typical of East Africa in its current state. Nations surrounding the Horn of Africa have been embroiled in civil conflicts and disaster at an alarming rate; Somalia is still gripped by famine with no grain coming from Ukraine and with its own Islamist militia problem, in Ethiopia the government is still fighting rebel groups, and the long-running civil war in Yemen still persists with no end in sight. After a brief period of progress in the region, it seems that as international situations lose stability, those regions of the world on a knifes edge are the first to fall into disorder.
stay safe
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