21 Apr 2023 15:24:PM
On Thursday, the fighting in Sudan continued despite one of the two warring sides agreeing to a 72-hour ceasefire on humanitarian grounds. The ceasefire came just ahead of the Muslim holiday of Eid-ul-Fitr and was meant to provide time for civilians trapped in conflict zones to escape the area. Regardless, even as the three-day ceasefire was to come into effect, fighting continued in the capital of Khartoum, with reports of airstrikes and shelling in several parts of the city.
Meanwhile, evacuation efforts continue, with various foreign governments attempting to reach out to their citizens still stranded in Sudan. The US, for instance, is already moving its military assets to the African nation of Djibouti to prepare for the possible evacuation of US embassy staff in Sudan.
There are also around 19,000 US citizens in the nation that may need to be evacuated from the warzone though such evacuations are made more difficult by the fact that the international airport in Khartoum has come under constant fire and the airspace over Sudan has presently been closed off.
India too is attempting to evacuate its citizens from the warzone, with Foreign Minister S Jaishankar meeting the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday in order to secure the organisation’s aid in the evacuation efforts. Previously, India has also reached out to the grouping of the US, the UK, Saudia Arabia and the UAE, four countries involved in working out a political settlement to end the conflict in Sudan and re-establish a civilian led-government.
Today, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also chaired a high-level meeting to further discuss the situation in Sudan.
As noted above, even the brief Eid ceasefire that was supposed to come into effect on humanitarian grounds was one-sided, with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) being the ones to announce the ceasefire but without the backing of the other warring group, the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF).
The non-functioning nature of this ceasefire is an accurate indication of the volatile situation in Sudan where neither side is agreeing to back down or even considering the possibility of crisis even as the conflict heats up.
To briefly recap the events leading up to this conflict that has already claimed over 300 lives and wounded over 3,000, it is important to start with the two men who define and drive this conflict.
On one side is the leader of the Sudan Armed Forces, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, a career soldier from the northern part of Sudan who rose in prominence under the former ruler of the country, Omar al-Bashir. Like his rival, the General gained his current infamy and reputation by leading counterinsurgency strikes during the bloody Darfur conflict that ended with hundreds of thousands of casualties. He commands approximately 100,000 men according to various sources.
On the other side is Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the leader of the nation’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, a successor organisation to the notorious Janjaweed militia that was armed and organised by the Omar al-Bashir government to fight anti-government dissidents during the aforementioned Darfur conflict.
Dagalo, popularly known as Hemeti, hails from the Arab Rizeigat tribe and rose to prominence as a result of the aforementioned Darfur conflict. His role in supporting the Bashir government’s anti-insurgency activities eventually netted him and his family a highly lucrative deal to mine and sell gold from the territories he seized during the crisis. His wealth allowed him to further fund the expansion of the RSF, an armed group that essentially acted as his private militia.
In 2017, the RSF was officially established as an independent security force beside the official armed forces of Sudan. Presently, it is thought to number anywhere from 70,000- 150,000.
In 2019, both Dagalo and Burhan cooperated in removing Omar al-Bashir from power after the authoritarian leader began losing power over his country in the face of mass pro-democracy protests. The two men then agreed to a power-sharing deal where they would help the nation transition to a democratic civilian-led government.
By 2021, however, the two men changed track and instead cooperated to carry out a coup and capture control of the nation instead. Later, in the face of concentrated international and regional pressure to end the coup and transition to a civilian government, Dagalo and Burhan backed down and agreed to negotiate with pro-democracy groups for the future of Sudan.
But even as these talks continued, tensions began to spring up between the two erstwhile allies as debates sprung up over the final shape of the nation’s armed forces and how the independent RSF would be integrated into the whole military system.
More importantly, tensions sprung up over which of the two men would be in charge of the whole combined force, General al-Burhan or his ‘deputy’ Lieutenant General Dagalo.
To make matters worse, Dagalo began to villainise his superior in public, claiming that while he stood for a democratic transition, the same could not be said for the power-hungry forces under Burhan.
The exact moment where these tensions and power games transitioned into outright conflict is hard to point out but it is known that tensions between the two sides sprang up earlier this week when the RSF started moving its forces into the capital Khartoum and its surrounding areas, something the SAF did not care for.
When fighting finally broke out between the two groups in the capital, both sides claimed that the other fired the first shot but ultimately, this did not matter. Both sides began engaging in an increasingly violent conflict that quickly escalated from small-arms fire to airstrikes and artillery barrages in civilian areas.
Swiftly, the fight spread to other parts of the nation as well, from Port Sudan to Darfur as both sides exchanged blows in this battle for supremacy. So sudden and confusing was the conflict that other entities were soon caught in the crossfire such as the UN which has already lost at least three people in the fighting this week.
At present, it seems unlikely that either side would compromise its position and back down, at least this early in the conflict where it is assumed much of their respective military powers are largely intact.
But this presently contained ego-tiff appears to have every chance of escalating into a larger conflict with the entry of both regional and international powers. It is important to note here that Sudan is in a highly strategic position in a particularly volatile part of Africa. Conflicts in the region, more often than not, have a history of spilling over across the borders of other nations.
According to some reports, this is already happening. On Thursday, Sudanese media reported that the SAF had fought off an attack on its positions in a border area from Ethiopian forces. The area in question, largely comprised of farmland, is considered a disputed area between Sudan and Ethiopia.
Meanwhile, Egypt, a nation known to support the SAF, has stationed some of its troops within the country for what it claims are simple ‘training purposes’. This did not stop the RSF from capturing a group of Egyptian soldiers near Sudan’s capital city and supposedly sending them back home.
At the same time, Russia too appears to have a stake in this fight, with an exclusive CNN report claiming that the mercenary Wagner group is supplying the RSF with missiles to fight the SAF.
The relationship is not apparently a new one, with a 2022 CNN report claiming that Wagner was using gold it gained from Sudan to fund its war in Ukraine. In return, the Russians provided Dagalo and his troops with weapons and training.
Besides the gold, Russia apparently also wants to build a military base in the Red Sea region, something that could be made possible through its involvement in the ongoing conflict.
Active intervention aside, the conflict seems likely to spillover the border of Sudan if the current fighting continues and leads to a steady stream of refugees crossing the nation’s border in all directions to escape the conflict, eventually culminating in a major refugee crisis.
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