Each crackle of gunfire makes the 15-year-old shiver. Playing football earlier this year, he was seized by militiamen, then imprisoned along with some three dozen teenage boys. At first their job was to wash the fighters’ clothes and polish their boots. Then many were raped.
One day a Kalashnikov was forced into his hands, he says. “If you don’t take the rifle and fight with us against the army, we will kill your families,” he and the others were warned. After being force-fed stimulants, they were chained to a pickup truck and driven to the battlefield south of Khartoum.
But a surprise drone attack allowed the boy to escape, and he was later taken into custody by Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). He is now in a safe house in Omdurman, a city adjoining Sudan’s capital. “I wish this war had never happened,” he says.
Yet it has. Since April 15th, 2023, Sudan has been gripped by a vicious conflict, as rival forces battle it out. The SAF, led by the de facto president, Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, are opposed by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), whose commander is the feared Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, a former camel trader known as Hemeti, whose forces are accused of committing ethnic cleansing.
The two men joined together during a popular uprising against the country’s long-time president and strongman, Omar al-Bashir, that led to his ejection in 2019; now, battling for the spoils, they are at each other’s throats. US officials estimate that the fighting has killed 150,000 people.
Both sides have been accused of war crimes. The UN has warned that Sudan faces a displacement crisis without parallel, as more than 10 million people, a fifth of the country’s population, flee their homes. More than half of that 49 million population are suffering life-threatening acute food insecurity, some of the worst conditions that have been recorded in the country.
This is arguably the world’s most devastating war, and there is no sign of a decisive winner, still less a tangible peace deal. As well as fighters from neighbouring countries, it has sucked in a string of global and regional actors, each tussling to compete for influence and power in a land that is one of Africa’s top gold producers.
“We’re now 16 months into this conflict and we don’t see an end in sight,” says Clementine Nkweta-Salami, the UN humanitarian chief in Sudan. “What we see is fighting, hunger and disease closing in.”
But, like so many wars in Africa, including in the eastern Democratic of Congo, events in Sudan have passed under the radar of the world’s attention. The conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, regarded as strategic conflicts with obvious geopolitical ramifications, have provoked feelings of solidarity and mass protests. But there has been little comparable hand-wringing about Sudan.
Even so, huge amounts are at stake: Sudan’s Red Sea location is close to the Suez Canal, a big conduit of world trade, already threatened by Houthi attacks. Countries including Russia and Middle Eastern powers are accused of pouring in money and arms.
“April 15th, 2023, changed everything in Sudan,” says Ahmed Osman Hamza, governor of Khartoum state, as explosions rumble in the background. “This is a war against the people.”
From their stronghold, Hemeti’s homeland of Darfur in the west and southwest of the country, the RSF and its allied militias now control vast swathes of territory; they are estimated to have taken much of the region around Khartoum last year. Meanwhile, with the capital under siege, Burhan and the SAF have retreated to Port Sudan, 670km northeast on the Red Sea coast. He has been attempting a fightback from there. Fourteen of 18 of Sudan’s states have now been absorbed in the fighting.
The geopolitical context is often complex. While retired Ukrainian pilots sip mango juice and feast on lobster in Port Sudan alongside SAF commanders, Russian snipers are also training Burhan’s army, according to Sudanese intelligence officers. Meanwhile, Sudanese generals claim that the RSF has roped in “mercenaries” from the Central African Republic, Chad and South Sudan.
Recent reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch found that weapons produced by countries as varied as China, Iran, Turkey, Russia and the UAE were proliferating, amid growing calls for expanding an arms embargo.
The SAF is being funded partly by gold exports, officials in Port Sudan confirm, as well as what is left of the army’s once-vast business conglomerate, all underpinned by supplies of Russian oil; since the beginning of the conflict, Russia has delivered eight cargoes of oil products, mostly diesel, into Sudan, according to LSEG data. By contrast, UN experts believe that the RSF is being supported by Hemeti’s own gold business and the United Arab Emirates. A UN panel has presented what they describe as “credible” evidence saying Abu Dhabi has been supplying arms.
The UAE forcefully insists that it maintains “complete neutrality”, criticising “baseless attempts to divert attention from the pressing issues at hand”. But observers say its support for the RSF is driven by suspicions that Burhan is too close to Islamists, who were prominent in the Bashir era. “The UAE sees the Muslim Brotherhood simmering in Sudan,” says a senior foreign diplomat. “This is what’s driving them.”
Sudan’s own resources are also at stake. The conflict has thrown off course an IMF-backed reform programme and further jeopardised Khartoum’s ability to repay creditors, including China, at a time when the country was negotiating debt relief. The economy shrank by 40 per cent last year, estimates Jibril Ibrahim, finance minister of the institutions controlled by Burhan.
But as well as being one of Africa’s top gold producers, the country has resources other countries crave – including tracts of fertile arable land along the Nile. Most importantly, it has 750km of Red Sea coastline en route to the Suez Canal, where the likes of Iran, Russia and the UAE are jockeying for access.
Following the 2019 overthrow of Bashir – who flip-flopped between Tehran and Riyadh for years – Burhan strengthened ties with the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. He even started a rapprochement with Israel.
But then came the conflict. Searching for allies, Burhan and his generals reopened diplomatic links with Iran; analysts and diplomats say the country has since supplied drones. “This is now a Middle East war being played out in Africa,” says a top western diplomat.
While the Russian mercenary group previously known as Wagner once trained the RSF, these days Moscow appears increasingly aligned with Burhan. Sudanese military leaders and Russian officials talk of reviving plans to allow a Russian naval base on the Red Sea.
“The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia – they are all seeking a foothold in Sudan,” says Suliman Baldo, head of the Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker think-tank. “Russia also wants Sudan’s gold.”
Speaking of “countries and negative forces, pouring fuel on the fire of Sudan”, the US special envoy, Tom Perriello, called on “all external actors to stop fuelling this war, stop arming the participants”.
The war has unleashed mass atrocities, which have prompted an investigation by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. UN special adviser Alice Wairimu Nderitu has spoken of “indicators for genocide” and “ethnically motivated attacks” against non-Arab communities in Darfur, including by the RSF.
The RSF – a descendant of the Janjaweed horseback militia accused of genocide in Darfur 20 years ago – claims to have some 300,000 fighters, many of them irregular, who have been accused by the Sudanese army, foreign governments and international organisations of appalling acts.
A 16-year-old girl recalls being dragged away in Omdurman earlier this year. “Two RSF militiamen tied me up, beat me up and raped me several times,” she says. In the next room, they “beat the hell out of” her brother, suspecting him of being in the army; it was the last time she saw him. The RSF “have no mercy, there is not humanity in them”, she says.
Yet both sides have been implicated, according to a UN Human Rights Council report published last week that speaks of “harrowing human rights violations and international crimes”. While the RSF comes in for special criticism, it and the SAF alike are accused of “large-scale” attacks against civilians, schools, hospitals and other infrastructure, as well as rape and other forms of sexual violence. The authors argue that “it is imperative that an independent and impartial force with a mandate to safeguard civilians be deployed without delay”.
Late last month, Human Rights Watch said both sides “have summarily executed, tortured, and ill-treated people in their custody, and mutilated dead bodies”, citing instances where SAF soldiers brandished decapitated heads.
Sudan’s SAF-aligned attorney-general, Al-Fathi Mohammed Issa Tayfour, insists the RSF is responsible for the “overwhelming” majority of atrocities. Ezzedine al-Safi, the RSF political representative – and a cousin of Hemeti’s – acknowledges “there are RSF soldiers who committed crimes”, but claims his force has established a committee to investigate abuses and 400 men have already been sentenced.
“What is happening in Sudan has not happened since the Middle Ages, anywhere,” a Sudanese businessman says of RSF fighters. “There’s been a lot of wars and civil wars all over the world, but nobody has done what these guys have done – they have systematically destroyed Sudan.”
In the wake of violence, cholera and hunger have stalked the country. Last month an international committee determined that there was now famine in the Zamzam displacement camp near the besieged city of El-Fasher in Darfur. UN-backed data suggests that 755,000 people in 10 states face “catastrophic” hunger. Overall, the lives of an estimated 25 million people are in danger because of malnutrition.
[ Hunger being used as weapon in Sudan war, humanitarian organisations sayOpens in new window ]
Aid deliveries into RSF-occupied areas have been delayed by SAF-controlled officials in Port Sudan, but nongovernmental organisations say that there have also been detentions, robberies and looting by RSF fighters. US special envoy Perriello calls this a “man-made famine, weaponised by systematic violations of international humanitarian law”. It is “spreading fast”, he adds.
But Sudan’s agriculture minister Abubakr al-Bushra casts doubt on the UN figures, countering that there is “no famine at all” and rejects suggestions that the army is hampering aid. “How can we block the aid to our people?” he asks.
Although there are hopes that the situation may ease – last month the SAF agreed to the reopening of humanitarian access routes – for many people the damage is already done. In a hospital in Omdurman, Halima Ahmed holds her 2½-year-old girl in her arms; she weighs just 5kg, and has been left blind after months of malnourishment. Last month, following intense fighting, they fled Gezira, a state just south of Khartoum that was once known as Sudan’s breadbasket.
As UN officials warned that Sudan was at a “catastrophic, cataclysmic breaking point”, last month new US-led talks aimed at ending the war began in Geneva. Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Egypt, the African Union and the UAE are all involved.
Yet achieving peace will be far from easy. When Perriello attempted to get the opposing sides to sit down, the army baulked. “Military operations will not cease until the last militia withdraws from the cities and villages they have violated and colonised,” Burhan said. For his part, Hemeti responded, “Burhan and his clique lack any genuine commitment to negotiation ... We will not allow a mere group of terrified generals, who fled the capital, to control the fate of our people.”
Analysts say that Burhan, who survived an attempt on his life in July, is an increasingly weak actor, surrounded by generals and Islamists with competing goals and loyalties, and is in no position to negotiate. “Islamists have a strong chokehold” on Burhan, says a senior foreign diplomat.
Both sides accuse each other of violating an agreement on the protection of civilians made in Jeddah last year. Hemeti recently told his men to adhere to the rules, but here his control, too, is doubtful. “The RSF is a mere alliance of criminal gangs engaged in looting, killing, rape,” says Amjed Farid, former assistant chief of staff to Abdalla Hamdok, the previous prime minister.
The SAF does not want the UAE involved in the talks because of its alleged backing of the RSF. “You can’t be the judge and the criminal at the same time,” says finance minister Ibrahim, who also leads a Darfuri armed group allied with the SAF. Not everyone agrees – and if the UAE really is involved, “how would we have a peace deal without the UAE at the table?” asks a negotiator.
We need more civilian input because neither side will accept any ceasefire deal without having an idea about what’s going to happen to them afterwards
Perhaps the bigger question is whether Sudan’s citizens will have much of a say in the haggling over their country’s future. A key challenge for these groups, which are mainly civilian-led, is that they are disunited. Some are seen as aligned with the SAF, while the Taqaddum coalition headed by Hamdok has been accused of being close to the RSF, although it insists it is neutral.
“We need more civilian input because neither side will accept any ceasefire deal without having an idea about what’s going to happen to them afterwards,” says Nureldin Satti, the former Sudanese ambassador to the US, who is now part of an array of democratic coalitions that include political parties, civil organisations and irregular armed groups.
Unsurprisingly, both the SAF and RSF present themselves as champions of democracy. Hemeti said on Friday that his forces wanted to “firmly establish the foundations of peace and democracy”. SAF Lieut Gen Ibrahim Jaber, a member of Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council, says that “after we stop the war, we shall announce a transitional period with a technocratic government to work together towards elections”.
Given the military’s intimate involvement in politics – Sudan has witnessed at least 17 successful coups since independence in 1956 – many citizens doubt that either is the country’s rightful leader. “We don’t want to see any military uniforms in power,” says Duaa Tariq, an activist in Khartoum. It’s like choosing “between cholera and malaria”, quips one commentator.
Many fear that Sudan – which already lost South Sudan to independence in 2011 following a war – could fracture into at least two competing regions. Suliman Arcua “Minni” Minnawi, a former rebel leader turned governor of Darfur whose forces are fighting the RSF, believes that if Hemeti fails in his bid to take over the country, he will try to create a “de facto government” based in Darfur. Much the same has happened in Libya, Sudan’s northwestern neighbour, which is now run by two governments backed by rival militias.
For his part, Perriello warns that Sudan risks turning into a “giant Somalia”, whose bloody descent into anarchy in the 1990s also started with two leaders with armies falling out. The country became an archetypal failed state. “Right now the parties lack the political will to stop fighting, and in fact are accelerating the conflict,” he says.
Kholood Khair, director of the Khartoum-based consultancy Confluence Advisory, puts things more crisply. “Neither side is interested in ending the war before they get their way,” she says.
– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024
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