Good morning Africa Briefers,

Today we’ll be taking a closer look at the war currently unfolding in Sudan, with peace talks between the two sides of the country’s civil war - the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) - beginning Thursday last week in the Saudi city of Jeddah. We’ll summarise some of the context and causes of the war, give you the latest updates on what’s unfolding, and discuss some of the broader regional and geopolitical implications. We’ll also discuss growing concerns of an RSF-perpetrated genocide taking place in Darfur.

The current civil war in Sudan broke out in April 2023 following the toppling of the military government of Omar al-Bashir in 2019 and the subsequent break-down of a UN-mediated political transition process toward democratic civilian rule.

Starting in 2018, the al-Bashir regime faced months of civilian protests triggered by wide-ranging issues, from the cost of living to authoritarianism and human rights abuses. Eventually, al-Bashir was removed from office in April 2019 by a military coup led by the SAF and RSF - two separate elements of the Sudanese government’s armed forces - and the Sovereignty Council of Sudan was formed, ostensibly to manage the country’s transition to democracy. In this effort it was aided by a UN delegation sent to oversee and facilitate the process.

Since then, SAF - the country’s national army - has been headed up by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. The RSF meanwhile, was and continues to be led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as “Hemedti”. A paramilitary group, the RSF was initially assembled by al-Bashir from various militias - most notably including the infamous ‘Janjaweed’ - to fight in the War in Darfur, but have since been used to secure land and natural resource access and to put down insurrections and protests across the Darfur region, as well as to terrorise and slaughter unarmed civilians and carry out ethnic cleansing. Hemedti thus accrued significant power under the latter years of the al-Bashir government, personally controlling and profiting from several Sudanese gold mines (Al Jazeera).

The leaders of the SAF and RSF - al-Burhan and Hemedti - thus respectively became the head and deputy-head of the Sovereignty Council, which constituted a civilian-military group that served as the head of state in the transition. A civilian Prime Minister in Amdalla Hamdok and a mostly civilian cabinet were also appointed in 2019, but al-Burhan and Hemedti retained significant political power, and tensions between the two would gradually rise. One aspect of these tensions was the question of the integration of the RSF into the SAF, with the SAF insisting that this integration follow a two-year timeframe and the RSF demanding ten (BBC).

After two years of transitional government, in October 2021, al-Burhan again instigated a coup, but this time with waning support and eventually opposition from the RSF. Amidst domestic and international pressure, including from the UN delegation facilitating the transition, al-Burhan agreed to another transition to civilian rule a month later and Hamdock was reinstated, but the civilian PM resigned in January 2022 as anti-military protests took place across the country.

From then on, the country witnessed a return to military rule under al-Burhan. The African Union suspended Sudan’s membership of the bloc in response, the US, EU, IMF and World Bank froze capital flows, and al-Burhan turned toward Russia for financial support and trade. Over the course of 2022, the UN delegation, alongside Western diplomats, continued to work with the military government and to push for a democratic transition and, in December of that year, it seemed as if this would be successful, with al-Burhan and Hemedti signing another agreement for plans for another transition to a civilian government. 

However, this did not last long. The agreement stipulated that a ‘Final Agreement’ would be signed between civilian and military groups in early April 2023, and there was widespread optimism that the situation would at last stabilise (Dabanga; Chatham House). But in mid-April, fighting broke out between SAF and RSF forces following rising tensions between their ranks, and the country descended into civil war.

Internationally, there was cautious optimism throughout much of the transition process that a transition towards full civilian democracy would take place, even despite the seemingly impossible task of persuading the SAF and RSF - the leaders of which greatly profit from their current positions (NPR) - to put aside their arms and voluntarily give up their influence and power. Western states and the UN were quick to dedicate substantial funding and support for the transitional government. The U.S. in particular pledged $700 million initially and a further $600 million annually to support the democratic transition (FP).

However, this aspiration was not to be. As Justin Lynch writes in this damning article in Foreign Policy, the money spent by foreign donors was poorly coordinated, ineffectively targetted, and frequently outsourced government work to private consultants and NGOs, rather than trying to build state capacity. Moreover, early in the negotiations the Trump-led U.S. government opportunistically attempted to ensure that the new Sudanese government recognised Israel and signed the Ambraham Accords by withholding their pledged funding and refusing to lift its designation of the Sudanese government as a state sponsor of terrorism.

This led to significant delays in the funding coming through to Sudan and thus missed the possible window of opportunity - were there to be one - to better strengthen the new Sudanese state. Thus, PM Hamdock and his civilian colleagues were heavily restricted in what they could do, greatly foreclosing the possibility of a democratic transition (see more: Al Jazeera; Guardian).

From April onwards, violent clashes between the RSF and SAF have increased dramatically, taking place across much of the country. According to UN data from mid-October, the conflict has resulted in more than 9,000 deaths and the displacement of at least 5.6 million, with millions more in need of urgent aid, and widespread reports of sexual violence perpetrated by troops of both sides (see also France24).

In Darfur, fears are mounting that the region may be seeing another genocide, with terrifying reports of massacres of Masalit men, women, and children by RSF forces, who have long sought to suppress uprisings from other groups in the Darfur region, emerging in the media (see The Economist). In June, the Governor of West Darfur - himself a Massalit - was assassinated after sounding the alarm about the genocide of his people, with many holding the RSF responsible (BBC). In late-August, the Washington Post released an editorial warning of ethnic cleansing in Darfur (see also: The Conversation). Earlier this month, the UK Minister for Africa, Andrew Mitchell told the BBC that events in Darfur had “all the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing”.

Peace talks facilitated by Saudi and US negotiators took place in May and June in the Saudi city of Jeddah with both RSF and SAF delegations present, but these were unsuccessful (ACLED). A second round of peace talks began last week Thursday (26/10), but commentators have expressed doubt that these will yield much, not least because representatives from the chief financial backers of the RSF - the United Arab Emirates - are not attending (Al Jazeera; Africa Report).

The UAE have dedicated significant support to Hemedti and the RSF, with Africa Report citing a former CIA analyst who claimed that “The Emirates has done more than anyone else to sustain the RSF and to prolong the conflict in Sudan”, supplying weapons, drones, trucks, and medical treatment to RSF troops.

In addition, the RSF have recently, with the help of such support, recorded a number of important military gains, last week seizing Sudan’s second-largest city, Nyala, from the SAF (Guardian) and capturing a SAF military base in the strategically important Central Darfur (Sudan Tribune). Through Nyala, the RSF have cleared the way to the Central African Republic, from which they can draw support from mercenaries and the Wagner Group (WPR). With this victory, the RSF now controls most of West, South, and Central Darfur. On Thursday this week (01/11), the US State Department announced a warning of a further RSF offensive on SAF positions in North Darfur.

Elsewhere in the country, the RSF is gradually taking Khartoum, where the majority of the fighting is taking place (The Economist), while the SAF has established itself in the eastern city of Port Sudan, on the Red Sea coast. Much will turn on whether the SAF decides to make use of their superior artillery and air power to attack RSF positions in Khartoum, knowing that doing so would come at a high civilian cost, given the RSF are using locals as human shields (USIP).

Given the evidence thus far, commentators are in agreement that there seems little way out of the current conflict. Either the RSF or SAF must somehow figure out a way to win, something that seems unlikely unless foreign support for one side or the other is stepped up substantially, or the war will drag on long enough for a stalemate and negotiation to emerge. In the meantime, a potential genocide unfolds in Darfur, Khartoum faces destruction, millions are being displaced, thousands killed, and to add insult to injury the country’s economy is shrinking dramatically - the International Monetary Fund predicts it will shrink at least 18% in 2023 (Bloomberg).

Fears are thus pronounced that this civil war will reach neither a brief nor bloodless conclusion, in large part given the involvement of foreign actors in maintaining the conflict, with the UAE and the Wagner group supportive of Hemedti and the RSF (ECFR) and Egypt of al-Burhan and the SAF (Wilson Centre). Russia has also announced designs on building a naval base near Port Sudan in the strategically significant Red Sea, something to which the SAF seems open, despite their opposition’s involvement with Wagner (Guardian). Alongside the involvement of the West in trying to bring about a democratic transition, the country’s fate is deeply intertwined with global geopolitics (Guardian). It reveals, as did our Closer Look at Libya a few weeks ago, what geopolitical contestation looks like in an increasingly multi-polar world.

Neither the UN, the African Union, the West, nor seemingly anyone else has the answer to this deadly, destructive war, and an examination of its geopolitical causes illustrates just how little power the ‘international community’ has at present. However, in spite of this lack of control, there seems to be little risk at present of the conflict spilling over into neighbouring countries, although fighters from the Central African Republic and Chad are being drawn into Sudan to serve in the RSF. Some surrounding countries are seeing significant upsurges in refugees, but security in Ethiopia, Egypt, and Eritrea is at present unlikely to be threatened. 

The conflict reveals the impotence of international organisations and institutions whose job it is to prevent and manage eventualities such as this. Of course, one could argue that war in Sudan following the toppling of Omar al-Bashir was inevitable given the strength, economic interests, and separate institutional structures, of Sudan’s national military and paramilitary and their respective leaders. But such an analysis would minimise the extent of the failings of the UN delegation sent to facilitate and mediate the transition to a civilian government, the related, instrumentalisation of the transition by the US government to secure Sudanese support for the Abraham Accords, and the opportunistic support of the RSF by the UAE and the Wagner Group.

That’s all from us this week, thanks for reading.

Cheers,

Josh