Terminators in Khartoum

MICHAEL YOUNG

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Mat Nashed is a journalist and political analyst specializing in the Middle East and North Africa, with a focus on Sudan. He has been closely following events in Sudan since a popular uprising erupted against long-time autocratic president Omar al-Bashir in December 2018. His work has appeared at Al-Jazeera English, Newlines Magazine, the New Humanitarian, the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, and other outlets. Diwan interviewed him in mid-April to discuss the outbreak of violence in Sudan between the Sudanese armed forces and the Rapid Support Forces.

Michael Young: What was behind the outbreak of the fighting in Sudan?

Mat Nashed: In my view, it was the result of failed international mediation from the United Nations mission, the United States, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. The West was pushing for any deal to end the impasse that followed the military coup of October 25, 2021. After cutting development aid and pausing billions of dollars in debt relief in response to the power grab, the West needed a pretext to resume both, indicating that they were most concerned with stability through the lens of economy when it came to Sudan.

This eventually led to the signing of an ad-hoc agreement known as the Framework Agreement on December 5, 2022. The agreement ostensibly aimed to address, in just a few days or weeks, very contentious topics such as security sector reform. The rushed process proved the West was not ready to make a concerted international effort to address major issues in Sudan before a deal was signed. There was not enough investment in terms of time and political capital. That was clear when the parties held only one session, on March 29, about security sector reform, before the expected signing of the deal on April 1. The deal would have stitched together a new civilian administration in name—with the junta in de facto control of the state—before holding new elections. But the session on March 29 didn’t go well and ended quickly, so the signing of a new agreement was postponed to a later date in April.

In short, the success of the political process effectively depended on the two forces that organized the coup—the Sudanese armed forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). But outside parties wanted to hash out the most sensitive issue in Sudan, between the most militarized actors, in one of the most militarized regions in the Horn of Africa in a tight timeframe. It was unrealistic and heightened tensions because neither the military nor the RSF saw eye to eye on security sector reform.

Security sector reform often takes months and years to achieve and is a delicate process. It requires meeting clear benchmarks and building trust among the different security actors, with sticks if the actors fail to reform. This process needs to be underway before a deal is signed. In fact, the opposite happened, and rushing things only exacerbated the harsh disagreements between army commander General Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan and RSF leader General Mohammed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo. The military walked out immediately because it wanted to absorb the RSF within two years, while the RSF wanted the timeframe to be ten years. Foreign diplomats in Khartoum mistakenly thought that after the deal was signed tensions would ease.

Moreover, during the lead-up to the deal, the military was trying to recruit from Hemedti’s tribal base to undercut him. The RSF, in turn, redeployed its forces from Darfur to Khartoum. We saw the catalyst when the RSF deployed near the Merowe airport, where Egyptian and Sudanese military aircraft are located. This was perceived as a preemptive strike by the RSF against the military and the aerial supremacy it has with regard to the RSF. The lack of international mediation and urgency, due to ambassadors being on vacation outside Sudan for Easter, meant that senior diplomatic officials didn’t rush back to find a solution. This would have required pausing the deal, not doubling down on signing it

MY: Some have suggested there is a foreign component to the confrontation, with some Arab countries supporting rival sides. Can you break down who supports whom and tell us what role this has played in the fighting, if any?

MN: Indeed there is. The UAE is certainly backing Hemedti. It has a longstanding patron-client relationship with him for several reasons. Sudan is a place where the Emiratis can acquire a significant amount of gold from the mines that Hemedti controls. The UAE also likes to deal with transactional partners, which Hemedti certainly is, rather than with those who are ideologically driven.

On the side of the military, there are longstanding relations between the Egyptian and Sudanese militaries. Over the last three years, they have conducted joint military exercises as a way for Egypt to flex its muscles with Ethiopia in regard to broader geopolitical disputes, especially the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Egypt’s relations with the Sudanese military go back a long time. Sudanese commanders have trained in Egypt and I believe that former president Omar al-Bashir fought in the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War. We need to look at how Egypt views security in general. It has always backed military institutions or military men who have had the desire to support the creation of military institutions. And for those reasons, we can see why Egypt is put off by Hemedti. The Saudis are realizing that neither partner, Burhan or Hemedti, is reliable for them right now, and they might be perceived as generally more neutral due to their relationships with both.

MY: Can you tell us about the two main protagonists, Burhan and Hemedti, and what they hope to achieve in this conflict?

MN: Burhan is a military man and has gone to military college. He is believed to be affiliated with the Islamist current in Sudan, but to what extent is debatable. What is clear is that he is an institutional man, who served in military intelligence in central Darfur during a period that saw some of the worst violence in that region back in the mid-2000s. That means Burhan has a past of overseeing or being implicated in atrocities. The story of Burhan and Hemedti is also the story of the army and RSF. The RSF was repackaged from several militias that were armed and trained by Bashir during the Darfur conflict. It grew to have ambitions of its own and became a force that could rival the military for supremacy. This not only threatened the military’s relevance, but also its patronage networks and economic stranglehold over the country. There was pressure on Burhan from within the military to prevent this and ensure that the military remained the supreme institution in the country. With Hemedti, the relationship with the RSF is more top-down. He and his family mostly control the force’s top guard and have lofty ambitions. They are using their well-paid recruits to achieve their personal ambitions

MY: What do you believe is the way out of the current impasse? And who is best equipped to mediate a successful resolution to the conflict?

MN: It’s very difficult to answer that question. We need to reframe our priorities and focus on civilian protection. A priority must be to open humanitarian corridors through which aid can enter conflict zones, considering there is a stoppage of aid services to neglected areas where there is less monitoring of the conflict, such as in Darfur or eastern Sudan. These places are extremely vulnerable, and there were huge protection concerns even before the conflict broke out.

A major success would be implementing a 24-hour cessation of hostilities that can hold. I think we’re in another phase right now, as conflict is easier to prevent than to stop once it gets underway. At this point, we need to consider two main issues: How do we resume aid to vulnerable populations? And how do we find ways for people to leave Sudan, given the damage to the airport? Western nations need to have a backbone and stop appeasing their regional partners, but they also must cooperate with them, as the Egyptians, Emiratis, and Saudis have real leverage. At the same time, the West cannot just outsource mediation efforts to them.

The stakes in Sudan are incredibly high for the region and, quite frankly, for several important issues that the West cares about. Western states would be wise to form a unified front, which can start in the UN Security Council, and have joint interests with Russia and China to a degree, as China does not like countries to be completely destabilized as this could threaten its Belt and Road initiative. When conflicts erupt like this one, Beijing tends to want to contain them. Unlike previous conflicts in which the Security Council was polarized, Sudan may offer an opportunity for containment of the crisis, the protection of civilians, and the opening of humanitarian corridors. When you have this, it creates a much stronger base to make sure that regional states implicated in the violence in Sudan become more cooperative. However, this is not an easy task.