Five days of infighting between rival generals that has killed more than 180 civilians and seen airstrikes on residential neighborhoods in Khartoum is creating a scenario Sudanese activists say they have warned of for years. A 24-hour humanitarian cease-fire brokered by U.S. and others, set to go into effect Tuesday evening after three previous cease-fires failed to hold, was wobbling.
With urban warfare threatening to tip Sudan into civil war, activists and analysts used fleeting internet and phone connectivity to call for an end to the violence and send the world a message: We told you so. They say the conflict is proof that democracy and civilian governance with accountability – no matter how messy – is the only path out from the bloodshed.
“We told the international community over and over you cannot trust a military dictatorship and militias,” says Mohamed, a member of the pro-democracy Popular Resistance Committees. “They have always been willing to burn the country down to enrich themselves and gain more power.”
Adds Kholood Khair, a political analyst in Khartoum: “There is a lot of serious reflection required from the international community on how they contributed to where we are today and how they ignored the voices of so many people who are now facing the consequences.”
Five days of infighting between rival generals that has killed scores of civilians, seen airstrikes on residential neighborhoods in Khartoum, and left millions trapped without electricity and water, is threatening to unravel Sudan’s cohesion – a scenario that Sudanese activists have warned the international community of for years.
A 24-hour humanitarian cease-fire brokered by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the United Nations, African Union, and the East African Intergovernmental Authority on Development bloc had been set to go into effect Tuesday evening after three previous cease-fires failed to hold. But renewed fighting in the Sudanese capital appeared to be threatening the latest effort.
Civil society groups, activists, and analysts used fleeting internet and phone connectivity to call for an end to the violence. And, amid fighting that killed more than 180 civilians – including three U.N. World Food Program workers – and hit a U.S. diplomatic convoy bearing American flags, to send a message: We told you so.
“We told the international community over and over you cannot trust a military dictatorship and militias,” says Mohamed, a member of the Popular Resistance Committees, a grassroots collection of independent pro-democracy activists.
“They have always been willing to burn the country down to enrich themselves and gain more power,” he says via messaging app from Khartoum. “Now they are doing it on a larger scale.”
Adds Kholood Khair, political analyst and founding director of Confluence Advisory, a think tank in Khartoum: “There is a lot of serious reflection required from the international community on how they contributed to where we are today and how they ignored the voices of so many people who are now facing the consequences of their choices.”
Sudanese activists say the generals’ infighting has exposed the fallacy of the military strongman trope they say Western governments fell for by involving the army and militias in Sudan’s post-revolution political transition.
With the urban warfare threatening to tip Sudan into civil war, civil society groups say the conflict is proof that warlords and generals cannot be turned into statesmen and that democracy and civilian governance with accountability – no matter how messy – is the only path out from the bloodshed.
“The framing of the generals as would-be-reformers who could be taken seriously as goodwill actors shows how ridiculous this entire proposition was,” says Ms. Khair.
From allies to enemies
The fighting erupted Friday between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group. The goal: control of Sudan’s military and security sector under a new political system the international community was attempting to push through at breakneck speed.
Although Sudan’s armed forces were the core of the Omar al-Bashir regime, which formed the RSF to commit atrocities in Darfur, both entities were treated as partners by the U.N. and international community in Sudan’s political transition after the popular overthrow of Mr. Bashir in the 2019 democratic revolution.
Up until this month’s fighting, the armed forces chief, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and RSF commander, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, were in a partnership.
As U.N.-mediated talks among generals, political parties, and civil society groups over the future of Sudan dragged on, the armed forces and RSF solidified their control over swaths of the economy, state institutions, ports, and gold mines. Generals Burhan and Dagalo then teamed up and launched a coup against the interim civilian government and democratic transition in 2021.
Under a landmark agreement last December brokered by the U.N., U.S., and Arab Gulf states, the military, RSF, civil society, and political groups agreed to a full transfer of power to a civilian government and elections, the much-delayed second phase of Sudan’s transition.
The new agreement, the details of which were workshopped by the international community with stakeholders in Khartoum in March, elevated General Dagalo as General Burhan’s equal and made both subservient to a civilian government – causing friction between the two.
An official signing of the deal due on April 1 was delayed amid disagreements between the armed forces and RSF over the latter’s integration into the military. Attempts by the paramilitary group to station itself at military bases this month ignited all-out war on Friday.
Khartoum besieged
Unlike previous conflicts in Sudan’s resource-rich rural regions such as Darfur and near South Sudan, the generals’ power struggle has been concentrated in the capital. Urban warfare has put millions on lockdown since Saturday and trapped hundreds of thousands without electricity, water, or access to food.
Fighting on Saturday shut down Khartoum’s airport – which remained closed as of Tuesday – and hospitals were emptied by fighters. Sudanese civilians resorted to pleas on social media for doctors, treatment, and medicines for loved ones.
The army and RSF traded possession of the national state broadcaster back and forth in attempts to prove on live television that they were “in control.”
Most alarming, according to Sudanese sources in Khartoum, the RSF militias stationed themselves in residential areas in the capital, leading the military to conduct airstrikes on densely populated neighborhoods.
The RSF’s General Dagalo accused General Burhan of being a “radical Islamist” who is “bombing civilians from the air.” General Burhan used interviews with Al Jazeera and Sky News to declare the RSF “rebels,” call for their dissolution, and point to the violence as proof that “formation of forces outside of the army” should not be allowed in Sudan.
The Popular Resistance Committees in Khartoum issued a simple statement: “The power struggle between generals is not our struggle.”
Even Abdalla Hamdok, the civilian prime minister the military arrested and pushed out with a coup, tried to mediate between the two sides, warning of a “catastrophe.”
Sudanese activists said the international community was partially to blame for the crisis for having treated the armed forces and RSF as responsible actors – with some Arab and African states receiving Generals Burhan and Dagalo in official visits like heads of state – even while they continued to maim and kill pro-democracy protesters and showed no intention of handing over power to a civilian government.
“This is who they are. This is the generals’ true face and they never hid it,” says one activist who did not wish to use her name due to security concerns. “The only difference is now that they have turned on each other rather than crushing unarmed civilians, the whole world can see it.”
By refusing to issue sanctions or consequences for their 2021 coup, says Ms. Khair, the analyst, “there was absolutely no accountability from the international community for these generals for anything they have done.”
Pro-democracy protests continued across the country up until the recent fighting, and demonstrators have continuously called on the U.N. and U.S. to hold the generals to account for their coup.
Even Washington’s foreign policy establishment cited the violence as proof that the West’s attempts to engage the warlords and generals in the political transition was a failure.
Ranking Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho said the clashes “reflect a clear pattern of behavior where strongmen try to rule the country through violence,” calling the junta a “major obstacle to Sudanese democracy.”
“Unfortunately, the international community and regional actors fell prey, yet again, to trusting junta Generals Burhan and [Dagalo],” Senator Risch said in a statement released Monday and widely shared by Sudanese on social media Tuesday. “It is clear we need a fundamental shift in U.S. diplomacy.”
Gulf Arab influence
Sudanese actors and Western states have responded to the widening violence with appeals to Arab Gulf states – particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – and to Egypt, which have outsized influence in Sudan and have been the focus of pro-democracy protester chants.
With Khartoum in flames, Secretary Blinken’s first official communications on Saturday were with the UAE and Saudi Arabia foreign ministers to discuss the “dangerous fighting” and its threat to “the security and safety of Sudanese civilians” and “efforts to restore Sudan’s democratic transition.”
“We agreed it was essential for the parties to immediately end hostilities without pre-condition,” Mr. Blinken said in a statement following the talks.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been the biggest backers of and, some diplomats say, advocates for and enablers of both General Burhan and General Dagalo to promote their interests, including control over Sudan’s strategic Red Sea ports.
Egypt, meanwhile, has been an unabashed backer of the armed forces and General Burhan, whom Cairo sees as a like-minded ally who could serve as a military strongman in its neighbor to the south in a vein similar to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Yet as of Tuesday it was clear that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and the Arab League were struggling to get the rival generals to agree to a temporary cease-fire.