MEMRI Vice President Ambassador Alberto Fernandez said in a May 2, 2023 interview with Alsyaaq (UAE) that the U.S. is partly responsible for the current armed clashes in Sudan because it failed to take measures against the two warring generals after the military coup in 2021. He said that the U.S. is leaning in favor of the Sudanese military in this conflict because it prefers “established institutions” and because the opposing Rapid Support Forces may be aligned with Russia and Wagner PMC. In addition, he warned that an Islamist regime may rise to power, particularly because the army is connected to Islamists who have been exiled to Turkey. Ambassador Fernandez served as charge d’affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum, Sudan, between 2007 and 2009. The interview was published on Alsyaaq’s YouTube channel.

MEMRI Vice President Ambassador Alberto Fernandez: “What you could see s a type of Bashir regime ‘light’. Or Bashir regime with a light civilian cover. A kind of step-by-step Islamization of going back to the days of the Bashir regime.

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“And in the case of the army, we know that there are – there’s no doubt about it – there’s the partisans of the former regime, the Islamists, the extremists who live in exile in Turkey, are connected to the army side.

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“The Americans have a role in the disaster. The Americans didn’t do anything after the military coup of October 25, 2021. They didn’t sanction the generals. That was the time to do it. The Americans thought that the had all this time to arrange things. When actually, after Abdallah Hamdok, after the Prime Minister was overthrown by the army, that accentuated the competition between the two military sides. And so, the Americans were slow. The Americans didn’t do anything. They didn’t pay enough attention to the situation in Sudan. I think that they deserve part of the blame.

“Now today, the Americans are talking to both sides. I personally think that the Americans lean towards the army, like the Egyptians, because they prefer kind of established institutions, and also because the Americans are obsessed with Russia, and somehow they think the Rapid Support [Forces] is [the] Wagner [Group]. The reality is that the Russians support both sides. The Russians have good relations with the army, and the Russians have good relations with the Rapid Support. But I think that once again, the Americans have a superficial view of the situation.

“But like I said, this is a problem that is easier to fix before it became a problem, right? Now we’re in a situation where we need to stop fighting, for the sake of the Sudanese people, and then try to find some kind of political solution.”