Sudan war lays bare 'fault lines' between capital and periphery
Issued on: 17/05/2023
Black smoke billows over war-torn Khartoum in this image from AFPTV footage taken on April 19, 2023 © Abdelmoneim SAYED / AFP/File
Cairo (AFP) – Sudan's brutal war has pitted the traditional urban elite that has long monopolised wealth and power in the capital Khartoum against forces from the marginalised rural periphery, analysts say.
For the past month, two rival generals have fought for control of the northeast African country in a war that has spread chaos, claimed at least 1,000 lives and displaced nearly a million people.
One of them is army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, a lacklustre career soldier, born north of Khartoum, who toppled the veteran Islamist autocrat Omar al-Bashir after mass protests and then assumed full powers in a 2021 coup.
Also known as "Hemeti" or "little Mohamed", Daglo got his start in the notorious Janjaweed militia that Bashir unleashed in the early 2000s to brutally quash a rebellion by ethnic minority groups in Darfur.
In the years since, Daglo has manoeuvred his way into the top echelons of power in the capital of five million people, even as he has been mocked among its elite for his provincial accent and lack of formal education.
The Khartoum-centred old guard "view Hemeti as an illiterate upstart thug whom they first armed to do their dirty work" in Darfur, said Alan Boswell of think tank the International Crisis Group.
Sudan's army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, pictured on the left, has been at war with his former deputy, Rapid Support Forces commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo
© ASHRAF SHAZLY / AFP/File
However, since then, Daglo has become a feared opponent, commanding the heavily armed RSF which is battle-hardened by service in Yemen and Libya and financed with profits from gold mines he controls.
'New phase of struggle'
Sudan, a vast country of 45 million people, has a long history of inequality and strife involving ethnic minority groups in remote regions.
Civilians flee conflict-racked Sudan
© Sophie RAMIS / AFP/File
Since its days under British rule, "Sudanese political society has been centralised in the Nile Valley," said Marc Lavergne, a specialist on the Horn of Africa and the Middle East.
Even after independence in 1956, "there has been this dichotomy between the Nile Valley, Khartoum, the parts that the British could make use of," and the rest of the country, he told AFP.
The more remote areas experienced decades of struggle "that no Khartoum government cared to address", said Lavergne of France's University of Tours who has worked for UN and non-government missions in Sudan.
"But today these peripheral regions hold the richest potential," he said, referring particularly to large gold deposits in Darfur and elsewhere, from which Daglo has built a military and economic empire.
Sudanese Army soldiers near armoured vehicles in southern Khartoum, seen on May 6, 2023 amid ongoing fighting against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces
© - / AFP/File
A Rift Valley Institute report judged that, as a result, "the RSF is no longer a rag-tag militia but rather a well-trained and effective fighting force that can rival" the Sudanese Armed Forces.
"The current conflict represents a battle between the established military-political elite from the centre and an emerging militarised elite from Darfur to control the state, and is a new phase in the struggle between centre and periphery."
Intruder from Darfur
Daglo has been depicted by his rivals as "an intruder from Darfur in more cosmopolitan Khartoum", said Kholood Khair, founder of the think tank Confluence Advisory.
"Before the war, the RSF were getting some traction in trying to create a narrative that they were fighting for democracy, and that they were doing so on behalf of all the marginalised people of Sudan," she told AFP.
As he built his force, Daglo became "one of the best employers in the country", recruiting fighters from areas "that had historically been marginalised by Khartoum," according to Khair.
A market devastated in El Geneina, West Darfur, as fighting continues in Sudan between the forces of two rival generals, on April 29, 2023 © - / AFP/File
But she added that, "once the war broke out, that narrative became more difficult to keep up" as "his troops are far less disciplined" than those of the regular army.
"They do not always follow orders and have been creating a lot of havoc for the people of Khartoum," she said, as reports of assaults against civilians, looting and home invasions have risen sharply.
The threat of deepening ethnic strife looms over Sudan, a diverse country at the intersection of historical migration and trade routes with a history of slavery.
Its rulers have historically exploited economic inequalities to divide and conquer, between the core and the periphery, between north and south, and based on skin colour.
"To this day, Sudanese have a lexicon of skin colour" that discriminates against those with darker pigmentation, Sudan specialist Alex de Waal wrote recently in the London Review of Books.
"The darkest people of the south (are) still routinely called abid, meaning 'slaves'."
Skin colour may not be a defining factor in the current war. But experts warn that a prolonged conflict will deepen fissures along the kinship lines and tribal affiliations on which Sudan's many existing militias were formed.
"Both sides will, as they lose troops, need to recruit more," said Khair. "And the easiest way to do that in Sudan has historically been through ethnic allegiances."
© 2023 AFP
Why is Sudan so prone to civil war?
Greg Myre
Updated May 10, 2023NPR
LISTEN· 4-Minute ListenDownload
Sudanese refugees who crossed into neighboring Chad receive aid at a distribution center on April 30. A growing number of Sudanese are fleeing their country following recent fighting between two rival generals in Sudan's capital Khartoum. GUEIPEUR DENIS SASSOU/AFP via Getty Images
When Sudan won independence on New Year's Day in 1956, two features stood out in the new nation: it was the largest country in Africa, and it was already embroiled in civil war that had erupted several months earlier.
Some see a link between Sudan's vast landscape, the many different groups that make up the country, and the repeated internal conflicts that have plagued the nation for decades.
For the past month, two rival generals have been feuding for control of the capital Khartoum, raising fears of another major conflagration.
"If you take Sudan, and you look at other large countries throughout the world, not just in Africa, they are almost always very difficult to govern," said Susan D. Page, a former U.S. diplomat who spent years working in the country.
Sudan's rival generals share a troubled past: genocide in Darfur
She's one of three former negotiators who spoke to NPR about the challenges of establishing and maintaining a peaceful, stable Sudan.
"When people are very different from one another — farmers, herders, nomads — it's always going to be quite difficult to rule," said Page.
Sudan has multiple fault lines.
Britain and Egypt jointly ruled Sudan for the first half of the 20th century and essentially treated the north and the south as two separate colonial territories.
That division carried over when Sudan became independent, with Arab Muslims in the north dominating the country, alienating African Christians and other groups in the south and the west.
Sudan has a wide range of ethnic, linguistic and tribal differences. Residents in remote parts of the country feel the elites in Khartoum monopolize the country's limited resources.
Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan (left), the head of Sudan's ruling military council, greets supporters near the capital Khartoum in 2019. Sudanese paramilitary commander Gen. Mohammed Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti, is shown on the right, in the capital earlier this month. The generals have been fighting for control of Sudan for nearly a month, leaving more than 500 dead.YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP via Getty Images
The result: Sudan has suffered three domestic wars spanning well over 40 years of the country's 67 years of independence.
Page helped negotiate the end of one civil war, back in 2005. She later became the first U.S. ambassador to South Sudan when it broke away from Sudan in 2011 (South Sudan fought its own civil war just two years after gaining independence).
Risk of renewed civil war
Page is now worried about the current fighting that pits Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, the commander of the military, against Gen. Mohammed Dagalo, the head of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR
Violence In Sudan Forces A Mother To Make Difficult Choice
"I think we have a notion that powerful countries can sort of wave a magic wand and get people to stop doing what they're doing," said Page, who now teaches at the University of Michigan. "That is what diplomacy is about. But it's very difficult once the big guns literally have come out."
The previous conflicts, waged in the remote southern and western parts of Sudan, were disasters for one of the world's poorest nations.
Yet the current fighting could potentially be even more devastating. More than 500 people have been killed in and around Khartoum – by far the most developed part of Sudan, and home to more than 5 million people.
"What we're essentially seeing is the deterioration of the Sudanese state itself with consequences, first and foremost, for the Sudanese people," said Payton Knopf. He was the U.S. deputy special envoy to the Horn of Africa until last year and is still working in the region.
There's no easy solution. Knopf says previous peace deals kept military figures in positions of power — which created conditions that then led to future conflicts.
"It's sort of like saying you're going to put the foxes back in charge of the henhouse after the foxes have bombed the hen house and killed a lot of the hens," said Knopf.
How Sudan's Democratic Dreams Were Dashed
"I think it's time to retire the notion that a power-sharing arrangement in which the military or the Rapid Support Forces are the dominant actors is ever going to be a stabilizing decision," he added.
A history of long wars
The two feuding generals have effectively controlled the country for the past four years and shown no sign of ceding power.
Alex DeWaal at Tufts University is an expert on Sudan and was called to the country in 2005 as part of an African Union effort to negotiate an end to fighting in Sudan's western region of Darfur.
That peace effort failed, and the military's brutal crackdown on rebels and civilians in Darfur was deemed a genocide by the United States and others in the international community.
That experience taught DeWaal how hard it is to end conflict in Sudan.
"Quite a few times I've been meeting with Sudanese generals, and they have this mindset when they go to war, which is, 'We will land a knockout, killer blow on the other guy. We can win a decisive victory and don't stop us.' And they're always wrong. Invariably, they cannot achieve that decisive victory," said DeWaal.
As a result, Sudan's wars have been painfully long.
"I recall from so many meetings that glazed look in their eyes when they had resigned themselves, pretending they had no agency and that war was inevitable. Getting them out of that mindset to recognize, yes, they started it, and yes, they can stop it, is the challenge of the mediator."
The U.S., Egypt and Saudi Arabia all have influence in Sudan. The rival Sudanese factions have sent representatives to Saudi Arabia in an attempt to halt the conflict. They've been talking since Saturday, but there's no sign of a breakthrough.
Meanwhile, growing numbers of Sudanese civilians are fleeing the country. Further fighting could set off a massive refugee outflow to neighboring states ill-prepared to handle such an influx.
Susan D. Page says it's always Sudan's civilians who bear the brunt of these conflicts.
"I just hope that the Sudanese people themselves are not forgotten, that everyone will pay more attention to the Sudanese population and their wants and desires, and not just those of the men with weapons," said Page.
The Looming Danger of State Disintegration in Sudan
AMR HAMZAWY
MAY 03, 2023
COMMENTARY
Summary: After the latest outbreak of violence, the country’s transition to democracy appears to be a pipedream.
Sudan is no stranger to civil war, but the latest outbreak of violence is a disappointing step back from recent advances in democratic progress. After numerous attempts at a cease-fire failed, the country seems headed for another protracted conflict over numerous deep-seated issues—including human rights violations, marginalization of minority groups, concentration of power and wealth in Khartoum, the expanding political and economic role of the army and paramilitary groups, and pervasive poverty and underdevelopment.
The confrontation between the Sudanese National Army (SNA) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) shows the limits of nonviolent political change in countries tainted by a long history of civil war and politically involved national armies and militias.
SUDAN’S POWER STRUGGLE
Known for its vast territory, ethnic and religious diversity, and natural riches, Sudan has witnessed a string of civil wars since gaining independence in the 1950s. At the core of this conflict lies a power struggle between Sudan’s political center in Khartoum and its southern and western peripheries. From 1989 to 2019, President Omar al-Bashir, in alliance with radical Islamists, persecuted non-Muslim populations and African tribes living in these remote regions.
A protracted civil war led to the creation of the independent Republic of South Sudan in 2011. In the western region of north Sudan—namely Darfur—successive civil wars between 2003 and 2011 brought about mass atrocities and the depletion of human and material resources.
In 2019, the army leadership ousted al-Bashir and jailed him and his closest aides in response to widespread pro-democracy protests demanding his removal from office. Two generals advanced to the political fore: Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, better known as Hemedti. Hemedti led the Arab paramilitary group Janjaweed, which emerged as a product of the civil war in Darfur—where it massacred an estimated 300,000 people from 2003 to 2005—before evolving into the RSF in 2013.
Both generals led political negotiations with civilian protest representatives, but the transition to democracy was a mere pipedream.
Despite the United Nations’ active mediating role, lengthy discussions on governing were unable to permeate Sudan’s political landscape. All the while, tensions between the government center in Khartoum and the country’s peripheries, as well as between the army and civilian groups on the one hand and the army and paramilitary militias on the other hand, were on the rise. In 2021, civilian prime minister Abdalla Hamdok resigned amid political deadlock, and army leadership and the militias assumed total control of executive powers. A period of political instability and growing hardship for 45 million Sudanese citizens has followed.
UNRESOLVED CONFLICTS
Much of the current outbreak of violence stems from the failure to integrate various armed groups after al-Bashir’s ouster. The SNA, led by al-Burhan, dominated the Transitional Sovereignty Council, which assumed executive power after ousting al-Bashir. A significant political role was also played by Hemedti’s RSF militia, which was reluctant to integrate its enrolled soldiers and accumulated arms into the national army. Efforts to broker a binding agreement that banned the militias from using arms for political purposes and stipulated their integration in the national army largely failed in recent years, hindering Sudan’s transition.
In addition, power sharing negotiations between the SNA, the RSF, and civilian forces failed to integrate consensus building plans that championed political and economic change. The countless rounds of negotiations and signed agreements that took place between 2019 and 2023 could not bring about a result that satisfied the sentiments behind the 2019 uprising, which demanded democratic governance in the Khartoum center, just distribution of power and wealth, and political and economic inclusion across the country. Sudan’s transition to democracy was significantly encumbered by numerous widespread revolts in its peripheries, where marginalized communities lost faith in the prospects of positive change.
THE WAY FORWARD
In this climate of social and political disarray, clashes between the SNA and RSF have progressively intensified. Al-Burhan’s and Hemedti’s previously agreed-upon roadmap to integrate the RSF, military personnel, and arms into the army has been hijacked by Hemedti’s political ambitions to monopolize executive power, triggering an outbreak of hostilities in the past few weeks.
To avert the looming danger of a protracted civil war and state disintegration, both parties must first find their way back to negotiations that prioritize the inclusive integration of all military actors in the national army; otherwise, the current escalation will persist. This is a most needed measure to protect Sudan’s territorial integrity and save its state apparatus from disintegration.
As a second step, the leaders must establish constitutional and legal safeguards to ban the use of arms for political purposes and to protect local communities—in Darfur and elsewhere—that have faced persecution and human rights violations and suffered due to the impunity enjoyed by both state and nonstate actors.
A third step is to restore political negotiations between the army leadership and civilian politicians representing pro-democracy groups. Hamdok’s resignation, which followed deadly protests and stalled negotiations, resulted in widespread popular resignation regarding Sudan’s democratic prospects. Bringing Hamdok and other civilian politicians back to the negotiating table with army leaders—with some guarantees given to civilians by regional and international actors such as the African Union and the United Nations—could help restore citizens’ hopes in Sudan’s democratic transition and peaceful power sharing arrangements between military and civilian groups.
Unresolved tensions between Sudan’s center in Khartoum and the peripheries over political power and the distribution of wealth have also ignited the present conflict. The civil wars in Darfur and other remote regions may have been brought to cease-fire and truce arrangements in recent years, but their root causes—namely the prosecution and marginalization of non-Muslims and African tribes residing remotely—have not been addressed.
Both contenders in the current military confrontation, al-Burhan and Hemedti, have attempted to co-opt movements and leaders representing the rebellious peripheries and to instrumentalize them in the quest for total power. Yet none of them has used executive power to address the legitimate social, economic, and political demands of the people in these regions.
RELATED ANALYSIS FROM CARNEGIE
Disruptions and Dynamism in the Arab World
Indeed, poverty and underdevelopment indictors in Sudan have only worsened since 2019, and even more since the civilian participation in the executive branch of government was eliminated following Hamdok’s resignation. Unless the socioeconomic and political grievances of the Sudanese peripheries are addressed in future negotiations, both between military leaders as well as between the army and civilian groups, peace and stability in Sudan will prove illusive.
No longer a case of hopeful democratic transition, Sudan is severely at risk for state failure and disintegration. However, for the first time in decades, Khartoum has become embroiled in the violence, and its residents are paying the price for the long-term warmongering against the country’s peripheries and for the nationwide instability. As a result, the increased internal and external attention might pull Sudan out of its stalemate. Saving Sudan from the horrible fate of state disintegration and restoring the prospects of stability, and later for democracy and development, are possible if regional and international actors work to integrate the militias in the national army and facilitate political talks between military and civilian groups.
End of document
Amr Hamzawy
Amr Hamzawy is a senior fellow and the director of the Carnegie Middle East Program. His research and writings focus on governance in the Middle East and North Africa, social vulnerability, and the different roles of governments and civil societies in the region.
Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
Sudan: From Conflict to Conflict
MARINA OTTAWAY, MAI EL-SADANY
MAY 16, 2012
PAPER
Summary: The failure of efforts thus far to bring peace to greater Sudan does not bode well for the chances of avoiding new conflict.
Less than a year after the old “greater” Sudan split into the northern Republic of Sudan and the new Republic of South Sudan—or North and South Sudan, for clarity—the two countries were again in a state of war. Years of international efforts to bring an end to decades of conflict by helping to negotiate the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005 and later efforts to ensure a smooth separation of North and South appear to have come to naught.
In January 2011, a referendum in the South, stipulated by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, resulted in an overwhelming vote in favor of partition. Over the next six months, North and South were supposed to negotiate outstanding issues but failed to do so. As a result, conflict broke out again almost immediately after the South became independent..
At first, the conflict involved clashes along the border region between the northern Sudanese Armed Forces and liberation movements in regions that preferred incorporation into the South. By April 2012 though, the fighting had escalated into war between North and South, with the South’s army crossing into the North and the North’s military bombing villages across the border. Oil exports from the South had been halted and other conflicts had broken out in both countries.
Oil has long been one of the central drivers of conflict between the two Sudans. After independence, that conflict was heightened since about 75 percent of Sudan’s oil is produced below the border that now separates the two countries, leaving the North with greatly reduced revenues. Another set of conflicts, which has quickly led to violence, involves attempts to control territories along the border between the North and South, in particular, in South Kordofan, the Blue Nile, and Abyei. Meanwhile, both North and South struggle with internal political and tribal conflicts as they try to build states on truncated territory and woefully inadequate institutional foundations.
The failure of efforts thus far to bring peace to greater Sudan, especially the Comprehensive Peace Agreement project, does not bode well for the chances of avoiding new decades of conflict and the countries’ continued impoverishment. All signs suggest that the transition from greater Sudan to the Republics of Sudan and South Sudan is not the end of a conflict but rather the beginning of multiple new ones.
Interactive Map
INCXYZ[SudanMap.html]INCZYX
Marina Ottaway
Before joining the Endowment, Ottaway carried out research in Africa and in the Middle East for many years and taught at the University of Addis Ababa, the University of Zambia, the American University in Cairo, and the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa
TO READ OR DOWNLOAD
