The Terrible, Senseless War in Sudan
Vijay Prashad
TWO years ago, the fragile but hopeful peace in Sudan was broken when the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) both arms of the Sudanese state – went to war against each other. The second-year anniversary of the war was commemorated on April 11, 2025 with a ghastly attack by the RSF on the Zamzam refugee camp in the province of northern Darfur. ‘The bombs were falling on the hospital’, said Hawa, a mother of three who was inside that hospital. ‘Those of us who survived left with only our children on our backs’. By April 16, the camp – which had once housed half a million refugees – had been destroyed and the people had fled to the nearby city of El Fasher. During these two years of fighting, at least a 150,000 people have been killed and over 11 million of Sudan’s 50 million people have been displaced. This is an ongoing catastrophe that appears to most Sudanese people to be utterly senseless.
SUDAN’S REVOLUTION
Everything appeared differently on April 11, 2019, six years before the Zamzam massacre. That was the date when longtime president Omar al-Bashir was deposed by a mass movement and, eventually, the military. Protests began in Sudan in December 2018 against the government of al-Bashir over inflation and an escalating social crisis. Unable to answer the crowds, al-Bashir, who had come to power in 1993, could not sustain his rule – even by force, particularly when the Sudanese military turned against him (as the Egyptian military had done against Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak in 2011). Al-Bashir was overthrown by what later became called the Transitional Military Council (TMC), led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and assisted by Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (called Hemedti). The groups that had led the protests on the ground formed a coalition called Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC). The FFC included the Communist Party of Sudan, the National Consensus Forces, the Sudanese Professional Association, Sudan Revolutionary Front, Women of Sudanese Civic and Political Groups, as well as the many Sudanese resistance or neighbourhood committees. Pressured by the protests of the FFC, the military signed an agreement in mid-2019 to plan for a transfer of power to a civilian government. With the assistance of the African Union, a Sovereignty Council was set up with five military members and six civilians. The Sovereignty Council appointed Abdalla Hamdok to be the new prime minister and Nemat Abdullah Khair as the chief justice. Hamdok (born 1956), a quiet diplomat who had done very important work at the Economic Commission for Africa, seemed well suited for this role as a transitional prime minister. Khair (born 1957), a lifelong judge who joined the protest movements against al-Bashir, struck the right tone as a competent head of the court. The door to a new future seemed to open for Sudan.
But then, Sudan fell prey to the pressures of its own history. In 2021, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan attempted several failed coups, and then a successful coup, in the name of defending the transition but in fact bringing in al-Bashir’s people from isolation back into government. Revolutions are frequently interrupted by returns of the old regime, who grip on the armed forces and on society is never so easily shrugged off. The two military men – al-Burhan and Hemedti – knew that any procedures for justice against the government of al-Bashir would strike them hard, since they had been the hammer of the previous government (Hemedti’s forces, known colloquially as the Janja’wid – or ‘devils on horseback’ – have been implicated in human rights violations during al-Bashir’s campaign in Darfur); then equally importantly, the two men and their coterie had material interests at stake (including control over the Sudanese gold mines in Darfur and Kordofan). With men such as these the worries about the gibbet and the desire for more bounty is paramount. When it comes to a transfer of power, a complete break with the old society is necessary but hard to effect if the military does not collapse and if it cannot be reconstructed in the image of the new society rather than with the elements of the old. Both al-Burhan and Hemedti pushed against the transition and – with swift repression against the mass movements, especially the trade unions and the communists – secured power in Khartoum.
SUDAN’S COUNTER-REVOLUTION
When a gaggle of ruffians forms a group for any country, it should worry all of its people. In 2021, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States formed the QUAD for Sudan, with the express purpose – they announced – to return the country to democracy. Sudan sat on the knife edge of geopolitical intrigue as accusations began to fly about that the counter-revolutionary military in Sudan had begun to develop close relations with Russia. In al-Bashir’s last period, he had signed a deal that would have allowed the Russians to build a naval base on the Red Sea, which would have allowed Russia a foothold on the African continent. But the fall of al-Bashir put the existence of that base into jeopardy. With the return of the old al-Bashir team to power, al-Burhan reopened the door for the base. This brought Sudan into the crosshairs of the growing conflict between the West and Russia, as well as between a conflict amongst the Gulf Arab monarchies.
When a country gets caught up in other peoples’ entanglements, its own problems become hard to discern. Within the ruling clique of the military and the al-Bashir remnants a disagreement began to swell over the integration of the armed forces and the division of spoils. On the surface, they seemed to be arguing about the timeline for a return to civilian government, but in fact the dispute was about military power and control over resources.
Internal power struggles within the armed forces between al-Burhan and Hemedti led to the civil war in 2023, an inevitable struggle that has all the hallmarks of a proxy war with al-Burhan’s Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) backed by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and Hemedti’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) backed by the United Arab Emirates – with other outside actors pulling strings behind the scenes. Talks continue here and there, but they are not moving forward at all. The war seems to have its own logic, with the SAF’s 300,000 troops unable to make major gains against the highly motivated RSF’s 100,000 soldiers. With endless resources from gold sales and from outside support, this war could go on forever, or at least till most of the world forgets that it is taking place (like other wars, such as in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo or in Myanmar’s frontiers). The United Nations keeps making statements, and various human rights groups plea for some further pressure on the two sides. But nothing has been forthcoming. Even the peace talks are divided: the Emiratis and the Egyptians are brokering some in Cairo, while the Saudis held others in Jeddah, and the British decided to create a table in London. It is not clear who is talking to whom and about what.
The most active attempt to broker a peace deal has come from the African Union. In January 2024, it created a High-Level Panel for Sudan (HLP-Sudan), chaired by Dr Mohamed Ibn Chambas, a Ghanian diplomat who had been the African Union-United Nations Special Representative for Darfur and head of the AU-UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) from 2012 to 2014. He knows both generals and is aware of the complexity of the situation in Sudan. The other two panel members are Dr Speciosa Wandira-Kazibwe of Uganda (a former vice president of Uganda) and Ambassador Francisco Madeira of Mozambique (a former AU Special Representative to Somalia and head of the AU’s Mission in Somalia). The HLP-Sudan is working with the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) – East Africa’s regional body – to get the two sides to the table for a ceasefire and then ultimately a deal. Importantly, the HLP-Sudan met with a range of people from across Sudan’s political spectrum, including members of political parties and the military, signatories of the 2020 Juba Peace Agreement that included warring parties in Darfur, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile. The negotiators face a problem amongst the civilian sections, however. In October 2023, the deposed Prime Minister Hamdok formed a coalition called Taqaddum (Progress), which brought civilian voices to the negotiating table. However, over the course of the past two years, dissention broke out over allegiances to one side or the other, and so in February 2025 it dissolved. Hamdok formed a new group, Sumoud (Resilience), which wants to remain equidistant between the two sides, while al-Hadi Idris (who had also been on the Sovereignty Council) formed Ta’sis which then nominated Hemedti of the RSF as its leader. Even the civilian groups effectively broke along the lines of the civil war.
In Sharjah last year, I had a brief word with Hamdok, who seemed exhausted by the long war and the futility of the negotiations. But ever the impassive diplomat, Hamdok felt that wars can exhaust armies and force them to negotiations. He knows his history. Sudan won its independence in 1956 (from Britian and Egypt), but then entered its first civil war between the north and the south till the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972; a decade of peace, helped along by the oil revenues from the south, is now a distant memory; a second civil war between north and south ran from 1983 to 2005, which resulted in a referendum that partitioned the country into Sudan and South Sudan in 2011; and finally, a terrible conflict in Darfur began in 2003 and came slowly to a conclusion in 2010, leading eventually to the overthrow of Omar al-Bashir in 2019. The chant against al-Bashir in 2019 was tisqut bas or just fall. He fell. But the ground continues to shake.
Sudan’s people have not seen peace in generations. Hamdok’s hope is a hope against history, but for a future.
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