ABSTRACT
The latest violent clashes, starting on April 15, between the Sudanese military forces and rival paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), in Northern Sudan, have killed an estimated 264 civilians, injured over 5,000, and displaced even more. The violence in Sudan has only exacerbated the dire conditions of an already struggling nation. According to the UN, an estimated 15.8 million people are in need of humanitarian aid and 3.7 million are internally displaced. Many flee to nearby countries such as the Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Egypt, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and South Sudan. According to the same UN OCHA report, “61 percent of health facilities are closed and only 16 percent are operating as normal, leaving millions of people without access to health care.” The overwhelming needs compared to available resources has resulted in looting of humanitarian aid which has become a serious concern in Sudan as well.
TAGS:
Spotlight, Sudan, Crisis, Syria, War, Aid, Intervention
CITATION:
Lewis, Raphael, 2023. “SiC Spotlight: The Conflict in Sudan,” Security in Context Spotlight Article 23-02. June 2023, Security in Context.
Crisis in Sudan
The latest violent clashes, starting on April 15, between the Sudanese military forces and rival paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), in Northern Sudan, have killed an estimated 264 civilians, injured over 5,000, and displaced even more. The violence in Sudan has only exacerbated the dire conditions of an already struggling nation. According to the UN, an estimated 15.8 million people are in need of humanitarian aid and 3.7 million are internally displaced. Many flee to nearby countries such as the Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Egypt, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and South Sudan. According to the same UN OCHA report, “61 percent of health facilities are closed and only 16 percent are operating as normal, leaving millions of people without access to health care.” The overwhelming needs compared to available resources has resulted in looting of humanitarian aid which has become a serious concern in Sudan as well.
Sudan’s military forces and the RSF have been locked in a deadly offensive on and off since 2019, when a popular uprising ousted the ruler Omar al-Bashir, who fragmented the Sudanese military in order to tighten his own grip on power. After al-Bashir was deposed, a power vacuum emerged and the now disparate military forces have been in conflict as each attempts to gain control of the country. This recent outbreak punctuates a longer history of internal conflict in Sudan dating back to Sudan’s first civil war in 1955.
Colonial and Post-Colonial Conflict
Sudan’s various conflicts have often been framed as a long struggle between the attempt of the predominantly Arab and Muslim North to control the non-Arab African, Christian and other ethnic groups in the South. These binaries hide the reality of ethnic, economic and cultural diversity throughout Sudan and histories of co-existence and integration among the diverse ethnic groups. Sudan’s various conflicts have reflected overlapping struggles that have ideological, ethnic, cultural, and economic dimensions.
Professor Firat Demir explains in a Security in Context interview that the region in Turkey surrounding the East Anatolian Fault Line had been selected for several preemptive earthquake mitigation projects because it is at high risk for extreme earthquakes. In 1999, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake occurred near Istanbul, with estimated casualties ranging from 17-30 thousand people. After this catastrophe, Turkey implemented a tax to develop emergency disaster relief plans so that the country would be prepared for the next inevitable earthquake: a fund that accrued $38 billion since its inception in 1999. However, Demir goes on to explain that most of these funds have not been used for their intended purpose. According to Demir, “most of the money was not used to reinforce buildings or for disaster preparation, the government even admitted, on multiple occasions, that they used the funding to build roads and for other priorities.” Despite the earthquake's predictability and despite federally implemented response policies, the country was poorly prepared for this disaster.
Decades of conflict have also entrenched war economies and struggles for wealth that are often exploited by outside interests. When South Sudan established its independence in 2011, it took control of the region's oil reserves, which immediately led to conflict within South Sudan. It also left Sudan poorer, which is believed to have indirectly contributed to current conflict in Khartoum as warring military groups fight for control over fewer resources. It’s the gold, agriculture, and oil which have attracted foreign influence in the country as world powers place their bets on which faction will gain control, rather than leverage their influence to establish peace and democracy.
Understanding Implications of Current Crisis
In an SiC interview with Hamid Khalafallah, fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, he reveals that most casualty reports in the media are merely a fraction of the total number of deaths from the conflict. He states that on average, 50 people die everyday from the civil war, many of which are unaccounted for in official reporting. Khalafallah goes on to illustrate the gravity of the humanitarian crisis in Sudan as people suffer from “a multifaceted crisis which includes the war, an economic collapse, power and water outages, bank closures, and no access to digital currency or banking apps.” Furthermore, Sudan is running low on food reserves with a struggling agricultural sector. This makes the importation of food supplies a necessity for Sudan. However, because of the intense conflict, there has been a halt on the importing of food to the country.
Regional actors have played a significant role in the conflict as well. The UAE and Saudi Arabia have been closely connected to Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in a number of ways. In 2017, the RSF sent soldiers to help the UAE in the conflict in Yemen. The UAE, along with Russia and Israel, have also provided the paramilitary group with arms. On the other hand, the Sudanese military forces have been supported by Egypt.
However, reducing the conflict in Sudan to a “proxy war,” ignores the nuances and complications of the conflict and frames the war purely as a product of western policy and action. This framing can also be weaponized by certain powers. For example, some outlets have simplified the war in Sudan as a Russian influence operation to further tarnish their reputation on the world stage.
Still, international actors should be condemned for inflaming the pre existing tensions in the region by helping fund the military on both sides of the war. It is these same powers who then fail to mediate peace or establish proper humanitarian corridors for Sudanese refugees while ignoring the most important goal for the country: establishing a reliable democratic process. The international actors, namely Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Russia, the UAE, the U.S., and Israel, who are directly or indirectly responsible for inflaming the conflict by pumping the country with arms and military support, are the same powers who have failed to broker a lasting truce or back local efforts to establish peace and democracy.
The Vulnerability of Civil Society
In fact, civil society groups have made a serious effort to secure tangible steps towards peace. While local groups have been involved in the public sphere since the 1940s, more recently, The Steering Committee of the Sudan Bar Association organized a workshop with several political parties in Sudan to craft a “transitional constitutional framework.” This constitution would hopefully separate Sudan’s military apparatus from its political institutions. Even though Western governments supported this effort with official statements, they have done little to protect groups from government pressure. In response to the transitional framework, Sudan's public prosecution used legal proceedings against the steering committee for the Sudanese Bar Association. Subsequently, the police took control of the Bar Association (SBA) premises in Khartoum. Volker Perthes, The Head of the United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS), explained that “[t]he attack against the office of the SBA is a clear signal sent against ongoing efforts to reach an acceptable consensus among political forces and the military towards a genuine democratic transition in Sudan.” This is just one example of intimidation tactics deployed by military groups in Sudan. International actors enable this by supporting both sides with arms rather than protecting groups like the SBA who try to establish legal movements to secure the democratic process.
The Effects of Continued War
The complexity of the conflict in Sudan, the natural resources in the country, an unwillingness from the international community to support actual democratizing efforts on the ground, and its geographic location near the Gulf, make the situation a recipe for a long lasting conflict that will spill over to neighboring countries. The UN has reported an estimated 350,000 refugees have fled to neighboring countries with over 1.2 million people internally displaced. The conditions in Sudan continue to deteriorate as struggling health care facilities are attacked, humanitarian supplies, homes, banks and schools are looted, and reports of unexploded ordinances grow. Because of the rapidly growing violence, the UN has estimated that 24.7 million people are in urgent need of assistance. According to Guiomar Pau Sole, Head of Communications for the OCHA, as of May 17th, the UN launched a “Revised Humanitarian Response Plan for 2023, due to the escalating violence across the country.” However, only 16% of the promised 2.6 billion has been funded. Sole has also stated that “humanitarian partners are ready to deliver assistance to over 4 million people in need through 89 planned movements,” and that authorities need “to ensure they provide the security environment and the ease of bureaucratic impediments at local and national levels to allow aid workers to move supplies swiftly and safely.” It is essential that a ceasefire is upheld and the social and political environment stabilizes so Sudan can revive its political processes.
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Security in Context is a networked initiative that promotes critical research and policy analysis on peace and conflict. Despite decades of prioritizing security, our planet has become increasingly insecure. We examine why, and show how rethinking military and security policy can reveal more equitable and sustainable solutions to the world’s most pressing problems.
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