Fighting in Sudan between forces loyal to two top
generals has put the nation at risk of collapse and could also have
consequences far beyond its borders.
Both
sides have tens of thousands of fighters, foreign backers, mineral riches and
other resources that could insulate them from sanctions. It’s a recipe for the
kind of prolonged conflict that has devastated other countries in the Middle
East and Africa, from Lebanon and Syria to Libya and Ethiopia.
The fighting, which began as Sudan attempted to transition
to democracy, already has killed hundreds of people and left millions trapped
in urban areas, sheltering from gunfire, explosions and looters.
A look at what is happening and the impact it could have
outside Sudan.
Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, head of the armed forces, and Gen.
Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, the leader of a paramilitary group known as the Rapid
Support Forces that grew out of Darfur’s notorious Janjaweed militias, are
each seeking to seize control of Sudan. It comes two years after they jointly
carried out a military coup and derailed a transition to democracy that had
begun after protesters in 2019 helped force the ouster of longtime autocrat
Omar al-Bashir. In recent months, negotiations were underway for a return to
the democratic transition.
The victor of the latest fighting is likely to be Sudan’s
next president, with the loser facing exile, arrest or death. A long-running
civil war or partition of the Arab and African country into rival fiefdoms are
also possible.
Terrified Sudanese are fleeing Khartoum, hauling whatever
belongings they could carry and trying to get out of the capital, where forces
loyal to the country's top two generals have been battling each other with
tanks, artillery and airstrikes since Saturday.
Alex
De Waal, a Sudan expert at Tufts University, wrote in a memo to colleagues this
week that the conflict should be seen as the first round of a civil war.
“Unless
it is swiftly ended, the conflict will become a multi-level game with regional
and some international actors pursuing their interests, using money, arms
supplies and possibly their own troops or proxies,” he wrote.
Sudan is Africa’s third-largest country by area and
straddles the Nile River. It uneasily shares its waters with regional
heavyweights Egypt and Ethiopia. Egypt relies on the Nile to support its
population of over 100 million, and Ethiopia is working on a massive
upstream dam that has alarmed both Cairo and Khartoum.
Egypt has close ties to Sudan’s military, which it sees as
an ally against Ethiopia. Cairo has reached out to both sides in Sudan to press
for a cease-fire but is unlikely to stand by if the military faces defeat.
Sudan
borders five additional countries, Libya, Chad, the Central African Republic,
Eritrea and South Sudan, which seceded in 2011 and took 75% of Khartoum’s oil
resources with it. Nearly all are mired in their own internal conflicts, with
various rebel groups operating along the porous borders.
“What happens in Sudan will not stay in Sudan,” said Alan
Boswell of the International Crisis Group. “Chad and South Sudan look most
immediately at risk of potential spillover. But the longer (the fighting) drags
on the more likely it is we see major external intervention.”
Arab Gulf countries have looked to the Horn of Africa in
recent years as they have sought to project power across the region.
The
United Arab Emirates, a rising military power that has expanded its
presence across the Middle East and East Africa, has close ties to the
Rapid Support Forces, which sent thousands of fighters to aid the UAE and Saudi
Arabia in their war against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Russia, meanwhile, has long harbored plans to build a naval
base capable of hosting up to 300 troops and four ships in Port Sudan, on a
crucial Red Sea trading route for energy shipments to Europe.
The Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary outfit with close ties
to the Kremlin, has made inroads across Africa in recent years and
has been operating in Sudan since 2017.
The United State and the European Union have imposed
sanctions on two Wagner-linked gold mining firms in Sudan accused of
smuggling.
Sudan became an international pariah when it hosted Osama
bin Laden and other militants in the 1990s, when al-Bashir had empowered a
hard-line Islamist government.
Its isolation deepened over the conflict in the western
Darfur region in the 2000s, when Sudanese forces and the Janjaweed were accused
of carrying out atrocities while suppressing a local rebellion. The
International Criminal Court eventually charged al-Bashir with genocide.
The US removed
Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism after the government in
Khartoum agreed to forge ties with Israel in 2020. But billions of
dollars in loans and aid were put on hold after the 2021 military coup. That,
along with the war in Ukraine and global inflation, sent the economy into
free-fall.
Sudan’s
economic woes would seem to provide an opening for Western nations to use
economic sanctions to pressure both sides to stand down.
But in Sudan, as in other resource-rich African nations,
armed groups have long enriched themselves through the shadowy trade in rare
minerals and other natural resources.
Dagalo,
a one-time camel herder from Darfur, has vast livestock holdings and gold
mining operations. He’s also believed to have been well-paid by Gulf countries
for the RSF’s service in Yemen battling Iran-aligned rebels.
The military controls much of the economy, and can also
count on businessmen in Khartoum and along the banks of the Nile who grew rich
during al-Bashir’s long rule and who view the RSF as crude warriors from the
hinterlands.
“Control
over political funds will be no less decisive than the battlefield,” De Waal
said. “(The military) will want to take control of gold mines and smuggling
routes. The RSF will want to interrupt major transport arteries including the
road from Port Sudan to Khartoum.”
The sheer number of would-be mediators — including the US,
the UN, the European Union, Egypt, Gulf countries, the African Union and the
eight-nation eastern Africa bloc known as IGAD — could render any peace efforts
more complicated than the war itself. “The external mediators risk becoming a
traffic jam with no policeman,” De Waal said.
