No One Seems to Care about Sudan

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The devastating war in Sudan is now in its second year and rages on unabated with no sign of an end on the horizon. It has devastated Africa’s third-largest nation with breathtaking speed and has gutted the capital, Khartoum, once a major center of commerce and culture on the Nile.

The civil war raging between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led respectively by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, or Hemedti, and General Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan, the former chief of Sudan’s “sovereign council,” has taken a horrific toll on civilians.

They were allies in the military junta that in October 2021 overthrew a transitional government that had been formed following the ouster of longtime resident Omar al-Bashir in April 2019. But they soon quarreled and in April 2023 turned on each other. The repercussions have reached alarming levels. The formal SAF-controlled government, itself displaced to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, has lost control of half the country.

According to United Nations agencies, some 20,000 Sudanese have lost their lives. The number of wounded has reached nearly 100,000. There are no available statistics on those who perished due to diseases like cholera. Furthermore, the already fragile healthcare system has been further debilitated with over 70 per cent of hospitals and clinics across the country destroyed in the fighting.

More than 9.5 million people have been displaced, seeking refuge either in neighbouring countries, where the situation is far from ideal or safe, or elsewhere within Sudan’s frontiers. Now, with a fast-growing regional food crisis, Sudan is sliding into chaos. More than a third of Sudan’s 48 million people are facing catastrophic levels of hunger, according to the United Nations, which in April called it the world’s worst hunger crisis.

Overt foreign military intervention is escalating the conflict, transforming it into a proxy war between rival foreign interests over the heads of the Sudanese people. The RSF militia continues to receive substantial military backing from the United Arab Emirates via Chad and the Central African Republic. Its ranks include recruits from Mali, Niger, and militiamen loyal to the Libyan warlord General Khalifa Haftar.

 On the other hand, the SAF gets support from Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Iran has been providing the SAF with drones, while Turkey has supplied tanks, artillery and helicopters. Islamist terrorists affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood also increasingly align themselves with the army. They too have been engaged in atrocities.

 Even the Russia-Ukraine war is being played out in Sudan. Ukrainian special forces are actively supporting the SAF in its clashes against the RSF, who are backed by the Russian Wagner mercenary group. Ukrainian special services were likely behind a series of drone strikes and a ground operation directed against the Wagner-backed militia near Khartoum last September.

 The powerful Russian group has played a public and pivotal role in Moscow’s foreign military campaigns. Around 90 per cent of the RSF’s weapons have come from Wagner, and its supply of arms to the RSF has continued unabated despite the death of the mercenary group’s leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash last Aug. 23.

Unfortunately, Sudan is no stranger to mass murder and genocide; the RSF is simply the latest incarnation of the Janjaweed, the militia mainly responsible for the genocide in Darfur in 2003 and 2004.

The ethnically Arab RSF controls four out of five states in Darfur. They have been conducting a campaign of rape, massacre and mutilation against the Masalit people in West Darfur, with 10,000-15,000 reportedly killed in the provincial capital of El Geneina alone.

The RSF has also launched a large scale onslaught on the city of El Fasher, capital of North Darfur state. “This spiraling violence bears terrifying similarity with the war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated in Darfur since 2003,” said Tigere Chagutah, a regional director with Amnesty International. “Even those seeking safety are not being spared.”

It is difficult to foresee a ceasefire or even period of calm taking place soon. The situation is made even more desperate by the apparent inability on the part of the international community -- including the UN, European Union and African Union -- to broker a truce.