Sudan power struggle risks turning into civil war

This is an audio transcript of the Rachman Review podcast episode: ‘Sudan power struggle risks turning into civil war’

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David Pilling
Hello and welcome to the Rachman Review. I’m David Pilling, the FT’s Africa editor, standing in for Gideon Rachman while he is on holiday. This week, we’ll be looking at a forgotten war, the war in Sudan. As it passes the 100-day mark we’ll be assessing the balance of power between the two fighting forces and more broadly looking at the dangerous spread of instability across the Sahel. That instability has its own complicated roots, but it has also been stoked by outside forces, from radical Islamist ideology to Russia’s Wagner Group. My guests are Sudanese political analyst Kholood Khair and Alan Boswell of the International Crisis Group. Kholood is a Sudanese researcher and the founding director of Confluence Advisory, a think-and-do-tank based in Khartoum. She’s been forced to flee the fighting in Sudan and is here with me in the studio. Alan, who is joining us from Nairobi, is project director at the Crisis Group and an expert in conflict resolution.

David Pilling
So what exactly is happening in Sudan? And is fighting there destined to ripple across a region that is already highly unstable?

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In mid-April, a bloody power struggle erupted between the Sudanese armed forces and a paramilitary force known as the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF.

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The leader of the armed forces is General Burhan, president of Sudan. His vice-president, universally known as Hemeti, leads the RSF. Now they are at war. The armed forces have air power, which they have used to bomb RSF positions in Khartoum and elsewhere in the country. The RSF, which has its roots in an Arab horseback militia known as the Janjaweed, controls up to 150,000 well-trained men honed in conflicts such as Darfur. In the middle are civilians dying in large numbers, struggling to get food and water, and desperately hoping to get their democratic revolution back on track.

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In 2019, it was civilian protests that led to the overthrow of dictator Omar al-Bashir, unleashing a real sense of hope that Sudan could finally transition to a functioning democracy. Those dreams were thwarted by a coup in 2021 and are now on hold, if not entirely shattered. In the meantime, countries such as Egypt and the UAE are taking a keen interest behind the scenes in the state of war and its regional implications. Russia’s notorious Wagner group is also tangentially involved. In the past, it has trained RSF fighters and helped in the gold operations that keep Hemeti’s forces paid and armed.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, speaking via interpreter
We’re getting ready, levelling up for a new enterprise: Africa.

David Pilling
With Yevgeny Prigozhin threatening to step up Wagner’s African activities, could Sudan be a focus of attention? I began by asking Kholood to assess the state of the fighting.

Kholood Khair
Well, it started out as a fight to the death, and that’s partially because both thought it would be a very quick campaign. And now it’s 100 days on and you know, you say only 100 days. But of course, that 100 days have been quite devastating for the country. Sudan was already teetering on the edge of state collapse because of the coup that took place in October 2021. And so by the time the war started in April, the country was already quite fragile. And what we have seen in the past few weeks is that Khartoum, the capital, is crumbling. There is no way to tell really who’s winning because both the generals and their armed forces have carved out parts of the country. In Khartoum, it looks like the paramilitary forces dominate a lot more on the ground and also in parts of the restive region of Darfur to the west of the country. But on the whole, there’s sort of a stalemate that has been going on pretty much since the first days of this conflict and we haven’t seen much change. Frankly, no conflict in Sudan’s postcolonial history has ever been won militarily, either by the central government or by a paramilitary or rebel force. And so both of these generals will have to at some point come to the mediation table seriously. Currently, though, they are still mired in this belief that both of them can win and win militarily.

David Pilling
You mentioned the humanitarian cost, which is obviously huge, but do we know exactly, again, what is happening? Do people have access to food? How many casualties have there been? There were reports from Unicef earlier this week, some quite hair-raising reports about casualties of children who are caught up in this conflict. What can you tell us about the civilian population?

Kholood Khair
The people who are already facing economic and physical security issues before the war are now, of course, at a much more grave level of need. And for the most part, those in Khartoum. And you have to remember that Khartoum geographically is located right in the middle of the country. So away from any border from which a humanitarian response can be launched. And so Khartoum is effectively a city under siege, a city of 7mn or so people with a large number having left, but a much larger number, so 5 to 6mn probably still around. The numbers of deaths are really conservative, I would say estimates at this point because it’s difficult to tell just how many people have perished, not just in Khartoum, but in other parts of the country. And there’s quite clearly a desperate increase in the number of people who are going to go hungry. And currently it’s the rainy season. The planting season has all but failed. It’s unlikely that come harvest season in September that there’ll be enough to feed everyone. And we’re already seeing, particularly in the urban areas, extreme shortages of food and people complaining of hunger.

David Pilling
That sounds absolutely horrendous. To what extent are the two fighting forces using civilians, do you think, as hostages? I mean, we hear reports, for example, of the authorities, whoever is in charge, in particular parts of the country, not allowing food convoys in, raiding food convoys for themselves, clogging up the delivery of aid with bureaucracy? Are civilians being used here?

Kholood Khair
Yes. I mean, civilians have been held hostage by the overtures of the generals since before this war. And that has absolutely intensified the military side, which still sort of tries to cast itself as the proper official. Authorities have been reverting to a tactic they have often used during wartime and actually outside of wartime too, which is to capture aid, including food aid. On the paramilitary side, we’ve seen them raid food stores either by the UN, particularly the World Food Programme, or even factories that have seeds, grain, etc. And so there’s absolutely a campaign to starve people and also enrich themselves. That’s the predatory nature of both the armed forces and the paramilitary forces. And really, what they’re both fighting is a war against each other. But both of them are fighting a war against civicness in Sudan. And we’ve seen that not just in the way that they’ve been holding people hostage and starving people, but in the way that they’ve targeted pro-democracy actors during this conflict too.

David Pilling
We’ll go back to that. But if I could just turn to Alan for a moment. There is another actor here. I want to find out from you to what extent you think Wagner is an actor in this conflict. Clearly, it had been around since 2019. It had been advising the previous government of Omar al-Bashir in how to suppress the civilian demonstrations that you were talking about. To what extent is Wagner still there? To what extent is it supporting Hemeti whom it has been closer to than to Burhan? And to what extent is it helping his gold operations, which presumably are still helping to fund this war?

Alan Boswell
The top line is that we don’t see Wagner playing a very substantial or game changing role in Sudan. The US has accused Wagner of supplying the rapid support forces primarily through the Central African Republic. It’s a bit unclear if that was a sustained weapon transfer of surface-to-air missiles and probably some anti-tank ones, you know, so that was a one off or if that was sustained. But more generally, I think Russia and Wagner sort of accidentally found themselves on this conflict and as much Wagner originally came into Sudan to support Omar al-Bashir’s government, and then after the coup, they were supporting essentially the military authorities. And then, yes, they did grow a lot closer to Hemeti and the Rapid Support Forces, because Wagner, unlike in other places, had played less of a security role and became very focused on commercial gold mining that was primarily through Hemeti. But it did set up this awkward situation after the war broke out, where Wagner was clearly on the RSF side, although the degree to that support is still not entirely clear. But it didn’t necessarily look like that was Moscow’s actual approach to the country.

David Pilling
And in terms of other players, Egypt and the UAE have interests in Sudan. Egypt is always seen to have leaned towards Burhan and the Sudanese armed forces. The UAE, if anything, leaned towards Hemeti. Are those countries helping to cool the situation or are they helping to heat it up? And more specifically, how are both sides rearming themselves?

Alan Boswell
Yeah, as you mentioned, there’s a lot of external players in the conflict in Sudan, Egypt and UAE. Of course, being two of them, I think there are slightly different situations with both. Egypt has always been very clear about its support for the army specifically, and it has been very uncomfortable with the RSF, with Hemeti, with this sort of paramilitary set-up. But Egypt, it doesn’t really have the financial wherewithal to necessarily weigh in very heavily. On that side it was a lot of sort of clinical support, diplomatic support, intelligence support, those kind of things. And then the UAE is the country that has the closest ties, political and commercial, to the RSF. It’s not the only one. I don’t think the UAE ever intended this to be support for the RSF vis-à-vis the actual military. So the UAE also had invested quite a bit in forging relationships with Burhan and the rest of the army leadership. I think it’s just been very difficult for the UAE to sustain those ties to the army, which considers the UAE as the main backer of the RSF. And so we have found this divide in which Egypt obviously is on the side of the army. Most suspect the UAE is favouring RSF on this side. The degree to any support from the UAE to the RSF, it’s still an open question, but it doesn’t look like these two actors have been brought in enough or are focused enough on trying to get a ceasefire. The diplomacy is basically in complete disarray. Egypt is trying to launch its own peace process, but it looks like one designed to essentially salvage the army.

David Pilling
And Kholood, how do you see these external players as potentially a benign force as in fact a malign force? And how are the two, the paramilitary force of Hemeti and the armed forces of Burhan, how are they getting resupplied in order to continue this war?

Kholood Khair
Well, the SAF, the Sudan Armed Forces, has a very large military-industrial complex, so it’s able to make their own weapons. Partially, they have relied on aerial support from the Egyptian forces, but the degree to which that is something they can continue to rely on, we’re not quite sure. If Egypt is successful in also increasing its military cache, then it’s possible that Sudan Armed Forces may also benefit from that. The Sudan Armed Forces has also reportedly been engaging with Turkey to secure some of their Bayraktar drones to be operated by Azeri operators, not Sudanese. And so that would signal an externalisation of this conflict in a way that hasn’t been the case thus far. For the paramilitary forces, there are reports and a lot of analysts believe, that the Chadian airport in Amdjarass, which is in the east of the country, has become a resupply base for the RSF. And there are reports there that also that the United Arab Emirates has been instrumental in resupplying through that base. But frankly, the RSF, having built an alliance with regional actors in the Haftar LNA government in Libya, some of the rebels in Chad and then the Touadéra regime in the Central African Republic, there’s a lot there that they can use to rearm themselves, both in terms of weapons as well as also to recruit from across the Sahel. And there are signs that they have been doing so.

David Pilling
You mentioned these neighbouring countries and Sudan is a huge country. To what extent does this conflict threaten to spread across its borders the other way into a region that is already highly unstable, the Sahel and Central Africa more generally?

Kholood Khair
I think we shouldn’t underestimate the spillover effects and they would be huge. Sudan borders seven countries. Almost all of them are unstable to some degree. Almost all of them are in some sort of transition and because of that, they are uniquely vulnerable to inheriting some of the conflict dynamics, or at least triggering some of their own conflict dynamics through the fighting in Sudan. So we will see, I think, even further afield into the Sahel a potential spillover effect beyond Chad.

David Pilling
Alan, do you see a commonality between the instability that we’ve seen in Sudan not just now, but really stretching back many, many years and an instability right across the Sahel as far as Mali and Burkina Faso. We mentioned Central African Republic as well, Libya, of course. Are there common themes that are causing this instability or is Sudan really quite a different case?

Alan Boswell
Sudan is a different case, but I think we’re really watching something incredible right now. You know, the RSF, it is a Sudanese movement. It arose out of Sudanese political dynamics, but it is now also this transnational business empire, family business empire. In a way, it’s tapping into these Sahelian Arab identities and I think pulling basically the Sahel into Sudan. I think that the gold mining and the way that gold has become this resource now fuelling conflict. The illicit smuggling networks that the RSF has tapped into so well. There is this question of, you know, do they even need a foreign supplier? The gold revenues that they are producing, are those enough to essentially buy up the weapons on the open market they do need. There is this Wagner element which we already talked about, but I do think this is the start of maybe not Sudan getting pulled toward the Sahel, but I think the Sahel getting pulled more into Sudan.

David Pilling
And Kholood, we’ll go back to Sudan in a second. But just looking at the broader Sahelian region, there are outside influences. There’s the ideology of Islamism, which has taken root in some countries, often preying on local conflicts. We do have Wagner. Wagner may not be playing a huge role in Sudan, but it is deeply embedded in Central African Republic. It has been hired by the Malian government. There are rumours in Burkina Faso. Prigozhin has said Wagner is prepared to intensify its engagement in Africa. Across this region, how do you see these external forces pressurising and exploiting conflicts that are clearly already there?

Kholood Khair
The thing about Wagner that makes it so pernicious, I think, is that it often comes in not as an invading force, but from any request from the government, and that has given it extraordinary access and also has allowed it in many ways to call the shots. And so even though the contracts are not publicly available, the conditions for the engagement between Wagner and some of these African countries is quite clearly very profitable for Wagner, often to the detriment of these countries. What a lot of these countries have had to deal with — Mali, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic that have had coups recently — is a lot of domestic opposition to the previous leaders. And we have seen very much unlike Sudan that in those countries when the coups have taken place, there has been a lot of public support for them because people have wanted change almost at all costs to the extent that they would back a military coup. And because of that, we have seen a spate of coups in this part of the continent, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the sixties and the seventies. And to some degree, these now incumbents feel that they can rely on that sentiment, which looks like anti-French sentiment. It looks like pro-Russian sentiment, it looks like the kind of sort of political change that would be quite threatening to the west. But really, it’s mired in a complete rejection of the way that things were done politically before. That’s why we’ve also seen the rise of militant Islamism and a sort of, quote unquote, “terrorist”, because they’ve also offered a different political vision. I think Wagner competes in many ways with these other actors in the region, but has been able to frankly, create a business model that works quite well for them.

David Pilling
Both end by going back to Sudan. As you hinted at there, Sudan is really very different. Three or four years ago, there was tremendous hope. Bashir had been kicked out after dozens and dozens of days after 30 years, by dozens and dozens of days of street protests all across the country, people crying out for democracy. There was great hope that there might be a transition. The west was hoping to kind of nudge that along. That’s all gone very wrong. And yet this Sudanese conflict has, in a sense, been forgotten. A lot of western attention is obviously on Ukraine. Do you think that we need to be paying more attention to what is going on in Sudan and why?

Kholood Khair
Absolutely. I mean, objectively, what’s happening in Sudan is something that could, you know, have very devastating effects, frankly, because it could go on for so long. And the longer this goes on, the more it going to draw on neighbouring countries and as Alan said, drawing the Sahel and it’s very destabilising dynamics. But also the longer it goes on, the more internally it could become much more of a civil war. And currently it’s sort of teetering on the edge of a war between different armed groups and a fully fledged civil war. The consequences of that are going to be hugely detrimental to the Red Sea Basin, to north Africa and potentially then also the Mediterranean and also, of course, to the already restive Horn of Africa region. Sudan is very, very porous as a country to its neighbours and to the region and that is something that can only really be wrestled with, I think, if there is a stable civilian democracy, because history has shown that the militaries cannot be underwriters of stability both in Sudan and the region. But beyond that, you have a robust, independent pro-democracy movement that has maintained itself and has continued to maintain itself even through the current war, which is frankly remarkable. And I think, you know, the international community should bet on them a lot more than it has for the sake of Sudan’s stability and that of the region.

David Pilling
Alan, all wars end. How is this war gonna end and when?

Alan Boswell
Well, I wish I could say it would end soon. As Kholood has said, you know, it looks like these parties thought it would be a quick fight, But since it hasn’t proved a quick fight, both of them are digging in for the long run. I mean, ultimately, these will end when the two parties have enough incentives to both negotiate peace. I think there is a lot more military dynamics to play out. We have hope this crisis group, that there could be a window for at least trying to get these two back together, back at peace talks, because the RSF continues to sort of strengthen its upper hand, if you will, on Khartoum. And that could give the army, which has refused talks early on, could give them an incentive to come to talks.

But thus far, the two sides do not seem ready. Essentially, the army sees itself as having a lot more external friends. It realises that RSF is hated by so much of the Sudanese population, but the RSF thinks it has the upper hand. It is pulling from even beyond Sudan’s borders into this war. And so it would only want to negotiate with essentially very advantageous terms. So I think unfortunately we’re dealing with a small window to try to end this before things get completely out of control and we’re dealing with a full-blown state collapse that might take generations to put back together.

But even given all that, the diplomacy has just not risen to the occasion. It has not been high enough on the world’s agenda. And so we’re not even entirely sure whether or not common ground can be forged between these two, because we don’t have any active peace talks between them. And so it’s just been very depressing to watch what’s happening to Sudan, but also watch the external actors really fail to rise to the occasion at all, to see diplomacy really fail to rise to the occasion at all, to try to address this before it’s too late.

David Pilling
That is a depressing way to end this. Could I ask, are there any grounds for hope?

Kholood Khair
Absolutely. I don’t think there’s much hope to be found in the sort of warring parties. Historically that has been their go-to for the international community. Try and create some kind of power-sharing deal between the parties at war and hope that would bring about some kind of stability. That has spectacularly failed in Sudan’s very long history of peace agreements. But as I said earlier, every conflict in Sudan has ended in a peace agreement or a political settlement. The question is, what are the terms of those settlements? And as long as either of the protagonists, the belligerents — we currently have Burhan or Hemeti — if either of them intend to feature in a future political dispensation, that’s not going to end the conflict. We’ll only sort of press pause on it.

I think what is critical is that both Burhan and Hemeti have forfeited permanently any sort of legitimacy that would see them be part of a political dispensation. I think it’s high time the international community got on board with that message. They need to get on board and they need to co-ordinate very quickly and in a way that sets up a co-ordination mechanism that will actually be able to not just talk about the immediate issues of humanitarian access and a ceasefire, but also future political dispensations. We haven’t seen anything of that type, and frankly, we’re not seeing the willingness from those actors to do so. But what they can rely on is that pro-democracy actors in the country and outside of the country absolutely are united in one thing, which is that they don’t want to see Burhan or Hemeti in government. And that opens up lots of different avenues for a potential civilian democratic Sudan that is far more stable and that opportunity needs to be seized.

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David Pilling
That was Kholood Khair ending this edition of the Rachman Review. You can find FT articles relating to today’s podcast in our show notes. And for a limited time this summer, we are making those articles free to read for all Rachman Review listeners. So click the links in our show notes to make the most of this summer offer and enjoy more of the FT’s international journalism with no paywall. That’s it for this week. We’ll be back with another episode of the Rachman Review next week. So please keep listening.

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