Sudan's year of civil war: 'the world has turned its back'

"Exactly a year ago, Sudan's ruinous collapse began," said Ishaan Tharoor in The Washington Post. 

On 15 April 2023, tensions between the nation's two most powerful factions – the Sudanese armed forces, headed by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), headed by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as "Hemedti" – "exploded into open war". Air strikes hit cities; militiamen and vigilantes set up checkpoints and looted neighbourhoods. "The capital, Khartoum, transformed into a sprawling battlefield." 

A year on, the Sudanese state has "essentially collapsed" in much of the country. Hospitals, health services and schools barely function. "The situation is astonishingly grim." At least 16,000 people have been killed. A large number of war crimes – massacres, sexual violence – have been reportedly committed by both sides. Almost a fifth of Sudan's population of 50 million has been displaced. Nearly a third of its people are acutely "food insecure", according to the UN. An estimated three million children are malnourished.

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Transition to democracy 'blown apart'

Sudan had until recently appeared to be transitioning to democracy, said Areesha Lodhi on Al Jazeera (Doha). In 2019, Sudan's dictator for nearly 30 years, President Omar al-Bashir, was toppled by a popular uprising. Yet "a fragile transition to civilian-led democracy was blown apart" when Burhan and Hemedti staged a coup in 2021.

The two sides were at the time long-term allies. The armed forces are Sudan's traditional rulers (its leaders have, like Bashir, mostly been army officers); the RSF emerged out of the Janjaweed, an ethnic Arab militia from Darfur that the armed forces deployed to put down a long rebellion in the region, and which has been accused of war crimes and ethnic cleansing. But they fell out last year because "each side feared ceding too much control to the other in a new political order": the RSF was meant to be integrated into the army, and the army was supposed to divest itself of its lucrative domination of large sectors of the economy.

'Splinters' emerge

When the war started, it looked like a relatively "clear-cut fight" between the Sudanese armed forces and the RSF, said The Economist. "Instead the conflict has metastasised into a nationwide conflagration so vast and anarchic it could yet destabilise several of Sudan's neighbours." 

Neither side has managed to land a knock-out blow – the country is roughly split now between the west, where the RSF is more powerful, and the east, where Burhan's forces are in the ascendant – but both sides are now beginning to "splinter". 

Across the nation there is "a mosaic of competing militias and rebel movements, each with its own interests and agendas. Arms and mercenaries are pouring over the border from Chad, Libya and the Central African Republic, and across the Red Sea"; the UAE has supplied arms to the RSF, and Iran likewise to the army.

An 'unwinnable' conflict?

The world has turned its back on Sudan, said Martin Griffiths in Le Monde (Paris). Two decades ago, the international community failed to stop atrocities in Darfur. Once again, we are looking the other way. "Let us be clear, our inattention has emboldened the parties to this conflict to flout the basic rules of war." Children are being killed. "Women raped. Hospitals targeted." Sudan remains "almost completely absent from the global conversation consumed by the wars in Gaza and Ukraine", said Mohammed Alamin and Simon Marks on Bloomberg. International donors have committed nearly 1,000 times as much aid to Kyiv as they have to Khartoum.

Despite the grim outlook, "at least some of the ingredients for a firm and concerted international push for a ceasefire are coming into place", said the International Crisis Group (Brussels). The war looks "unwinnable", and the nations with most influence – the US, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE – are pushing hard for negotiations. 

"Resistance from both strongmen to entreaties for peace remains formidable." The alternative, though, is ever-spreading war, chaos and "mass starvation".