Five points about Sudan

Of:  

 

Alexander Bönke  

 

Published: Yesterday 23.15  

 

Updated: Less than 2 hours ago 

 

NEWS  

 

Right now a conflict is going on in Sudan.  

 

The Riksdag has voted yes to the government being able to send an armed force of a maximum of 400 people to evacuate Swedish citizens. 

 

But what is the conflict about? Here are five points.  

 

Who are fighting?  

 

The background to the conflict is a power struggle between the Sudanese army, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary forces RSF (Rapid Support Forces) led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. Both claim to lead the country.  

 

They ousted dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019 and promised to share power during a transition period towards a democratic Sudan. But that project died after a new military coup in October 2021. There, the two generals took the lead and deposed or imprisoned all civilian leaders who had been part of the transitional government, TT writes. 

 

But now the two men do not agree on how Sudan should be governed. Whoever wins the power struggle will most likely take power.
 

Who are RSF?  

 

The RSF sprang from the so-called Janjaweed militia. The group was used, among other things, by the Sudanese government to put down rebellions during the conflict in Darfur.  

 

In 2017, a law was passed recognizing the group as an independent security force. The group's leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo previously had close ties to the country's former president Omar al-Bashir.  

 

"As he became more prominent, his business interests grew with the help of al-Bashir, and his family expanded their holdings in gold mining, livestock and infrastructure," said Adel Abdel Ghafar, director of the foreign policy and security program at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, to Al Jazeera

 

How does it affect the region? 

 

- What happens in Sudan will not stay in Sudan. Chad and South Sudan appear to be the countries most exposed to the risk of a potential spread, says Alan Boswell of the International Crisis Group to the AP news agency.  

 

Sudan is Africa's third largest country by surface area and shares the important Nile River with Egypt and Ethiopia. 

 

In addition, the country also borders Libya, Chad, Central African Republic, Eritrea and South Sudan. Basically everyone has their own internal conflicts and different groups move across the relatively unguarded borders.  

 

Where do the great powers stand?  

 

Regional powers Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have close ties to the RSF, which helped them in the conflict in Yemen. They want to see a ceasefire, writes Al Jazeera.  

 

Egypt has close ties to the Sudanese military and is trying to broker a ceasefire.  

 

Russia has an interest in building a naval base along the country's coast in the city of Port of Sudan to be able to monitor energy transport to Europe, something that Sudanese leaders have been open to.  

 

The West, led by the United States, withdrew much of the financial support to the country after the 2021 coup, but backed a transition to democratic elections after the overthrow of Omar al-Bashir. 

 

How does this end? 

  

Alan Boswell describes the conflict as "an existential struggle on both sides" to the AP and says that it is unlikely that either general will sit down at the negotiating table, unless they have suffered heavy losses.  

At the same time, the risk is that there will be too many chefs trying to solve the problem when so many countries have interests in Sudan. 

 

Or as Alex De Waal, an expert on Sudan at Tufts University tells AP:  

 

"The external mediators risk becoming a traffic jam without the police"