Members of Sudan’s armed forces take part in a military parade held on the occasion of Army Day outside the Armed Forces Officers' Club in Port Sudan on August 14, 2024. A UN report, based on interviews with survivors and witnesses shows the hardship and ‘grim and gruesome’ suffering of Sudans people because of the ongoing conflict 'which has been the work of a sustained seventeen-month war between the Sudanese armed forces and the Rapid Support Forces', the writer says. – Picture: AFP
By Kim Heller
This week, the Director-General of the World Health Organisation, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, implored the world to “wake up and help Sudan out of the nightmare it’s living through”. Speaking from Sudan on Sunday, he said that over 20,000 people have been killed in the 17-month conflict and over 10 million displaced.
Ghebreyesus said that the best medicine for Sudan is peace. This would require an immediate ceasefire, responsibility and accountability from the warring groups, and international support. Without doubt, peace is both a vital and urgent tonic for the people of Sudan who have become the walking dead in the catastrophe and aftershock of civil unrest, armed coups, destabilisation, and persistent poverty.
Wonderous dreams of freedom, peace and democracy after independence from British colonialism in 1956 have been horribly transfigured into an inescapable nightmare of apocalyptic proportions. The country’s vast oil reserves and rich gold deposits and its prized geo-political location has made it a hunter’s paradise for countries in search of economic treasures, and strategic advancement in the continent.
Peace is the right prescription to end economic plunder in Sudan, kill the perilous and persistent proxy wars, and pave a new path for the country. However, peace efforts need to correctly diagnose the underlying causes of the Sudan crisis if these are truly to be treated and rooted out. Many efforts have failed.
Just days after the release of the report by the United Nation’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan, on Friday 6th September, its findings and recommendations have been rejected by the Sudan government. The Sudan government has described the report as both politically motivated and illicit.
The UN report, based primarily on interviews with survivors and witnesses sets out a grim and gruesome picture of the persistent conflict and catastrophic devastation and destruction which has been the work of a sustained seventeen-month war between the Sudanese armed forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has impacted 14 of Sudan’s 18 states.
The canvas is a bloodstain of tens of thousands of dead civilians, a chaos of over 10 million displaced, and a large spill of refugees flooding into neighbouring countries. Brutal strokes of the rape of women, shelling of schools, hospitals and critical water and electricity supplies, detention and torture, is part of a real-life portraiture of the current day Sudan.
The UN report accuses both the SAF and the RSF militia of “an appalling range of harrowing human rights violations and international crimes”. Both warring parties could be guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, according to the report.
The Chairperson of the mission, Mohamed Chande Othman, spoke of how the weight of the findings and failure of the army and RSF to protect civilians “underscores the need for urgent and immediate intervention”. Top of the recommendation from the UN mission were for an arms embargo on all parties, and the deployment an independence and impartial force to protect civilians.
In its response to the report by the United Nation’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission, the Sudan government has objected to an arms embargo on the SAF arguing that the army was required to fulfil its constitutional duty to protect Sudan. The Sudan government reiterated its commitment to safeguarding citizens and expressed that the 2023 Jeddah Declaration was as a more appropriate framework for providing protection than an international force.
In June 2023, the government had signed the declaration and pledged to ensure that citizens are protected at all times and are afforded safe passage to leave conflict areas. However, SAF and RSF have failed to facilitate humanitarian assistance or agree to ceasefires as stipulated in the Declaration.
The call by the UN mission for an arms embargo is a vital one. However, there are some biases, if not flaws in the report. Despite an extensive list of very severe crimes committed by RSF, including wide-scale rape, use of and looting by mercenaries, and acts ethnic violence, there seems to be a deliberate attempt to create a sense of balance in the blame game.
The SAF and RSF are presented as equal offenders when evidence points to the fact that the RSF is responsible for the lion’s share of atrocities. By doing so, the UN report provides a skewed diagnosis of the crisis and limits effective remedies and solutions.
Mohammed Amin, a reporter for The Middle East Eye, wrote of how the RSF is massacring civilians daily. He writes that such massacres have occurred before, during and after the RSF sent a delegation to Geneva to attend the August peace talks. He writes that on the day the RSF delegation arrived in Geneva, RSF massacred around 80 people in Sennar State.
While the UN report calls for an immediate stop of weapons and ammunition to SAF and RSF, there is no mention of which countries are blameworthy. The report fails to boldly identify the countries that are fuelling or supersizing the conflict in Sudan for their own ends.
This not only fails to bring about much needed accountability but also fails to depict the international scale of the conflict in Sudan. By not naming and shaming international protagonists, it also fuels perceptions of the Sudan crisis as a local feud between rival parties rather than as a toxic outcome of proxy wars.
The RSF has been emboldened through military support from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Although the AEU denies any involvement, the United Nations and Amnesty International have claimed to have tangible evidence of significant support. Amnesty International has also claimed that weapons and ammunition from China, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, Yemen are flowing into Sudan.
In an article in the Guardian in May 2024, Husam, co–founder of Sudan Bukra, an independent non-profit Sudanese TV channel writes that it is an open secret that the UAE is fuelling Sudan’s war. He writes that until this is called out there will be no peace in Sudan.
In his article he points out that Sudan is key to UAE’s strategy of achieving political and economic hegemony in Africa and the Middle East. Mahjoub writes that UAE is the main importer of Sudan’s gold and has multibillion-dollar plans to develop ports along Sudan’s Red Sea coast.
“By supporting the RSF in Sudan”, he writes, the UAE has “undermined the democratic transition that followed the 2019 ouster of Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s dictator for 30 years”.
International relations expert and legal advisor, Dr David Matsanga has argued that the generals of both the SAF and RSF must be held accountable for their role in crimes against the people of Sudan. So too must international warmongers and mercenaries.
In terms of the way forward, the Sudan ministry argues that the UN should support national peace efforts rather than force external machineries. The US’s special envoy for Sudan, Tom Perriello has expressed his opinion that the Jeddah platform could foster a strong body of support from African and Arab leaders in order to build “political will in the region to compel a peace deal”.
Peace talks and missions need to venture beyond trying to find common ground between the warring parties. Such initiatives need to lay the foundation of what a post-war Sudan will look like, and who governs it.
Whether the leaders of SAF and RSF who have both caused such trauma to the people of Sudan, should form part of a post-war, democratic Sudan, should be left to the people of Sudan to decide. For now, they have no voice. For this has been lost in their desperate, unheard cries in a war not of their making.
* Kim Heller is a political analyst and author of ‘No White Lies: Black Politics and White Power in South Africa’. This article was written exclusively for The African. To republish, see terms and conditions.
** The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of The African