Museveni wrong on Sudan situation

Fighting will not end peace talks but partition

COVER STORY | THE INDEPENDENT | When President Yoweri Museveni received a delegation from the Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan led Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council recently, he told them to stop fighting their rival, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo and seek peace through dialogue.

“President Museveni reiterated his message to the fighting forces in Sudan, urging them to cease fire, hold peaceful elections and grant power to the people to elect their own leaders,” read the statement released by the State House Press Unit.

According to the statement, Museveni believes that by coming together to pursue dialogue, the warring factions will get a solution because “once the problem is identified, it becomes easier to isolate it and bring about peace in the country.”

President Museveni’s latest intervention to seek peace in Sudan comes after Gen. al-Burhan’s Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) has been battling unsuccessfully for 10 months to defeat the renegade paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Gen. Dagalo aka Hemedti. Over this period, an estimated 15,000 people – mainly civilians- have been killed and about 10 million displaced from their homes, mainly in the capital Khartoum.

The delegation that met Museveni at State House Entebbe on Feb.22 was led by the deputy chairperson of the Transitional Sovereignty Council, Malik Agar. According to the State House statement, Malik told Museveni that al-Burhan is willing to enter the proposed peace process.

Gen. Dagalo had reportedly equally outlined his vision for negotiations, cessation of hostilities, and the reconstruction of Sudan on equitable foundations when he met Museveni on December 13, 2023 at State House Entebbe. Does this mean the warring factions are will to talk peace and end the fighting? Not so say many analysts within and outside of Sudan.

Peace overtures snubbed

Many analysts point at how similar overtures being pursued by the highly respected former Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok have been snubbed by both Gen. al-Burhan and Gen. Dagalo.

Hamdock who was the prime minister during the transitional period following the ousting of Sudanese dictator Gen. Omar Al Bashir in 2019, and who was recently chosen as chair of the new Civil Democratic Forces alliance (Tagaddum or ‘progress’ in Arabic) has requested separate peace meetings with al-Burhan and Dagalo.

According to the Tagaddum, Hamdok sought to speak to them about protection of civilians during the conflict, provision of humanitarian aid, and agreeing on a political process to end the war.

Hamdok had sought the meeting to take place in January but he was snubbed. Instead, fighting between the forces escalated; especially in the gold-rich Darfur region of western Sudan which Gen. Dagalo appears determined to claim as fully his territory.

Developments on the battlefields in Sudan change very fast, but by Jan. 24, Sudanese news media were reporting fresh battles erupting between the Sudanese army and the RSF near the Abu Shouk camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state.

At the time, the RSF was in control of four out of five Sudanese states in the Darfur region and appeared determined to seize El Fasher, the sole city in Darfur controlled by Sudanese army. These clashes have persisted into February, although reports indicate that the Sudanese Army has made strong gains against the RSF and managed to break its siege on El-Fasher.

The Sudanese Army forces appeared to be staring at defeat when in December 2023 they withdrew from Wad Madani, the capital of al-Jazirah state. At the time, the RSF appeared to have the momentum as several Sudanese Army commanders shifted alliance to the RSF.

It was around this time that a buoyed Gen. Dagalo took on a whirlwind diplomatic tour that included meeting several African heads of state such as President Museveni.

Dagalo separately met Museveni, Kenyan President William Ruto, and Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed. He was also in Kigali where he visited the Genocide Memorial although he did not meet President Kagame.

“They are treating him like a head of state and giving him all this attention,” Dallia Abedlmoniem, a Sudanese political analyst said of IGAD while speaking to the BBC on Jan. 17.

Partitioning Sudan?

There was also increased speculation about what the RSF success on the battlefield would mean for peace in Sudan. Some analysts speculated that Sudan would go the `Libya way’.

For years, Libya has been living in a state of division between a western region ruled by the National Unity Government from the capital, Tripoli, and the east of the country run by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar from the city of Benghazi.

Many speculated that similarly, Sudan would become a de facto partitioned state.

After the RSF on November 21, 2023 seized the SAF headquarters in El Daein, the capital of East Darfur state, the only remaining obstacle to expanding its influence over the entire region was El Fasher, the political and administrative capital.

Earlier, in October, the RSF had seized four of the five states in Darfur, along with parts of Khartoum. The RSF has also attempted to penetrate the Kordofan region located between the two.

On the other hand, the SAF was based in the city of Port Sudan in the east and was controlling the states in the central and eastern regions, the Nile River State, and the country’s Red Sea ports.

In this scenario, analysts said the “Control over Darfur became a strategic goal for the RSF after its inability to capture the capital Khartoum”.

According to them, based on geopolitical considerations, the Darfur region suited Gen. Dagalo because it borders eastern Libya, which is governed by his ally, Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar.

The region is also bordered by Chad and Central Africa who, according to the Sudanese army, have been used by Gen. Dagalo’s allies, the United Arab Emirates, to ferry arms and munitions to the RSF. Darfur also contains gold mines that are the backbone of the Sudan economy.

Control over Darfur also became a strategic goal for the RSF because the region is home to the main ethnic base of fighters of the RSF.

The city of El Fasher constitutes the centre of gravity of these armed movements in the region, and many observers believe that its fall to the RSF would mean the end of the influence of local groups, which explains their reactions to fears of the RSF storming the city.

For more than two decades, the Darfur region has been an arena for bloody war between the Sudanese army, supported by the RSF, on the one hand, and local armed movements, on the other.

The conflict between the latter two parties took on an ethnic dimension, as the armed movements descended from African tribes while RSF fighters belonged to Arab tribes.

With reports of several Darfurian armed movements gathering in El Fasher in preparation to confront the RSF, fears were increasing that this will lead to an escalation of ethnic conflicts within the region.

To win over the population, the RSF has attempted to provide “a model of governance based on establishing security and providing services” in the areas it governs in Darfur.

It now appears the SAF, which also regards the city of El Fasher and its environs in North Darfur to be of great strategic and symbolic value as it is “the political and historical capital of Darfur” and is still holding on to them was engaged in a “tactical withdrawal” and had all along not meant that the Sudanese army was leaving Darfur.

After the RSF made clear its intention to storm the city of El Fasher and North Darfur, two of the largest armed movements in the region announced their support for the Sudanese army, just seven months after committing to a policy of neutrality between the two sides.

In a press conference, Jibril Ibrahim, leader of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), and Minni Arko Minawi, leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), justified their decision by accusing the RSF of targeting civilians, looting property, and attempting to “break up Sudan in the service of external agenda”.

“The RSF’s approach to controlling the entirety of Darfur practically means its domination over western Sudan, and this has raised speculation that Hemedti may follow in the footsteps of his ally Khalifa Haftar,” said Muhammad Khalifa Siddiq, an analyst.

War will continue

But, according to one report, written by Eritrean journalist and researcher in African Affairs Abdolgader Mohamed Ali, the final vision of all parties has not yet been fully crystallised, therefore “the war in Sudan will continue for a long time to come”

Abdolgader Mohamed Ali cites says Mahamat Ali Kalyani, an analyst who says “there will be no Libyan scenario in Sudan”.

He cites another Sudanese political analyst Muhammad Torshin who also rules out any repetition of the Libyan scenario in Sudan, but for different reasons.

“The equation in Sudan is complicated,” the researcher in African affairs told journalists.

Torshin says, in addition to providing a model government in Darfur, the RSF must agree with the victims of the violations committed by its fighters in the region to reach a radical solution. Torshin says, this however, is “unlikely”.

“Hemedti could formulate understandings with armed movements in Darfur, but he will not do so because any alliance of this kind clearly means the end of these movements,” Torshin adds.

“It is not easy for Hemedti to copy General Haftar’s model, and the final vision of all parties has not yet been fully crystallised, therefore the war in Sudan will continue for a long time to come.”

But the departure of the Sudanese Army forced armed mobilisation and civilian defense militias in the area and declaration of readiness to fight the RSF by armed groups that had previously claimed neutrality.

That became part of the RSF’s problem as the motley fighting militias appeared to have sided with the Sudan Army against the RSF. These militias include the SPLM-N which has clashed with the RSF in Southern Kordofan and the Darfur Joint Forces around the El-Fasher area.

As a result, by mid-January 2024, the SAF appeared to shift from a tactical defensive mode into an offensive one. According to reports, they quickly took regaining territory from the RSF, established checkpoints to consolidate its gains around its bases in Khartoum and broke the RSF siege on the Engineers Corps in Omdurman, where they had been on the defensive since April 2023. In other words, there now seems to be no incentive for either Gen. al-Burhan or Gen. Dagalo to talk peace.

Already, Gen. al-Burhan deflated President Museveni’s chariots of diplomacy when on Jan.30 he vowed to resume fighting, just as a 14-day window for direct talks between him and Gen. Dagalo was closing days to the expiry of a deadline Museveni mediated.

Museveni had on Jan. 18 hosted several heads of the Horn of Africa, Nile Valley, and Great Lakes regions that comprise the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) to review the situation in Sudan and repeat its demand for face-face talks between Burhan and Dagalo.

The IGAD meeting ordered Burhan and Dagalo to hold face-face talks within 14 days. Instead on Jan.30, while addressing his troops at the 11th Infantry Division headquarters and the 44th Brigade in New Halfa, Burhan pushed aside the Museveni brokered push for dialogue and vowed to crush Dagalo’s rebellion.

“We are not interested in wasting time with talks. We must move forward and continue our fight against this rebellion,” Burhan reportedly said, according to the Sudan Tribune.