How to help build peace in Sudan

In its second year, Sudan’s forgotten civil war has claimed at least 15,000 lives, causing the almost total destruction of Sudanese law, politics and society. In this bloody setback reminiscent of the Darfur genocide two decades ago, militias have robbed and burned entire villages.

Sudan, a vast country, three times the size of France and with a population of nearly 47 million, is facing a humanitarian catastrophe of immense proportionsAccording to OCHA, the United Nations crisis response agency, some 25 million people – the equivalent of the population of Australia – are unable to survive without humanitarian aid.

The war has created the displaced persons crisis fastest growing of the world, with almost 11 million people who fled their homes in the first months of the conflict. Every day they flee 20,000 more people, which is equivalent to emptying a city the size of Munich every two months. Violence has devastated the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, closing the country’s main airport and causing the government itself to flee 800 kilometers to the northeast, to the Red Sea coastal city of Port Sudan.

The economic and political consequences of this war will last for generations. Sudan now has the largest population of internally displaced persons world, half of them under 18 years of age. There are more displaced children than anywhere else on the planet, and 19 million Sudanese children are not in school.

According to the President of South SudanSalva Kiir“Sudan is a buffer between zones of unrest in Africa and if it is allowed to waste away in its internal conflict the whole of Africa will bleed to death.”

Against this backdrop of catastrophe that threatens to upend African geopolitics at large, tireless activists on the ground are helping humanitarian aid groups reach local populations while providing crucial information to diplomats and media who are unable to travel to Sudan. Governments in European countries can do more to protect and support these groups. But how did Sudan come to this catastrophe and why should European policymakers care about ending this civil war?

State of war

Even before the civil war broke out last year, Sudan was ranked as the seventh most fragile state of the world, behind Syriawith 13 years of civil war, and Afghanistan, under Taliban rule since the deadly and chaotic withdrawal of the US military in 2021.

Unlike Syria and Afghanistan, Sudan has been in a state of internal war since before it was even a country. The first civil war, which began in 1955, months before the United Kingdom liberated Sudan from colonial rule, ended in 1972.

Another, longer and deadlier war began a decade later. The peace deal that ended it in 2005 left several armed groups bitter at being excluded from the government’s peace deal, which included only one group among many that cohabit the African country.

These conflagrations, fueled by ethnic rivalries and the quest for natural resources such as oil and gold, killed millions of people, most of them in lands that are now South Sudan, since 2011 the world’s newest country and now ravaged by its own civil war and instability.

Sudan’s three short-lived democratic governments briefly held power in Khartoum for only 11 of the 68 years since independence. They were never able to stop the wars. Sudan’s longest-running dictatorships have benefited from them.

Sudan abandonment

The latest war began in 2023, on an otherwise unremarkable spring day. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a militant group that the SAF once supported, were at odds over how to share power, let alone whether and how to transfer power to civilians after a popular revolution toppled Omar al-Bashir’s 30-year dictatorship in 2019.

Last year’s violence was so swift that it caught Western diplomats in Khartoum off guard. As bombs and bullets rained down, they destroyed their documents, closed their embassies and evacuated the country. Not since the ill-fated siege of Khartoum by British General Charles Gordon in 1884 has the Sudanese capital been so overwhelmed by violence.

Today, no single group or government fully controls Sudan, although the SAF and RSF are the most likely and feared groups to take on that role. But both have splintered, leaving them in the same position as former strongman Bashir, unable or unwilling to negotiate with new armed factions seeking control and money. Foreign governments may not reopen their embassies for months or years, leaving the Sudanese people to fend for themselves.

What can Western countries do?

UN officials say a negotiated solution is the only way to end the war. European and American politicians have tried to take the initiative in Sudan, but their efforts so far have been another case of too little, too late.

US President Joe Biden has appointed a sent to Sudan in 2024 to coordinate policy and mediate a resolution to the conflict. However, concern about Sudan remains low among American politicians and undecided voters, especially regarding more pressing electoral issues such as Abortion, crime and immigration.

French President Emmanuel Macron hosted senior diplomats in Paris in April to rally support for ending the crisis in Sudan. However, European foreign policy has been overwhelmed by Russian aggression in Ukraine. The €2 billion pledged at the Paris Conference for Sudan is dwarfed by the commitment of $160 billion from the European Union with Ukraine and amount to only half of what the United Nations said was needed for Sudan.

By pledging 12% (244 million euros) of the total, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, declared at the Paris Conference that “every life counts equally, whether in Ukraine, Gaza or Sudan.”

Thinking in national terms

Western diplomats should focus on getting the warring parties to lay down their arms, as well as supporting civil society activists, who are the country’s lifeline.

Forced to leave the devastated capital, activists – many of them women – have not given up their non-violent fight for justice. In the absence of a fully functioning government, they have been reaching out and helping survivors.

Women’s groups have thoroughly documented hundreds of cases of sexual violence that constitute evidence of war crimes. This number, according to the aid agenciesis a small fraction of the real number of sexual crimes committed by armed groups.

Constantly on the move, some women and girls have been attacked in multiple places, terminating unwanted pregnancies only when they could reach a distant refugee camp. Sudan’s few functioning hospitals are largely controlled by militias, and women who seek treatment there may be raped again or even killed.

The activism and contributions of women’s groups – together with associations of lawyers, journalists and students – historically opened a path to democracy in Sudan, overthrowing the Bashir regime and previous dictatorships of the 1980s and 1960s.

Act globally

But the Sudanese military and militias have always put themselves first, so it is imperative to cut off the flow of weapons to them. The weapons arrive in Sudan through supply lines from neighboring countries, such as Libya, Chad and Uganda. Some of these countries, as well as South Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt, are feeling the pressure of thousands of refugees fleeing Sudan.

EU policymakers can also work with their African Union and Arab League counterparts to take a joint, multilateral leadership role to put pressure on the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and China. Are the largest business partners from Sudan and should not take sides.

However, China and the UAE have an incentive to ensure instability reigns in Sudan as long as natural resources continue to flow to them. With gold demand at all-time highs in both UAE like in ChinaDarfur militias have gotten rich working with the Russian group Wagner to extract, traffic and profit from Sudan’s gold.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) looms large in any future agreement. The ICC has already opened six cases against seven Sudanese defendants for crimes committed in previous wars. Chief among them is former President Bashir. Languishing in Sudanese military custody, he was the first Sudanese president to be released. first person accused by the ICC for the crime of genocide.

A sustainable peace

My own family fled Sudan in the early 1980s, when I was a child, in the midst of the country’s second civil war. My parents were never able to return. However, regaining hope from the recent South SpringIn 2019, peace is feasible. Instead of giving in to despair, policymakers in Berlin, Brussels and elsewhere can support Sudanese civil society and exert diplomatic pressure on China and the UAE to prevent the humanitarian crisis from worsening. This is the only sustainable path to peace.

During his recent visit to Namibia to apologize for the genocide of 75,000 people perpetrated by Germany in colonial timesGerman President Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke of the importance of reach out “over the dark abyss of our history” to repair political violence. His comments are also valid to help Sudan end this conflict, which is too important to pretend not to see.

Article translated from English from the website of Internationale Politik Quarterly.

Activity subsidized by the Ministry of Foreign and Global Affairs.