Sudan – Fighting broke out on Saturday 15 April in Khartoum, at the height of tensions between General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and his arch-rival army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, who de facto heads Sudan as the country’s collective transitional head of state. The paramilitary group claims to have the presidential palace and the capital’s airport.
At least three civilians were killed this Saturday and dozens were injured as a result of armed clashes between the Rapid Support Forces (FAR) paramilitary group and the Sudanese Army, the Sudanese Doctors Union reported.
The special envoy of the United Nations mission in Sudan, Volker Perthes, “strongly condemned the outbreak of fighting in Sudan” and called for “the immediate cessation” of hostilities between the Army and the Rapid Support Forces (FAR) paramilitary group. , which are facing each other in various parts of the country.
The confrontation takes place just one day after the vice president of the Sudanese Sovereign Council and leader of the FAR, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, alias “Hemedti”, showed his willingness to seek a solution to the escalation of tension with the Armed Forces to avoid a “bloodshed”. The Rapid Support Forces (FSR) of General Hamdane Daglo are now calling on the entire population, as well as the soldiers themselves, to sedition against the army.
While the army, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, the de facto ruler of Sudan since the coup d’état on October 25, 2021, denounces “lies” and the “betrayal” of a force that recently deployed armored vehicles and men for the whole country.
During the coup, Hemedti and Burhane formed a common front to oust civilians from power. However, Hemedti has never stopped denouncing the coup, siding with the civilians – therefore against the army in political negotiations – and now it is his dispute with General Burhane that prevents any way out of the crisis. in sudan.
The FSR says it controls the presidential palace
For days the street had been filled with rumors of an impending guerrilla war between the two sides. On Saturday morning, Khartoum was awakened by the sounds of loud gunfire and almost continuous explosions.
Within hours, the FSR announced that they had seized Khartoum international airport, in the heart of the capital, then the presidential palace, where General Burhane usually sits.; as well as the palace reserved for state guests, an airport in the north of the country and “other bases in different provinces.”
And in a press release, they call on the population to “join them” and affirm to the military that they are not “targeting them, but rather their general staff that uses them to stay on their throne, even if it means endangering the stability of the country in danger”.
Residents are confined to their homes. “Like all Sudanese, I remain protected,” US Ambassador John Godfrey tweeted.
“The escalation of tensions between soldiers to direct confrontation is extremely dangerous. I call on the military high command to stop fighting immediately,” he wrote.
The Army, on the next page, denounces “lies” and accuses the FSR of having started the hostilities: “the fighting” began when the FSR attacked military bases “in Khartoum and other places in Sudan”, the spokesman told AFP of the Army, General Nabil Abdallah. The army, then, “complies with its duty to protect the homeland,” he added.
On the side of the FSR, the opposite is said: that they were “surprised in the morning by the arrival of a large contingent of the army, which besieged their camp in Soba”, in the south of Khartoum, and “attacked them with all kinds of weapons heavy and light”.
A dangerous turning point
On Thursday, April 13, the army denounced a “dangerous” deployment of paramilitaries in Khartoum and other cities in Sudan “without the approval, nor the slightest coordination, with the command of the armed forces.”
Then he rang “the alarm bell” in the face of “a dangerous and historic turning point” because for days, while the civilian population and the international community were forced to accept a new postponement of the signing of a political agreement that would supposedly remove to the country of the impasse -due to the differences between the two generals-, the videos did not stop showing the arrival of a large number of armored vehicles and men in different places, particularly in Khartoum.
The future of the paramilitaries is now the main issue in Sudan: any return to democratic transition depends on their integration into regular troops.
If the army does not reject it, it still wants to impose its admission conditions and limit its incorporation in time. General Daglo demands a broad inclusion and, above all, his place within the General Staff.
It is this dispute that still blocks the return to the transition demanded by the international community to resume aid to Sudan, one of the poorest countries in the world.
Keys on the conflict between the Army and the paramilitaries of Sudan
What are the Rapid Support Forces?
They are a paramilitary force created by former Islamist president Omar al Bashir and dependent on Sudanese intelligence. Since its conversion in 2013, it has been led by Hemedti, who after the 2021 coup is vice president of the Sovereign Council and number two in the Army.
The FAR was born from the Yanyauid (Janjaweed) militias, accused of committing mass murders and rapes in the Darfur conflict (2003-2008) and after the overthrow of Al Bashir, in April 2019, it became a regular military force.
This group was also accused of murdering and kidnapping pro-democracy protesters during the so-called Sudanese revolution, which overthrew the former dictator’s regime after three decades in power.
How has the democratic transition been?
Sudan is immersed in a democratic transition process with the aim of ending the political crisis unleashed after the coup in October 2021.
On January 8, the final phase of the political process began between the signatories of the “framework agreement”, reached on December 5 between the military and civilians and which defined the steps to establish a civilian government to replace the current military one.
However, the signing of the definitive political agreement between the different parties involved in the transition process in Sudan, which was scheduled to be initialed on April 1, was postponed up to two times due to lack of consensus on the creation of a unified Army. with the FAR.
What is the origin of the conflict?
The disagreements between the Sudanese Army and the FAR date back to 2019, when the latter were accused of being the visible arm of the repression that killed hundreds of protesters who camped in front of the Army headquarters in protests that led to the fall of Al Bashir.
The opposition platform Forces for Freedom and Change then called for its dissolution and recalled that this group committed crimes against humanity in Darfur.
It was then that Hemedti affirmed that the eviction of that sit-in “was a trap and the objective was the FAR”, which according to the leader of this armed group were victims of officers of different ranks, although he did not formally accuse the Army.
The sum of these situations makes it difficult for the FAR to integrate effectively into the Sudanese National Army, despite the attempts and commitments announced by both Al Burhan and Hemedti.
With AFP and EFE. Original note on France 24
