Flames on Nile

Tuesday 25th April, 2023

It is with shock and dismay that the world is watching waves of barbaric violence sweeping across Sudan. The current conflagration has resulted from a bitter dispute over an internationally-backed move to facilitate the formation of a new civilian government four years after the ouster of President Omar al-Bashir in a military coup.

What is of tragic import is the fact that the secession of South Sudan has not helped resolve Sudan’s crises once and for all. It may have helped contain one conflict, but, overall, the partition has enabled neither Sudan nor South Sudan to come out of other crises, which are numerous. South Sudan is also gripped by economic, humanitarian and political crises. It is facing mass displacement, a culture of impunity, food insecurity, blatant human rights violations, economic deprivation and political instability. The situation in this relatively new state is extremely complicated and requires careful handling.

Interestingly, when a peace process got underway in Sudan with the signing of the Machakos Protocol in Kenya in 2002, an effort was made internationally to impose something similar on Sri Lanka, where the UNP-led UNF had just formed a new government with Ranil Wickremesinghe as the Prime Minister and was clashing with the then President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga. In fact, the UNP government entered into what was made out to be a peace process with the LTTE at the beset of the US, the UK, Norway and Japan and allowed the LTTE to do as it pleased because the implementation of an aid pledge to the tune of USD 4.5 billion was tied to progress to be made in the Norwegian-brokered peace process. The real architects of the Sudanese peace deal were also the US, the UK and Norway though these nations called themselves ‘observers’ with Italy also as a partner. The Machakos Protocol paved the way for the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (2005) and the subsequent secession of South Sudan in 2011. The split caused considerable oil revenue losses to Sudan, worsening its economic crisis, and compelling Khartoum to adopt austerity measures much to the resentment of the public.

It is doubtful whether the developed world is doing enough to help resolve the ever-worsening conflict in Sudan. The unfolding tragedy is only one dimension of a multifactorial crisis, which has been chipping away at the foundations of the state of Sudan for decades. Apart from making some half-hearted diplomatic interventions and other such moves to crank up international pressure on the warring parties responsible for barbaric violence, which has already claimed many lives in Sudan, the Global North ought to end the practice of its powerful multinational corporations exploiting Sudan and other African nations to ensure a continuous supply of cheap minerals and other natural resources to improve their bottom lines. If this unholy nexus between the influential western businesses and the armed groups/dictatorial regimes in Africa is severed, there will emerge some space for the internecine conflicts that plague countries such as Sudan to be tackled politically. Corruption, economic mismanagement and ethno-religious tensions underlie Sudan’s protracted conflict, but the economic exploitation and external interference are also responsible for the perpetuation of it.

The ongoing conflict in Sudan, the third largest African country, straddling the Nile River and located at the gateway between Africa and West Asia, is of existential importance to the entire region. It is feared that some of its neighbours might take sides in the raging armed conflict to safeguard their interests. This will only exacerbate the crisis. It is only natural that the unfolding tragedy in Sudan has sent shock waves across the world. The western powers, however, have chosen to close their diplomatic missions in Khartoum and evacuate their diplomats. The US and the UK were the first to launch special operations to fly their envoys out of Sudan while fighting was on.

The most important lesson that the world could draw from the predicament of two Sudans is that there are no shortcuts to conflict resolution, which requires a holistic approach with economic development as one of its prongs. Public resentment that all rebel groups are utilising to fuel their violent campaigns in Sudan is mainly due to the economic and political marginalisation of various ethnic and religious groups in the peripheral states such as Darfur and Blue Nile. These factors, too, have to be eliminated if peace and political stability are to be achieved in Sudan.