How Did Sudan Reach Its All-Out War — And What Is the Way Out?
Youssef Abdullah
In reality, Sudan has entered a violent, all-out war now in its third year since April 2023. There are no serious indications that its end is near; rather, there is a likelihood of the country splitting apart, with a new competitive war if the Darfur region secedes. In any case, neither the war itself nor the possible secession represent a path to democracy, stability, or dignity — contrary to the propaganda accompanying the conflict.
By all reasonable arguments, war in Sudan was never the only option for resolving its political crisis, nor was it inevitable or impossible to avoid its catastrophic course. This applies to the current war just as it did to other conflicts Sudan has officially waged since its independence in 1956.
By early 2023 — even in the preceding months — Khartoum was far from a beautiful city. Public civil services had largely collapsed, and it was no longer secure enough to meet the minimum standards of urban life.
The so-called “heroes” of the city were rogue individuals who worked to stifle peaceful protest marches seeking to bring down the military coup staged by the army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and to restore the hijacked and stumbling democratic transition that had been subverted by generals Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti), with the blessing of armed resistance movements.
During those months, for example, the police did nothing to protect public safety, shocking the population with repeated unprofessional behavior that eroded trust in them as a dependable force. Meanwhile, the October 25, 2021 coup restored the security apparatus’ old authorities inherited from the Muslim Brotherhood regime, including powers of arrest and interrogation.
Quickly, the police and security agencies coordinated in violently cracking down on peaceful demonstrations with blatant cruelty and zeal. As an illustration, on March 20, 2022, the United States imposed sanctions on Sudan’s Central Reserve Police for its excessive repression of protesters and “serious human rights abuses.”
By April, when the war erupted, confrontations between police and peaceful protesters had left more than 150 people dead and 500 injured, according to UN envoy Volker Perthes in his official report to the Security Council.
Overall, the city was caught in a web of security and military blackmail. In addition to the police, the army, and the RSF, there were also armed movements which, having signed a peace agreement with the government in October 2020, developed an authoritarian attitude and seized pockets of the capital, even threatening to resume war “starting from Khartoum” rather than from Darfur or other peripheries.
In truth, this war cannot be separated from the profound contradictions between the forces that launched the December Revolution and the elements of the counterrevolution it toppled. These contradictions led to the October 25, 2021 coup, and then to stark divisions among the coup leaders themselves.
Many developments then created a new reality filled with fractures and conflicting interests of international players who fueled the conflict. This weakened international bodies responsible for collective security, such as the UN Security Council, paralyzing its ability to act. This diplomatic failure opened the door for regional rivals to intervene, supporting one side in order to escalate and contain their competitors inside Sudan.
In mid-2021, Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok wrote to the chair of the Sovereignty Council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, expressing concern about tensions within the military establishment (the army and RSF). But Burhan replied that the military “was sufficiently cohesive... and the relationship between the army and RSF was in its best shape,” blaming politicians for trying to sow division in the security system.
By mid-October 2021, a sit-in began outside the presidential palace, popularly known as the “Banana Sit-In.” This was a hidden alliance between army leaders, the RSF, and counterrevolutionary forces, aimed at toppling Hamdok’s transitional government. At the same time, they blocked the key road linking the capital with Port Sudan.
On October 25, 2021, the coup overthrew the constitutional document, arresting civilian government members, including Prime Minister Hamdok. Protests broke out rejecting the coup and demanding a return to civilian rule. The security services responded brutally, killing dozens of demonstrators.
The coup faced internal rejection and international isolation. Political and regional organizations described it as “a coup against a civilian government.” In these circumstances, Burhan failed to form a new government, and economic conditions worsened, crime rates increased, and security chaos spread. The country fell into constitutional limbo.
About a month after the coup, the coup leaders turned again to Hamdok, hoping he could absorb the public’s anger and contain the revolutionary movement. They signed a political agreement in November 2021, brokered by RSF deputy commander Abdel Rahim Dagalo, but the street rejected it, protests grew, and Hamdok ultimately resigned.
Increasing domestic and international pressure pushed the coup leaders to negotiate with the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC) coalition and 52 other political factions. On December 5, 2022, they signed a draft Framework Political Agreement between civilians and the military. Burhan told the media at the time that the agreement “represented the only way out of the crisis,” and the parties set April 6, 2023, as the date for final signing.
What was the Framework Political Agreement? It was a political pact intended to end the coup’s status quo after October 25, and to resume Sudan’s civilian democratic transition and achieve the revolution’s goals. Over 50 political, union, and civil society groups participated.
In the meantime, a UN-sponsored political process aimed to end the coup status advanced to March 26, 2023, with a workshop on security and military reform to agree on a plan for integrating the RSF and armed movements into the Sudanese Armed Forces.
Leaders of the National Congress Party, the party of Omar al-Bashir, sensed the danger of this emerging political agreement and began to incite against it, vowing to kill it off — even violently. But where did their threats of violence come from?
For decades of Sudan’s official politics, army leaders coexisted with parallel military and militia forces, at least throughout the rule of Omar al-Bashir. In fact, al-Bashir’s government skillfully built them up as the most effective means to suppress political opposition at the time. What was new this time, however, was the emergence of forces with the same features as the army itself: military strength, money, political ambition, and foreign ties.
Since the 1980s, successive governments in Khartoum had waged wars in Sudan’s peripheries with the help of irregular militias, granting them wide latitude to use weapons against rebel movements or even civilians in villages suspected of harboring rebels.
When the Islamic Front took power in 1989, the use of irregular militias reached its most horrific extremes, and their costs became heavier than ever before, to the point of threatening Sudan’s unity as a state — and the stability of the entire region.
Over the years, this cheap strategy had obvious benefits for regimes in Khartoum. For years, Omar al-Bashir’s regime was firmly convinced that militias were more efficient and less costly, and their crimes could be denied as a matter of policy.
Over time, these locally recruited irregular militias became more visible than the regular, state-controlled forces managed by Bashir and, later, Burhan. For Bashir, their ability to support themselves through looting seemed cheaper than relying on a professional national army. But with time, they proved far more costly, due to their rising financial demands and political ambitions. And today, they appear almost to hold the country’s fate entirely in their hands.
