What Sudan Ceasefire?
The Sudanese army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) reportedly extended their ceasefire. The RSF announced a “humanitarian truce” for 72 hours beginning at midnight tonight.
Except that the army marked that announcement by launching an offensive against the RSF. It reportedly wants to drive the RSF out of the capital, Khartoum. And no one expects any ceasefire to put a halt to that.
Sudan’s rival military forces accused each other of fresh violations of a ceasefire … as their deadly conflict continued for a third week despite warnings of a slide towards catastrophic civil war. …
Army leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has said he would never sit down with RSF chief General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, who in turn said he would talk only after the army ceased hostilities.
(Reuters, April 30, 2023)
Mind you, this same army and RSF were fighting together just four years ago. Their joint mission back then was to depose perennial strongman Omar al-Bashir. The world heralded it as Sudan’s Arab Spring.
Yet the army and RSF are now turning on each other. It’s almost too disheartening for words. But this should surprise no one. I even presaged this descent into the heart of darkness years ago.
Sudan conflict is all too familiar
We’ve seen this madness play out in far too many other countries. It even played out in neighboring South Sudan.
There, we watched Salva Kiir and Riek Machar lead the fight for independence in 2011. But only two years later, they led opposing forces into civil war. And that fallout was all too predictable. Sure enough, I presaged that too.
But, lest we forget, there’s the ethnic cleansing that played out in the Darfur region of Sudan itself. There, we watched government-back Arab militias attempting to cleanse Black Africans ethnically.
Al-Bashir lorded over this genocidal menace. It resulted in over 300,000 killed and 2.5 million displaced in Darfur.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague issued an arrest warrant for him in 2009. It charged him with genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
But nobody had any reason to think al-Bashir would ever face justice. I even greeted those ICC charges by dismissing its warrant for his arrest as a pipe dream.
But civil conflicts of this type have raged in Libya, Egypt, Syria, and Ethiopia. And ceasefires have served only to allow each side to rearm to continue fighting.
I have written too many commentaries to count on each of those conflicts. For example, I wrote about how
- Libyans deposed strongman Muammar Gaddafi. Civil conflict ensued. I soon found myself commenting on ethnic cleansing in Libya.
- Egyptians ousted strongman Hosni Mubarak. Civil conflict ensued. I warned that Egypt’s Arab Spring was spawning a dictator worse than Mubarak.
- Syrians attempted to depose strongman Bahir al-Assad. Civil conflict ensued. I soon found myself commenting on ceasefires becoming the weekends of warfare.
- Ethiopians forced the surprise resignation of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn. Civil conflict ensued. I soon found myself commenting on Ukraine just aping the fratricidal conflict that raged in Ethiopia.
Millions fleeing Sudan
The Sudanese army and RSF have already killed hundreds of Sudanese. Everyone fears they will kill thousands more. And these killings always trigger mass migration.
In this case, the difference is that the United States and other Western countries are leading it. They are scrambling to evacuate thousands of their respective citizens. Nothing betrays the desperation and utter hopelessness afoot quite like that.
Russia exploiting migration
Meanwhile, Russia is training, arming, and goading the RSF. More to the point, it’s fomenting this migration to destabilize Europe. And nothing could be more nefarious than that.
Of course, much has been made of Russia using food as a weapon of war as it wages genocidal warfare in Ukraine. But too little has been made of the fact that this weapon is harming Africans far more than Ukrainians. And there’s far too little condemnation of how Putin mocked the African leaders who begged him to lift his blockade on Ukrainian grain exports.
But Russia sees a geostrategic advantage in this civil war. Because the more it forces Africans to flee, the more likely Africans are to destabilize Europe.
So, like food, Russia is using migration as a weapon of war. And it’s victimizing Africans by using them as hapless pawns. Sudan is just providing more humans as cannon fodder.
Africans flee famine to find food. They flee war zones to find safety. But either way, they invariably run to their former colonial masters in Europe. They rarely seek refuge somewhere else in Africa. Think about that.
Even worse, though, I fear it’s only a matter of time before reports come about Sudanese selling Sudanese as slaves; you know, the way pre-colonial Africans always did.