Sudan has been at war since it acquired her independence in 1956, owing to the British colonial policy of governance where two separate systems were used to rule the North and South.[1] While the North was the political and economic base, the south and other peripheral regions were largely ignored and only exploited for resources. This created resentment due to decades of marginalization and by the time Sudan got her independence, when the British failed to honor their promises to the Southerners, civil war broke out and went on until 1972, and resumed again in 1983 to 2005.
Sudan being strategically located at the Red Sea, Sudan provided an important buffer between the Arab Mediterranean region and Black Africa in the south. The US took strong interest in Sudan as an ally against the communist interests of the Soviet Union in Ethiopia and Libya.[2] The US supported Numeiri’s government on this premise, and the human rights atrocities that were committed by the Numeiri government against the southern rebels (who were by then connected to the Communist-friendly government in Ethiopia) were ignored by the US in the name of fighting communism expansion.[3] However, during the second phase of the Sudanese civil war which started in 1983, two events happened that changed the trajectory of the war; the fall of the Soviet-backed government of Haile Mariam Mengistu in Ethiopia in 1991, coinciding with the collapse of the Soviet Union spelt the end of the Cold War.
Yet the civil war had for long been fought along the cold war grounds, atrocities committed and resentments formed, that would not be erased simply because the cold war had ended. The high-handedness of the Sudan government under Omar Al-Bashir had pushed all peripheral regions of the South, Nuba Mountains, Blue Nile and Darfur to all rise up in arms. Sudan was faced with civil war from all fronts.[4] Sudan is a poor country whose survival was largely dependent on extractive resources such as crude oil, mostly came from eth south, and animal trade from Darfur. Now that these regions were at war with Khartoum, there was a real threat of a cutoff of these crucial resources. The government could not fight all these wars by itself. It was mainly preoccupied with the war against the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in the south, as well as the Nuba Mountains and south Kordofan regions.[5]
Due to military constraints that the Sudan military faced, it was forced into recruiting and arming the Sahel nomad Arab militias (the Janjaweed) to fight in Darfur. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the US had resurrected its policy of human rights and democratization and could not ignore the human rights atrocities of the Sudan military. Therefore recruiting and arming the Janjaweed was seen as advantageous because it enabled the Sudan government to have militias who had the capacity to fight in Darfur because they were familiar with the territory, but also provide deniability to the Sudan government for the atrocities they committed during the war. These militias nevertheless, had an opposite effect to that intended by the Al-Bashir government, instead of suppressing the rebellions, the atrocities committed by these militias served to embolden the rebel forces and pushed them to create alliances among themselves.
By 1991, the loosely allied rebel forces controlled most of southern Sudan, Nuba Mountains, Blue Nile and the southern parts of Darfur. This forced the Bashir government intensify it support for and dependence on the Janjaweed militia to maintain control in Darfur. In 2001, the peace talks between the Sudan government and the southern rebel SPLA started in Kenya, and in 2005, an agreement (the Comprehensive Peace Agreement – CPA) was signed, providing for a six-year transitional period followed by a referendum on eth secession of South Sudan. Faced with the real possibility of losing a large chunk of the country in the south, Al-Bashir was weakened and felt more insecure and the threat of being overthrown became more and more real.[6] In 2013, the fear of being overthrown pushed Al-Bashir to consolidate the Janjaweed militias under then nomad commander Muhamad Hamdan Dagalo “Hemeti” and turned them into a paramilitary force that he named the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) under Dagalo, now a fully recognized Sudan military commander with the rank of General.
For years, Bashir depended on the Rapid Support Forces to subjugate the Darfur rebels, but also provide protection from the threat posed to Al-Bashir from within his own Sudan military. In 2017, under a new law, the RSF was declared an ‘independent security force’ and were provided with elite training and advanced weaponry and with time it rivaled the main Sudan army. The privileges afforded to Dagalo and his RSF forces, like the control of the Gold mines in the west of the country, enabled him to strengthen his position and also position himself as one of the wealthiest and most important military men in Sudan. The RSF became Al-Bashir’s ‘private army’ outside of the formal army setup. He used the RSF to quash the armed uprising in south Darfur and also in the wars in Yemen and Libya. With these military missions, the RSF cemented its position as a standout military outfit, which was answerable only to Al-Bashir.
The secession of South Sudan in 2011, accelerated the economic decline in Sudan that resulted into mass protests over the price of food and other economic hardships. The sustained protests were repressed with extreme violence by the RSF, leading to widespread local and international condemnation. This rendered Al-Bashir’s position untenable, resulting into his overthrow by the by the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) led by Gen. Abdel Fatah Al-Bruhan initially with the support of Dagalo’s RSF. The military takeover led to widespread mass protests that forced the military to agree to a power sharing arrangement between the military and the civilian leaders.
The terms of the power sharing arrangement provided that power would be transferred to the civilian leaders, to which both Dagalo and Al-Bruhan were reluctant to do. In 2021, Al-Bruhan and Dagalo seized power and imprisoned the then civilian Prime Minister Abdala Hamdok. The two military strongmen took power directly, with Bruhan as the president and Dagalo as his vice president. However, tensions arose out of the attempt by Bruhan to integrate the RSF into the Sudanese Armed Forces, which was resisted by Dagalo and this resulted into an all-out war between Bruhan’s SAF and Dagalo’s RSF which has thrown the country into a devastating war, destroying Khartoum and also escalating to other parts of the country.
The ongoing civil war in Sudan has a long background overview that built up right from the pre-independence period.[7] These long lasting grievances were nursed in the pre-colonial racial, ethnic and religious tensions, but were expounded by the colonial segregative governance system. After being ignored for a long time, the south were promised an independent country of their own or in the alternative, be allowed to become part of British East Africa upon independence, a promise that was not kept. This only increased their grievance and a feeling of injustice as successive governments in Khartoum continued to marginalize the people from the south and other peripheral regions.
The disintegration of Sudan (which was first and most illustrated by the secession of South Sudan[8]) and then the current state of affairs (the civil war within Khartoum, Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile regions), has its origins in the historical racial, ethnic and religious rivalries. These rivalries were built upon by the divisive colonial legacy, which created two different classes of citizens, the privileged class in the north (Khartoum, which was/is the center) and the exploited and marginalized south and other peripheral regions. The problems that have resulted into Sudan’s disintegration were therefore birthed centuries ago, before the Cold War even started.
However, the politics of the Cold War can credited for pushing the divisions within the class struggles to the extreme in the 1970s and 80s.[9] During this period, the two most significant warring parties (the Sudan Armed forces and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army) found themselves at opposite sides of a brutal conflict, with the SPLA leaning towards the Soviet Union through its connection to the then Communist regime of Haile Mariam Mengistu, and the US and other Western Allies backing the Nimeiri regime in Khartoum.[10] The Nimeiri regime committed atrocities and war crimes like mass rape, forced migration, ethnic cleansing and indiscriminate bombardment of civilian targets in the south and in Darfur, which atrocities were largely ignored by the US and its western allies because Nimeiri was seen as a force against communism.
These atrocities can be said to have contributed towards strengthening the resolve of southerners to fight for their self-determination, which in the end resulted into the disintegration of Sudan.[11] Because of the Cold War politics, Sudan under Nimeiri was able to commit war crimes and horrible atrocities against his own people with impunity, and by the time Al-Bashir came to power, Sudan’s fate was already decided, and it was only a matter of time.[12] The events that followed (Al-Bashir’s enlistment of the Janjaweed militia to fight for him, which grew into a full paramilitary force now at odds with Sudan’s government forces) only served to accelerate what was already determined.[13] Therefore, one can say that to some extent, without the Cold War politics, Sudan would probably have a chance to remake itself and prevent the current disintegration of the country being witnessed today.
Bibliography
DeRouen, K.R.; Heo, U. (2007). Civil wars of the world: major conflicts since World War II. Vol. 1. ABC-CLIO.
Johnson, D.H. (2007). The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars (4th ed.). Oxford, Kampala, Nairobi: International African Institute.
Klein, P.W. (2008). ‘Tea and Sympathy: The United States and the Sudan Civil War, 1985-2005.’ Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 2007. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/2007
LeRiche, M. &; Arnold, M. (2013). South Sudan: From Revolution to Independence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McEvoy, C. & LeBrun, E. (2010). Uncertain Future: Armed Violence in Southern Sudan, HSBA Working Paper No. 20, p.13-17
Prunier, G. (2004). Rebel Movements and Proxy Warfare: Uganda, Sudan and the Congo (1986-99). African Affairs, 103(412), 348-366.
Raftopoulos, B. & Karin, A. (2006). Peace in the balance: the crisis in the Sudan. Cape Town, South Africa: Institute for Justice and Reconciliation. p. 19.
Srinivasan, S. (2021). When Peace Kills Politics: International Intervention and Unending Wars in the Sudans. London: Hurst & Co.
[1] Johnson, D.H. (2007). The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars (4th ed.). Oxford, Kampala, Nairobi: International African Institute.
[2] Prunier, G. (2004). Rebel Movements and Proxy Warfare: Uganda, Sudan and the Congo (1986-99). African Affairs, 103(412), 348-366.
[3] Klein, P.W. (2008). ‘Tea and Sympathy: The United States and the Sudan Civil War, 1985-2005.’ Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 2007. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/2007
[4] DeRouen, K.R.; Heo, U. (2007). Civil wars of the world: major conflicts since World War II. Vol. 1. ABC-CLIO.
[5] McEvoy, C. & LeBrun, E. (2010). Uncertain Future: Armed Violence in Southern Sudan, HSBA Working Paper No. 20, p.13-17
[6] Srinivasan, S. (2021). When Peace Kills Politics: International Intervention and Unending Wars in the Sudans. London: Hurst & Co.
[7] Johnson, D.H. (2007). The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars (4th ed.). Oxford, Kampala, Nairobi: International African Institute.
[8] LeRiche, M. &; Arnold, M. (2013). South Sudan: From Revolution to Independence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[9] Prunier, G. (2004). Rebel Movements and Proxy Warfare: Uganda, Sudan and the Congo (1986-99). African Affairs, 103(412), 348-366.
[10] Klein, P.W. (2008). ‘Tea and Sympathy: The United States and the Sudan Civil War, 1985-2005.’ Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 2007. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/2007
[11] Klein, P.W. (2008). ‘Tea and Sympathy: The United States and the Sudan Civil War, 1985-2005.’ Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 2007. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/2007
[12] Raftopoulos, B. & Karin, A. (2006). Peace in the balance: the crisis in the Sudan. Cape Town, South Africa: Institute for Justice and Reconciliation. p. 19.
[13] LeRiche, M. &; Arnold, M. (2013). South Sudan: From Revolution to Independence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.