A Silver Lining in the Terrible Cloud of War

If there is one bright light in the midst of the armed conflict devastating Sudan since April 15, this light shines through the decentralization of governance and redistribution of people and resources away from the capital city Khartoum. Not only have millions of people fled to Wad Madani, Port Sudan, and other cities and rural areas, many businesses, doctors and other professionals have also moved their practices to havens not affected by the war. Some physicians are now performing advanced surgery in remote towns. Banks and Western Union operate in most regions outside of Darfur. Port Sudan has turned into an administrative capital. Shipments of Gum Arabic (Sudan’s major export) are finding their way from Kordofan in the west to the Port city on the Red Sea coast, using a different route than the main artery that passes through war torn Omdurman. In short, state and regional governors and many local officials are making decisions and logistical adjustments that in the past may have required approval and plenty of red tape from Khartoum. This forced massive relocation of people, services, and capacities is in effect reducing the concentration of power and economic hegemony that have ultimately led to the current dire conflict in Sudan. 

This is good news for the country. But, for how long? How long will it be before supplies of food, fuel, and medicine run out despite appreciable international humanitarian assistance? There are limits to what can be accomplished locally under the continued influx of refugees, damage to national infrastructure facilities and networks, and complete absence of a central government. 

The newly found capability of provincial governments will run into two forces that push in opposite directions. A centrifugal force heightens the risk of the country’s disintegration since, having relished more freedom, regional governments may be tempted to envision greater, more drastic autonomy from the center. On the other hand, not all problems can be resolved locally, especially in a large country with only one major seaport and sizable international airport. Among many limits are the loss of revenue from exports and coordination in management of shared resources between the different regions; the Nile waters run through ten different states, while the main oil export pipeline cuts into most of Sudan’s territory from the southwest to the northeast. This reality highlights the benefits of unity, even if a deeply flawed one, and represents a centripetal force that pushes against secession. The combined effect of these two forces favors the vision of a federation, with one national authority and several autonomously governed regions or states. A federal political system has been the vision for Sudan that many intellectuals and political leaders have hoped for ever since the country gained independence from Britain almost 70 years ago. It never came to fruition. 

Sudan has limped along without a central government since Generals Burhan and Hemedti carried out their doomed military coupe in October 2021. Now, since their even more disastrous armed conflict, the destruction of homes, businesses and public utilities in Khartoum and the exodus of people to other regions have diminished the city’s monopoly on consequential decision making in politics, livelihoods and other daily life affairs for the rest of the country. The military still maintains its destructive power to kill, displace and starve millions of people, but, the allure of the capital city, with its wealth and cosmopolitanism, is forever gone. The question now is: will future political and economic balance between the different regions materialize through disintegration into a few weaker competing ‘nation-states’ – Darfur, Kordofan, the Red Sea, and so on? Or will it be achieved within the framework of a possibly stronger, more cohesive federal state of Sudan?  

#Sudan Healthcare Workers

لا للحرب#

Our Collective Failure

War has broken out; there is much to lament. Just four years ago a peaceful uprising ousted dictator Omar El-Bashir and ushered in a civilian-military government in hopes of transitioning to fully civilian democratic rule in two years. The Transitional Government – ill-equipped, lacking experience, and faced with a colossus of formidable challenges – quickly managed to get Sudan out of the ‘pariah countries’ club of sanctions and global isolation, put the economy on the long road to recovery, and begin to dismantle the deep structures of the Bashir regime. The level of euphoria in the country was unmatched. 

Alas, on October 25th 2021, Abdul Fattah El-Burhan, head of the Armed Forces, and M.H. Dagalo Hemedti, leader of the Rapid Support Forces militia, put an end to that hopeful aura by seizing power and putting down civilian protests with a campaign of killing and detentions. For more than a year, they failed to form a new government because of unrelenting opposition. But, with two rival armies vying for power, the inevitable happened: on April 15 a deadly clash erupted in Khartoum and other major cities. Thousands of civilians have now been killed, injured or are missing. UN agencies estimate that more than a million people have been internally displaced or fled to neighboring countries. The destruction of homes, business districts, and infrastructure, and damage to hospitals, banks, and other facilities will set back the country’s economy for years to come. What a devastatingly quick fall from the peak of our optimism about Sudan’s future just two years ago.

The conflict in Sudan is steeped in a complicated history and cannot be fully grasped apart from global and regional power dynamics and interests in the country’s natural wealth and geographical location. It is a Sudanese conflict imprinted with external meddling and geopolitical calculations that range from US national security concerns and EU anti-migration policies to Arab-Israeli-Iranian rivalries in the Middle East and Russia’s efforts to blunt the impact of Western sanctions on its economy. But, in the end, the war also carries the imprint of our collective failure as Sudanese – in the homeland as well as the Diaspora.  

Bashir remained in power for three long decades, in which he methodically demolished the civil service, education, the media and other critical institutions by replacing qualified personnel at every level with political loyalists, saturated the land with weapons of war, and created his own private army (the RSF) from the Janjaweed militia that has terrorized Darfur for the last twenty years. Many Sudanese died in Khartoum and elsewhere in resistance to his brutal regime; many scattered all over the globe in forced or chosen exile. But, once Bashir was ousted, one could say we failed to protect the remarkable December Revolution that brought him down. Among many missteps, the pro-democracy movement abandoned the Transitional Government then couldn’t get behind a unified leadership to defeat the remnants of Bashir’s Congress Party and security apparatus. Civilians all too easily trusted soldiers to give up power willingly and on time. In the Diaspora many of us actively joined the revolutionary tide inside Sudan from dozens of cities across the world but didn’t sustain the same level of energy and pressure to help keep the transition on course. 

The ransacking of Khartoum by RSF hordes today is our reckoning for having failed to rise up against Bashir’s genocidal war on Darfur. Yet, it is heart-wrenching to witness the “Sudan Armed Forces” failing to protect the national capital despite all signs of eminent danger as Hemedti mobilized his troops around the city months in advance. Was it military ineptness? tactical miscalculation? Or complicity as some have suggested? We may know the reasons in time. For now, our beloved Khartoum – the triangular capital – is a city under siege and its people are overrun by wild Janjaweed mobs. 

!لا للحرب

No to War!