Episode Notes:

Since April 15, Sudan has been in the grips of a civil war between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and the de facto government of Abdel Fattah al Burhan. This week, Egypt is hosting a summit between Sudan’s neighbors in an attempt to bring an end to the conflict, but it is still raging. Michelle Gavin, the Ralph Bunche senior fellow for Africa policy studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), joined the WarCast to give us an update on what’s going on in Sudan.

[:18] Intro

[:44] What is happening in Sudan now?

[2:10] What is the toll of this conflict?

[3:58] What attempts have been made at mediation?

[7:16] Why is this conflict so difficult to resolve?

[8:56] How could this play out?

Episode Transcript

Erin O’Brien: My name is Erin O'Brien, and I'm the membership editor at War On the Rocks. You are listening to The Warcast, the members-only podcast for what you need to know now. Since April 15th, Sudan has been in the grips of a civil war between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and the de facto government of Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. This week, Egypt is hosting a summit between Sudan's neighbors, in an attempt to bring an end to the conflict, but it is still raging. Here to give us an update on what's going on in Sudan is Michelle Gavin, the Ralph Bunche Senior Fellow for Africa Policy Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Welcome to the Warcast, Michelle.

Michelle Gavin: Thanks for having me.

Erin O’Brien: What exactly is happening right now in the conflict in Sudan? Of course, it was at the top of headlines a few months ago, but now, with everything else that's going on, it's faded a bit. So could you give us a bit of an update?

Michelle Gavin: Unfortunately, the fact that Sudan is not ubiquitous in the headlines anymore is not an indicator that the conflict has eased in any way. It's actually deepened and worsened. So fighting continues intensely, both in urban areas, in and around Khartoum and in Darfur, the site of such horrifying atrocities that started 20 years ago. And now, again, we're getting reports of mass graves, massacres of civilians, widespread use of sexual violence, and the International Criminal Court has just opened a new probe into alleged war crimes in Darfur, a very unfortunate echo of the genocide related investigations that had occurred previously. So all of this fighting persists. Civilians continue to suffer. Humanitarian access is very difficult. And thus far, international efforts to drive toward any kind of lasting ceasefire or pivot to a political process have been utterly ineffective.

Erin O’Brien: You hinted at this, but yesterday, I saw that there was a mass grave uncovered in West Darfur that had at least 87 bodies in it. That seems to be the work of the RSF, the Rapid Support Forces. So could you go into a bit more depth about what the toll of this conflict has been on civilians?

Michelle Gavin: Well, it's almost impossible to get an accurate account of how many people have been killed. We know it's well into the thousands. We know about 3 million Sudanese people have been displaced by this conflict. Again, it's very difficult to get numbers on victims of sexual assault for a range of reasons, but we know that this is a tactic that is being used in a widespread manner. But it's much deeper than even all of this, even for those who haven't been directly victims of violence, right? The medical infrastructure in the country is almost non-existent now. It's very difficult to get food. People can't access banks. They can't get money to pay for what food is available. So it's a humanitarian crisis of the first order. And you're right that many of these atrocities in Darfur are clearly being committed by the RSF. But it is important to note too, that the Sudanese Armed Forces continue to engage in aerial bombardment of civilian targets, including markets, including mosques. So there are no good guys when we talk about the antagonists in this fighting.

Erin O’Brien: And what attempts have been made at mediating this conflict or trying to find some end to it?

Michelle Gavin: Well, one of the problems, I think, is that there are too many diffuse attempts, allowing for forum shopping and really, in some ways, creating a distraction from the important business of stopping this nightmare. So for a while, you had US- Saudi led talks in Jeddah that didn't yield much. They were constantly announcing deals on ceasefires, that would never hold, half-baked commitments and reversals, a very frustrating process that has been paused, because it was not yielding much in the way of results. But it was also problematic in that there are many international actors with interests in Sudan, beyond the US and the Saudis. And why exactly that effort was structured in the way that it was is unclear to me. But so then, you've had IGAD, the sub-regional organization in the Horn of Africa, trying to get a process up and running. But that process has been rejected by General Burhan, who believes that the President of Kenya maybe is biased in some way toward the RSF.

You have seen now this Egyptian effort. Of course, Egypt has very strong ties to the Sudanese Armed Forces and to Burhan, where they have succeeded in bringing a number of leaders from the surrounding region together. But beyond having the meeting, it's difficult to see any kind of concrete commitments or changes in the current situation coming out of this meeting. So you have these different centers of gravity, of diplomatic efforts, trying to drive towards some kind of ceasefire. And what it does is allow these warring factions to sort of sit back and judge and complain and speak to the relative merits of these different options. And it's really kind of a shocking failure of international diplomatic coordination and leadership.

You, of course, have the UN's role as well. So there's been a UN mission mandated to be in Sudan since 2020. The special representative of the Secretary General has been PNGed by General Burhan and his military regime. It's not at all clear that the UN is in a position to be an effective interlocutor at this time. It's sort of fallen into the same basket of external actors who are perceived to be on one side or the other and therefore, not seen as credible mediators. So it's a, I think the technical term would be, a mess.

Erin O’Brien: Why is that? Why is this proving so intractable, this conflict? Why is it, as you say, such a failure?

Michelle Gavin: There are a couple reasons. One is that Sudan is a complicated theater, right? There are a host of external actors, be they neighbors or actors in the Gulf or others who have real interests, who are very interested in the future of Sudan, interested in having influence and access there. So that's one piece of it. I think that the other piece of it, frankly, is there's just kind of a grotesque failure of leadership here, where powers, including the United States, appear to be so distracted by other issues on the kind of foreign policy agenda that this is not rising to the level that it should. When we look at, for example, the costs, the fallout from Libya's implosion, this should teach us a lesson that this is not the kind of thing that can be ignored or treated as some kind of a marginal regional problem. The shockwaves are significant, costly, and they reach very, very far. And Sudan's a similar case, and I honestly cannot, for the life of me, understand why this has not risen higher on the agenda.

Erin O’Brien: Do you have any idea or any sense of how this could come to an end? How could this play out in a way that could bring some kind of peace to Sudan?

Michelle Gavin: Well, right now, it's very clear that the antagonists in this conflict aren't looking to stop. They're still jockeying for military advantage. You can see it in their resupply efforts and the ongoing recruiting that's taking place. So what's clear is that, right now, the costs for them of continuing to press their case for supremacy and continuing to terrorize the Sudanese people, those costs are not high enough. And that is partly probably because the international community is so divided on so many different pages, and it is possible to find support for one's ongoing military efforts from one quarter or another. What is needed is more international consensus and a much more serious effort to cut off the supplies and access to finance of all of these, both sides. And these sides are not monolithic. So I always hesitate. They're complex, in and of themselves, but it needs to get a lot harder for these actors to keep doing this. Because I don't think either party sees a quick win on the horizon.

So they know that, even in their best scenario, it's going to take time for them to get to this imagined place of military victory, and they need to start to feel the heat around the fact that those responsible for the atrocities that are ongoing are going to be held accountable. So what kind of victory does that really look like, if you're an international pariah? This is something that the Sudanese have seen up close from the days of the Bashir regime. I think all of this is important, but equally important is finding ways to elevate the voices of Sudanese civilians, who have not given up on their country, who had been inappropriately sidelined over the course of the transition that failed, that led us to this place.

But trying to make it plain that the future of Sudan is not just a matter for Burhan and Hemeti to sort out between themselves. These are not the only Sudanese voices that are relevant in discussions about the country's future. So finding ways to have an international process that brings more weight and more of a platform for those civilians has to happen in concert with increasing the costs of ongoing conflict.

Erin O’Brien: Well, that's a somewhat grim outlook, but I really appreciate you coming on to give us an update. Thank you so much for coming on the Warcast.