Sudan needs peace now
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The civil war in Sudan that began in April 2023 is on the verge of plunging the entire Horn of Africa into turmoil. With nearly 10 million people internally displaced and more than 25 million facing acute hunger, the humanitarian toll is already catastrophic and continues to escalate.
This tragedy stems from an unending cycle of failed peace initiatives and the intensification of the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces. Ironically, each attempt at peace seems only to exacerbate the war, plunging civilians deeper into despair.
The chaos in Sudan mirrors previous conflicts in Africa, yet the implications of this one are uniquely alarming. The US special envoy for Sudan, Tom Perriello, has warned that the civil war could devolve into a multi-decade version of “Somalia on steroids,” potentially transforming Sudan into a permanent failed state.
As the conflict continues to rage, the risk grows of a regional conflagration threatening to pull in neighboring countries such as Ethiopia, South Sudan, Chad, Libya, and the Central African Republic. The geopolitical fallout of this could be immense, with illicit flows of drugs, weapons, and fighters destabilizing an already volatile African continent.
Al-Fashir, a heavily populated Sudanese Armed Forces stronghold in Darfur, exemplifies the potentially dire consequences of the conflict. As the Rapid Support Forces advance on the city, which is home to nearly 3 million people, aid groups fear widespread atrocities including gender-based violence, torture, and massacres.
Across Sudan, civilians are caught in the crossfire and face relentless bloodshed and deprivation. Attempts to provide aid are thwarted by the combatants’ strategic embargoes. The situation is dire. The US State Department has confirmed that both sides have committed war crimes, with the Rapid Support Forces and its allied militias accused of engaging in forms of ethnic cleansing.
Unfortunately, the responses by the international community to the crisis so far have been worse than inadequate, mostly diverted as they are by other global conflicts and rising tensions elsewhere. Despite US efforts to revive peace talks, success remains elusive and attempts so far have consistently failed to secure a lasting ceasefire.
This reflects the complex and entrenched nature of the conflict. The Biden administration’s policy on Africa has come under fire for unforced missteps. For example, misreading the civil war as merely a localized conflict while ignoring its potential for becoming an extraterritorial clash among rivals, which some experts believe has contributed to the unfolding crisis.
Beyond the fighting, the geographic and strategic significance of Sudan has drawn a multitude of other actors into the peace-making arena. Aside from the US and Saudi Arabia, neighboring countries, regional organizations and other global powers have all tried and are still trying to mediate.
The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, the League of Arab States, the African Union, and the UN are just a few of the entities involved. However, these peace efforts have allowed the warring factions to exploit the myriad initiatives to buy time, escalate the fighting, and worsen the civilian suffering.
The biggest hurdle remains the lack of differentiation between the well-intentioned efforts in search of peace, and the strategic gambles in pursuit of geopolitical advantages among rival powers. As a result, instead of a single coherent and inclusive peace process, what we have now is a muddled mess that makes any effort redundant at best and counterproductive at worst.
The chaos in Sudan mirrors previous conflicts in Africa, yet the implications of this one are uniquely alarming.
Hafed Al-Ghwell
This uncoordinated flood of peace processes has allowed the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces to cherry-pick the initiatives with which they engage, based on whether or not they seek to prosecute the egregious acts committed by either faction, which range from blocking humanitarian aid to perpetrating war crimes.
Despite repeated international warnings and sanctions, the hunger for military advantage continues to outweigh the desire for peace. Neither side is prepared to commit to any grand bargains in the interests of peace, or even a temporary ceasefire that freezes this brutal conflict and allows for more sophisticated diplomacy to take place while the guns grow cold.
It cannot be overstated how rapidly the window of opportunity for influential actors to enforce a credible peace is closing.
In the absence of a credible, enforceable and widely accepted peace process, Sudan risks emulating Libya’s fragmented political future or becoming a perma-failed state akin to Somalia. If the past few years of UN mediation in Libya has taught the international community anything, it is that waiting for both sides to fight to a stalemate and then seeking bargains with the elite among this unelected and unaccountable lot will only create a new ruling class as disconnected from the public as the current belligerents.
If Sudan is to find peace and keep it, therefore, the public must also have a significant and meaningful voice in any resolution. Failure to ensure this will only result in grave consequences that extend far beyond Sudan.
Recent history is rife with examples of how conflicts can easily spill over borders, as seen with how the turmoil in Libya has affected the Sahel region, and how the inconclusive war against Daesh has left splinters active and able to destabilize parts of West, Central, and Southern Africa.
Sudan, with its population of about 50 million people, poses an even greater risk. The flow of refugees, fighters, and weapons could disrupt fragile states across Africa and beyond. Such instability would severely hamper efforts to counter extremism, with Sudan likely serving as a haven for terrorist groups — as was the case with Al-Qaeda during the 1990s.
As the civil war in Sudan rages on, the grim reality is that each failed peace initiative not only prolongs the conflict but also deepens the suffering of millions of civilians. The world can no longer afford to turn a blind eye to this crisis, or allow self-interested actors to undermine concerted efforts to make peace and restore stability.
• Hafed Al-Ghwell is a senior fellow and executive director of the North Africa Initiative at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. X: @HafedAlGhwell
