The situation in Sudan is so sad

The war in Sudan between the army led by Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces militia led by his deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, nicknamed Hemedti, is worse than anyone could have imagined when fighting broke out in April last year. The scale of destruction and displacement, and the number of people killed, makes it difficult to remember what Sudan was like before the war. The humanitarian situation has been described as the world’s “worst ongoing crisis”.

Ever since its separation from Egypt and Britain in 1956, Sudan has been plagued with internal conflicts and military coups that have undermined and impoverished its people. The 2019 military coup led by Al-Burhan against the ousted Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir was nothing new or surprising for Sudan; its history has been full power struggles like others in the Arab world and Africa. It has been ruled by the military for more than 60 years, peppered with supposed “transitional” periods of short-lived civilian administrations.

The first of these coups came a year after independence and the formation of the first national government headed by Ismail Al-Azhari, who declared the independent Democratic Republic of Sudan and was able to thwart the coup. The army tried again a year later, led by Lieutenant General Ibrahim Abboud, who seized power and ousted Al-Azhari’s civilian government in 1958. Abboud ruled Sudan with an iron fist until he was overthrown in a popular revolution in 1964. Sirr Al-Khatim Al-Khalifa Al-Hassan became acting president of Sudan and was followed by the government of Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi in 1966, who was ousted by Lieutenant General Gaafar Nimeiry in 1969. Nimeiry survived four military coups in 1971, 1973, 1975 and 1976, until Minister of Defence and Army Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Abdel Rahman Suwar Al-Dahab carried out a coup in 1985, which coincided with civil disobedience that swept the entire country.

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Al-Dahab promised to manage a transitional period for a year, until the situation in the country had stabilised. He duly handed over to a civilian government and stepped down voluntarily, allowing his name to go down in the history of Arab coups.

He set a precedent in the Arab world, as no other Arab military ruler has ever handed over voluntarily to civilians.

The leader of the National Umma Party, Sadiq Al-Mahdi, took power in 1986 but he was deposed by the 1989 military coup led by Field Marshal Omar Hassan Al-Bashir, who also dismissed his government. Al-Bashir survived two military coup attempts before the army eventually overthrew him in April 2019 after a popular uprising lasting for nearly five months.

Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan then assumed the presidency of the Transitional Sovereignty Council with Dagalo as his deputy. The council announced that it had thwarted two military coup attempts in 2021 and arrested the rebel officers.

It was clear that there was a latent conflict between the two military wings of the Transitional Sovereignty Council, the army led by Al-Burhan and the RSF led by Dagalo. They each prepared for that decisive moment when they could eliminate the other and rule Sudan. This is why they both sought regional and international support. The UAE, Ethiopia and the Zionist state of Israel backed Dagalo, while Egypt and Saudi Arabia are Al-Burhan’s biggest supporters. He has not lost hope in turning the Zionist compass towards him and getting the occupation state to back him against Dagalo.

Al-Burhan has long had links to Israel. When he took over Sudanese military intelligence, he reinstated the Israeli spy agency Mossad’s office in Khartoum, which was active at the end of the Nimeiry era. It was the Mossad office which facilitated the transfer of the Falasha Jews from Ethiopia to occupied Palestine. He also allowed raids on Sudan to strike Hamas industrial centres during the Bashir era.

More recently, Al-Burhan has sought to consolidate his rule by getting closer to the Zionist entity. He is fully aware that it is the main supporter of the ruling regimes in the Arab world, and if it were not for this entity’s satisfaction with the Arab rulers, they would never be or stay in power. He met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Uganda in 2020, in a move arranged by the UAE as part of the effort to get Sudan included in the accursed Abraham Accords. A dialogue was agreed to normalise relations between Sudan and the occupying state. Netanyahu described the meeting as “historic”.

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A delegation from the Mossad also visited Khartoum after the coup and met with Dagalo, while other Zionist officials and figures, civilians and intelligence agents alike, flocked to Khartoum, followed by Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen in February last year. After meeting with Al-Burhan, Cohen said that Sudan has agreed to normalise relations with Israel and that they would sign a peace agreement in Washington within months. He then made a comment about reconciliation, recognition and negotiation, referring implicitly to the “no peace, no recognition and no negotiation” with the Zionist enemy announced from Khartoum during the 1967 Arab summit after the Six-Day War.

It is clear that the Zionist entity is playing and arming both sides either directly or through the UAE.

The RSF militia is a tool to implement Israel’s diabolical plan to sow discord in the country and eventually divide Sudan, just as it did in the secession of South Sudan, in which the occupation state played a dirty role behind the scenes. It understands the geographical and strategic importance of Sudan, which has enormous reserves of natural resources. It is also aware that it must remain under military rule for normalisation to happen and for it to sign the Abraham Accords, and that if there is a civilian government in Khartoum this will probably not happen, even though there are some Zionist figures within the civilian Forces of Freedom and Change. The occupation state believes that it is better to hinder the transfer of power to civilians who object to normalisation in line with the general mood of the Sudanese people who strongly reject any links with the Zionist entity.

This is why the civil war is likely to continue until Sudan is basically destroyed. The Sudanese people will continue to be the victims until the army eliminates the RSF or vice versa. The struggle is a zero-sum game with no return, no negotiation and no power-sharing as it was in the past. They will either be victorious or defeated, and the latter will either be killed or in exile in the UAE — Dagalo — or Egypt — Al-Burhan — if and when the fighting stops. The situation is so sad for Sudan. Once again, its people are suffering in the power struggle which has nothing to do with good governance, and everything to do with greed.