Sudan: To break the cycle of violence, end the kleptocracy

The violence in Sudan is often portrayed as a disagreement between two men with money and guns. It’s not.

Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, leader of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), are the two public faces of extensive elite networks whose members until recently shared a shared understanding of how to distribute Sudan’s wealth among themselves and their clients.

To then stop the fighting in the short term, mediators must not only facilitate a political deal between the warring parties, but also mediate a financial settlement between their allies.

To break the cycle of violence in the longer term, action is needed to make the price of imprisonment by the state less attractive to the country’s ruling class. This means punishing Sudanese individuals and their corporate bodies and also targeting those who help move and convert their corrupt capital abroad: the bankers, lawyers and accountants in places like Dubai, London and New York.

The impunity of the kleptocracy must end if the transition to a stable, rules-based government in Sudan is to succeed. But this must be done carefully. Sudan – like Myanmar – should be a cautionary tale for democrats seeking change. In both countries, the military regimes have shown that they would rather give up political power than give up their economic interests.

Sudan’s previous protracted political settlement under President Omar al-Bashir was dramatically rewritten by a popular uprising, leading to his ouster in April 2019. Soon after, a transitional government took over after civilian troops and the military signed a power-sharing deal. But the civilian faction in the government moved too quickly to dismantle the lucrative network of companies built under al-Bashir’s rule and controlled by the military. This resulted in a military coup by al-Burhan in October 2021.

The political settlement that followed, which appeared to be just another military junta, actually represented an unstable balance of power between Sudan’s main security actors and their networks of domestic and international allies.

Hemedti, the face of one network, built his power base among armed groups — known as the Janjaweed — co-opted by al-Bashir in 2003 to suppress an insurgency in Darfur. Ten years later, Hemedti was promoted to head the newly formed RSF, which came under direct presidential control. Eventually, Hemedti gained control of lucrative gold mines in Darfur and used their wealth to recruit and massively expand the RSF’s military forces.

He also loaned RSF troops to fight in Yemen and Libya, and expanded his political network to include the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar. His business network also grew to include not only private military contracts, but also gold trading, mining, construction and luxury real estate.

Al-Burhan, the face of the other rival network, commands the SAF, which also has an extensive business empire. Senior officers monitor companies in sectors as diverse as construction and meat processing. Al-Burhan has the support of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who is keen to prevent the example of a military regime in the region from being replaced by a civilian government.

What finally broke the fragile pact between these rival networks was the plan to merge the RSF into the SAF. Hemedti wanted to delay integration. He knew that once the RSF was no longer under his exclusive command, he would lose his military veto over actions that threatened his interests.

The violence in Sudan must then be understood as a function of rival networks and competing material interests and addressed accordingly. One strategy would be to encourage groups within a network not to fight. The United States and Iraq governments did this in Iraq in 2007 when they paid Sunni tribesmen to stop fighting them and fight with them instead.

In brokering a financial settlement to end the violence in the short term, mediators should extend feelers to groups within the RSF whose allegiances may be turned. Loyalty may be more negotiable among Chadian and other foreign fighters, as well as those recruited from Sudan’s Kordofan region. Mediators should also contact the other major armed groups in Sudan that have not yet taken sides. Minni Minnawi of the Sudan Liberation Movement, Gibril Ibrahim of the Justice and Equality Movement and Malik Agar of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North are key players whose involvement could lead to a protracted civil war.

In the longer term, a message needs to be sent to the kleptocratic class in Sudan that it does not pay to use force to secure vested financial interests. US President Joe Biden’s executive order authorizing sanctions against those who “destabilize” Sudan is a step in the right direction.

Much has been learned about how to make sanctions bite after the West’s punitive response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

It means not only freezing the overseas assets of Sudanese individuals and the companies they control, but also criminalizing the assistance provided to them by bankers, lawyers, accountants and other service providers in major financial centers to transfer illegally acquired wealth. to wear, conceal, launder and grow abroad. .

We could also be bolder by making the kleptocrats, not foreign donors, pay for the destruction wrought. This can be done by helping Sudan recover stolen assets.

According to the anti-corruption NGO Global Witness, Hemedti’s assets are concentrated in the Al Junaid family business and the RSF reportedly has a registered account with the First Abu Dhabi bank. For al-Burhan, the army’s business empire is in the hands of the umbrella company Defense Industry System. These assets could be confiscated and used to rebuild the country and compensate the victims of the violence.

The cost of inactivity is known. Sudan has nearly 47 million people and Khartoum has more than 6 million. If the fighting continues, the humanitarian and refugee crises will be huge. A disorderly exodus of civilians threatens to destabilize neighbors and further strain a weary international refugee regime. It can also enshrine a war economy in which the parties learn that fighting is more profitable than peace. The effort required to stop the killing will then be much more expensive than it is now.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial view of Al Jazeera.