Sudan’s horrific war is being fueled by weapons from foreign supporters of rival generals, UN says
UNITED NATIONS — Sudan’s year-old war between rival generals vying for power has led to “a crisis of epic proportions” fueled by weapons from foreign supporters who continue to flout U.N. sanctions meant to help end the conflict, the country said. UN political chief Friday.
“This is illegal, it is immoral and it must stop,” Under-Secretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo told the UN Security Council.
In mid-April 2023, Sudan plunged into chaos as long-simmering tensions between the army, led by General Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitaries commanded by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo erupted into street fighting in the capital Khartoum. The fighting has spread to other parts of the country, especially urban areas and the western region of Darfur.
DiCarlo painted a bleak picture of the war’s impact: more than 14,000 dead, tens of thousands injured, a looming famine with 25 million people in need of life-saving aid, and more than 8.6 million people forced to flee their homes.
Mohamed Ibn Chambas, chairman of the African Union panel on Sudan and high representative of the Silence the Guns in Africa initiative, called external interference “a major factor affecting both ceasefire negotiations and to stop the war is getting worse.”
“In fact, external support in terms of the supply of war materials and other needs has been the main reason why this war has lasted so long,” Chambas said. “It’s the elephant in the room.”
Neither DiCarlo nor Chambas named any of the foreign supporters.
But Burhan, who led a military takeover of Sudan in 2021, is a close ally of neighboring Egypt and its president, former army chief Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. In February, Sudan’s foreign minister held talks in Tehran with his Iranian counterpart, amid unconfirmed reports of the purchase of drones for government forces.
Rapid Support Forces leader Dagalo has reportedly received support from Russia’s Wagner mercenary group. UN experts said in a recent report that the RSF has also received support from Arab allied communities and from new military supply lines running through Chad, Libya and South Sudan.
The Arab-dominated RSF has carried out brutal attacks in Darfur against ethnic African civilians, especially the ethnic Masalit, and has taken control of most of the vast region.
The latest target appears to be El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur. Edem Wosornu, director of operations at the UN Humanitarian Office, said RSF-affiliated militias attacked and burned villages west of El Fasher on April 13.
“Since then, there have been continued reports of clashes in the eastern and northern parts of the city, causing more than 36,000 people to flee,” she told the council.
Wosornu warned that “the violence poses an extreme and immediate danger to the 800,000 civilians living in El Fasher, and threatens to lead to further violence in other parts of Darfur – where more than 9 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.”
Twenty years ago, Darfur became synonymous with genocide and war crimes, especially by the infamous Arab Janjaweed militias, against populations who identify as Central or East African.
That legacy seems to have returned. International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan said in late January that there are reasons to believe both sides may be committing war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide in Darfur.
The RSF was formed from Janjaweed fighters by former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who ruled the country for 30 years before being overthrown in a popular uprising in 2019. He is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide and other crimes during World War II. conflict in Darfur in the 2000s.
DiCarlo called for redoubled efforts to bring peace, saying that U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ personal envoy to Sudan, Ramtane Lamamra, has proposed convening a meeting with African and Arab organizations and key countries “to reach a to develop a comprehensive strategy for mediation and peacemaking.”
Chambas said the AU is calling on countries in the region not to support either side.
It is also organizing “a comprehensive political dialogue for Sudanese that will prepare citizens for the post-war transition to democratic governance,” he said.
“The war has set the country back decades and it will take more than a generation to rebuild Sudan to its pre-war state,” Chambas said.