Sudan plunges into chaos again as fighting breaks out between the army and the RSF

weeks of friction between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group (RSF for its acronym in English), the most important in the country, ended this Saturday with the outbreak of large-scale fighting in the capital, Khartoum, as well as other parts of the country, which could collapse in the coming hours long and expensive process initiated by the country four years ago to the establishment of a civilian government after decades of dictatorship; efforts now about to die on the coast.

The fighting, still with an uncertain outcome (the medical union speaks of “many martyrs and wounded”), has so far left at least three dead and dozens injured in the capital, devastated by bloody bombardments and heavy artillery fire both in the streets and at the airport, represent the final break between the country’s two strongmen: Sudanese military leader Abdelfatá al Burhan and so far ‘number two’ and paramilitary leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, aka ‘Hemedti’, who have finally taken their differences over the functioning of the future Sudanese army under civilian command to an armed struggle .

The The fighting in the capital started around 09:00. with a frustrated attack by the RSF on Al Burhan’s residence, as the Sudanese leader himself has confessed, before attempting to take over Khartoum International Airport and at the same time the Sudanese military base in the town of Meroe, 220 kilometers north of the capital and surrounded by paramilitaries since Thursday in the first indication that the situation would hardly change.

In addition, fighting erupted moments after senior leaders of the Sudanese armed groups that signed the Juba peace deal, now emergency mediators between the dispute between Al Burhan and ‘Hemedti’, assured that both leaders had agreed to start negotiations. urgent to resolve the situation.

As expected, both held each other responsible for the outbreak of hostilities. The Sudanese military has directly accused the paramilitaries of “treason”, who in turn have blamed the armed forces for launching a surprise attack against their deployment in the capital.

The international community (the African Union, the European Union, the UN, the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Qatar, among others) has called for an immediate cessation of hostilities, while embassies in the country have ordered their citizens to return home in view of the bloody fighting, particularly in the capital, where military warplanes have made low-altitude sorties to bomb RSF positions, including their headquarters in the Soba camp, and clashes with artillery have been repeated throughout the morning.

A ‘spring’ that does not blossom

The painstaking process began after the popular revolution or ‘spring’ that ended thirty years of dictatorship of Omar al Bashir in April 2019 has been continuously marred by mistrust between civilian groups, who played a part in the downfall of the monarch, and a military they have never quite seen – as well as the RSF – as guarantors of a process of transition to democracy, as first demonstrated with the coup ‘état led by Al Burhan in 2021 that ousted Abdalá Hamdok, the prime minister initially agreed by citizens and military, and then the extremely violent military crackdown on the 2022 coup protests, in which a hundred deaths fell.

The RSF is by no means exempt from blame: Amnesty International accuses the formation of massacres such as those that took place on June 3, 2019, shortly after the dictator’s fall, when the militias led the massacre of a hundred participants at a meeting in the capital that called for the rapid stabilization of living conditions. More than 700 people were injured and dozens of men and women later complained of being raped by paramilitary elements, successors to the fearsome Yanyawid militias of the conflict in Darfur.

For example, humanitarian organizations such as Human rights guard They have pointed the finger at the international community, starting with the mediation, accusing them of playing into the hands of the Sudanese army and paramilitaries, ignoring their apparent inability, they add, to put the country on lead the way to peace.

“Since the coup,” laments HRW researcher Mohamed Osman on Twitter, “international actors have tiptoed past military actors who have shown utter disregard for people’s basic rights and their utter disinterest in credible reforms,” ​​referring to both the United Nations like the international quartet made up of the United States, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which have never supported any kind of parallel effort without a military presence, such as the one in Egypt a few months ago .

Amidst all these situations, the voices of civil society groups as prominent as the Forces for Freedom and Change (FCC) have been all but muffled after warning earlier this week of the imminent derailment of the process after warning of the presence of elements of the “old regime” obedient to Al Bashir whom they accuse of directing current affairs from prison.