Long Road To Peace In Sudan By Usman Bello

Sudan’s army chief, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has reportedly vowed to push on with his fight against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), despite a United States visa snub to attend the UN General Assembly and mounting pressure for a ceasefire on U.S. terms.

The US proposed a five-point peace plan to end the civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF. Two key points of the plan include securing an immediate 90-day nation-wide humanitarian truce to pause fighting, and reach a comprehensive and permanent cessation of hostilities through structured negotiations.

Major hurdles, however, have so far blocked this peace plan. The Sudanese military authorities have expressed reservations and tied its acceptance to the complete withdrawal and disarmament of RSF units from occupied cities. Its advisers are cautioning that the framework in its current form risks pushing the country toward a permanent partition.

Meanwhile, the RSF has continued military operations that continues to drive the world’s largest displacement and humanitarian crisis with over 12 million people displaced.

Observers point out that if the US says that it is working for peace in Sudan, how can that peace be just if it does not begin by establishing responsibility for crimes and holding those who committed them accountable, rather than placing the aggressor and the defender of the state on the same footing. The conflict in Sudan is not a political disagreement that can be contained through negotiations.

The country is facing a war ignited by the RSA, which is not a political group at odds with the army-led government. It is not a military institution that can be equated with the Sudanese Armed Forces as two equal parties to a political conflict. It is an armed formation that originally emerged outside the traditional structure of the armed forces, with origins in the notorious Janjaweed militia that brutally fought rebels in Darfur where they were accused of genocide and ethnic cleansing against the region’s black Africans and non-Arab populations.

They then developed into a massive military force with weapons, resources, economic networks, and regional relationships before entering open confrontation with the state and its institutions. Many are asking: If the use of force against civilians and the threat to security and stability constitute a criterion for terrorism or sanctions in another country, why does the same conduct in Sudan become merely a ‘’dispute between two parties’’ requiring a political settlement?

Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that US policy does not always move according to the principles it proclaims, but according to a combination of strategic interests, regional alliances and calculations of influence. Sudan is a resource -rich country with an exceptionally important strategic location at the intersection of the Horn Africa, Red Sea, and the Arab world. The conflict in Sudan is therefore not merely an internal confrontation between two military forces. It involves multiple regional and international interests.

This is why it is dangerous to treat the Sudanese war simply as a confrontation between ‘’two warring parties,’’ without considering the nature of each party, its project, its sources of strength and its external relationships. The SAF represents the state’s official military institution. In contrast, the RSF is a terrorist group at war with the state. If political equivalence of the two fails to take cognizance of this fundamental distinction, it means ignoring the very nature of the conflict.

A settlement that treats the RSA as political partner equal to the state and its institutions would not only prolong the war but reward terrorists fighting the state, and send a dangerous message that the road to power in Sudan is not through elections and institutions, but through building an armed force, and then imposing its presence at the negotiating table.

Tragically some Sudanese civilian forces have become political cover for the war rather than an independent force working to end it. Over recent years, various alliances  have emerged and raising slogans of democracy, civilian rule, and ending the war. But the problem is not with their aspiration for democracy but lies in the allegiance of some of them to the RSA, despite its documented atrocities.

It is dangerous when such forces become channels for conferring political legitimacy upon terrorists, while the institutions of the state like the armed forces, are portrayed as the principal obstacle to peace. A peace based on redistributing political roles among armed actors and their supporters does not address the roots of the crisis but reproduces the crisis in a new form.

Genuine mediation does not mean equating the aggressor with the defender, nor does it mean disregarding crimes in pursuit of a political deal, granting political legitimacy to those who impose their presence through force of arms.

If Washington genuinely wish to be an impartial mediator in Sudan, it should support the SAF to end the RSA capacity to engage in terrorism by rejecting them and their supporters just the way it is supporting the Yemeni government against the Houthi terrorists.

Attempts to reshape Sudanese reality from outside, or impose political formulas not grounded in the will of the people, will not produce stable peace, but only postpone the next explosion. It is high time Washington recognized that Sudanese no longer judge American policy by its official statements, but by the gap between what it says and what it does.

When Sudanese see a group classified as terrorists in one country, being given a different description by Washington in another, the message they receive is not one of peace, but a clear one: the standard is not the crime itself, but where the perpetrator stands in relation to the American interests. That is the essence of double standards.

And it ultimately does not harm Sudan and the victims of the war alone, it damages the credibility of American policy and undermines confidence in any American role that claims to seek a just and sustainable peace.

*Usman writes from Kaduna.