“It’s not a civil war, it’s a war against civilians,” said Maria Malagardis, journalist at “Liberation”

“There is a term that should not be used” to describe the bloody conflict in which Sudan has been the theater for more than 20 days, believes the journalist to Release Maria Malagardis is that of “civil war”. Guest of the Talk franceinfo Thursday May 4, she makes this point “It’s not a civil war, it’s a war against civilians. They are the victims”. Although there is surely “supporters of each other”, she points, “this is the final step in the confiscation of civil power”. “A War of the Generals” which killed at least 700 people according to the NGO ACLED, which lists the victims of conflicts, and more than 300,000 displaced persons.

To punish, “is to bury the population”

US President Joe Biden on Thursday threatened to impose sanctions on Sudan, without giving a timetable, while calling for a “sustainable ceasefire”. “Putting an economic sanction on Sudan would just bury the population,” says Khadidja Medani, doctoral student in geography at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. The researcher specializing in Sudan recalls that during the thirty years of power of Omar el-Bashir, overthrown by a coup in 2019, the country “was under international embargo, under economic sanctions and the only ones who were penalized were the Sudanese people”.

An alternative to these international sanctions would be, adds Khadidja Medani, that “the godfathers” of Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, freeze “the accounts of the RSF [les forces du général Hemedti] where they are.” Would these individual sanctions really have any weight? “Would that be done?”, asks the geographer. “Not sure”, hasshe says.