(Wad Madani) Back at the negotiating table in Saudi Arabia, the Sudanese generals at war are mainly trying to gain points on the military field, by concentrating their efforts on Nyala, the country’s second city, in the heart of Darfur.
In Khartoum, the air force of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane failed to dislodge the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (FSR) of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo. Elsewhere in the country, the army holds the East – never won by fighting – while the FSR advances in Darfur, their historic bastion on the border with Chad in the West.
Unable to gain a decisive advantage for more than six months, both camps are stalling but neither intends to make any concessions at the negotiating table.
Talks between the Sudanese warring parties resumed Thursday in the Saudi city of Jeddah. They aim “to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid, establish ceasefires and other confidence-building measures, and progress toward a permanent cessation of hostilities,” the Saudi Foreign Ministry said in a statement. a statement.
“The talks will not address broader political issues,” he added.
Previous attempts at mediation have resulted in only brief truces, and even these have been systematically violated.
Before the suspension of the first round of negotiations in Jeddah, mediators were increasingly frustrated by the reluctance of both sides to work toward a lasting truce.
The war of attrition between the two rival generals has already left more than 9,000 dead – according to a UN report which is undoubtedly much lower than reality due to the widespread chaos -, nearly six million displaced people and refugees and destroyed the most infrastructure.
To change the situation, the RSF have recently focused on Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, bordering the Central African Republic and South Sudan, where they seem to have gained the upper hand over the forces of General Burhane.
This city is strategic because it has an airport – a major asset for supplying troops – and because it is also a road and rail crossroads.
It is also, explains a former officer to AFP, “the largest military center in the three states of South Darfur, Central Darfur and East Darfur”.
Economic lung
The RSF intend to reign supreme in Darfur, where the UN suspects a possible new “genocide” after that carried out in the early 2000s by their ancestor, the Janjawids, on behalf of the dictator of the time Omar al-Bashir.
The paramilitaries have already held the Oum Dafouq border post with the Central African Republic for three months and are said to be controlling additional corridors for their supply routes to Khartoum, 1,000 kilometers to the northeast.
And, beyond its military assets, Nyala is also the commercial and economic heart of Darfur – a region the size of France where a quarter of the 48 million Sudanese live.
The city “has economic relations with Chad, the Central African Republic and South Sudan, and as far as Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo”, which even has a consulate there, recalls local journalist Ezzedine Dahab to AFP .
“Deployed everywhere”
Thus on Thursday, at the very time when negotiators from both camps were meeting American and Saudi mediators in Jeddah, General Daglo’s brother and right-hand man, Abderrahim Daglo, under American sanctions, filmed himself leading the troops to Nyala.
In the process, the RSF announced that they had taken the city on the 16the infantry division, information denied by the army, which claimed to have inflicted “heavy human and material losses” on the enemy.
Contacted by AFP, residents say that the FSR crisscrossed Nyala, capital of the Dadjo kingdom in the 16th century before being designated capital of the rural West by the British colonizer.
“RFS fighters are deployed everywhere and we haven’t seen the army since Wednesday,” assures one of them, Adam, who lives in the al-Wadi neighborhood, one of the largest in Nyala, refusing to give her last name for fear of reprisals.
Ali, who lives in another neighborhood, assures that the two camps have long held different sectors of the city since the start of the war. “The takeover (by the FSR) happened in stages,” he adds.
The latest took place last week, says a source within the army: “the FSR attacked the 16e division aboard 300 armored vehicles,” after six months of uninterrupted harassment.