The violent tensions between the generals in power in Sudan, which continued Tuesday for a fourth day in a row, are not unrelated to the presence in this African country of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner which, since 2017, has sought to impose influence of Russia in this region. A disruptive strategy which has just inflamed Sudan, placing it now on the brink of a civil war from which the Kremlin will certainly seek to take advantage.
The failure of discussions for a transition to a civilian government in Sudan has set fire to the powder between the army, under the command of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, who has ruled the country since the putsch of 2021, and the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (FSR) of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, known as “Hemedti”. Since Saturday, the two men have remained camped in irreconcilable positions, the army denouncing “a coup d’etat” led by “rebels supported by foreign countries” while the FSR pose as defenders of “freedom, justice and democracy”.
Hemedti’s position in the current conflict is necessarily more than doubtful, he who benefits in the Sudanese political context from the most direct and interested aid from the Russian totalitarian state, and this, through the through the Wagner group. The paramilitary organization under the control of a close associate of Vladimir Putin, Evgueni Prigojine, has been repeatedly accused of war crimes in Ukraine since the outbreak of the war of invasion launched by Moscow against the former Soviet republic.
Prigozhin has been defending his interests — and those of the Kremlin — since 2017 in Sudan, when he began providing high-level training to officers and soldiers of Hemedti’s Rapid Support Forces, as well as military intelligence and resources to carry out online disinformation campaigns in this country with an unstable political climate since the fall of dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019.
In exchange, the Wagner group obtained control of several gold mines in Darfur through front companies. The region and its gold are under the control of the FSRs. The scheme has contributed to the personal enrichment of Yevgueni Prigojine, but has also benefited Moscow since the outbreak of its war in Ukraine and, above all, the appearance of international sanctions imposed by the West against the Putin regime.
It is that this Sudanese gold has been used for more than a year to finance the Russian invasion of Ukraine and support the Russian economy, revealed last July a CNN investigation which brought to light the existence of 16 thefts illegal immigrants from Khartoum and other cities in Sudan, orchestrated by the Wagner group, to smuggle this gold out of the African country in the direction of Russia. Official documents mentioned exports of biscuits, a product rarely exported by this country of the African horn to Russia.
On February 23, 2022, the same day that Moscow launched its failed attack on Kiev, Hemedti was at the head of a Sudanese delegation sent to the Kremlin to “advance relations” between Sudan and Russia. Relations that go beyond the Kremlin’s takeover and exploitation of African natural resources…
In 2018, the two countries signed an agreement for the construction of an oil refinery by a Russian company in Port Sudan, on the Red Sea. The facility, with a planned capacity of 200,000 barrels per day, aims to secure Russia’s extradition activities in this region. This port area is also coveted by Moscow for the installation of a military naval base, the first in Africa for the Kremlin since the fall of the USSR. Moscow sees it as a strategic position that will strengthen its influence in the region, at the expense of France or the United States. Among others.
Last February, the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, moreover ratified the agreement for the construction of this base during a visit to Khartoum. There he met both the self-proclaimed president of the Sovereign Transitional Council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, and the vice-president, Hemedti, both today at the heart of a war of influence whose outcome is still uncertain, four days after its onset.
On Tuesday, even though the two sides agreed to a 24-hour ceasefire, following a telephone conversation with the head of the American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, the sound of gunfire was still heard in the capital at the end of the day, reported witnesses quoted by the Reuters news agency.
It is that in Sudan, since last Saturday, the only certainties seem above all to come from Moscow, which gives the impression of digging the same furrows there as in Libya, Syria or even the Central African Republic, and this, by stirring up disturbances in unstable political climates to encourage predation, both of natural resources and of strategic positions previously occupied by others.