Will the guns finally be silent in Sudan? As the humanitarian catastrophe deepens, neighboring country South Sudan announces an agreement on a new truce.
South Sudan has assured that it has negotiated an extension of the seven-day ceasefire in Sudan, which was to end on Wednesday May 3 at midnight. The announcement should be taken with caution as the two generals who have been fighting for power in Sudan since mid-April hate each other to death. They have so far refused any discussion. However, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of South Sudan, which plays the mediators, they would have nevertheless agreed to take a break of seven days in their military operations, while indirect technical discussions would take place in Saudi Arabia.
But we are a thousand miles from peace. A truce is already supposed to be applied for three days. However, it prevented neither the aerial bombardments nor the bursts of automatic weapons; Khartoum, the capital, is still in chaos. The ceasefire has only maintained secure corridors to evacuate foreign nationals. Sudanese civilians have fled en masse on foot or by bus within the country or to neighboring countries. Those who remain have to do without water, without electricity and often without food.
The country is approaching “the breaking point”
Sudan is one of the poorest countries in the world and the speed and scale at which events are unfolding have taken everyone by surprise. The UN is expecting more than 800,000 displaced persons, but the stocks of humanitarian organizations have been looted and aid is only arriving in dribs and drabs.
Sunday, April 30, the Red Cross was able to deliver eight tons of medical equipment, but it is barely enough to treat 1,500 wounded. Experts speak of a “catastrophe” which could be similar to that of Somalia or Syria. The UN says the country is approaching “breaking point”.
Darfur again at the heart of the fighting
With a particular risk for the Darfur region (in western Sudan), already the victim of a civil war in the 2000s which claimed up to 300,000 deaths according to estimates. At the time, to defend the distribution of land and their access to water, the ethnic minorities had taken up arms, repressed both by the regular army, but also by the Arab Janjawid militias (which means “the demons on horseback”) that gave birth to General Hemetti’s Rapid Support Forces – now at war.
Militias guilty of massacres, rape and ethnic cleansing which have in reality never ceased their abuses, despite peace agreements signed in 2020 in the wake of the fall of dictator Omar al-Bashir. The region is even experiencing a resurgence of conflicts, unprecedented for ten years: in 2021, nearly 500,000 people were displaced, five times more than in 2020. And it is still in Darfur that today the displaced are the most abundant. Recent violence has killed, according to the UN, a hundred people. The leaders’ war in Khartoum was the spark that ignited the flames of Darfur.