(Khartoum) The UN calls on Thursday to grant “three days” of respite to the Sudanese still caught in the crossfire of the army and the paramilitaries of the two generals in war for power on the occasion of the end of Ramadan celebration Friday.
But calls for dialogue or even a short truce have found no response for six days, stifled by the din of air raids, explosions and street fighting.
Thursday, reacting for the first time since the start of hostilities, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, head of the army, decided: there will be no “political discussions” with his rival Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, said ” Hemedti”, at the head of the Rapid Support Forces (FSR): either he stops “wanting to control the country”, or he will be “crushed militarily”.
After a meeting with the African Union, the Arab League and other regional organizations, UN chief Antonio Guterres called for a ceasefire of “at least three days” for Eid al- Fitr, the feast that marks the end of the Muslim fast of Ramadan on Friday.
He also spoke on the phone with General Burhane, also contacted by the presidents of South Sudan and Turkey, the prime minister of neighboring Ethiopia, as well as the heads of diplomacy from the United States, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the Sudanese army reported. .
Since April 15, the clashes, mainly in the capital and the Darfur region (west), have left “more than 330 dead and 3,200 injured”, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Explosions also sounded Thursday in El-Obeid, 350 kilometers south of the capital.
But Tagrid Abdine, a 49-year-old architect in Khartoum, is “not optimistic”. “It’s been three or four times that we have announced a ceasefire but the two sides have never respected it,” she told AFP.
“We would like the fighting to stop for Eid, but we know that will not happen,” laments Abdallah, another resident of the capital.
In “certain districts of the center, the smell of death and corpses reigns”, testifies a man on his way to a quieter district.
In the metropolis of more than five million inhabitants, many families have exhausted their last food and no longer have electricity or running water. Some crowd the roads to escape air raids and street fighting.
Lost bullets
“At 4:30 a.m., we were woken up by the air raids. We have closed all the doors and windows because we are afraid of a stray bullet,” another resident of Khartoum, Nazek Abdallah, 38, told AFP.
A few dozen kilometers away, life is going on and houses are opening up to accommodate the displaced. Traumatized, they drove or walked for hours.
To take shelter, they had to undergo the questions or the searches of the men at the checkpoints of the FSR of General Daglo and the army of General Burhane, de facto leader of Sudan since the putsch they carried out together in 2021.
Above all, they had to progress in the middle of the corpses which litter the edges of the road and avoid the most dangerous zones, identifiable by the columns of black smoke which escape from them.
Since the power struggle, latent for weeks between the two generals, turned into a pitched battle, civilians have also fled in large numbers abroad.
Between 10,000 and 20,000 people, mostly women and children, have crossed into neighboring Chad, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
From both sides, announcements of victory and mutual accusations rain down, impossible to verify on the ground as the danger is permanent.
The air force, which targets the bases and positions of the FSR scattered in residential areas, does not hesitate to drop bombs, sometimes above hospitals, doctors testified.
US military deployed
In five days, “70% of the 74 hospitals in Khartoum and areas affected by the fighting have been put out of use”, according to their union: bombed, they no longer have any stock to operate or fighters have taken it control, chasing doctors and wounded.
In the capital, “children are hidden in schools and nurseries amid the fighting and children’s hospitals have been forced to evacuate in the face of airstrikes”, adds UNICEF.
Humanitarians have mostly been forced to suspend their aid, crucial in a country where more than one in three inhabitants suffer from hunger in normal times.
Three employees of the World Food Program (WFP) were notably killed in Darfur at the start of the fighting.
Amid the general chaos, Egypt managed, through mediation by the United Arab Emirates, to evacuate “177 of its soldiers” stationed at an air base in the North, according to the two countries.
And 27 others, captured by the paramilitaries and then handed over to the Red Cross, are at the embassy in Khartoum, according to the Egyptian army.
On Thursday, the United States announced that it would send troops to the Sudan region to facilitate a possible evacuation of its embassy.
What we know about the fighting in Sudan
More than 300 civilians have been killed since Saturday in the war between the two generals in command of Sudan since their putsch in October 2021.
For weeks now, the 45 million Sudanese have been watching the tensions rise between the head of the army, Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, and his number two in the putschist power, Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, known as “Hemedti”, head of the Forces rapid support (FSR).
How did we get here ?
In October 2021, the two generals joined forces to oust the civilians with whom they had shared power since the fall of dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019.
“A marriage of convenience,” researcher Hamid Khalafallah told AFP. “They never had a sincere partnership, but common interests against civilians.”
And the breaches quickly appeared: Hemedti repeatedly denounced the “failure” of a putsch which reinstalled, according to him, “the old regime” of Bashir.
Then the conflict escalated when it was necessary to sign the conditions for the integration of his men into the regular troops – to finalize the political agreement on the return of civilians to power.
For experts, this agreement has opened Pandora’s box: by letting the military negotiate among themselves, “Hemedti has gone from the status of second to that of equal of Burhane”, told AFP Kholood Khair, founder of the center of Confluence Advisory research.
“More autonomous in the face of the army”, Hemedti saw an opportunity to realize “his very great political ambitions”, abounds with AFP Alan Boswell, in charge of the Horn of Africa at the International Crisis Group.
Who are the FSRs?
Created in 2013, the FSR bring together thousands of former Janjaweed, these Arab militiamen recruited by Bashir for his war in Darfur (west).
This conflict, which broke out in 2003 between Khartoum and members of non-Arab ethnic minorities, left 300,000 dead and 2.5 million displaced, according to the UN. And earned the dictator two arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for “war crimes”, “crimes against humanity” and “genocide”.
In 2015, the RSF joined the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen and, according to experts, some of its men are also fighting in Libya, strengthening their boss’s international networks.
In 2019, the RSFs were accused of killing around 100 pro-democracy protesters in Khartoum. But despite everything, “they continued to strengthen their power”, assures Mr. Boswell.
They now number a hundred thousand men, according to several experts.
And after ?
The current fighting is “an existential struggle for the two belligerents”, continues Mr. Boswell.
And to last a long time, at least one camp has created supply channels: that of Hemedti, say the specialists.
His stronghold in Darfur borders Chad where he has “contacts to secure” his supply from “the Sahel flooded with weapons and ammunition, since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya”, told AFP Eric Reeves, researcher at the Rift Valley Institute.
It is also in Libya that the paramilitaries could find their best ally: shortly before the war, Hemedti welcomed as a friend the son of the strongman of eastern Libya, Marshal Khalifa Haftar. The latter denied Thursday in a press release any support for one or the other of the belligerents.
Whatever the regional implications, warns Mme Khair, “neither side will come out unscathed”.
“It is highly unlikely that the two generals will return to the negotiating table before one or both suffer heavy losses”, agrees the specialist.
Human and financial losses, but also in popularity, because the Sudanese will not forget the street wars and the civilians mowed down by stray bullets.
“Both sides are strong enough that a war between them will be very expensive, very deadly and very long,” Boswell said. And above all, even if one of the two parties wins, particularly in Khartoum, “the war will continue elsewhere in the country”, creating rival strongholds.
“We are already in the worst-case scenario and we will go towards even more dramatic events”, with possible repercussions throughout the region, warns Mr. Boswell.