The video recording of the interview is available here.
To listen to the interview in podcast format, click here.
It has been almost two weeks since the armed conflict between the Sudan Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces began. As a result, hundreds of people have been killed, thousands have been injured, and the conversation about Sudan’s democratic transition has evolved to focus on preventing another civil war.
In the midst of this crisis, Security in Context was able to contact a Sudanese expert and interview him on the 25th of April. He is Hamid Khalafallah, a development practitioner, researcher and policy analyst based in Khartoum, Sudan. He works as a program officer for the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance in Sudan, and he is a non-resident fellow in the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy in the United States.
Anita Fuentes
To start, could you give us a brief update on the most important developments that have taken place in Sudan over the past week?
Hamid Khalafallah
Since the conflict erupted there have been multiple initiatives to mediate and establish a ceasefire. Despite these efforts for talks to resolve the conflict politically, every ceasefire that was announced was not honored by any of the parties. The April 24th ceasefire, for example, was sponsored by the US and announced by the Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. It was brokered between the two generals, leaders of the Sudan’s Armed Forces and of the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary, both committing to the ceasefire. However, just a few hours after the announcement they broke it and violence resumed. In fact, before this interview I could hear gunfire. So the war is continuing and both leaders do not seem to be ready to commit to a ceasefire or to end the war soon.
Anita Fuentes
The uprising of the Sudanese people and the mass protests that took place in 2018 and 2019 inspired the region and the world, particularly because the popular movement insisted on nonviolence. They succeeded in gaining a number of important victories, including the push for civilian rule or at least a shared government. Could you explain to our audience the impact of that popular movement, and what has happened since then that led to the events we see today?
Hamid Khalafallah
The popular movement that started in December 2018 and continued throughout the past four years sustained even during the relatively peaceful and democratic era that followed, which focused on having a civilian transitional government. Between September 2019 and October 2021 the popular movement still continued to be very active, mobilizing people and advocating for their demands. And after the October 2021 coup, orchestrated by the two generals that are currently fighting each other, the popular movement was on the streets at the forefront of the demand for the return of the civilian democratic transition. Popular mobilization has always been active and changed the rules of the game in Sudan, changing the way things were working. That upset a lot of the old powers that were trying to find their way back, including those within the former regime of Omar al Bashir, overthrown by the revolution. Also, a lot of army officers have high ambitions, or at least think that the army should be in control. The leader of the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary, for example, is essentially building his way to presidency, an aspiration he has always had.
The role of the resistance committees or the popular resistance movement in general has directly threatened the interests and privileges of these people. This is why they are now carrying out a full-on war, fighting against each other for power. But by extension, they're trying to say to the resistance democratic movement that they will not have a future in Sudan, that one of the military leaders will win and will be in charge of everything.
Anita Fuentes
What are Sudanese civil society groups calling for? What are the main demands being raised internally and to the international community?
Hamid Khalafallah
First, there is the demand to end this war immediately. There's a popular campaign with slogans such as “No to War”; this immediate focus is such because we cannot afford an extra minute in this war. Although people’s lives should never be reduced to numbers, statistics help us to see the impact of the war. On a daily basis we lose an average of about fifty people. Up until the 25th of April, at least 460 people were killed, still being a very tiny representation of the actual magnitude of losses. I'm sure there are so many people who have been killed but not accounted for. When you drive around Khartoum, particularly in the streets where fighting is happening, you would see bodies of people thrown to the side, no one is able to take and bury them. It is a horrific situation.
People in these groups are also calling for the flow of humanitarian assistance to reach those currently suffering a multifaceted crisis. Because of the war, the economic situation, the power and water outages, a shortage in cash flow with banks being closed and technical networks falling apart, having no access to mobile money or mobile banking apps, people are literally locked in their houses without electricity, water, food supplies nor money. Many people have very little chance to leave their homes to seek help because of the security situation outside. Getting humanitarian assistance to flow to these people suffering is also a priority.
The third demand is the return to the political process. That would take Sudan out of this bottleneck when the time is right, because now there is no way to discuss a political process in the middle of the war. But when the time is right an important step would be putting an end to the multiple military interventions in politics and governance of Sudan.
Anita Fuentes
Aside from the death toll, what is the economic and humanitarian impact of the recent events?
Hamid Khalafallah
We are currently living a full-on humanitarian crisis. In terms of services there are huge problems with providing water and electricity. Most neighborhoods have been suffering from outages of these services since the war erupted back on April 15th. These difficulties have been added to the food supplies running out, as Sudan largely depends on importing them, and now, due to the war, food is not reaching the communities who need it. Stores are mostly closed and people are running out of food; eventually, if this is not solved some people might starve to death.
On top of this, the medical care situation is critical: over half of the hospitals in Khartoum, the capital city, in a country where the healthcare, and also development is quite centralized. Many hospitals were bombed, and many hospitals which were not bombed cannot function since they are located in very risky areas where neither medical personnel nor patients can reach the place. Other hospitals do not have power or water.
So while 40% of medical centers are functioning, they are experiencing severe shortages in terms of staff and medical supplies, plus, citizens find it very difficult to reach these hospitals. This huge healthcare crisis is made worse because most of the health care providers are located in very critical areas that are close to either the military headquarters, the presidential palace or focal fighting areas.
Also, many people are trapped in their homes in these critical areas. They have been unable to leave as no one is able to rescue them, having to live with whatever they already had in their homes when this conflict broke out.
Anita Fuentes
Zooming out a little bit, there is a lot of discussion about the role of regional and international actors, such as Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and other countries. Can you explain the role of international powers? Is it a simplification to call this a “proxy war” as some have referred to it?
Hamid Khalafallah
It is certainly a simplification and a reduction of the size of a problem, a product of these Western-centric approaches by different media outlets that Western governments tend to use. This simplification follows the narrative in which all problems happening in the Global South are happening because something is happening in the Global North; thus, the whole problem of Sudan is now reduced to being a Russian proxy war because everyone is currently upset with Russia. Indeed, the actors fighting do have connections with Russia, and it has been supporting them in many ways. But this is not why they are essentially fighting. The main reasons for the conflict are complex, local, and based on the Sudanese context of power struggle.
There is this regional dimension too: the Rapid Support Forces have been helping the UAE during the war in Yemen, building very strong connections with them, and the RSF has benefited financially from that war. Therefore, the Emirates are one of the biggest regional allies of the RSF, which in turn has connections with Russia and Israel, which have been supporting selling weapons or through financing.
On the other hand the Sudanese Armed Forces have very close connections with the Egyptian regime and its army, receiving unlimited support from them. Burhan also has connections with a faction within the Israeli government. So both actors have these regional extensions, but we should not oversimplify the whole problem, reducing it to these regional linkages. Simultaneously, it is important for the international community to capitalize on these regional links to use that leverage to exert pressure on both fighting militaries to end this conflict right now.
Anita Fuentes
In a tweet, you state that “pushing for safe passages to evacuate internationals without simultaneously pushing to end the war will be terrible.” Is there a generalized perception among the Sudanese people that they are being left behind by regional and international actors?
Hamid Khalafallah
Yes, regional and international actors arguably played a huge role in the current context. Ever since the revolution international actors have been pushing for this partnership with the military, suggesting that it is better for the civilians to work with the military while using the fragile security situation of Sudan as pretext. The military-civilian partnership, that to some extent led us to the current situation, was in so many ways brokered by the international community. It is somewhat disgraceful to just pack, leave and not look behind, especially when you were part of the people who created the current problem. I appreciate the importance of evacuating diplomatic staff to take them to safety, given that if they remain they will obviously become a target, becoming part of the war. While I do not deny the importance of those evacuations, I think that the same leverage that the international community had to secure safe passages to evacuate the international and foreign diplomats could be used at the same time to at least secure safe passages for humanitarian assistance. They have successfully secured safe passages for people to flee to their country to get evacuated, with planes continuously flying in and out, but no one can provide humanitarian assistance. That makes you wonder about the priorities of the international community when they negotiated the safe passages for evacuating diplomatic staff.
Anita Fuentes
Linking to your previous point on the conflicts in the Global South constantly being framed in terms of the Global North, how do you see the global coverage of this conflict? According to an Instagram post by Khaled Beydoun, 200 Sudanese civilians were killed this past week as violence between rival factions intensified, and this has received minimal coverage. He said that “if Sudan were in Europe, this would be global news, but the context is Africa and the victims are black, Muslim, and tied to a region stereotyped as violent and uncivilized.” What are your thoughts about this?
Hamid Khalafallah
We have been seeing this over and over again. I am not surprised but still disappointed. Sadly there are many cases in the Global North where Western governments and nations in which even when they know about the conflict going on in Sudan or anywhere in the South, there is an assumption that it's less of a problem because there is the sensation that these peoples are used to wars and suffering. If this happens in the Global North, people there are not used to it, so it is a big problem and we need to support them. It's often easier to sympathize with those closer to you in terms of proximity, but that does not take into account all the transnational dimensions of current conflicts.
The ongoing Sudanese conflict is deeply rooted in the national context, but it has regional dimensions, international actors have played roles in it. And even more, if this war continues it will spread all over the region, impacting on Europe and elsewhere. Every conflict that happens anywhere is very much transnational, and I think people should view it in that way. I also hope a day will come when a human being's life is equal everywhere, regardless of their race or nationality. However, the conflict in Sudan is not getting enough coverage, given its magnitude. It is sad, but we have continuously seen this happen.
Anita Fuentes
I think it is like a vicious circle, where the more something gets covered, the more people empathize with it. And the more you know about something, the more feelings you have about it. So it is very important that news globally cover this conflict just as much as they cover any conflict that they consider to be “closer” in terms of geographical proximity. Before we wrap up, is there anything you would like to add that we have not covered?
Hamid Khalafallah
Yes. Like I said, the priority now is to end the war, and if there are any policymakers who are reading this, or if there are any people close to policymakers or planning to do anything about Sudan: yes, the priority is to end the war. But also, one of the reasons that led us to this situation is an imported colonial notion that Western governments have tried to impose on us in which the Sudanese and by extension people in Africa or in the Global South are always asked to tone down their aspirations for democracy and to focus on security and stability. We are demanded not to be too ambitious asking for democracy, and I really worry that after this war that narrative would become even stronger, disregarding the calls for the democratic transition and to focus on ending the war and peacebuilding. This reasoning would allow another authoritarian regime to take control of Sudan for a long time.
I believe that while we focus on ending the war agenda, it is important to not compromise the democracy-security nexus. We should not only focus on security at the expense of democracy. We want security and peace, but we also want democracy. After four years of revolution and people being out in the streets every day asking for democracy, they have earned their right to ask for democracy to be treated as important as security and peace.
