tv France 24 LINKTV April 18, 2023 5:30am-6:01am PDT
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♪ ahmed: military players in sudan are turning against each other. they were partners in the coup that entered a short lived coalition with civilians. but now, each side is vying for power. so, could the standoff grow into a civil war? and what does it mean for the future of sudan? this is "inside story." ♪ hello and welcome to the program. i am mohammed jamjoom.
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after years of instability and coups, fears are growing of another armed conflict incident. the paramilitary group, the rapid support forces, has deployed the military to major cities. the army warns the move could fuel divisions and threaten security, and plans to sign an agreement government have again been delayed, with the potential that the cuff it could turn into more civil war. >> these are not the headlands people in sudan were hoping for. plans for a new government are on hold yet again. instead, focus has turned to tensions between the army and a powerful paramilitary group, the rapid support forces. the escalation boils down to the two leaders competing for power. on one side is the army, led by general abdel fattah al-burhan. on the other is the head of the rapid support forces, general mohammed hamdan dagalo, known as hemedti.
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this week, he mobilized troops in several cities, including the capital, khartoum. the two generals disagree about when and how the paramilitary unit will be integrated into the armed forces. and that is a condition for the transition to civilian rule. >> this redeployment issued by the rapid support forces will lead to more tension and division in sudan. it may also lead to security failures. reporter: the rsf worked with the military to overthrow omar al-bashir in 2019. two years later, they carried out another coup. dozens of protesters were killed. in the aftermath, hundreds were arrested. with the new government due to be appointed, the general seemed determined to maintain their influence. >> we have general burhan and general hemedti fighting for power while we fight to find
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food and water. they're fighting for authority over our country and people while we fight for education and , health services. reporter: as the threat of an armed conflict grows, the much-anticipated agreement for a peaceful transition to a civilian-led government remains unsigned. katty a lopez for "inside story." ♪ mohammed: that's good head and bring in our guests. in doha, waleed madibo, founder and president of sudan policy forum. in khartoum, kholood khair, director of confluence advisory, a sudan-based think tank. and in medford, masachussetts, alex de waal, professor at tufts fletcher school of law and diplomacy and executive director at the world peace foundation. kholood, let me start wit you today. the rapid support forces had worked with the military to
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overthrow omar in 2019. two years later they carried out another coup. why are the heads of these groups now at loggerheads? guest: the reality is they have always been at loggerheads to some degree, and that is because they have very different visions for consolidating their power grab in 2019 and their coup in 2021. but the reality is they both want to avoid accountability. they both want to avoid committing to security-sector reform elements that will vastly circumscribe or curtail or limit their powers. there are signs that they are actually working together to escalate the tensions between them in order to gain concessions from pro-democracy forces, only then to de-escalate tensions, as we have been seeing in the past few hours, in order to maintain those concessions, particularly on reforms. this is a rinse and repeat that we have seen at least for the last few years now.
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ahmmohamemed: can you tell us about bit more about these two men, the two generals, general burhan and general hemedti? what else is behind the struggle as well that they are in a real quagmire? guest: if you take for example the head of the rsf, if he decides to go with, i mean if he gives into the demands of the public, then he may lose the protection for his wealth or whatever amount he has gotten it from the the gold in the past few years. if he decides to go away with the coup d'etat and does not yield to the demands of the international community, he may face targeting sanctions. this is the quagmire of hemedti. if you think of burhan, if he decides to go ahead with the
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agreement, he will face the old guard, who are still in control of the army. but if he doesn't, then he will face the popular revolution that has never stopped since 2019. so the quagmire of these two individuals has become the quagmire of the nation as a whole. not to forget the sort of influence that they are receiving from the regional powers, mainly egypt, that is supporting burhan, and the uae, that is supporting? hemedti. mohammed: alex, what he was talking there about, what he called the quagmire of these two individuals, i mean is that what this escalation essentially boils down to is simply about two leaders competing for power? guest: it is a struggle for power.
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a struggle for control of the central instruments of coercion and and and state authority. and it is a struggle to keep intact these vast military business empires that exist. hemedti is a newcomer to this. he has built his corporate militia empire in recent years. but al-burhan and the whole crony capitalist system that developed around the military establishment, is equally entrenched. in fact, the immediate trigger for a coup 18 months ago was precisely in order to halt the exposure and potential dismantling of the military commercial complex that has been sucking the economic lifeblood dry for so many years. mohammed: alex, let me follow-up with you on another point,
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because many point out that the fact that right now is -- right now, a lot is hinging on the rsf potentially being integrated into the nation's army. does the stability of the country going forward depend on that? guest: there has to be some major reform to the security apparatus. every agreement among the parties up to now has involved expanding that security apparatus and paying off the soldiers, in order to get them to cooperate. that is part of this deadly cycle that has led to this entrapment and this quagmire. there definitely needs to be some form of integration and security-sector reform, but it has to be taken in the broader context. the army itself needs to be thoroughly reformed, downsized and made into professional army that serves.
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-- that serves people instead of dominating. mohammed: kholood, you were on the ground in khartoum. from your vantage point, what are the other sudanese saying? do they believe that an armed conflict is inevitable? guest: the thing is, armed conflict is always possible and always likely, precisely because of the struggle between the generals. the difficulty now is that they are both united in resisting the types of controls that alex spoke about, and the types of oversight from civilians that we are seeing become part of the conversation. they come together, and we know this very well. they come together when they need to, to resist reforms, to resist democratic gains by democratic actors. and then when things don't go their way, or when they start to
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try to really settle into taking rights or arms or money or influence from each other, that's when we see things heating up. and it is those sort of different impulses and different dynamics that are playing out that mean that regardless of whether there is a de-escalation or not, there is always a likelihood of a clash. what makes this particular incident interesting in many ways, the first time that we have seen the sudan armed forces and release a statement at 3:00 a.m., almost calling the rsf's actions in merowe an act of war, that is an escalation that we haven't seen yet, and that is what gives people a lot of anxiety. a lot of citizens recognize the trend of escalation of tactical escalation and deescalation and they recognize the broader strategy to avoid accountability that this falls under. so you have these two conversations that are happening in khartoum and throughout.
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mohammed: waleed, obviously, this all gets a bit complex. i want to try to step back for a take a moment and look more specifically at the rapid support forces. they evolved from militias that had fought in the early 2000s in darfur. they are now a complex paramilitary group. how powerful are they? how well-funded early? do they operate under their own chain of command? guest: they definitely operate under their own chain of command, but as i mentioned earlier, they are very much influenced by the uae because it is the uae that gave him r -- that gave hemedti the machinery, the money. but again,, these soldiers are not being paid by the uae, so they are exhausting the finances
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of the country. but more intriguingly i i would want to say that the the i have made to are recklessly and irresponsibly trying to exploit the ethnic and racial and tribal cleavages. if you notice in the most recent announcement, the army has been calling for the public to support the army. against whom? against a buddy that burhan himself and the islamist groups that they have brought up to the public. i mean, it is hemedti. they are the ones who have given him all the influence and all the support. burhan more recently gave him access to strategic positions in khartoum. he made him vice president of the council. he has been giving him access to the international community. and so if you think about omar al-bashir, as damaging as he
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was, he was very powerful in the sense that he was putting the leader of the rsf under his own control. but now, the situation has become uncontrollable, and hemedti is taking advantage of this current attitude of burhan. mohammed: what kind of diplomatic efforts are underway to try to de-escalate the tensions? guest: there was a recent concerted effort. there was a troika of multilateral organizations -- the united nations, the african union, and the intergovernmental authority of the development of east african regional bloc. the problem with them is that the u.s. special representative is essentially a technocrat, not a political heavyweight. the african union leadership has succumbed to the transactional
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politics and is really just interested in dealing, they are both extremely weak. the next layer, which is more influential, is a quartet of players -- that is the saudis, the emirati's, the united kingdom, and the united states. their problem is that there is no unity. in fact, a key international player, egypt, is not fully aligned with them. they are not unified and there is no overall strategy. the diplomatic tasks have been delegated to relatively junior officials who simply don't have a way to direct the regional traffic to get a coordinated response. this is simply not getting the level of attention that it warrants. mohammed: waleed, i saw you
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nodding to what alex said. do you agree with what he was saying when it comes to the level of diplomats currently involved in trying to de-escalate tensions? kholood: yes. alex is right, the political weight that is required both within the quad countries and in the tripartite mechanism has been very glaring and absent. beyond that, there doesn't seem to be a strategy that this fits into. the quad have been working and trying to get a final agreement signed, but it is this very agreement and the process that surrounds it that has been part of the problem, this agreement last year in december, effectively codifying the power and balance between those generals which gives us these kinds of flashpoints. the medicine that has been proffered, the signing of this final agreement may in fact worsen the disease.
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in any case, there are so far has not been enough effort at working out the broader political struggle between burhan and hemedti. there is a laser focus instead on this political agreement and its process and these kinds of flashpoints of conflict can be created in an ad hoc way, which by no means helps us figure out and sort out the broader power struggle. mohammed: waleed when it comes to the power struggle and the fact that it has delayed this transition to a planned civilian government what happens now when it comes to the timeline of this transition, and where does this leave things right now? guest: i think we can compare the situation of sudan to libya. these two leaders, they are trying to prolong the process for as long as they can. in libya, it has been 12 years?
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i mean, the transitional period. here they are trying to elongate it in such a way that it may reach 10 years. but that is not the issue. the issue is, should the two leaders and the sudanese politicians and the international community go ahead with this agreement? the agreement itself is not sustainable because it is alienating a big portion of -- a big majority of the sudanese people. if you think of the forces of freedom and change, the very few that are left now in the process, they don't carry the weight that would make the government sustainable. that is one aspect. another aspect depends very much on the personality of the prime minister. even if burhan and hemedti agree to the civilian process, the personality of the coming prime minister will play a very
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important role in the process. if it happens and they bring a weak personality, then the whole scenario is going to collapse. and we are going to go into some sort of civil war. i think the confrontation is inevitable, between these two individuals. but then the outcome may be beneficial to the sudanese people, because, we don't know if a third party can come along and just try to smash out all of the political chaos and military chaos. mohammed: looks to me like you were reacting to what kholood was saying. jump ahead. guest: i don't think this all hinges on who becomes prime minister, that will only follow on from whatever political sort of ecosystem this framework agreement and its resulting process have created.
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no one person, no matter how capable they are, will be able to combat or even mitigate many of the challenges that we see coming out of this framework agreement process. leave alone the issue of the generals and the power struggle, which i think we will see for certainly months, if not years to come. the issue of this political process is that it has no broad-based political support. and without including the very large proportion of sudanese public that came out against precisely this kind of militaristic politics, without the the fact that people who wanted to do away with it, with this kind of system and bring in a new one, you're not going to have any individual or prime minister who will get things done. that is something that is very much missing from this process. it needs a much more concerted approach that deals with and
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engages with broader proportions of the sudanese public who, so far, have not been engaged in this current political process. mohammed: mohammed: alex, it looks like he wanted to jump in as well. please go ahead. guest: i wanted to add one more point and fully in support of of what both valid and column have been saying, which is that any civilian government any civilian prime minister who comes in at this stage will have a much weaker hand than prime minister abdul fattah al-burhan -- of prime minister abdul fatah, when he came in almost four years ago. one of the relative weaknesses and divisions among the democratic people and the
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weakness and division of the international engagement. there is so little international interest in actually bailing sudan out of this very, very serious economic crisis. any civilian prime minister, however strong his character whatever his support on the , street, is going to have a very weak set of cards in his hand to play. mohammed: waleed, there are groups like the forces of freedom change, which is a coalition of pro democracy parties that are saying that the ongoing events are the plan of loyalists of the former regime. so i wanna ask you, how much does the shadow of former president omar al-bashir hang over all of this? guest: i believe that the old guards, they do have influence. but think it is the failure of the democratic forces to provide a futuristic vision for sudan
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that is carrying a lot of weight. you see a total lack of leadership, and absence of vision, developmental vision for sudan. there is a lack of comprehensiveness in the approach of trying to resolve the situation. if you look at the agreement itself, it is a historical and traditional approach of the sudanese political elite. they try to avoid the critical issues and they think that by avoiding these critical issues, that they are going to go away by themselves. one of the main issues is the issue of the secular state. it has not been resolved because you do have other leaders, abdul mohamed noor, that is a big group.
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if you think of helu, he is occupying a territory that is 1400 kilometers in southern sudan. if you think of abdul wahid. his army is sort of this is stabilizing force causing a lot of problems there. so the issues of the secular state, the issues of the ex-regime of omar al-bashir -- as of now, he should have been handed to the international criminal court a couple of years ago. they haven't taken any action against him. they haven't taken any action against the criminals of the ex-regime. if you think of burhan, i mean, he could have taken a harsher stand against the old guard, the ex-regime, but instead, he went and embraced them wholeheartedly, and by so doing, he lost the popularity of the
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public. it's not that the people are standing for the forces of freedom and change, the people are fed up with the indecisiveness of burhan and his inability to take action. mohammed: kholood, from your perspective in khartoum, or do you hear from the sudanese on what they want to see happen and what concrete steps they believe need to be taken in order to resolve all of this? guest: everyone pretty much knows whose fault particularly this is. and i find it particularly peculiar when people say that it is the civilians and their inability to agree that is driving out of this. we're literally talking about a military clash between two very armed, active men. this is quite clearly a problem for these military actors and cannot be lain at the feet of civilians. sudan has a very militarized political system, we have to acknowledge that much, and , therefore, any solutions to
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its political woes have to be related to dismantling this militarized system. there is room for the sudanese armed forces that serve the interest of the public, and not the interests of a certain group of actors, particularly partisan actors, islamist, etcetera. there is room for a level of reform that allows for integration of the rsf into the military staff, but as long as we make this an issue of the civilians, we will not get there. the problem is that this framework agreement of last year has forced the realignment between what was before a civilian camp and a military camp, and instead it has given us the two camps -- one led by hemedti and won by burhan. within those camps are civilians that could lead the next government. let's say whatever resolution
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the two civilian factions come up with cannot be implemented, unless the core issues between the military patrons that they have resolved. and we are not anywhere near a total resolving the problem between the military actors and therefore we cannot really find the sort of civilian solutions we have been looking for. this is the folly, i think, of relying on a final agreement between the two factions. and to steer us through this very difficult period, it's going to require much broader thinking about how to dismantle the militarized state and how to save the civilian armed forces from these malign actors. mohammed: alex, we have just about one minute left, what are the steps that can be taken right now? what are the concrete steps that can be taken in order to help solve this? guest: faith included a much higher and more robust level of a global, international coordination and diplomacy.
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number one, the first absolute priority is to stop an accidental or deliberate escalation into all-out conflict, which is quite possible. then a reconsideration or reframing using the framework agreement which has the basis for addressing these very problems we have been discussing. mohammed: all right, we have run out of time. we are going to have to leave the conversation there. thanks so much to all of our guests, khollod khair, waleed madibo, and alex de waal. and thank you, too, for watching. you can see the program again at any time. by visiting our website, aljazeera.com. and for further discussion, just go to our facebook page. that's facebook.com/ajinsidestory. and you can also join the conversation on twitter. our handle is @ajinsidestory. for me, mohammed jamjoon, and the whole team here bye, for , now. ♪
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