Fears mount for Sudan ceasefire as former regime members escape
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00:00 Well, to get a bit more analysis now, I'm joined on the set by France 24's Angela Diffley.
00:04 Angela, let's start first with these reports of a member of Omar al-Bashir's regime, a
00:08 former minister accused of war crimes who's escaped from jail in the chaos.
00:13 Yes, this is Ahmed Haroun, who was, as you say, a member of the Omar al-Bashir regime.
00:23 He is accused of crimes against humanity because of his involvement in the very brutal repression
00:29 of an insurgency in Darfur back in 2003.
00:33 He has been in prison.
00:34 Al-Bashir himself is in the same prison, but apparently was moved just before the civil
00:38 war to a hospital.
00:40 Now it's unclear why, how this happened, how this escape happened, that Ahmed Haroun managed
00:48 to escape.
00:49 The Sudanese Interior Ministry are saying that the forces disloyal to the de facto general
00:58 who had been running the country, al-Burhan, they organized a breakout.
01:03 Meanwhile, on the other side, General Hemmati, who is opposing General al-Burhan, says that
01:10 the Sudanese army, it's in their interests to let him out, that they are trying to restore
01:18 those people who were very instrumental in the al-Bashir regime.
01:22 Angela, talk us through these two sides of this conflict.
01:25 It's been going on for almost two weeks now.
01:27 What's the balance of power like at the moment?
01:29 This is something that's worrying outsiders is that the balance of power remains fairly
01:33 equal.
01:35 You have these two generals, al-Burhan, who was until now the de facto runner of Sudan.
01:44 He is head of Sudanese armed forces.
01:47 He has a good relationship with Egypt, although Egypt denies giving him any help.
01:53 On the other side, we have Hemmati, who has a good relationship with Eritrea, whose president
01:59 has in the past not been reluctant to intervene in countries outside his own, and also a good
02:05 relationship with the Libyan warlord, a key Libyan warlord.
02:10 So they both have outside people who might be willing to help.
02:16 In terms of their actual resources, on the military side, al-Burhan's side has superior
02:22 capacity in the skies, better tanks.
02:25 And that's one of the reasons why General Hemmati, they moved very quickly on that side
02:30 to try to secure airfields so that that wouldn't happen.
02:34 On the money side, again, it's fairly equally balanced.
02:38 The Sudanese armed forces have always pretty much had a business empire.
02:43 On the other side, Hemmati has made a lot of money.
02:47 They have something of a business going on, giving gold concessions and mercenary forces
02:52 in exchange for mercenary help in return for gold concessions.
02:55 Both sides are fairly evenly matched.
02:57 It looks as though General Hemmati is trying to big up the suggestion that al-Burhan is
03:08 keen to return to a more Islamist Sudan.
03:11 That might be in the hope of getting help from Gulf countries.
03:14 We don't know.
03:15 There's another danger that if this goes very wrong and on Hemmati's side, he returns to
03:23 Darfur, which is the western region of Sudan where he came from.
03:26 He has a tribal base there.
03:28 This could, we've already talked about how other powers could intervene.
03:31 This could mean that it becomes a very, very messy ethnic factional civil war in Sudan.
03:37 Now Washington was very instrumental in brokering this three-day ceasefire that's on now.
03:42 How much involvement does the U.S. have really in Sudan?
03:45 Well, Washington, a lot of people looked to Washington.
03:47 Washington brokered the ceasefire which led to the establishment of South Sudan.
03:52 There was a civil war between Sudan and what is now South Sudan before Washington was very
03:57 instrumental in making that come about.
03:59 That said, it has a lot less leverage nowadays.
04:02 There are people in Washington who said that this fight between these two generals in Sudan,
04:10 it could be seen to be coming that the U.S. should have introduced some sort of sanctions
04:14 earlier in a bid to thwart it.
04:18 That said, the Americans will be keen not to try to be on either side of this.
04:24 There is a suggestion that there is more likelihood of Russian involvement on the side of General
04:31 Hemeti that it might turn into something like a Russian-West proxy war.
04:37 Everyone is keen to try to avoid that.
04:39 What is important is that Sudan has seen an awful lot of conflict since its independence
04:44 in 1956.
04:45 This is the first time it's really been around Khartoum and the capital and business people
04:51 might be the people who managed to draw this thing to a close.
04:55 All right, Angela, thank you for that.
04:56 France 24's Angela Diffley.