00:00This is Apropos. It is the latest atrocity in a war that's raged for over 31 months.
00:09Paramilitary fighters have been rampaging through what had been the Sudanese military's last major stronghold in Darfur,
00:16killing and detaining hundreds of people since the RSF took full control of El Fasher on Sunday.
00:22The UN said the risk of further large-scale ethnically motivated atrocities was rising
00:27as it called for the safe passage of trapped civilians out of this city.
00:32The war began in April 2023 when simmering tensions between the Sudanese military and the RSF exploded into open fighting, as Karis Garland reports.
00:45Two warring sides, each supported by multiple armed groups.
00:50The Sudanese armed forces and the paramilitary rapid support forces used to work alongside each other
00:56but have been locked in a bloody civil war since April 2023.
01:02The army, in its current form, was established in 1956 when Sudan gained independence from the Anglo-Egyptian condominium.
01:11It's estimated to have some 200,000 active personnel.
01:15After Omar al-Bashir led a coup in 1989, the military became deeply intertwined with Sudan's economic activities,
01:23with the army and other linked entities controlling natural resources like oil fields, gold mines and agricultural land.
01:31Fighting the army is the rapid support forces.
01:34The RSF grew out of the Janjaweed, an Arab-majority armed group from eastern Chad and the Sudanese region of Darfur.
01:42The Janjaweed were used by Bashir's government in 2003 to help the army put down a rebellion in Darfur.
01:50The conflict killed an estimated 300,000 people and displaced more than 2 million.
01:56With Bashir's support, the militia was formally organized under the RSF banner in 2013,
02:02its members going on to be used as border guards in particular.
02:06In 2017, a law legitimizing it as an independent security force was passed.
02:12The RSF is thought to have some 100,000 troops and is led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalow, also known as Hemeti.
02:20Despite previously being hired by Bashir to protect him from coup and assassination attempts,
02:25the RSF ultimately joined forces with the Sudanese army in 2019 to overthrow Bashir
02:30after months of demonstrations against his near three-decade rule.
02:34Months later, the military and pro-democracy movement established a transitional sovereign council.
02:41Hemeti was announced as its deputy head, while an army general called Abdel Fattah al-Burhan was appointed to lead it.
02:49The two men disagreed on the direction the country was going in and on whether to incorporate the RSF into the army.
02:55It's thought both generals wanted to maintain their positions of power.
02:59Following days of tension, shooting broke out between the two sides in April 2023,
03:05though it's disputed who fired the first shot.
03:08For more, we're joined now by Jan Pospisil, an associate professor at Coventry University Centre for Peace and Security.
03:19Jan, thanks so much for being with us on the programme.
03:22Human rights groups are saying that up to 2,000 unarmed civilians have been killed since Sunday.
03:29Are we going to look back, do you think, at this moment, the capture of the city as a turning point in the war in Sudan?
03:39It's certainly a low point.
03:40If it's a turning point, we'll have to be seen.
03:43What came to be seen over the last couple of hours is surely something nobody wants to see.
03:51And it's just, well, it's incredible what atrocities had happened.
03:56I've seen video footage of people just being randomly shot.
04:00I've spoken today with people who are in contact with people in the region, especially around Tawila,
04:09which is the next city from El Fasher, where refugees want to flee to.
04:14And apparently, our troops are basically hunting refugees, even down this road, and discriminately killing people around there.
04:25And Jan, what is at the heart of this conflict?
04:28And why has it not received the same kind of global attention as other wars have?
04:33We think, obviously, of Gaza and Ukraine.
04:38Well, these two questions are actually probably interlinked.
04:42Sudan is not that easy.
04:43We have, like in Gaza, Israel and Palestine, two clear sides.
04:47We have in Ukraine, also two countries, basically, at war with one another.
04:52But to explain what actually happens to Sudan, it's much more complex.
04:55And probably it's this complexity that makes it also more difficult to take sides.
05:02There is hardly any sympathy for any of these two sides,
05:07neither among most Sudanese nor internationally.
05:10So this makes any kind of solidarity in a way more difficult than in wars where you can more easily take sides.
05:21What is at the heart of the conflict is a failed transition process of the revolution against the Bashir government
05:28and the failure to basically bind the military back, bring it back to the barracks and to demilitarize a state that was under these decades of Bashir rule,
05:42basically a function of the military, with the military complex basically dominating even the economy of the country.
05:50And Jan, you've said in the past that this conflict exposes the limits of international mediation efforts when they're not also accompanied by political substance.
06:01So why the lack of meaningful political engagement then?
06:08Well, what we have to say in Sudan, it's actually a regional war.
06:12We have several of the regional powers actively involved here.
06:17First and foremost, of course, the United Arab Emirates that are heavily supporting, still on a daily basis, the rapid support forces.
06:25We have a substantial involvement of Egypt, more on the side of the Sudanese armed forces.
06:31We have Iran there, Russia, Turkey, to an extent Saudi Arabia.
06:36And we have the other side, we have neighboring countries, we have JAD, we have political involvement of other countries in the region.
06:42So there is, it's a very complex regional situation here.
06:46And at the heart of the problem of the international mediation efforts is, in essence, stopping the regional support for the two fighting forces,
06:58especially the support, the heavy support of the United Arab Emirates for the rapid support forces.
07:04As long as this support isn't cut, there is no interest at the moment to stop the fighting on both sides, basically.
07:10So what actually needs to be done then?
07:13And can these warring sides be brought together?
07:16Is there any hope at all of that?
07:18Or is a permanently divided Sudan inevitable at this point?
07:24Well, at the moment, especially now after the success of the RSF by taking El Fasher,
07:31which also frees up quite a lot of their troops here, up to 20,000 of their troops are freed up now by this victory
07:37and are able to move to other parts of the country to extend the war there.
07:42The interest of the RSF for a ceasefire has certainly declined.
07:47The international efforts are, in a way, taking, not taking off, really, but there is things happening.
07:52The Americans, the U.S., have established a so-called Quad Group, which brings the big regional players together.
08:00The Quad is, besides the U.S., the Emirates, the Egyptians and Saudi Arabia.
08:06And the Quad has released a statement.
08:09It is also like a lot of internal mediation that goes around.
08:13There's, at the moment, delegations from both sides, actually, in Washington, D.C.,
08:19speaking with the American Special Envoy Boulos on potential development starts a ceasefire.
08:28But the problem is, even if there is a short-lived humanitarian ceasefire,
08:32there haven't been any meaningful political negotiations going on for quite a while now.
08:38And the Quad as well, it wants this transitional civilian government, if it is eventually set up.
08:44They say that it needs to exclude both the Army and the RSF.
08:47But is either side going to agree to that?
08:50Is that feasible, do you think?
08:51Well, the problem is that this was basically the trigger point of the military coup in 21 and then later the war that we are seeing now.
09:01It was after the revolution of 2019 against Bashir, the clear aim of the civilian part of the transitional government to get the military back to the barracks.
09:14And in the end, they simply decided to not accept that because they are also, first of all, under political pressure,
09:21especially by Islamist groups from the north of the country, to defend their interests.
09:25And they have their own significant economic, political interests.
09:30They have ruled this country for long, and they are not willing just to go back like that.
09:35When I speak with people close to South, they are very clear.
09:38We are willing to stop the war.
09:40We are willing to accept the transitional government as long as there is no RSF in there,
09:44and as long as we are represented there to safeguard our interests, which is, in turn, a non-starter for others.
09:52So this is the heart of the conundrum, and this is the heart of the problem, how to get the military out of power.
09:59Yeah, because you say as well that civil society has been essentially sidelined during all of these mediation efforts.
10:05So how can you find, how can, you know, efforts to reach peace be successful if civil society isn't involved in the conversation?
10:13Well, we might see how the situation now plays out after the fall of Al-Fashir.
10:20What happened over the last year was a polarization in the conflict that both sides, in a way, like RSF,
10:28as well as the Sudanese armed forces, gained quite some ground in aligning with other smaller militia movements and political forces.
10:38So the alliances of both sides became bigger, and it looked like a very polarized situation where civil voices basically had no space anymore,
10:48even in political negotiations and also on the ground.
10:51But now with atrocities that have been seen.
10:54But on the other hand, also quite substantial support, militia support of SAF basically getting eradicated in this fall of Al-Fashir.
11:04And this might lead that to, to the blocks becoming a bit dismantled and probably a more flexible situation developing.
11:14And can lessons that have been learned during peacekeeping efforts elsewhere be applied to Sudan?
11:21Or is it just the situation there?
11:22Is it just too complex and too different to anything that we're seeing playing out anywhere else
11:28or to wars and conflicts that have previously been resolved?
11:31Well, the issue with peacekeeping at the moment is that it's not a very popular concept.
11:37When we see the recent developments over the last year, the U.S. administration has decided to basically devest from peacekeeping.
11:47We have seen huge reductions now in South Sudan and in the huge peacekeeping mission there.
11:52We have seen a lack of funding in Somalia.
11:58So even if there is, if there would be countries willing to go for peacekeeping,
12:04the question is who would pay for it and are the funds available?
12:07It looks unlikely.
12:09But even at the moment, we are far away from this situation.
12:12We have at the moment basically two scenarios that are possible.
12:17One is more the one going the Libya way with freezing the current front line,
12:22which is now more clear than it had been.
12:26And basically two separate administrations establishing themselves.
12:33Or, and I would think this is the more likely scenario, to be fair, with current fighting also increasing in Kordofan and other parts of the country,
12:42that this leads to renewed escalation and perhaps even a counterattack on Khartoum,
12:47which is currently back in the hands of the Sudanese armed forces.
12:50So this is not a situation where peacekeeping comes in, especially in the current climate where a Chapter 7 mandated peacekeeping mission,
13:00so a mission with hard means available, is very unlikely to be sanctioned by the Security Council.
13:07Jan, Paz, Bisil, thanks so much for being with us on the programme this evening.
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