Peace in Sudan and the incapacity of the elites and the emerging Quartet..! – The face of truth – ✍️ Ibrahim Shaqlawi
Since the outbreak of war in Sudan on April 15, 2023 between the armed forces and the rapid support militia, the internal, regional and international political scene has opened up to intertwined complexities. This ranges from the ambiguity of roles to the erosion of national depth and the lack of political efforts to have a global reference on which we can rely.
At the heart of this chaos, vague conceptions of peace are reformulated and initiatives are put forward, which lack depth and balance, while the Sudanese are asked to make existential concessions without even having the right to determine the criteria for a solution, nor to define who is the aggressor and who is the victim. These interactions clearly reveal the inability of Sudanese political elites to offer real solutions to the country’s crisis.
In this context, the International Quartet – made up of the United States, Britain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and, recently, Egypt – has emerged as one of the most prominent manifestations of international confusion over Sudan. This formula appeared after the fall of Omar al-Bashir’s regime in 2019, without clear legal reference. Neither from the United Nations, nor from the African Union or IGAD.
This is a political pressure group akin to an alliance formed in response to common interests between these countries. It therefore lacks the elements of fair mediation or an effective role in resolving the Sudanese crisis.
The Quartet’s latest statement, issued on September 12, 2024, was clearly biased when it called for “preventing the return of Islamists” and considered them the main drivers of the war, without mentioning the direct responsibility of the militias who started the war, looted banks, committed massacres and demolished state institutions.
This crude bias again poses a fundamental question: how can a party involved in supporting militias – as in the case of the United Arab Emirates – be presented as a peace broker? Can the Quartet be considered a neutral umbrella for a political solution in a country ravaged by regional and international interference?
It is clear that the latest statement represented an unofficial declaration aimed at restructuring the Sudanese scene away from popular will and national sovereignty.
The discourse began to shift towards imposing a preconceived international notion about the nature of the post-war Sudanese state. This is the same approach followed by this quartet and which was one of the reasons why the country descended into war.
This perception continues to exclude Islamists as an “ideological threat” and overlooks armed militias who have committed documented violations simply because they adopted a false “modernist” narrative.
The official response from the Sudanese government was firm and clear, when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that national sovereignty is a red line and that any international initiative must go through state institutions. This was not a question of defending a particular political trend, but rather a founding principle: true peace cannot be produced by mediators who do not recognize the existence of the State itself or who seek to shape its future outside of its people, its army and its national institutions.
On the other hand, the parallel government supported by the Rapid Support Militia welcomed the Quartet declaration and saw it as an opportunity to exclude its political opponents, in perfect harmony with the international discourse, seeking to obtain external legitimacy that would compensate for its lack of internal legitimacy. This position revealed that the war in Sudan is no longer just an internal conflict, but has transformed into an arena of regional conflict in which militias are used as tools to achieve political gains for the benefit of regional bosses.
Amid this fragmentation, Sudanese political elites – from various directions – seem incapable of producing an overarching national discourse or even minimal coordination. Some of them have engaged in meaningless dialogues, such as the “Mediation Workshop”, organized outside the national context, and which attempts to reach agreements with popularly rejected parties, while others are still prisoners of old ideological calculations and zero-sum discourses.
The elites – as usual – are lagging behind the popular struggle and crossing foreign agendas, without presenting a clear vision to end the war or build real peace.
Today’s ground reality paints a clearer equation: the Sudanese army, despite challenges, has held firm, advanced and repositioned in large areas of the west of the country. If it continues its military operations in Kordofan and Darfur, the militia will lose its raison d’être and transform into a diaspora without strategic influence. However, any delay in military resolution or any incitement of the army into unequal negotiations before achieving its objectives can lead to disastrous results: the first is the legitimization of the militia and the second is the division of Sudan.
We know – obviously – that the Sudanese do not refuse to negotiate, as all major wars end with an agreement, but they refuse to negotiate under the pressure of international blackmail. Negotiations should not be conducted with those who arm and finance the militias before they admit responsibility and put an immediate end to it. The UAE is not a mediator, but rather an original part of the war, and the Quartet, unless it reconsiders its composition and positions, will remain a part of the crisis and not a means of solution.
The real solution to the Sudanese crisis does not lie in the use of external mediations that impose their agenda to the detriment of national sovereignty, but rather in the capacity of Sudanese elites to regain consciousness, unify their ranks and build a unified national vision that preserves the independence of decision-making and safeguards the future of Sudan.
May you always be well.
