Sudan's plight has many facets ✍️ Rashan O'Shea
The seriousness of the problem is that the impasse is not only military, but it is multiple and has different names. It is also international, political, military and internal, linked to the composition of Sudanese society, and above all. a moral impasse.
The April 15 war is nothing but a major shift between two closely spaced moments that reveals the abundant possibilities of political fluctuations, and that the things that actually lie in the stagnant pool called politics are not a choice between two colors, black and white, but rather, in most cases, they are shades of colors, including the gray area.
Politically… and because the rifle does not know the colors of gray, the National Army fought with its back bare, without a political incubator, without a political cover and without a mobilizing speech. All this is the product of the positions of the government. political forces based on pragmatism, and which are of course incompatible with the position of the army announced by the president. Al-Burhan, in a famous speech during the crisis of the “framework”, said: “The army stands at the same distance from all political forces.
Everyone is trying to rise to power on the back of the armed forces. When they realized that the army and its leaders would not ally themselves with a political party but only with the nation, they disbanded, and recent memory preserves the repeated trips between Cairo and Port Sudan, and the enthusiasm of the conferences organized in recent months.
On the military front… there are still continuous obstacles that prevent the Sudanese army from assuming its role in restoring stability in the country, after the army was subjected to the largest operation of genocide and destruction of its structures, camps, vehicles, bases and aircraft for more than a year of war, it is now living under the yoke of a psychological war, which is trying. It has created a gap between its leaders and the people, claiming that the leaders were defeated militarily and that the army was fleeing the confrontation on the ground.
The truth is that the Sudanese army has never fought before inside cities and among citizens. In addition to the daily material exhaustion due to the international blockade and the opening of borders with conspiratorial neighbors, it has paid the price of having fanned the flames in Sudan in public.
At the international level, an attempt was made to overthrow the state by using the West's destructive political power under the pretext of protecting civilians and turning a blind eye to an immoral war, in which all international prohibitions were used, which turned Sudan into a common land for fugitives, bandits and terrorists who loot, rape and kill civilians. The aim was to overthrow the state and sow chaos.
The crisis, with all its internal and external complexities, and the clash between politicians, tasked with providing political cover and mobilizing a discourse to support the national army in an existential war whose results can be disastrous, including the fact that they will not find a country for which they can fight.
In addition, some politicians have conspired with their superiors abroad to thwart the army's efforts to prevent the state from falling into the hands of foreign mercenary militias, and have even tried to kill it by contributing to psychological warfare campaigns depicting soldiers and officers fleeing the battlefield, so that the role of the army would diminish with the intention of dismantling it, which is what some major countries intervening in Sudanese affairs are seeking.
Internally, the complexities of Sudanese society were another, but secondary, reason for the continuation of the war at this pace, because the people did not find a respectable politician to represent them as an inspiring leader for the masses, even for the men of civil society. The administration resorted to conspiracy and paid the price.
The most important step that must precede any political dialogue on power sharing is to seek to evacuate Sudan from militias, mercenaries and foreign forces, otherwise all efforts at a political settlement will fail.
Neighboring countries sponsoring political settlement projects should be aware that mercenaries also pose a danger to their neighbors, and some believe that even going out with their weapons is seen as another regional danger, especially in light of the presence of conflicts in the region.
The issue of militias and mercenaries is not at all a purely Sudanese issue, and whoever thinks that their exit depends on a purely Sudanese will is mistaken, because the presence of mercenaries is the result of external interference and a proxy war in Sudan, and therefore, any request to eliminate these groups must go through the door of the big countries interfering in Sudanese affairs. The one who brought the devil is the one who will turn it away.
My love and respect
