Violence in Sudan is partly our fault

Khartoum has been wracked with violence for nearly a week. At least 413 people have been killed and millions trapped without food, water or electricity, while a former Janjaweed militia — the Rapid Support Forces led by Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, known as Hemeti — battles the army for control of Sudan’s capital. After violence erupted last Saturday, many pointed to the fact that Sudan is still merely four fitful years into building a civilian-led government after decades of military rule. General Hamdan and Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who heads the Sudanese Army, had joined forces to remove President Omar Hassan al-Bashir from office in 2019 following a pro-democracy popular uprising, and continued their alliance as they jointly led a military coup in late 2021, removing the (at least nominally) civilian-led transitional government.

Tensions that had been on the rise for months between the two military leaders finally exploded against the pressure of a looming deadline to hand power back to a civilian government. Analysts have noted that the movements that helped overthrow al-Bashir’s dictatorial regime in 2019 were too weak and too disorganized to compete with the armed militias. Others have pointed to a broader “global power struggle” that has reportedly led foreign actors such as Russia, the Gulf States, Egypt and even the Wagner Group to support or build ties with either Hamdan or al-Burhan, who are currently fighting for control of Sudan. When conflict did not end in Sudan after the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which marked the end of two decades of civil conflict, the international community fell into a familiar pattern of never-ending peace negotiations, rotating through different facilitators, in which the armed belligerents were brought to international locations to negotiate for concessions that might lead to an end to the violence.

Yet the problem is that conflict resolution focused on signing peace agreements that split power between armed groups — no matter how many provisions on political reforms are added — rarely leads to sustainable peace. It often doesn’t even lead to short-term peace. The effects of such misbegotten efforts, in the wreckage in Khartoum, are plain to see.

Armed groups and dictatorial regimes know that as long as they are participating in a peace process, international pressures will eventually — often quickly — ebb. If they are pressed into signing an agreement, there are typically very few effective mechanisms to hold them to it. What’s more, the time put into these peace processes — which in Sudan’s case amounted to decades — is spent by the armed groups amassing political and military power.

I saw this happen time and again in both Sudan and South Sudan, where certain leaders of armed groups with whom I dealt were more interested in watching televised soccer matches by the hotel pool and scheduling meetings for their own gain rather than discussing the violence affecting their people. All the while, international interveners — in this case the African Union and UN with the support of the US, EU and others — legitimize these armed groups as the only valid power brokers or voices that need to be heard, while asking Sudanese citizens to quietly wait their turn. A turn that often never comes.

The international community should not stop trying to end violent conflicts, but future efforts must consider who matters for peace and who does not. The insidious nature of contemporary international conflict resolution is that, in its single-minded drive to get armed groups to put down their guns, those fighting for the real and lasting reforms necessary for peace too often get cast aside.

Burns is a former adviser to the U.S. special envoy for Sudan The New York Times