The Character and Nature of This War

The Character and Nature of This War

The Character and Nature of This War

Sikka: Mamoun Eljak 

Translated by: Salah Mohamed Khair 

It is known that each armed conflict will generate as it develops structural and political dynamics that may become more effective than the primary factors that led to the conflict1. Immediately after their outbreak, wars gain their own logic and dynamics of self-development and attraction of additional internal and external parties. This raises the maximum human cost paid by the innocent citizen from the lives and bleeding blood; dismembered bodies and destructed houses; homelessness and humiliation; psychological fractures; and deep mental pains, under fear and bitterness of losing everything in a moment.2 In the April 15 War, the "competition over power, coupled with the structural imbalance of the multiplicity of armies and the absence of unity of command are certainly the direct factor the outbreak and continuation of war."3   According to a report in The Economist, "Sudan, like many fragile countries, can be understood as a political marketplace where the main currency is violence… A former Western diplomat commented that the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces were fraudulent parties attempting to corner the market."4

Professor Abdullah Ali Ibrahim refuses to call what has been happening since April 15 a war, giving arguments rejecting this characterization and suggesting a name that is more rightly and suited to what is happening now. He writes: 

"We are describing what we have been under since April 2023 as a war and we did not think if it had a name considered its characteristics. The dictionary has not mentioned the number of conflicts so that we can confine ourselves to its terminology. The scourge upon us is a highway robbery, not a war. Has there ever been such dispossession of a city before, so we can describe what happened to Khartoum?"5 This process of renaming and positioning is not a linguistic opulence, but it is a process through which the modalities to deal with this event can be found. In this context, there is no other process than renaming and positioning that can get the truth. Ibrahim goes on to write: 

"The war is what we have experienced and tasted, and it will become increasingly bitter if we do not realize its nature and its political and social significances to make it easier for a world that did not absorb our experience in the doctrine of its war and peace. Our statement of what is going on in the Sudan is a war, based on its universal term, has hidden from us the criminal energy behind this term. Political scientists agree that such criminality is a feature of the contemporary politics in the third world countries where the divide between crimes and politics nearly goes away."6 These crimes "amounting to ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and systematic gang rape."7 

Muatasim Al-Agraa confirms the criminal nature of the Rapid Support Forces, wondering: "Has the war, even partially, turned into aggression against the Sudanese citizen, his/her history, existence, culture and the holiness of his/her body and house?"8 This is unsurprising "however, from the experiences of conflicts, that the objectives of any conflict are transformed from the attempt of a party to win the conflict to a transformation of the conflict itself to an objective leading to the destruction of the social, cultural and political structures."9 Hashem Merghani attributes the scale of criminality and havoc, accumulated by this war, to the scorched-earth policy by which this war is being conducted, since the aspirations of the two parties lie in the subsoil, not the soil. Another shrewdest reason of the scorched-earth policy is that the two parties to this war, the Salvation Revolution Group and the Janjaweed Militia, have not contributed to the formation of the memory of this country. Both of the parties have not inscribed a luminous letter in the country's lines, have not constructed architecture, have not played a melody, and have not composed a line of verse. Both of them were completely absent from the memory of the National Records Office and the Sudan Museum and the centers of the Sudanese culture records, they were attempting to erase through looting and torching. How not to torch them as they contain no mention to the two parties except in the part of the shame and evils? This is a narrow path that leads out of history, not into it. This record of crimes will remain engraved in the memory of people who never forget the abuse. The people can recall, after two hundred years of time, the Defterdar Campaign in Sudan in 1822 and the atrocities of Khalifa Abdullah when he took power in the Sudan, from 1885 to 1899.10

Although the disputed space is located within the city, this war "is not a city war in the full sense. In the city war, the rebels employ the space of the city to get stronger. The first condition of the city's war is the sympathy of the residents of the city with the rebels and the knowledge of the city's features for smooth movement. The main tactic of the city's war is: "Hit and run to your incubators of the city's residents." These conditions were not met by the Rapid Support Forces in their war. It is not unclear that the Rapid Support Forces is in a bitter rivalry with the city. In the first days of the December Revolution, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo said that he would satisfy the residents of the city, but the city got no satisfaction from him. The action that the residents of the city experienced at the hands of Dagalo's forces was the brutal crackdown of the sit-in, the climax of December Revolution, in front of the Military Headquarters in June 3, 2019. The Rapid Support Forces had reached a point of cruelty that had made them pursue the young people on the roads to mow their hairs. Unlike the city's war, the Rapid Support Forces conducted their war not with a "hit-and-run" tactic but from headquarters known for heavy machinery that not alleged to be agile and smooth. When the Sudanese Armed Forces pounded these headquarters with air strikes, the Rapid Support Forces were displaced among the neighborhoods not to shelter at sympathetic supporters' houses, but to occupy these houses and make their inhabitants human shields. Saying that what is happening in Khartoum is the city's war is not without exaggeration."11 

According to Alex de Waal, the wars in the Sudan follow a horrific and familiar pattern. Day by day, the fate that this war may become is evident. This war begins with fierce confrontations, with each party to it pledging a swift and decisive victory. But this victory is never achieved. Based on what has come clear before, it is difficult to reach and maintain a ceasefire. Both parties do not wish a ceasefire if it is temporary because they believe that they gain the upper hand. As the fighting continues, the material and organizational resources required for fighting are exhausted. Therefore, each party recruits agents from internal militia and seeks assistance from abroad. As fighting expands, its intensity is expected to ease, therefore, coordination between control units collapses. If the conflict is prolonged, the political conflict may turn into an inter-ethnic war, targeting civilians because of their identities. During this spiral of decline, famine may become a weapon and force millions to flee12. The longer the war lasts, the longer the chance of tribal, ethic and regional biases increases. Then the fire of civil wars will be unabated13. No wonder we see the people become divided over themselves because of the national jealousy or patriotism that views the country's military as a haven at the time of adversities and blights, or the tribalism that considers the defeat has wiped out the force of the 'cattlemen' who were, until the moment of the last confrontation, members of the country's reserve forces in all their campaigns, which sought to undermine the civil state's dream, especially those attempts by the margin in the south and west of the country.  Instead of being polarized tools and reactors in their laboratory - that is to say each group sides with one of the parties – we must form a broad front that serves as the barrier to the two parties' progression in war or return to power under any other name. Furthermore, the two parties must be held accountable for the material damage caused, including destruction of the capital's infrastructure and the moral damage whose effects emerged as fractures in the national conscience of the country.14 

Professor Abdullah Ali Ibrahim disagrees with those who warn of the possibility of civil war and asserts that what we are now experiencing the civil war itself. He writes:

"One does not know about the definition which is based on by those who think that the war in the Sudan is not a civil war, as long as this war is taking place between two competing and warring forces. The civil war, by definition, is the clash of these two rival forces. It is a war in which two well organized and huge armies clash. It is a prolonged war in which violence is maximized. In another definition, it is a fierce clash between the State and one or more armed factions in the midst of the country. These two definitions of the civil war apply to the Sudan's war. However, the weaponry of the Rapid Support Forces has been contributed to, or turned a blind to it by the State for a purpose for ulterior motives. It is surprising that the concept of the civil war is out of our depth in a country that has rarely lived without such a war, whether it is the war of the southern nationalists, which has been persistent since 1956, or the war of the armed movements in Darfur. I have realized the fear of some people that this ongoing war, which is indisputably a civil war, will become a war between civil groups of ethnicities and tribes of what is known as "inter-communal war." It is a war that has erupted on racial or ethnic grounds, in which the parties target their victims on the basis of belonging to the group or enemy. The closest of our wars to this sense is the ongoing war in the city of Al-Genaina. News reporters associate this war with the war in Khartoum on the basis of the principle of result and cause, but the war of Al-Genaina is another war. This war dates back to 1994 as a clash between the farmers of the Africans of the Masalit people and the Arabs of Darfur Desert and Chad in the conditions of desertification and drought of the Sahel. The Bedouin Arabs crowded the Masalit and assaulted their resources. The conflict worsened in 1994, the year when the state of the Salvation Revolution enacted legislation that seized hakoras (private agricultural lands) of the Masalit for the Bedouin as a reward for military and political services they provided to the regime. Such legislation violated the customs of the hakora, which is the historic land of certain group who has the right to control it. No one has the right to enter the land except with the consent of this group. The one who control the hakora remains an affiliate to the owner of the land, and does not aspire to occupy any political position, such as the Nazir (the person who at the top of the native administration hierarchy) and even subject to royalty for his use of this land."15 

According to Qusai Hamrour, dealing with this war as the height of the war is "a strategic mistake" and failure to read the reality due to the astonishment with the new war. This astonishment stems from the fact that this war started from inside the capital and directly influenced the conditions of those who have lived over the past decades hearing that there are civil wars in the country, but they have not felt the effect of these wars. These are the same people who were for a long time got closer to the positions of power and wealth, about which everyone fights. The Sudan is in a state of consonant wars since its independence, which indicates that there are unresolved fundamental and structural problems.16 


Footnotes

  1. Brief Thoughts on the Outcomes of the War Progression in the Sudan, Bakri Al-Jack, Al-Taghyeer   Newspaper, May 29, 2023.

  2. The Media Shadow Brigades and the Exaggerations of Treason and Bidding, Rasha Awad, Al-Taghyeer   Newspaper, May 4, 2023.

  3. The War in the Sudan May expand and Prolong, Bakri Al-Jack, Al-Taghyeer   Newspaper, August 16, 2023.

  4. What Is the West Gets Wrong about Peacemaking in the Sudan, The Economist, May 11, 2023.

  5. Is our Scourge A War or Highway Robbery? Abdullah Ali Ibrahim, Independent Arabic Newspaper, September 3, 2023. 

  6. ibid

  7. On the So-called the Political Program of the Criminal Militia, Mohamed Jalal Hashem, Madameek, August 28, 2023.

  8. False Questions Resulted in Wrong Answers and Impossible Neutrality Inside the War Train that Went Off, Muatasim Al-Agraa, Madameek, August 31, 2

  9. The War in the Sudan May expand and Prolong, Bakri Al-Jack, Al-Taghyeer   Newspaper, August 16, 2023.

  10. The Most Barbarous War, Why? Dr. Hashem Merghani, Madameek, May 9, 2023.

  11.  The War of Khartoum and the Untrue Speech about it, Abdullah Ali Ibrahim, Al-Taghyeer Newspaper, May 22, 2023.

  12. Sudan’s Descent into Chaos: What Washington and Its Arab Partners Must Do to Stop the Shootout, Alex de Waal, Foreign Affairs, April 27, 2023.

  13. Random Discourses and the Scourge of Manipulating the National Feeling, Dr. Al-Waleed Adam Madibo, Al-Taghyeer   Newspaper, May 30, 2023.

  14. What is the Future of the Pastoral Belt under Current Military and Political Polarization, Dr. Al-Waleed Adam Madibo, Al-Taghyeer   Newspaper, May 22, 2023.

  15.   The War of Khartoum and the Untrue Speech about it, Abdullah Ali Ibrahim, Al-Taghyeer Newspaper, May 22, 2023.

  16. Considering this War the Height of War is a Strategic Mistake, Qusai Hamrour, Madameek, September 11, 2023.

The Character and Nature of This War | SIKKA