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Sudan’s last civilian prime minister warned that the country’s brutal civil war risks turning it into “fertile ground” for the spread of regional terrorism at a time when several African countries are struggling with an onslaught of jihadist violence.
Some 150,000 people have been killed and 10mn pushed out of their homes since military president General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy and paramilitary leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti, went to war last year. About half of Sudan’s population of 49mn is now on the verge of famine.
Abdalla Hamdok, prime minister between 2019 and 2022 who now leads the Taqaddum — Progress — coalition of democratic forces, said Sudan’s descent into violence risks bolstering jihadis across the region.
“I really feel quite frightened about this,” he told the Financial Times. “With Sudan bordering seven countries, it will become fertile ground for terrorism in a region that is very fragile.”
The Sahel, the semi-arid strip of land below the Sahara that is home to some 400mn people, has become a haven for jihadis. They range from Boko Haram in Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad to Isis, which is most active in the border area between Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.
Hamdok fears the descent into violence in Sudan, which hosted Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, could also connect groups allied to al-Qaeda in the Sahel to jihadis such as Somalia’s al-Shabaab in the Horn of Africa, which is linked to Yemeni Houthis.
Analysts and officials in neighbouring countries have echoed Hamdok’s concerns. The country was long on the US’s list of state sponsors of terrorism before it was removed under Hamdok in 2020.
Sudan’s war has already attracted a complex web of external actors. The United Arab Emirates is accused of backing Hemeti, claims Abu Dhabi denies, while Iran and Russia support Burhan. Mercenaries from Chad and pilots from Ukraine have also entered the fray.
Burhan’s army this week launched a major assault to retake the capital city, Khartoum, from Hemeti’s Rapid Support Forces, which captured most of it last year.
Negotiations for a ceasefire to stop the fighting began in Geneva last month, led by the US and brokered by a range of countries — including Egypt, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia and the UAE — but without direct contact between warring parties.
Hamdok and members of Taqaddum criticised the process, saying that while it could help “put more pressure” on the warring parties there could not be a “sustainable” solution without including civilian politicians.
“There is a tendency to try to get a quick fix, to just bring in the belligerents. The fact is that all attempts have failed,” said Khaled Omar Youssef, a senior member of the Sudanese Congress party, which is part of Taqaddum, referring to previous unsuccessful talks in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
A western official involved said the focus of the Geneva negotiation was “to open up humanitarian access and ensure protection of civilians as well as trying to get ceasefires”. The official said “efforts to transition to the civilian government is outside of the realm” of the current talks.
A critical challenge for civilians is to unite Sudan’s array of political forces amid differences among groups who have competing views on how its political future should unfold. Many Sudanese see Taqaddum as aligned with Hemeti, something Hamdok labels as “propaganda” spread by the army.
Among other things, there is a sharp divide between those pressing for a purely civilian government and those who advocate power-sharing with the military. Sudan has suffered some 17 coups and a string of civil wars — including one that led to the creation of South Sudan — since independence from Britain and Egypt in 1956.
Hamdok took charge in 2019 following the ousting of longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir in a putative transition government backed by Burhan and Hemeti. He was ousted in a coup in 2021 before being briefly reinstated.
“The only formula that would keep this country together is a government led by civilians,” said Hamdok. “The military has messed up the country for over 50 years. They cannot be entrusted with the future of the country.”
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