On April 15, several columns of smoke stained the sky of Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, black. The fratricidal war had just broken out between Generals AbdelFattah Al Burhan, head of the Sudanese army, and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, alias “Hemedtiâ€, leader of the Rapid Support Forces (FAR) paramilitary group.
Collaborators at the end of 2021 to carry out a coup and derail the civil transition government that had been born after the fall of the dictator Al Bashir, both soldiers buried their interested friendship to get involved in a struggle for power.
Although the conflict in the country of the desert elephants (in Arabic, “Al Khartoum” literally means elephant’s trunk) has its roots in recent turbulent years of protests and dictatorship and in a history fraught with wars and coups, various International actors remain attentive to the future of the African country and seek to influence the outcome of the current crisis.
The interest was not born today and the echo of the bombs: the popular revolution that in 2019 overthrew the dictator Omar Al Bashir, further multiplied the world’s gaze towards the third largest country in Africa, a nation with enormous agricultural potential and great mineral wealth and a geostrategic candy located between the Nile and the Red Sea.
These are the main international actors playing a fundamental role in the Sudan crisis
EGYPT
Egypt watches with concern the violent decline of its neighbor to the south. Although in recent years he has even tried to mediate and organize political initiatives to ease the relationship between Generals Hemedti and Burhan, the preference of the Egyptian president, AbdelFattah El Sisi, for a formal military man like Burhan makes him a less than neutral actor.
The sympathy reaches the personal terrain: Burhan and Al Sisi studied at the same military academy.
The Egyptian role in the war goes beyond dispatches. On April 12, three days before the outbreak of the battle for Khartoum, Hemedti’s FAR soldiers surrounded a military base more than 300 kilometers north of the capital where several Egyptian soldiers and a dozen aircraft were camped.
The arrest of almost thirty Egyptian soldiers led to the diplomatic intervention of regional and Western forces, concerned about a possible extension of the conflict to the north.
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES and SAUDI ARABIA
Although regional African nations such as South Sudan, Djibouti or Kenya have offered to mediate in the Sudanese conflict, two non-African countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are two of the most influential international actors in Sudan.
While previously supporting Bashir, when the Sudanese satrap fell in 2019, both countries scrambled to extend a hand (and wallet) to the civil transition council to seize the opportunity to increase their influence in the area.
Both are seen as closer to Hemedti, who sent his experienced mercenaries to Yemen to defend the interests of the Emirates.
To the enormous benefits that Hemedti obtained from renting his men in the war on the other side of the Red Sea are added the businesses, via Dubai, that the FAR general carries out thanks to the gold mines under his control in Darfur.
According to Global Witness, the United Arab Emirates is also a key supplier of weapons to the FAR camp, which experts say is a better armed and trained force than Sudanese army troops.
Despite the fact that the Emirates has not publicly supported either side, its interest in the fertile lands along the Nile is not a secret, and for this reason it is not surprising that it is included in the diplomatic group known as Quad, along with the United States. , the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia, which maintain a more neutral position and welcome the democratic drift of Sudan.
RUSSIA
The advance in Africa of the Wagner mercenary group, with ties to Moscow, has also made itself felt in Sudan. Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of Wagner and a friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, even offered to mediate between the rival generals, although Washington accused him of offering arms to both sides.
“The United Nations and many others want the blood of the Sudanese,” Prigozhin accused in a statement.
For Russia, interested in the construction of a military base and naval access to the Red Sea, there is nothing to object to Wagner’s good relations with both sides of the conflict.
The collaboration of Russian experts with the intelligence service of the Sudanese army is joined by the alliance of Wagner mercenaries in Darfur (very present in the neighboring Central African Republic) with Hemedti, to whom they provide weapons and military collaboration in exchange for mining concessions.
CHINA
Despite China’s enormous economic and geostrategic interests in Sudan (before the war there were more than 700 Chinese citizens working on Sudanese soil), the Asian giant has adopted a neutral position in the conflict, as it usually does in similar situations in the continent.
Shortly after the first bombs went off, the Chinese foreign minister called on both sides to stop the violence as soon as possible and work together for a process of political transition.
Although Sino-Sudanese bilateral relations date back to the middle of the last century, they have increased in the last decade thanks to the export of Sudanese oil. For Beijing, which signed agreements with Al Bashir and kept them when he fell, it is a matter of business.
EUROPE AND USA
The commitment to support the democratic transition in Sudan by Western forces has now become a race against time to avoid a disintegration of Sudan that would be fatal in a region in turmoil and dotted with tottering nations such as South Sudan, Eritrea, the Central African Republic , Libya or Chad.
From Washington, pressure is being placed on Egypt, the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia to influence their Sudanese allies to stop the spiral of violence before it is too late.
From Russia and China, part of the conflict is blamed on Western insistence on a rapid civil transition and the idea of ​​reforming the security forces and integrating the FAR forces into the army, which caused much of the tension between Hemedti and Burhan. .
Justin Lynch, an analyst and co-author of the book Sudan’s Unfinished Democracy pointed in that direction this week. “The generals publicly committed to democracy and reform (of the security forces) but it seems that the only ones who believed them were the officials of the United States and the United Nations.”
Jeffrey Feltman, a former US envoy to the region, explained this week in the Washington Post how, just five hours after organizing an apparently successful dialogue between Hemedti, Burhan and the then leader of the transition council, Hamdok, both soldiers perpetrated a coup and arrested the leader of the transition. “History repeats itself over and over again: both leaders make commitments only to immediately break them,” he wrote.
Michelle Gavin, an expert on the region at the think tank Council on International Relations, reflected the general feeling about Sudan: there are too many competing interests to let the African giant fall.
“While the collapse of the state in Sudan is not desirable for any of the many external actors with interests at stake, and the United Nations, the Arab League and the African Union have urged the warring parties to stop the conflict, both the Burhan’s army like the FAR have external supporters who want to see their preferred side succeed.”
