Sudanese to world: Violence in Khartoum shows strongmen can’t be trusted

April 18, 2023

Amman, Jordan- Five days of infighting between rival generals that has killed scores of civilians, seen airstrikes on residential neighborhoods in Khartoum, and left millions trapped without electricity and water, is threatening to unravel Sudan’s cohesion – a scenario that Sudanese activists have warned the international community of for years.

A 24-hour humanitarian cease-fire brokered by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the United Nations, African Union, and the East African Intergovernmental Authority on Development bloc had been set to go into effect Tuesday evening after three previous cease-fires failed to hold. But renewed fighting in the Sudanese capital appeared to be threatening the latest effort.

Civil society groups, activists, and analysts used fleeting internet and phone connectivity to call for an end to the violence. And, amid fighting that killed more than 180 civilians – including three U.N. World Food Program workers – and hit a U.S. diplomatic convoy bearing American flags, to send a message: We told you so.

We told the international community over and over you cannot trust a military dictatorship and militias,” says Mohamed, a member of the Popular Resistance Committees, a grassroots collection of independent pro-democracy activists.

“They have always been willing to burn the country down to enrich themselves and gain more power,” he says via messaging app from Khartoum. “Now they are doing it on a larger scale.”

Adds Kholood Khair, political analyst and founding director of Confluence Advisory, a think tank in Khartoum: “There is a lot of serious reflection required from the international community on how they contributed to where we are today and how they ignored the voices of so many people who are now facing the consequences of their choices.”

udanese activists say the generals’ infighting has exposed the fallacy of the military strongman trope they say Western governments fell for by involving the army and militias in Sudan’s post-revolution political transition.

With the urban warfare threatening to tip Sudan into civil war, civil society groups say the conflict is proof that warlords and generals cannot be turned into statesmen and that democracy and civilian governance with accountability – no matter how messy – is the only path out from the bloodshed.

“The framing of the generals as would-be-reformers who could be taken seriously as goodwill actors shows how ridiculous this entire proposition was,” says Ms. Khair.

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