LAST Saturday, the world woke up to the news of fighting across Khartoum and at other sites in Sudan. After weeks of tension between the army and the powerful paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the situation eventually boiled over, thereby placing the country on the undesirable list of hotspots across the African continent witnessing conflagrations.
The protagonists in the theater of war, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy cum RSF leader, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (a.k.a. Hemedti), were once allies after seizing power in a 2021 coup, but things have since fallen apart, and the center can no longer hold between the duo based on the simple but yet complex issue of the integration of the RSF into the military.
Expectedly, Qatar and many other countries have urged the two warring parties to end the fighting and respect ceasefire but the call is yet to be heeded as the battle rages on.
In situations like this, as in others before it, the humanitarian toll of the crisis keeps piling up, with the innocents bearing the brunt of the fallout of the “fight of the two elephants.”
According to Sudan’s Doctors Syndicate yesterday, the number of civilian casualties in the clashes has risen to 264 civilian deaths and 1,543 injuries. The group noted that there were many injuries and deaths that were not included in this declared number, pointing to the inability to reach hospitals due to the difficulty of movement and the security situation in the country.
Meanwhile, foreign governments have been scrambling to evacuate their nationals, diplomats, staff, and others trapped in the country as the battle rages on with no sign of a truce that had been declared over the Eid holidays.
While foreigners are leaving in droves, many Sudanese are also desperately seeking to flee the chaos to face an uncertain future, with many travelling on dangerous roads to seek safer spots or crossing the northern frontier into Egypt, especially.
The fight couldn’t have come at a worse time for a country where 65% of the 45 million population lives below the poverty line, according to a 2020 report by the United Nations (UN), and the purchasing power has been falling steadily over the past years.
The crisis has doubtlessly dealt a harsh blow to Sudan’s heady hopes for a democratic transition, and it risks plunging the country into a full-blown war with no end in sight soon.
While each of the parties might have justifiable or unjustifiable reasons to go for each other’s jugular, it is high time they allowed reasons to prevail for the sake of the country they both hold dear, and the citizens they both swore oaths to protect. The world cannot afford another war in Africa. It is time to stop this crisis now.
