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the fighting in Sudan is is a power
struggle it's a power struggle between
two men
one is
the general who has been head of the
Sudanese Armed Forces for the past few
years and he's also basically the leader
of the country he looks pretty much like
a guy he's trying to ensconce himself as
a dictator for Life the other guy is
Muhammad hamdan de gallo popularly known
as hermeti he calls himself a messy
everybody calls him hemeti he is the
leader of the rapid support forces which
is a vast and extremely powerful militia
group that is importantly outside the
command of the regular armed forces and
that's allowed hemeti to make himself
power broker in his own right he
controls a large chunk of the economy
especially the gold trade and he is
effectively all he was until this
fighting started burhan's effective
Deputy the effective vice president but
it's pretty clear his end goal is to be
the indisputed ruler of Sudan as well so
basically what you've got is a a fight
of a death it looks like between two men
who've basically decided there's only
room for one of them in cartoon in Sudan
so the rapid support forces grew out of
what was called the zhangjuid militia
and they were pro-government militias
mostly raised to suppress an uprising in
Darfur which turned into a huge and very
very bloody war in the 2000s hermeti was
one of the commanders of the zhangjuid
and to kind of understand how he got to
today you have to go back to 2013 when
the dictator of Sudan a guy called Omar
Bashir took these Gentry guys and
reformed them he made Mr hemeti a
lieutenant general and he made them
answerable directly to himself fast
forward to 2019.
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when you get a huge basically a massive
civilian Uprising pro-democracy protests
in cartoon hemeti did a deal with
al-bohan then the Army and the rsf
backed the protesters they arrested Mr
Bashir and a Revolution was proclaimed
you did get a transitional government
but both Mr hametti representing the rsf
Mr behan representing the Army were in
very influential positions in that and
then 2021 they do a full coup of their
own and basically put themselves in
charge of the country
so
it felt to lots of people like someday
this showdown was gonna come
back so the trigger for conflict it's a
little bit complicated the immediate
trigger was this discussion of something
that diplomats call security sector
reform basically security sector
reformers how do you get the Army out of
politics and how do you defang the rsf
now part of this is that the rsf should
be folded into the regular Armed Forces
irregular Armed Forces become led by a
civilian government like in any other
country
General albertan wanted that done
quickly he wanted them folded into the
regular armed forces in two years hermet
he said no no no no no no no no it's
very big job 10-year timetable and as
this dispute escalated you began to see
troops being moved around Khartoum the
Army blamed the RSA for massing troops
near an air base near Khartoum and then
bang overnight on Friday Saturday
morning the fighting began
having conversations with people in
Khartoum over the phone there's no way
to downplay the the horror of of what is
happening the reports are consistent as
well if you go out in the streets you'll
quite like if you get shot no one seems
to care whether they're shooting at
civilian the rapid support forces in
particular have begun taking over
buildings guys coming to houses pointing
machine guns at them the owners the
occupiers the caretakers a lot of
reports actually of of rape and sexual
violence so sheer lawlessness in the
streets of cartoon
and then you've got a huge amount of of
international diplomacy going on you've
got different states competing for
influence in Sudan and of course that's
true it's Rich it's got a lot of
resources it's in a really important
part of Africa and so Sudan is a great
prize some people have talked a lot
about Russia and Wagner hermetis rsf
have done business with Wagner he is
known to have become wealthy from gold
mining his forces provide security for a
gold mine run by Wagner in Sudan but
look he's he's not alone and Mr Bohan
has also visited Moscow and has also
done deals with the Russians so I would
be wary of drawing a conclusion that one
side is backed perhaps by Russia and and
the other side is backed by the West I
think actually if you look at the
behavior of all the outside players here
they tend to hedge their bets they don't
want to back the losing horse and it's
not entirely clear which the losing
horse is going to be at
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