War in Sudan | No end to the war in sight

The capital Khartoum and the airport are now back under the control of the Sudanese army. Photo: AFP/Ebrahim Hamid There is no lack of peace mediation, but there is a lack of desire for peace. "The war must end," said the UN Secretary General's personal envoy for Sudan, Pekka Haavisto, at the start of the UN conference on Sudan in the middle of this week. It ended inconclusively, like the five previous UN conferences.

Jan van Aken, member of the Bundestag for the Left, is currently taking a look at the status of peace efforts on site. He describes his impressions at a digital press conference from Port Sudan on Friday. "The war in Sudan has caused one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world." The figures from the UN refugee agency prove this: around 14 million people have been forced to flee since the fighting broke out in April 2023. “Now there is even a threat of acute famine,” reports van Aken. "Many experts say it could be as bad as the one in Ethiopia in the mid-1980s, which gave rise to the famous Live Aid concert."

The war between two generals has been raging in Sudan since April 15, 2023 and has long since become internationalized, according to van Aken. General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan commands the Sudanese Army (SAF), opponent Mohammad Hamdan Daglo, known as Hemeti, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Al-Burhan and Hemeti shared power until April 15, 2023, when they were divided by the dispute over the transitional agreement that provided for the integration of the paramilitary RSF into the army: the starting point of the war, which is not a civil war because military and paramilitary troops fight each other, while citizens stand between the fronts and desperately try to survive.

»It's currently quiet up here in Port Sudan and in the region around the capital Khartoum, it's all under the control of the SAF. The RSF controls parts of Darfur and the south and the fighting there is currently escalating," says van Aken, describing the situation.

Both warring parties have powerful supporters behind them: the SAF receives weapons primarily from Saudi Arabia, while the RSF is supplied primarily by the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The federal government neither recognizes the SAF as the legitimate, democratic government of Sudan nor the RSF as a legitimate movement, which van Aken welcomes. "During our discussions, we heard several times that Germany, which has an extremely positive image here, should play the role of a neutral mediator," says van Aken. The Bundestag member does not ignore the fact that the good image also comes from the fact that the Federal Republic of Germany invested a lot in Sudan in competition with the GDR after independence in 1955, but also supplied a lot of weapons.

The dimension of the war in Sudan goes far beyond the country. »We are in the middle of a war in which a lot of money and a lot of influence are at stake, influence in the Gulf and the Red Sea, which includes the Suez Canal, one of the most important waterways in the world. The Iran war, the war in Ethiopia, the war in Yemen, everything belongs together," van Aken sees interactions between these conflicts. "Many people I spoke to, including me, fear that the war in Sudan could spread into a conflagration that would quickly affect our wallets in Germany, as we saw with the prices at the gas stations during the Iran war."

Van Aken identifies the conflict between the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia behind the war in Sudan. Among the many points of contention, one is central: access to the Red Sea. With Jeddah, Saudi Arabia has an important port on the Red Sea. The UAE wanted to build a large port on the Red Sea in order to be at the forefront of world trade. That's why the UAE supported forces in South Yemen, that's why it supported the government in Ethiopia, that's why it supported the RSF in Sudan. "And they'll kill themselves for that."

A central message that van Aken received from his interlocutors from UN and civil society circles: "Without the UAE's support for the RSF and without Saudi Arabia's support for the SAF, this war would be over quickly." And van Aken also sees the federal government's duty here. »At the moment, the federal government is still approving arms deliveries to the UAE and Saudi Arabia, the two countries whose arms deliveries make the war in Sudan possible. The federal government is not allowed to support such countries with its own arms deliveries.

The fact that Germany hosted the third international Sudan conference in Berlin in April, emulating France and Great Britain, was viewed positively in Sudan and van Aken also appreciates it. After all, there were funding commitments of almost 1.5 billion euros. But Berlin didn't come any closer to a peace solution. “Security for the trade routes in the Red Sea cannot be achieved militarily, it can only be achieved through diplomacy,” a senior UN official said.

Van Aken is therefore making the following demand to the federal government for the next Sudan conference: “All interested parties on the Red Sea must come to the table, and then we will have to look for ways to reconcile the interests of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, etc. This is of course difficult, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are currently at war over access to the Red Sea. But in the long term, a diplomatic reconciliation of interests is the only solution to achieve peace in this region," von Aken is convinced. There is still a long way to go and Germany is still on a different course, van Aken regrets and refers to last week. The Bundestag decided by a large majority to extend the Bundeswehr's participation in the EU naval operation EUNAVFOR Aspides in the Red Sea for another year. Apparently no one expects peace in the region so quickly.

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