Sudan’s Civil War, With Michelle Gavin

LINDSAY:
Welcome to The President's Inbox, a CFR podcast about the foreign policy challenges facing the United States. I'm Jim Lindsay, director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This week's topic is the civil war in Sudan.

With me to discuss the ongoing deadly conflict in Sudan is Michelle Gavin. Michelle is the Ralph Bunche senior fellow for Africa Policy Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She served as the U.S. Ambassador to Botswana and served concurrently as the U.S. representative to the Southern African Developing Community from 2011 to 2014. Michelle was also a special assistant to President Barack Obama and a Senior Director for Africa on the staff of the National Security Council. Her recent writings on Sudan include "Seeking Urgency on Sudan" and "Sudan's Two Truths," both of which you can find on cfr.org. Michelle, thank you for joining me.

GAVIN:
Thank you for having me.

LINDSAY:
Michelle, I want to get into the details of the power struggle we are witnessing in Sudan, but I'd like to begin with the question of its significance. Sadly, coups and counter coups, insurrections, and insurgencies are far too common around the world. What is it about the turmoil we are seeing in Sudan that stands out?

GAVIN:
Well, there are a couple of things. First, the opportunity cost in Sudan. Sudan was governed for a long time by a brutally violent authoritarian regime, and then a popular movement rose up to demand change. That popular revolution was essentially truncated when the military seized power. But for those who believed that there's an important struggle going on in the world between authoritarianism and democracy, Sudan for a moment looked as though it was trending in the democratic direction. That's what the people in the streets were calling for. And then to watch it devolve into this horrifying civil war is a real loss in that respect.

Sudan is also strategically quite important. Access to Port Sudan on the Red Sea is being coveted by many international actors, most recently Russia seeking a naval facility there. It's an important bridge between the part of North Africa that is often lumped in with the rest of the Middle East and the rest of the African continent. And right now its proximity to the instability in the Sahel to its west is raising a lot of concern that if Sudan essentially collapses, and that may have already happened, we're going to have this belt of instability going all the way across Africa that a range of malign actors can take advantage of. So in addition to basic human decency and humanitarian concerns, there are good reasons to care about what's happening in Sudan.

LINDSAY:
So it's a matter of seeing a fledgling democracy disappear. We have obviously the human cost of what is happening in Sudan and the potential spillover effects regionally that could destabilize other countries and basically create a vicious circle as you have more and more displaced people or people seeking to go across borders. So let's talk about how we got to this point. You have referenced the fact that in 2019 the Sudanese military overthrew the country's dictator, Omar al-Bashir. He had been in power for three decades. The military moved to unseat him in the wake of widespread public protests calling for him to leave office. That did prompt hopes that we would see democracy come to Sudan, and there were some at least early signs that that hope might be realized. What happened?

GAVIN:
Well, for a period of time there was a transitional arrangement whereby the military and civilian leaders were sharing power in a sort of broker deal, and there was a clear timeline for a transition to elections and civilian government. Over the course of that transitional period, it was clear that the military was getting more and more uncomfortable both with the prospect of relinquishing the first among equals role that they held initially in that transition and critically very uncomfortable with attempts to bring new transparency and accountability to some of the lucrative deals that military actors had access to within the economy, trying to unwind some of that and help Sudan deal with the economic crisis that it confronted. So the transition was cut short when essentially there was another coup in 2021.

LINDSAY:
This is in October of 2021.

GAVIN:
That's right. Civilians were sort of pushed out entirely from the governing of the country. That 2021 coup was perpetrated by both the Sudanese armed forces and the RSF, the Rapid Support Forces, essentially a state-sponsored militia group. Those two armed entities are the chief antagonists in Sudan today, but in 2021, they worked together to seize power.

LINDSAY:
Let's talk about that because the Rapid Support Forces grew out of the Janjaweed, which was a militia that was active from the early 2000s until recently in Darfur where there was a great deal of turmoil and oppression. Can you walk us through what the RSF is right now and what its relationship is to the Sudanese former military?

GAVIN:
Sure. The RSF, you're absolutely right, is the new name for the same entity essentially that was created by the state to suppress an uprising in Western Sudan that then led to the genocide that occurred in Darfur. This is a paramilitary force, a militia force that has more experience with the kind of warfare, particularly urban warfare, that is happening in Sudan today than the formal military might have. The RSF has extensive business relationships and networks. It's got lots of international connections. RSF fighters were involved in the war in Yemen. The RSF has links to Haftar's group in Libya. They have relationships with the Wagner group. They have extensive gold mining assets. So it's a really multifaceted organization led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, best known as Hemedti.

LINDSAY:
Okay, so Hemedti runs the RSF. On the flip side, the head of the Sudanese military is General al-Burhan. But for a while they were working in concert, certainly after the October 2021 coup, Michelle, so what led to this fallout in April where all of a sudden the RSF and the Sudanese military have squared off against one another?

GAVIN:
Well, there were always some underlying tensions because the RSF was created in part by Omar al-Bashir as part of a divide and conquer strategy to ensure that none of his entities of enforcement were ever strong enough to challenge him and the others. So they were designed to be at odds with each other, and that's important to remember. Then in the wake of the coup in 2021, the international community was trying to get Sudan back on track towards a real transition so that they could move to elections. And as part of this process, there were discussions about how to integrate the RSF into the regular armed forces. These were incredibly contentious discussions. Obviously Hemedti was not interested in losing access to power, he's clearly a very ambitious individual, and the seeds of confrontation were able to sprout quite quickly under pressure to get to clear answers around security sector reform.

LINDSAY:
So Michelle, as we look at this contest for power between al-Buhran and Hemedti, is this just a personal battle, an institutional battle? Is it about regional differences, ethnic or tribal differences? If you can flesh out what we see happening here in Sudan.

GAVIN:
Sure. Almost all of the above. So there absolutely is personal animus here, but it's also not the case that, for example, General Burhan is the undisputed authority of the faction he commands. He represents both the formal armed forces and a lot of resurgent elements of the Bashir regime. His degree of autonomy and authority is very unclear, but it's certainly not extensive. They represent the status quo ante where the center in Sudan, particularly Khartoum, was privileged, was often shielded from a lot of the strife and suffering that was happening in the periphery. The RSF in some ways, though they have been oppressors in those peripheral areas, represents something different, kind of a rejection of the old elite. From a class-based point of view, they represent a less privileged segment of society. So you have both center peripheral issues here. In different facets of conflict in Sudan today, you absolutely have ethnic dimensions. Certainly the violence that we're seeing in Darfur right now is once again very clearly targeted at specific communities, the Masalit in particular.

And so all of these different identities and drivers of conflict are finding expression. One of the real worries is that this conflict that's gripping Sudan right now will force civilians and others to choose sides, to not instead just be civilian victims of these two armed groups but rather to pick an entity and join the fight.

LINDSAY:
I'm curious, Michelle, is the RSF position to be able to defeat the Sudanese military? I ask because my impression is that the Sudanese military is better armed, it's larger, and that the chances of a victory in the traditional sense of defeating your adversary in the battlefield is not something that the RSF is capable of doing. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding the nature of the military contest between the two sides.

GAVIN:
It's a great question. Clearly the Sudanese armed forces have air power that the RSF simply does not have. The RSF does have the seasoned fighters. All of the analysis seems to suggest that neither entity can militarily defeat the other, but it's clear that they have not come to that conclusion yet.

LINDSAY:
Right now we have some sense of the death toll in Sudan. I've seen numbers of 3 to perhaps 4 thousand dead, but maybe even more significantly something on the order of 2.12 million people who are internally displaced.

GAVIN:
Three million displaced now. And it's very hard to get good numbers on how many killed. But you're right, I think people feel confident of about 3,000. The number could be much, much higher.

LINDSAY:
I should note that Sudan, when you look at a map of Africa, touches a lot of other countries, so any spillover effect could go to a large number of places. But I want to open the aperture, Michelle, if we can, and go back to the point you made about lots of other international actors, i.e., countries being interested in what's happening on the ground in Sudan. The two countries that come first to mind to me and I think would surprise many people is Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. As it's been explained to me, the Saudis are backing the Sudanese military and the Emirates are backing the RSF. So walk me through how we're ending up with two Gulf Arab countries, which are normally seen as being allies, bankrolling different sides in this fight.

GAVIN:
Well, it's complicated, unsurprisingly.

LINDSAY:
Much of foreign policy is, alas.

GAVIN:
Indeed. Indeed. The UAE has a long relationship with the RSF stemming in part from collaboration in Yemen, and there does seem to be evidence that they're continuing to directly support them. They have commercial relationships with the RSF, a lot of the gold mining moves through the UAE. The Saudis, it's slightly more ambiguous just how much they have a strong preference for the Sudanese armed forces. The U.S. has been engaged in a mediation effort with the Saudis, the Jeddah initiative, in part because there's a view among some that Saudi does not appear to favor one side or another as opposed to, for example, the Egyptians who are very clearly supportive of Burhan and the Sudanese armed forces because they see in this struggle echoes of some of their own contestations for political power.

LINDSAY:
And obviously for Egypt, which is Sudan's northern neighbor, the Egyptians also pay attention to what's happening to their west in Libya and the turmoil there.

GAVIN:
Precisely. Egypt is dealing with a massive influx of Sudanese refugees. Sudan matters in the context of Nile waters as well. Egypt's got a lot of reasons to be concerned about state collapse in Sudan. 

There is a school of thought that believes that some of the many tensions that exist between Saudi Arabia and the UAE are finding some expression in Sudan, so less necessarily driven by a clear Saudi preference, but rather driven by other factors and finding expression there. But it's certainly the case that there are many, many cooks in the diplomatic kitchen right now. You have this Jeddah initiative with the Saudis and the U.S. You also have IGAD, the sub-regional grouping in the Horn of Africa trying to convene around this issue with President Ruto of Kenya in the lead. You recently had a mediation effort launched in Cairo where they obviously have a clear preference for one of these actors. And so there are many fora that these warring parties can move between so far to very, very little actual effect.

LINDSAY:
I want to talk a little bit about what can be done on the diplomatic front to bring the parties to a ceasefire, if not a full resolution. But before we do that, I want to talk about a couple of other actors that are involved in this, and one is the Wagner Group. Now, Americans have become well aware of the Wagner group because of its role in Ukraine and its leader, Mr. Prigozhin's effort to lead an insurrection against Mr. Putin's government. Talk to me about the role that the Wagner group is playing in Sudan and which side they are aligned with or if they're playing both sides of the fence.

GAVIN:
Sure. So Wagner had a pre-existing relationship with the RSF, again related to gold mining. There does seem to be some evidence that Wagner has sent arms to the RSF via Libya since this conflict.

LINDSAY:
Another neighbor of Sudan.

GAVIN:
Precisely. Since this conflict broke out. But it is important to note that these are also murky waters because General Burhan has his own Russian connections and appeared to be forward-leaning around Russian desires for a naval facility on Port Sudan. So there's the Russian state, which at least in the past Hemedti has gone to see Russian leaders as well, but the Russian state, it would've seemed, might have leaned more toward the Sudanese armed forces, but Wagner has this longstanding relationship with the RSF.

LINDSAY:
Two other countries I want to talk about being Sudans neighbors, one is Chad to the west, the other is Ethiopia. What are their positions on this conflict? Are they sitting on the sidelines? Are they trying to protect themselves against spillover? Are they trying to inject themselves into the conversation?

GAVIN:
I would say that both of those states are incredibly alarmed about this insecurity and the spillover effects and what it might mean for them. For Chad, which is already a very fragile state, the government has questionable, at best, legitimacy. They had an unconstitutional transfer of power when former president was killed on the battlefield. The ethnic linkages between communities in Darfur and communities in Chad, including the group that has political primacy, are very, very strong at creating a range of political pressures, right? When the Zaghawa are targeted in Darfur, there is pressure on Chad's leadership to take action to support them, but they're also dealing with this influx of refugees in a state that is already stretched quite thin. What it really paints a picture of is tremendous fragility and political risk.

For Ethiopia, which thankfully the conflict in Tigray has ended, there are a number of other civil conflicts that continue to rage in Ethiopia, and there are concerns about security forces being overstretched and concerns about spillover as well. Interestingly, Ethiopia and Egypt have recently taken some surprising steps to try and come to a agreement around the use of Nile waters. That's a very positive sign since this was a dangerous source of tension in the region, but-

LINDSAY:
This is because Ethiopia has built the Grand Renaissance Dam, which would limit potentially the flow of water down the Nile, and Egyptian life depends quite heavily on the flow of the Nile.

GAVIN:
Exactly. The old agreement governing Nile waters was struck really before any of those upstream African countries had any agency or seat at the table. So this-

LINDSAY:
There have been rumors or talk that the Egyptians might go so far as to bomb the dam to keep it from coming online.

GAVIN:
Exactly. They'd engaged in some extremely bellicose rhetoric around this. I bring it up because Sudan has a dog in this fight as well, right? The two Nile Rivers meet in Sudan. The ultimate conclusion of this question of who governs Sudan, who's in charge, is incredibly important for the viability of any kind of Egyptian-Ethiopian agreement.

LINDSAY:
So we have a lot of interested parties who have a very real stake on the outcome of what happens in Sudan. You have been a diplomat, so help me understand what initiatives have been underway. And perhaps you can start with what is it the United States government has done. I guess really have two parts to that question. One, what did the Biden administration do in the wake of the October 21 coup? Given that the administration came into office painting this picture of democracy versus autocracy and saying that it was going to fight on behalf of democracy, so what did we do in the months after October 2021? And what has the administration done since April of this year when the fighting broke out?

GAVIN:
They're great questions, and they've been the source of, I think, a lot of frustration in that the United States was unwilling to hold either Burhan or Hemedti or the people around them accountable, really, for their unconstitutional seizure of power in a serious way. The U.S. certainly was painting a picture of the realities of the situation, that Sudan's economy could never get back on track in a dispensation of an unconstitutional transfer, that these parties were going to have to find their way back to a transitional arrangement. But there was a lot of pressure from Capitol Hill and elsewhere to be a bit tougher. A lot of questions about the negotiations that had been ongoing since the 2021 coup because the credibility of these actors is rather questionable. After you've gotten them to agree to one transitional process, and when the rubber met the road, they decided to boot out the civilians and seize power again, it's difficult to know why one should trust their word again.

The talks tat the U.S. and others, the UN was taking a leading role as well, were engaged in to try and get back to a transitional arrangement. Importantly, really gave both of these entities, armed forces and the RSF pride of place, and there was very little space for the civilian voices in Sudan. This has been concerning to many, many people, not least the Sudanese, because this all began with Sudanese civilians standing up saying they wanted a different kind of government. But very quickly, diplomatic efforts, including those of the U.S., became about trying to accommodate and appease and coax and cajole these different armed actors. This is something that seems to persist in the wake of the outbreak of this fighting. So when the fighting started in April, there were many statements of condemnation, then a effort to engage in this Jeddah process with the Saudis to bring these parties together to hammer out first, just to ceasefire a few hours to give civilians a chance to get out a Khartoum, to let some urgently needed assistance in.

What we saw was a set of half-baked commitments, ephemeral ceasefires, supposed to be forty-eight hours, maybe you got sixteen. Time after time there would be announcements around temporary ceasefires, none of which ever lasted as long as they were supposed to. Eventually the talks were suspended in frustration. What's also clear is that during that process, both of these sides used those temporary, very brief, halts to resupply, redeploy forces; they used them to their military advantage. There was not any indication that there was any kind of serious will to turn down the temperature and deescalate.

LINDSAY:
I mean, there's an interesting thing there, which is that the United States has relations with both the Emirates and the Saudis, and those have been quite tense and full of friction in recent years. It's not at all clear that either UAE or Saudi Arabia is willing to take direction from Washington. And so that raises the question: does the United States have much in the way of leverage in this particular dispute?

GAVIN:
Well, this is a question that's haunted me through much of my career, where do we find our influence in Sudan? Because the U.S. spent many, many years essentially trying to end the reign of Omar al-Bashir. They were on the state sponsor of terrorism list for a very long time. We had one of the most comprehensive suites of sanctions on Sudan in the world for a period of time to limited effect, to limited effect. The U.S. has played an incredibly important role in some ways in Sudan, helping to broker the comprehensive peace agreement that led to a referendum and the peaceful separation of South Sudan from the north after a long period of civil war. And sadly, South Sudan is not so peaceful now, but I mention it because the U.S. has played a leading and very important role in some important Sudanese issues.

But the U.S. has often struggled to find sufficient leverage over Sudanese actors. What history says to me is that we're most effective when we're working with a strong multilateral coalition that agrees that X or Y must be done. So the referendum on South Sudanese independence, that happened because that became a strong point of international consensus. The Chinese were on board, everyone was on board. What's frustrating as we watch Sudan devolve now is that there doesn't seem to be a very serious effort to bring the many cooks in the diplomatic kitchen, the many external actors with stakes in Sudan together to agree on some core principles, which would seem essential to be able to effectively pressure the parties in one direction or another.

LINDSAY:
Well, obviously two players that could matter there would be the United States and China, but obviously the United States and China are involved in their own rivalry. Very little in the way of diplomacy going on between the two of them. It seems to me that Sudan is one example of the spillover effect of the hostility between Washington and Beijing. I want to end with just one final question, if I may, Michelle, it may be unfair, but as you know, there's been a lot of talk in the United States in recent years about the idea of restraint, that the United States should mind its business overseas, focus on issues at home. What is your response to the argument that whatever's happening in Sudan, however awful it may be, essentially, it's not our problem, let somebody else worry about it?

GAVIN:
Well, two responses to that. First off, it's a little late for that. We have been, not by design, but we have been a part of elevating both of these armed actors on the international stage and treating them as if they are legitimate authorities in Sudan. So it's too late to say, "Well, we'll just leave it to the Sudanese to sort out." We've already gotten involved, and we may have done some harm.

But also, if you game out some of the second and third order consequences of real state collapse in Sudan, eventually this comes back to get us. Whether it's freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and very important commercial sea links, whether it's hostile radical extremists who do, in fact, intend to harm Americans, not just overseas, but in the homeland, there are a lot of problems with just letting a huge swath of the African continent devolve into insecurity and factionalized fighting and atrocities. And there are a lot of opportunities for others, be they the Wagners of the world or other actors, whose potential threats to the U.S. it's easier perhaps for the foreign policy establishment to see. So it's just not something that from a strategic lens where we're looking out over the horizon, it's not something that anyone could say, "Well, none of this will ever affect us."

LINDSAY:
I should note in you're writing a book on this very topic. We are witnessing a demographic explosion in Africa, and it's clearly the one continent around the world where we're going to see rapid population growth. That means great opportunities for economic growth, but it also raises the potential for great political and social upheaval if the continent's political structures break rather than prove.

GAVIN:
You're absolutely right, and it was in many ways young Sudanese who started this effort to change their society from an authoritarian one to one that would be more democratic and more decentralized. I'd be remiss if I didn't note, a lot of those activists are still fighting today, trying to cobble together humanitarian operations without international support, trying to find ways to protect each other and continuing to trying to advocate for civilian voices in these various international negotiations.

LINDSAY:
On that incisive note, I'll close up the President's Inbox for this week. My guest has been Michelle Gavin, the Ralph Bunche senior fellow for Africa Policy Studies at the Council. Michelle, I want to thank you for joining me, and when your book's completed, we're going to come back and talk about this issue, okay?

GAVIN:
Sounds good.

LINDSAY:
Please subscribe to The President's Inbox on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, wherever you listen. And leave us your review, we love the feedback. The publications mentioned in this episode and a transcript of our conversation are available on the podcast page for The President's Inbox on cfr.org. As always, opinions expressed on The President's Inbox are solely those of the host or our guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. 

Today's episode was produced by Ester Fang with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks go out to Michelle Kurilla. This is Jim Lindsay. Thanks for listening.