Could Sudan be split into two countries?

Khartoum: The current month of Ramadan marks almost two years of fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, and their respective allies.

During Ramadan in April 2023, the commanders of the two forces fell out over how to integrate the RSF into the SAF.

The ensuing brutal war over who should control the country has plunged Sudan into the world’s biggest humanitarian and displacement crisis.

Now, in addition to the dire humanitarian situation, hunger and famine, ongoing fighting and outbreaks of cholera, the war-battered country risks being split into two rival administrations.

‘Grave concerns’
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces — which hold nearly all of Sudan’s western Darfur region and parts of the south — recently signed a charter to establish a “Government of Peace and Unity” in areas under their control.

The United Nations Security Council has warned that “such a move would risk exacerbating the ongoing conflict in Sudan, fragmenting the country, and worsening an already dire humanitarian situation.”

This week, the African Union, a continental body that comprises 55 African countries, also condemned “the announcement by the Rapid Support Forces and its affiliated political and social forces of the establishment of a parallel government in the Republic of Sudan, and warned that such action carries a huge risk of partitioning of the country.”

The Sudanese Armed Forces, which control most of the country’s north and east, and recently won back large swathes of the capital Khartoum and central Sudan, also unveiled a political roadmap “for peace” in February.
“Each side hopes to position themselves [sic] as the ‘legitimate power’ in the country,” Leena Badri, from the International Security Program at the London-based think tank Chatham House, told DW.

“The SAF stated that any end to fighting will only happen once the paramilitary militia withdraws and gathers for disarmament while the RSF hopes to gain access to more formal weapons import through establishing a government,” she added.

“However, a real willingness to end the fighting and destruction on the ground has not been expressed.”

Partition exacerbates the humanitarian situation
Analysts and human rights activists are increasingly concerned about the ripple effects of a potential partition.
“Parallel administrations would draw Sudanese civilians even further away from the goals of peace, justice, and freedom and would cement the control of military men over Sudan’s political future,” Shayna Lewis, a Sudan specialist and senior advisor at the US-based non-governmental group Preventing and Ending Mass Atrocities (PAEMA), told DW.

“We have already been seeing an unfriendly environment for humanitarian aid by the RSF and the SAF, with blockages and restrictions on unfettered humanitarian access remaining in place,” Mohamed Osman, a Sudan researcher at the US-based NGO Human Rights Watch, confirmed.

“The RSF-proposed government is not something we can expect to help or advance human rights or improve the humanitarian situation, given their own record throughout the war,” he told DW.

For the 12.9 million Sudanese people forced to flee their homes, of which close to 9 million are internally displaced, the already dire situation risks getting even worse.

The UN warned this week that in Sudan’s western Darfur region, civilians in refugee camps were dying of hunger.

Salah Adam, who is living in the Abu Shouk refugee camp in Darfur, said on Friday that “conditions are very tough.” “We have very little food left, and there is a water shortage,” he told DW.

He said that there was no more medical care and that shelling by the RSF continued. “We are so worried about our lives and the situation in Sudan but we have no power to change anything.”

International influence
Observers have repeatedly pointed out that the outcome of the conflict in Sudan depends largely on the respective international allies of the warring sides.

The Sudanese Armed Forces under General Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan rely on political backing and military support from Egypt and Qatar.

The UN estimates that there have been at least 40,000 deaths in the past two years.