Also happening: Sudan
The first Sudanese civil war started in 1955, one year before Sudan became independent and continued till l972. The second Sudanese civil war lasted from 1983 to 2005 and lead to the eventual secession of South Sudan. Fighting broke out again on April 15, 2023.
Joshua Craze explains what lead to this confrontation in his piece published in Sidecar.
On 15 April, clashes began in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, pitting the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), loyal to Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the general who runs the country’s governing council, against the paramilitary forces of his deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, otherwise known as ‘Hemedti’ (little Mohamed), the Bonapartian pretender to Sudan’s throne. Initially, Hemedti’s militias, known as the RSF, or Rapid Support Forces, seemed to have the advantage. They took control of several airbases and installed themselves in Khartoum’s residential areas, auguring a difficult campaign of urban warfare for Burhan. By the end of 16 April, however, the SAF’s superior weaponry was telling, with fighter jets strafing RSF barracks and dislodging the paramilitary force from positions around the city. Much about the situation remains uncertain, even for those on the ground. All I can tell you, one friend wrote to me, is where the smoke is coming from. Unlike during the coup d’état of October 2021, the internet is still working, yet it has brought little clarity. The facts are concealed by claims and counterclaims, all delivered via Facebook posts.
Bashir made a Faustian pact with Sudan’s cities: accept terror in the country’s margins in exchange for cheap commodities and subsidies for fuel and wheat, whose import required foreign currency obtained from the sale of resources produced in the peripheries. Oil had begun to flow in 1999, largely from southern Sudan. Income from its sale subsidized urban consumption and greased the wheels of a transactional machine with Bashir at its centre, acting as fixer-in-chief for an unwieldy coalition of security services and politicians. Were the margins able to control their own resources, this machine would inevitably grind to a halt. Thus, their interests were structurally opposed to those of the centre – a class relation articulated as a geographical antagonism.