Sudanese line up to collect a charity 'iftar,' fast-breaking meal, during Islam's holy month of Ramadan in Omdourman, on March 19.EBRAHIM HAMID/AFP/Getty Images
As Sudan’s military pushes closer to recapturing the presidential palace in the capital, Khartoum, there are growing fears that the embattled country could be carved up by the two warring sides in an unofficial partition between rival administrations.
Sudanese army units this week have reportedly advanced to within a kilometre of the presidential palace, the symbolically important site that was captured by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) when the war erupted in Khartoum nearly two years ago.
The long-time RSF commander, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, vowed this week that his forces will never surrender the presidential palace. But Sudan’s army has been advancing steadily across Khartoum in recent weeks, regaining control of most of the city, and seems poised to capture the entire capital soon.
Even if the Sudanese military succeeds in driving the rival militia out of Khartoum, however, the RSF still dominates much of the south and west of the country, including almost all of the Darfur region in the west. The war between the two factions has devastated the country, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and leaving an estimated 30 million people in need of emergency aid.
The RSF has begun promoting a plan to establish its own parallel government in the territory that it controls, effectively splitting the country and leaving the officially recognized Sudanese government in charge of the eastern and northern regions.
The new government would have its capital in Nyala, a major city in Darfur, according to RSF officials. They say the new government would have the capacity to print its own passports and currency.
The potential division of the country – similar to the situation in Libya, where the country is split between two rival factions – has alarmed the international community and triggered criticism from the United Nations, the African Union and several Western governments. But the RSF’s unofficial allies, including the government of nearby Kenya, appear to be supporting the plan.
Many Sudanese are worried that a partition would fragment the country and entrench the rule of the two armies, preventing any chance for democracy and a civilian government after the war.
The African Union, in a statement by its Peace and Security Council this month, voiced its “grave concern and outright condemnation” of the RSF’s plan. It warned that the plan “carries a huge risk of partitioning the country” and it urged the world to refuse any recognition of it. “Council does not recognize the purported parallel government or entity in the Republic of Sudan,” it said.
The United States and the European Union are equally opposed. “Plans for parallel ‘government’ by the Rapid Support Forces risk the partition of the country and jeopardize the democratic aspirations of the Sudanese people for an inclusive Sudanese-owned process that leads to the restoration of civilian rule,” the EU said in a March 11 statement.
Senior RSF leaders and their supporters, including the RSF’s allied militia groups, gathered last month for a glitzy ceremony in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, to sign a charter for a self-styled “Government of Peace and Unity,” which they aim to establish within the next few weeks.
They promised to create a secular and “noncentralized” state. Abdulaziz al-Hilu, leader of a regional militia allied with the RSF, called it a “historical moment” and “the birth of a new Sudan.”
The Kenyan government tacitly endorsed the plan for a parallel government, providing a venue for the signing ceremony and later issuing a statement to praise the agreement.
This sparked a furious reaction from the Sudanese government, which complained that Kenya’s actions in hosting the ceremony were “tantamount to an act of hostility.” Sudan issued a diplomatic protest, suspended all imports from Kenya and threatened to prohibit Kenyan airlines from flying in Sudanese airspace.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres swiftly denounced the RSF plan, warning that it would simply deepen Sudan’s crisis. Analysts said the plan was aimed at winning international political legitimacy for the RSF at a time when it is suffering losses on the battlefield.
“A territorial division might be similar to those in Libya and Yemen, with each side enjoying foreign support, even if there are reasons to doubt that it could prove stable or durable,” said the International Crisis Group, an independent think tank, in a recent commentary.
Jonas Horner, an Africa analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said a partition “would only serve to reconfigure the conflict” and would further destabilize the country.
Many Sudanese also strongly oppose the idea. “We were always one people, one country,” said Hatim Kheir, a Sudanese Canadian physician who was among the pro-democracy protesters in Khartoum before the war.
Partition would only weaken the country, Dr. Kheir told The Globe and Mail. “Unity is the only way forward.”