as war rages, negotiations stall in Saudi Arabia

Fighting raged on Monday (May 8) in Khartoum and other parts of Sudan between the camps of the two rival generals, as talks on a truce between their representatives stalled in Saudi Arabia. The 5 million inhabitants of Khartoum live for the fourth week in a row barricaded in their homes for fear of stray bullets.

Without water or electricity, with almost dry food stocks and less and less cash, they survive in the overwhelming heat thanks to the solidarity between neighbors and relatives. The telephone network and the Internet come and go with the efforts of telecommunications companies, which are struggling to find fuel to run the generators.

Clashes have pitted Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Al-Bourhane’s army since April 15 against the feared paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, two generals who led a putsch together in 2021 but are fighting today for power. The numerous truces announced have hardly been respected and the NGO Acled has already counted more than 750 dead in the country, and the Sudanese authorities 5,000 wounded.

“Massive” looting according to the UN

“The main premises of the World Food Program have been looted”said Farhan Haq, spokesman for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, on Monday. He denounced looting “massive” in the country, where, before the war, one in three Sudanese was already suffering from hunger. “Our priority is to achieve a lasting ceasefire” and to allow the arrival of humanitarian aid, declared for his part the American ambassador in Sudan, John Godfrey.

Across the Red Sea, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, emissaries from both sides are supposed to negotiate a truce. According to a UN official, the UN chief for humanitarian affairs, Martin Griffiths, who arrived in Jeddah on Sunday, asked to participate. These “pre-discussions” are only ” techniques “, have been tempering Sudanese and international negotiators for several days. They do not concern any political aspect – the country has been in the doldrums since the putsch of 2021.

They will be limited, say the experts, to clearing secure corridors for humanitarian aid arriving on the east coast, in Port Sudan, in order to feed and treat civilians trapped in Khartoum and Darfur, another badly affected region. by the clashes, located in the western border of Chad. In these two areas, almost no hospitals are functioning and most of the humanitarian reserves have been bombed or looted.

“Good Thanks”

For Kholood Khair, a specialist in Sudan, the lack of results of these discussions is not surprising. With these talks, both sides seek above all “to curry favor with the Saudis and the Americans, rather than reaching an agreement”, she told Agence France-Presse. Moreover, the supporters of a civilian power, sidelined since the putsch and who make the link with the humanitarians on the ground, are not represented in Jeddah. Nor are there the players who could change the situation, she notes, with reference to the United Arab Emirates, Daglo’s great allies, and Egypt, a historic partner of the Sudanese army.

Alongside the Americans and Saudis, the African Union – which suspended Sudan in 2021 and therefore no longer has great levers of pressure – and IGAD, the East African regional bloc of which the country is a part. , are trying to organize discussions under the aegis of the President of South Sudan, Salva Kiir. The latter received Monday in Juba an emissary of General Al-Bourhane, for whom the discussions of Jeddah do not diminish “the role that IGAD and President Salva Kiir” could play in the negotiations between the two generals.

The fighting has caused a vast exodus of inhabitants from the affected regions, the UN speaking of 335,000 displaced persons and 117,000 refugees. In the midst of an economic crisis, Egypt has taken in more than 65,000 Sudanese refugees. Its head of diplomacy, Sameh Choukri, was in Chad on Monday, where he sounded the alarm on the “human tragedy” of the conflict and its “direct impact on neighboring countries”before joining South Sudan, another neighbor of Sudan, which, along with Chad, has taken in more than 57,000 people fleeing the war.