Somalia’s bloody descent in the 1990s started with a feud: two militia leaders together ousted a strongman ruler, then fell out. The battle for Mogadishu never really finished and, for decades, Somalia was left as the archetype of a failed state.
For the Horn of Africa — and for Sudan in particular — it is a cautionary tale of violent infighting after regime change that seems bleakly relevant today.
About a year ago, peals of gunfire rippled across the capital Khartoum as two generals, who had united to unseat a dictator, decided it was time to fight each other.
The shooting has barely stopped. Sudan is in the grip of one of the world’s most brutal wars, and one of its most devastating humanitarian crises after more than a quarter of the 47mn-strong population were forced to flee their homes.
The fighting has already killed as many as 150,000 people, one senior US official estimates. A country that has endured numerous coups and civil wars, including one that led to its break-up and the creation of South Sudan in 2011, has been brought low.
But the nightmare could continue, just as it did for Somalia — two factions splintering into many, sucking in foreign powers, spreading violence and man-made famine and opening the floodgates for hardline Islamists and jihadi militants linked to al-Qaeda.
“In Somalia, it also started with two factions fighting each other. If this is not resolved today, Sudan will fragment itself tomorrow, making peace a very distant feat,” warned Awes Haji Yusuf Ahmed, a political adviser to the Somali president who was a member of one of the political-turned-fighting factions.
On one side in the battle for Sudan is General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, president of Sudan’s military government and head of the army, who has the backing of Egypt and most recently won support from Iran; he is also being courted by Russia.
On the other is Burhan’s former vice-president Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti. He oversees the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, one of the region’s biggest militia groups, and has Emirati backers, although Abu Dhabi denies involvement.
Two decades ago, Hemeti ruthlessly fought against a Darfur uprising on behalf of long-standing dictator Omar al-Bashir, who created the RSF to protect himself — something he would later regret when Burhan and Hemeti deposed him in 2019 following a civil revolt.
Over the past year, the US and Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, the African Union and a regional body — the Intergovernmental Authority on Development — have all tried to somehow mediate in Sudan.
But, in the words of UN secretary-general António Guterres, all these efforts failed for a simple reason: “The two parties have made a bet, and the bet is to win militarily.”
The US has talked to Burhan about resuming the fraught and so far fruitless talks sponsored by Washington and Riyadh in Jeddah, as a last best chance to secure a ceasefire. But the obstacles are legion.
“There will be no negotiations, no peace and no ceasefire except after defeating this rebellion . . . so this country can live in peace,” al-Burhan said last month.
Hemeti said on Sunday that he was open to talks “aimed at achieving comprehensive peace”, but neither warring faction has previously stuck to its commitments.
The risks linked with the conflict are only growing. While fighting continues in many parts of the country, the RSF is closing in on El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur — the last army bastion in an ethnically divided region and Hemeti’s historic power base. This has heightened fears of the country splitting into two competing areas.
Tom Perriello, the US special envoy to Sudan, told senators last month that “a peace deal could be on the horizon”. “But, first, let me be crystal clear that there is undeniable momentum now for this crisis to get much worse,” he added. “A two-sided war is in danger of factionalising.”
Any serious breakthrough in talks will probably need a concerted international effort. But as wars rage in Gaza and Ukraine, Sudan is not at the top of the global agenda. It is an ominous parallel with the early 1990s when the Gulf war, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the conflict in the Balkans dragged attention away from Somalia.
Amjed Farid, a former special adviser to the ex-prime minister, warned the war could last another decade “unless there is a united civilian front that can bring everyone together to work on stopping the war”.
If the slide continues, he warned, “there’s no coming back for Sudan”.