Like the others, the umpteenth truce announced in Sudan has fizzled. Twenty civilians were killed on Wednesday in a bombardment attributed to the army on a market in Khartoum, the capital, resulting in a hardening of tone on the side of the White House on Thursday. Monday evening, the army of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane and the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (FSR) of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo had nevertheless accepted a new truce. In reaction to this new violation of a ceasefire, Washington announced economic sanctions and visa restrictions “against the actors who maintain the violence” in Sudan, without however naming them.
“Sanctions are a tool,” agrees researcher Alex de Waal. But Sudan, under US sanctions for two decades, represents “a classic case of sanctions that have never solved anything”, he continues. Because the two warring generals are elusive: General Daglo is considered one of the richest men in Sudan thanks to his gold mining empire and General Burhane, like all his peers, has developed under the embargo of techniques to circumvent international sanctions.
More than 1,800 dead and more than a million displaced
After the bombardment on the Khartoum market, the “resistance committee”, which organizes mutual aid between the inhabitants of the district, denounced a “catastrophic situation”, launching an “urgent” appeal for “doctors and blood donations “.
At the same time, the FSR fired on civilians “who wanted to prevent them from stealing the car of one of them”, indicates the committee. “Three civilians died after being hit by bullets and prevented by the RSF from going to the hospital”.
The fighting has killed more than 1,800 people according to the NGO ACLED, and more than a million people, mainly Sudanese but also refugees in Sudan, are displaced in the country.
In addition, more than 350,000 people have fled to neighboring countries. More than 100,000 people are in Chad, according to the UN, driven out by deadly fighting in Darfur, on the other side of the border, whose entire regions are completely cut off from the world, without electricity or telephone. In this region, new calls to arm civilians raise fears of a “total civil war”, according to the civilian bloc ousted from power by the 2021 putsch of the two then allied generals.
Humanitarian aid prevented
According to Unicef, more than 13.6 million children need humanitarian aid in Sudan, including “620,000 in a state of acute malnutrition, half of whom could die if they are not helped in time”. However, no corridor has been cleared for humanitarian aid. The rare shipments that have been able to be transported cover only a tiny part of the immense needs. On Thursday, the director of the World Food Program (WFP), Cindy McCain, denounced “the attack on her warehouses in El-Obeid”, 350 km south of Khartoum, threatening “vital” food stocks for “4, 4 million people”.
Already before the war, one out of three Sudanese suffered from hunger, long power cuts were a daily occurrence and the health system was on the verge of collapse.