When former friends fight

Understanding the conflict in Sudan

LIVING IN KHARTOUM can be incredibly frustrating and exciting in equal measure. The facilities are limited, sharia constricts personal freedoms, the people are warm and friendly. I spent five years as India’s ambassador in Sudan, an unpredictable nation, and it was a truly amazing learning experience.

Who are the Sudanese?

Their identity is still forming through an ongoing historical process of tribal and regional amalgamation; parallel faultlines are just below the surface.

India has great brand equity in Sudan. We have given over $1 billion in soft loans for infrastructure projects.

I was posted in Sudan when a peace deal ended Africa’s longest-running civil conflict (41 years), and when the African non-Muslim south voted to secede from the Arabised and heavily Islamic north. That conflict was less about religion and ethnicity than about resources and dignity.

Even as the war was winding down in the south, an insurrection began in 2003, in Darfur, pitting Arabised Muslims against African Muslims. An exhausted regime outsourced the conflict to a bunch of vicious Arab tribes, collectively known as the Janjaweed (roughly, warrior on a horse). They were authorised to rape, loot, plunder and abduct, and were led by a brute called Hamdan Dagalo, a former cattle herder, who was a darling of the then president. The army in Darfur was commanded by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, now the army chief and president.

The Janjaweed metamorphosed into what is grandly called the Rapid Support Forces, and became a kind of praetorian guard.

In 2008, Chad-backed rebels attacked Khartoum, the RSF fought them on the streets while the former president cowered in his basement and western diplomats sought refuge in India House.