The war of generals: Where is the Sudan infighting heading?

After a three-day ceasefire in Sudan ended on Wednesday last week, the military conflict between the country’s two most powerful generals renewed once again as both sides have fought street clashes across the capital Khartoum.

Since mid-April, on-and-off fighting between Gen. Abdel Fattah al Burhan, the country’s top general, and Gen. Mohamad Hamdan Dagalo (Hemetti), the second top general, who leads paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has claimed more than 2,000 Sudanese lives, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.

The war of generals has displaced nearly two million people as more than half of the Sudanese population needs humanitarian aid, according to the UN.

Sudan has been in political turmoil since the military establishment ousted the country’s longtime military ruler Omar al Bashir in early 2019 when large-scale civilian protests hit the North African state.

The natural resource-rich Sudan’s bloody fighting has seen many ceasefire violations and renewed military clashes in the last two months and continuing violence emerging from the war of generals shows that the conflict will not have a political solution anytime soon, according to experts.

Zero-sum game

“Current Sudanese crisis rapidly moves toward a political framework best described as a zero-sum game in the political science language,” says Yunus Turhan, the managing director of Mediterranean Basin and African Civilizations Research Center at Ankara Haci Bayram Veli University.

“As a result, the Sudanese crisis will probably create a political situation, a zero-sum game, in which one side should only win by forcing the opposite side to lose it completely,” Turhan tells TRT World. He sees a lot of parallels between the Sudanese crisis and other African conflicts, which have also gone through similar zero-sum games in different situations.

The bloody fighting have left many Sudanese residents trapped in a war zone between the two sides without water, food and transportation as gangs attack neighbourhoods looting families.

“It’s terrible here. I am overwhelmed with thinking about how to find money and food for my family,” a Sudanese professor and Khartoum resident, who wants to stay anonymous, told TRT World.

Turhan thinks that a zero-sum game solution would further deepen Sudan’s political problems rather than addressing them. Prior to the war of generals, there was also a power struggle between civilian groups and the military between 2019 and 2022, when civilian Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok resigned following another military coup under Burhan who was allied with Hemetti in late 2021.

Abdi Samatar, a professor in the Department of Geography, Environment and Society at the University of Minnesota, has similar thoughts to Turhan’s zero-sum-game argument. One of the political scenarios is that either Burhan or Hemetti wins, resulting in Sudan going under a military rule, says Samatar.

There is also a worse scenario in which “a stalemate develops and Khartoum becomes a warlord zone like Mogadishu in 1992, leading to the fragmentation of Sudan,” Samatar, a Somali-American professor, tells TRT World.

Burhan calls Hemetti supporters insurgents while the paramilitary RSF leader accuses the country’s top general of being the protector of the former Bashir regime elements allied with Egypt.

The African Union and countries like Saudi Arabia, the US and Türkiye offered their good offices to address the bloody conflict. But the peace talks in Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah have not produced any tangible results until now due to both sides’ irreconcilable stances.

Is a return to civilian rule possible?

Despite the ongoing chaos across Sudan, Samatar sees a good political scenario for the country while it is a weak possibility.

“In a miraculous turn of events, the civic movement that challenged the military organises underground and re-emerges as the stalemate between the (military) factions stagnates,” Samatar says, referring to the country’s protest movement, which was instrumental to oust Bashir four years ago.

At the moment, it’s difficult to imagine a civic end to the military conflict between the two generals, says Turhan. But in the mid-term, civilian factions might also strengthen due to the military’s endless infighting, which could inflict a blow to the army's prestige and sources, according to Turhan.

Five-month-long protests beginning in December 2018 against Bashir’s rule demonstrated a clear national will to move toward civilian rule, says Turhan. But since then, from Bashir’s ousting in 2019 to the resignation of Hamdok in 2022, the domination of the military wing has overshadowed people’s democratic aspirations, Turhan says.

“From popular unrest to military dominance, we see a political picture that desires to pass to civilian administration but cannot pass to this civilian administration until now,” says the professor.

After the military ousted Bashir, it formed the Transitional Military Council (TMC), which pledged to transfer power to the Sovereignty Council, a transitional body comprising both civilians and generals, aiming to pave the way for a move from the military rule to a democratic civilian governance.

In August 2019, the TMC transferred its power to the Transitional Sovereignty Council as Hamdok, a respected international figure, became the country’s prime minister. But after the October 2021 coup against his government, Hamdok first left power while he was reinstated to prime ministry the next month with a controversial deal with Burhan.

But anti-coup civilian groups opposed the Hamdok-Burhan deal seeing it as a military conspiracy against the transition process to a democratic rule, calling the prime minister to resign. Hamdok, eventually, resigned in January 2022 under intense deadly anti-government demonstrations.

Since then, with the dismantlement of civilian leadership, Burhan has speeded up to consolidate all military power under his leadership, taking steps to integrate Hemetti’s paramilitary RSF, which controls most gold mines and some other sectors of the government.

Burhan’s move against the RSF angered Hemetti, who already called the 2021 coup a “mistake”, leading to a military confrontation between the two generals.

Turhan believes that the current military struggle between the two mighty generals could create some opportunities for pro-democracy groups as the infighting will weaken the army’s credibility and power formation, possibly increasing political demand for a transition process to civilian rule in Sudan.

“The door of a new Sudanese government based on the will of the people can be opened. It is difficult to predict when this will happen, but the weakening of the military presence may present such an opportunity,” the professor says.

Like Turhan, other experts also believe that the current Sudanese situation with a completely dysfunctional government can not last long.

Burhan dismissed Hemetti from his position as the deputy chairman of the Sovereignty Council while both foreign and interior ministers were also fired by Sudan’s top general. Most of the other cabinet ministers have also not been visible since the war raged between the two generals.