We Lived through War but Missed the Meaning (1-2)

By: Abdullah Ali Ibrahim

There have been repeated calls for the involvement of the civil political class in negotiations to end the ongoing war in Sudan and the arrangements for its aftermath, the most recent of which came from Thomas Perriello, the American envoy to Sudan. The question may have arisen here, whether there is a point in this involvement of this class that has isolated itself from the war by turning it into a popular strife between its right and its left. The war in their speech is no longer the war seen between the armed forces and the “Rapid Support forces (RSF)”, but rather it is their “Bassusian” war from the era of sessions in universities and schools in a different way. It a matter, which we will detail in the article, that both the right and the left of the political class accuse the other of being the ones who ignited the war, as if the army and “RSF” were merely pawns at the table of their historical conflict. Thus, it was necessary to fear that the deep lesson of this war would be missed on this class, just as it would miss the lessons of less danger and deeper significance that passed by them unwittingly, until T. S. Eliot’s quotation came true on them: “We had the experience but missed the meaning.”
You will not find in this class’s discourse about war any consideration of the jurisprudence of war, in terms of the legality of waging it and the laws that govern its performance. The question of a just war and its conditions are hidden in this discourse. The coordination of civil democratic forces (Taqaddum) agreed to “present” it as a “damn” or “absurd” war, which exempts one from investigating whether it is just or not. However, you find that it singled out the “RSF” for the justice of their war in their answer to the question of who started the war. It was agreed that the army was the one who fired the first bullet at the “RSF” on April 15, 2023 in the Sports City in Khartoum. The RSF was justified by self-defense. It is a defense guaranteed by the law of war in the case of states, and conditions are stipulated for that. It is for a legitimate authority to wage a just war after it has exhausted every other means of confronting an injustice that has been committed against it or is about to be committed. The RSF is not a legitimate force, even in the eyes of Taqaddum itself. Otherwise, why would it want to integrate it into the army as part of its military reform project? Moreover, “Taqaddum ” did not verify, or investigated, as to whether the “RSF” were forced into war after they had exhausted means of responding to the aggression by other means. It is no secret that we apply to a national war a law that has been legislated for states. But we have gone beyond the scope of its application to the meanings of justice in it in general. We found that among the Americans there were those who resorted to the Just War Law to conclude that their civil war (1861-1865) was not a just war under the pretext that Abraham Lincoln, the American president in whose time the civil war broke out, did not exhaust the reasons before launching the war. “Taqaddum” must have worked here according to the principle of “For action reaction and the one who started is the offender,” not the law of war, when it justified the firing of the first bullet in order to give the “Rapid Support” the right to confrontation in self-defense. However, it seemed that “Taqaddum” recently had doubts about who started the war, as among the decisions of its last conference in Addis Ababa (January 1, 2024) was a decision to form a credible international national committee to investigate who started the war. This is palpation after slaughter.
As for “Taqaddum’s” biggest door to authorizing a just war for “RSF,” it is the consensus of its parties, as they have never met before, that the Islamists who are supporters of the ousted “Ingaz Regime,” that is, the “Kizan” or “Remnants,” are the ones who ignited the ongoing war. They even imposed it on the army itself. According to Taqaddum, the Kizan wanted the war to restore their regime, which was overthrown by the December 2018 revolution. It is known that Taqaddum was in the leadership of the revolution and in its transitional government which worked hard not to let Ingaz group return. ” Since the war, its writers have not stopped regurgitating the history of their sects’ suffering from the “Ingaz State” with boring details. “Taqaddum” appointed RSF the as an adversary fighting against remnants to restore their state. It began broadcasting that the war was in fact a war of “the Kizan” and repeatedly called on the “Freedom of the Army” to shake off their hands from it.
The greatest aspect of “Taqaddum ” in the jurisprudence of war is in holding the parties to the war accountable for their violations. If it justified the “RSF” to go to war in self-defense, as we have seen, it stumbled greatly in taking it harshly for its violations against civilians, if not permitting it. It neglected the principle of discrimination in war, which limits targeting in war to the military. The principle requires the warrior to ensure that the target he chooses is a military man, not a civilian, and to refrain from striking the latter altogether except with very complex controls.
The “RSF” war could only be a war against civilians as much as it was a war against the military as long as it targeted politically, and even regionally or ethnically, specific civilian groups such as the northern Nile Sudanese groups behind the 1956 state, that is, those who appropriated the goods of the independence state without them in the margin. The greatest manifestations of the RSF violations were the occupation of elite and non-elite neighborhoods, plundering their money and cars, and forcing them to evacuate them through direct violence or intimidation. The writers of Taqadum did not find these violations in violation of the discrimination law.
To be continued