On What Shall the Army and RSF negotiating?!

By:  Dr. Al-Derdiri Mohamed Ahmed, former FM of Sudan

We have marked one year since the outbreak of the Sudan War on April 15, 2023.  If the world paid some attention to this war in its first months, it quickly left it, preoccupied with other new things.  If the mediations are active to end them in the year that was planned, they will most likely fade away in the coming.  Rather, it is feared that if these mediations are carried out, they will not have a better chance of success than their predecessors.  That’s not pessimism.  Rather, it is because all indicators indicate that the mediators do not care about the first reason that leads to the success of the negotiation, which is the correct description of this war and the nature of its two parties in the balance of constitutional legitimacy. How did past mediations fail to establish this weight fairly?  What should the next brokerage do, if it has control over itself and does not want to lose the balance?

Immediately after the war broke out, the international media called it “the war of the two generals,” considering it a war sparked by the intense competition between the two men for the presidential seat.  Regional organizations, including the African Union and IGAD, said this.  Rather, several important African countries equated between the two men, so Hemedti was received as the presidents received.  The basis of the initiative of the IGAD Subcommittee, which was announced by its Chairman, Kenyan President William Ruto, was to hold a face-to-face meeting that included the two generals in Djibouti in December last year.  How far from the truth was that description of the nature of this war.  Rather, how much he offended. He makes Lieutenant General Abdul Fattah Al-Burhan, Commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces, a mere imposter, like Hemedti, searching for power without the legitimacy of the Commander of the National Army, which he enjoys in light of a transitional period in which there is no elected government.  Hence, Al-Burhan avoided holding the meeting. Hemedti was running behind it.  Then the IGAD mediation failed, and after that any mediation based on the idea that this war is a war of two generals will fail. If they met and agreed to share power, the war would be over.

The other premise on which the other unannounced mediation was built, which produced the Manama Agreement on January 20, 2024, the text of which was leaked by Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, is the premise that Rapid Support Forces (RSF)  is a “cause and a project.”  The proponents of this mediation believe that this war was fought for the sake of a cause that is to thwart the 1956 state and overcome its consequences.  For a project to establish a civil state on the basis of the Framework Agreement.  They believe that those who ignited this war were the remnants of the previous regime to prevent them from serving this noble cause or implementing this great national project.  Did you not see how the Manama Agreement calls for addressing the “roots” of the war, making the people the “primary source of power,” “ensuring equal citizenship,” adopting a “legal reform package,” and criminalizing “departing from constitutional legitimacy and undermining the democratic system”!  Haven’t you seen how RSF is what frames the armed forces to return to constitutional legitimacy, since they are the ones who departed from it?  And it is the one urging her to repent and submit to the democratic system after it undermined it!  Although no one in the Sudanese political arena has denounced this blatant fallacy except the RSF and Taqaddum movement led by former Prime Minister Dr. Abdullah Hamdouk, it has found supporters in the international arena.  These are the ones who adopted it and pushed for its layout in Manama.  They believe that if Hemedti does not have the constitutional legitimacy that makes him the general equivalent to Burhan, then he is the owner of the great national project that the army failed!  He was the one who came to address the noble cause that the army failed to advance!  It is not surprising that these mediators were the ones who came up with the Framework Agreement and supported it yesterday.  Today, they are the ones calling on the Taqaddum movement to participate in the Paris conference without inviting the legitimate party.  If it were not for a trace of shame, they would have invited Hemedti besides Hamdouk.

As for the third premise, which is fundamental to the success of the upcoming mediation if it wants to distance itself from agendas and wants this war to be silenced forever, it is the one that stems from the idea that the Sudanese Armed Forces are the ones with full and undiminished constitutional legitimacy.  The RSF is the semi-regular paramilitary force that rebelled against the army and turned into a militia that has no legitimacy or project except to plunder, loot, burn, rape, and spread devastation and death wherever it goes.  It is a starting point that is currently only clearly expressed by the Egyptian position.  South Sudan has an approach that is not far behind. The Jeddah Initiative also indicates some of this.  With the Jeddah Declaration issued on May 11, 2023 calling for a ceasefire to precede the eviction of RSF from homes and public civil facilities, this initiative can be developed in this direction.  This is because opening any window to negotiate with the RSF regarding any matter other than removing it from the citizens’ homes that it usurped, returning their looted possessions, and holding it accountable for the crimes it committed would be a reason to give it legitimacy that it does not deserve.  Or approve a project that is not its.  The Army Commander has rightly emphasized this repeatedly. In this regard, it comes from the overwhelming position of the people and their living forces that unanimously rejected anything other than this.

US President John Kennedy is reported to have said in April 1961, while he was in the midst of the Cuban missile crisis and the Bay of Pigs, “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate. The analogy between the confrontations of major nations among themselves and Sudan’s war with Hemedti is not correct, or in the language of jurists, analogy with a difference.  However, the lesson learned from Kennedy’s statement is that there is a universal past year according to which war, insofar as it is a war, whatever it is, , wherever it may be, and whoever its parties are, “the end of which is speech.”  Only a few deviate from this, and the deviant has no rule.  But if we want an analogy by which we can measure the state of Hemedti’s rebellion, one piece of shit for another, then that is the case of the transgressor who seeks corruption on earth.  Even the legal sentence will be lightened for him if he repents and puts down his weapons before you can control him.  Negotiation is one of the forms through which it is possible to lay down the weapons of those who seek corruption on earth.  However, negotiating with these people is not valid if it has any other purpose.  In addition to his goal being to dress the transgressor as legal, or to acknowledge that his effort in the land to corrupt it and destroy the crop and the offspring is in itself an issue.

Therefore, we say let the Sudanese army not negotiate with the RSF out of fear of its expansion or even fragmentation, to give it legitimacy that he lacks, or to make him the owner of a project or cause.  But let it not be afraid to negotiate with RSF for the sake of negotiating with the transgressors who seek corruption in the land, so they burden the truth until they lay down their weapons and the war ends.  This can only be done from the standpoint of complete legitimacy that is based on this great public rally.  If the Sudanese army has not yet had a platform to launch such mediation based on this conviction, it will have such a platform in this new year of ours, sooner rather than later.  This was only due to the entire people standing behind their army, except those who refuse.  Thanks to his armed resistance, which has become more powerful.  Thanks to the brilliant victories that came one after the other.  Then thanks to the many brothers who take the correct position on the issue of constitutional legitimacy.