Between the American Administration and Congress: We will Learn War in the Dark (1-2)
By: Abdullah Ali Ibrahim
“It was not difficult for the Sudanese to restore democracy when a dictator confiscated it, but they had never before tried to restore the state after its collapse. As the Roman commander said, ‘We will learn war in the dark’ when they told him that the Persian arrows covered the sky, darkening the earth.”
It appeared from the testimony of America’s special envoy to Sudan, Tom Perriello, before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee last Wednesday that the tension between the Council and the US administration over US policy towards Sudan had widened considerably. The committee’s Republican member from Idaho, Jim Rich, said it explicitly: Their patience has run out with an administration that introduces and repeats futile policies. He had previously personally called on the administration to appoint a special representative for Sudan since April 2023. This was not achieved until 10 months after the request to assign Perriello six months ago, and with very modest capabilities to perform the task.
About a dozen Democratic representatives were concerned about the proposed support of the United Arab Emirates for the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) . They sent a letter to its Emir in December 2023, asking him to stop doing so. At a hearing for Perriello’s testimony, Rich blamed the administration relentlessly, saying, “We did not gather there to criticize the administration about how the situation in Sudan is deteriorating. However, it has not made practical and tangible progress to improve the situation there, or reach a solution to its issue. While Congress is assuming its leadership role In monitoring government policy, the administration does not do its part in return.”
After 27 months of waiting for the appointment of the special representative for Sudan, during which there was another coup and a civil war, Rich remains angry at the administration’s continued inability to present the Senate committee with a comprehensive plan for what can be done about Sudan. He acknowledged that such work is difficult, but it must be accomplished, and called for breaking this vicious cycle of waiting for relief. The Sudanese, their allies, and the committee want to know how this war will end, eliminating the suffering of millions of Sudanese, and prosecuting those responsible for starting it. Their committee, he said, wants to hear from the State Department how it has arranged to avoid the looming worst-case scenarios.
Rich added that his country’s response to Sudan’s plight was weak compared to Gaza and Ukraine. It is still lingering at the Jeddah platform for negotiations between the parties, although there has been no success in achieving a ceasefire to this day. Despite the importance of holding other negotiations in Jeddah, he said, his committee wants to know how this new round of negotiations will differ from the previous ones. He wants to know specifically how they and their allies thwarted the interventions in the war from the UAE and Russia, which “landed on Sudan like hawks, dipping their beaks into the waste of what remained of the body of its state.” Perriello appealed, saying, “Please do not spend your time among us. We talked about how bad the conditions are in Sudan. We know that. We want to hear about how the administration will take control of this crisis, and how will it stop the genocide taking place in Darfur?” He asked him, “Do you support the International Magnitsky Act to impose a boycott on Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti) and the ‘Rapid Support’ because of the destruction and killing they are causing? And if you do not support the law, then it is not doubtful that we will return in 12 months counting the souls who fell victim to greed and hatred.” This committee of Republicans and Democrats looks forward to hearing about my path forward, and I repeat to you, it is hard work.”
Rich put his finger on the root of the American failure regarding Sudan’s plight, which is that it does not represent the strategic importance that Ukraine or Gaza has. Another criticism of President Joe Biden’s policy towards Sudan stated that it is not a priority. This is unfortunate, despite the fact that Sudan is the ideal country in Africa in clinging to the goals of democracy, which are the cornerstone of American foreign policy for Democratic Party presidencies such as the Biden administration, as the Sudanese, with the strength of their civil society, have restored democracy three times since its independence in 1956, which is included in the encyclopedia.” Guinness World Records. America did not celebrate this and was distracted by one political exploit after another. The October 1964 revolution took advantage of the suspicion of communism during the Cold War, and gave a cold shoulder to the 1985 revolution by celebrating the armed movements that opposed the restored democracy, and looked at the difficult effects that befell non-Muslims as a result of President Nimeiry’s short-lived Islamic state. Upon the success of the December 2018 revolution, President Trump’s concern was for his transitional government to reconcile with Israel without anything else on that government’s agenda.
What prevented America from designing an effective policy towards Sudan, which Rich complained about, is that it is still dependent on its policies of support for Darfur and what it suffered under the hands of the Janjaweed and then the “Rapid Support” forces under the Ingaz State regime (1989-2019) since 2003. It seemed to them that The “RSF” fight in Darfur is against African elements such as the Masalit, as if history is repeating itself as a tragedy for the second time. Nowadays, America is calling to stop the imminent war in the historic city of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state. America’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Linda Thomas Greenland, warned of the imminent attack on El Fasher on this Muslim Day. She appealed to Hemedti and the forces allied with the army and the army not to escalate the war, saying, “We have reached the point of confirmed, horrific atrocities, which is a strong reminder of what we saw happening in 2004, in which it was correct to describe it as genocide.” Greenland has first-hand experience of the ugliness of the war in Darfur when she visited the refugees from there to Chad in September 2023. She said a very sweet word about the world’s abandonment of Darfur, “Among the sounds of bullets and bombing, the Sudanese heard our silence.”
We did not hear this well-deserved annoyance about the El-Fasher war when the “RSF” was about to attack the city of Medani in the Gezira state at the end of last year except from Britain. Rather, you do not hear this pity about the escalation of the war today and in cities such as Shendi, Atbara and Merowe in the River Nile and Northern states. The River Nile is experiencing the terror of drones and the threat of invasion to settle historical scores with all of its people, who claimed that they had misruled Sudan since they inherited it from the British in 1956. They went so far in this threat to the point of atheism, God forbid, and one of them said that entering the city of Shendi is an invader that takes precedence over entering Paradise. America or others have not yet come up with a name for the RSF operations evacuating the homes of citizens in Khartoum and housing their relatives there other than saying that they are “violations.” This violation has a term called “settler colonialism,” and there is a close distance between it and “genocide.”
To be continued
