The Sudanese Solution to Geneva Negotiations

Perhaps the Sudanese are pinning great hopes on this new round of negotiations on the Sudanese crisis, scheduled to be held on the fourteenth of this month, August, between the Sudanese army SAF and the Rapid Support Forces RSF under the auspices of the United Nations, to reach a final ceasefire in the war that has been ongoing since 15th of April of last year, and to which the United Nations had invited both parties to the war.

Geneva negotiations are a new trend in the Sudanese negotiation path, and a remarkable development in the Sudanese crisis, given its international representation weight.

As press reports indicated, US Secretary of State Blinken personally attended, stating that the negotiations aim to reach a comprehensive national agreement to stop the violence and deliver aid to those in need, and to find a mechanism to monitor any agreement that may be reached.

The United States US was the sponsor of the first negotiation initiative in what was known as  Jeddah Forum, under the auspices of the US-Saudi bilateral alliance.

It is no longer has any influential role in the course of the war, although it remains the only forum agreed upon by both parties to the conflict, among all the initiatives that have been put forward at the regional and international levels. With the humanitarian deterioration witnessed by Sudan from a famine that is ravaging its population, as a result of the war, non-military voices are rising to stop the war in search of a peace that seemed impossible in the context of the positions of the warring parties on the issue of negotiation and peace.

In the past two weeks, the Swiss capital, Geneva, witnessed negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations UN between the two parties to the conflict, related to the delivery of humanitarian aid and the protection of civilians.

This is the first time that the two parties have agreed to discuss an issue related to non-military matters, since the suspension of Jeddah Forum negotiations last December, and the negotiations ended without reaching an agreement, but the importance of the upcoming negotiations under the umbrella of the United Nations and the participation of the African Union AU the State of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates UAE as observers, addition to the main sponsors, the United States US and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This list includes what is in disagreement, and even accused by the Sudanese government, of supporting the Rapid Support Forces RSF which increases the volume of the hidden and announced caveats and reservations, on the part of the Sudanese government, towards certain countries and regional organizations.

As usual, the Sudanese army SAF and government forces hesitated to accept the invitation, and their statements regarding the presence of their delegation were conflicting, until they finally agreed to attend the negotiations in a statement by the Sudanese Foreign Ministry last Tuesday, with conditions.

The conditions disclosed in the statement were included in the provisions of Jeddah Forum, and some of what was said by the SAF commanders.

On the other hand, the Rapid Support Forces RSF – as usual – and other spectrums of civilian powers welcomed the negotiations, addition to other powers trying to catch up with the negotiating delegations, such as the armed movements allied with the SAF.

The official vision of the negotiations was affected by the complications left by the war on the political reading of the course of the peaceful solution, and the new political reality it created, divided into positions determined by the distance between the two parties’ fire, more than political consensus, in a state of military and political divisions that the country has not witnessed.

Therefore, the political forces searching for a seat at the negotiating table did not ask themselves about the legitimacy of this representation, and their position in managing the conflict.

But what is new in Geneva negotiations, unlike the previous incomplete negotiations, and have the international conditions been prepared to allow acceptable intervention by the parties, to sit again at the negotiating table? And will this be the last chance to save the troubled Sudanese situation? What prompted these negotiations is what the war has caused on the humanitarian level, according to reports from international organizations of cases of displacement, killing and rape committed against civilians, with the prolongation of the war and the intransigence of both parties to resolve it militarily, and the failure of the mediation efforts made to convince both parties of the importance of the negotiating track.

If the international attitude , according to the contexts of the international systems (the United Nations) and the regional ones with little impact (IGAD, the League of Arab States), is read with the texts of the charters and agreements, with what they interpret as binding intervention, which does not constitute a threat to international peace and security, in addition to other groups and countries that have sufficient influence in the ongoing conflict to manage the conflict; it will place Geneva negotiations under great international focus.

Hence, perhaps the importance of the American role in light of the end of the term of the US administration of President Biden, and what it can do, represented by its Secretary of State, in the upcoming US elections.

The obsession with achieving peace for the various US administrations at the end of their government eras remained a pragmatic factor in the presidential elections.

The difference in the assessment of the negotiating position of each party is based on the military operations on the ground, which are changing in terms of military control in the geographical sense, and the boundaries of the areas that have become outside the SAF ‘ circle in the military sense.

This is what the advocates of war tend to do in their hardening position towards Geneva negotiations, which means surrendering to the fait accompli and literally means acknowledging the defeat of the SAF  and the presence of the Rapid Support Forces RSF that is legitimized by international recognition through the terms of the negotiations and their outcomes.

Perhaps the SAF wants to reach negotiations that do not lead to what it may consider submission to conditions achieved by the other party (the Rapid Support Forces RSF) that the negotiations work to establish, if not by the logic of reality then by the logic of the nature of the military equation between the two parties.

The difference between the two parties in terms of power cannot be denied its effect on the negotiating table. The call for Geneva conference puts the conflicting powers in a very critical position, given the conditions of the population as a result of the war and local and international pressure.

The political and moral responsibility has gone beyond the technicalities and conditions of negotiation, to a challenge that neither party to the conflict can resist in the current situations. However, these expected negotiations cannot tolerate the maneuvers that the two parties have become accustomed to using their tactical methods, because the weight of international influence and the monitoring of the global media momentum oblige the parties to reach, whatever the details of the Geneva negotiations, a practical end to the war. The Egyptian researcher, Amani Al-Tawil, Director of the African Program at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, wrote about a presidential summit that Cairo is re-engineering the scene of an attempt to stop the fire in Sudan.

A quadripartite summit in El Alamein for the regional parties active in the Sudanese crisis. I think the scene in Switzerland will be rearranged to meet the Sudanese interest in the first place.

This preemption or preparation at the regional level indicates the importance of the negotiations in Geneva, and that the time has come to achieve everything that would stop the war.

Therefore, moving forward to resolve the Sudanese crisis through negotiation has become an inevitable choice, as there is nothing left that the war can resolve or lead to more than the horrors, destruction and threat of the disappearance of the Sudanese state.

The political and military forces whose differences led to the outbreak of the war can no longer bear it, and they are facing a legal and humanitarian position towards what resulted from a war in which they miscalculated and thus lacked what makes political consensus a gateway to lasting peace.