The Framework Agreement: If They Stopped Digging (2-2)

The speech by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti), the leader of the Rapid Support Forces, which he broadcast on October 9th, has filled Sudan and occupied people’s minds over the past week. Hemedti’s attack on the Framework Agreement (December 2022), which the Forces of Freedom and Change and the international community sought to use to resolve the political crisis following the October 2021 coup, weighed heavily on the Civil and Democratic Forces Coordinating Committee “Taqaddom”. This committee was the third party to sign the Framework Agreement alongside the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces. They had been promoting it as the anticipated remedy for Sudan’s crisis following the military’s coup against the transitional government in October 2021, if not for the Islamists’ premeditated intention to sabotage it through war in an attempt to regain power after being ousted by the December 2018 revolution. Taqaddom was undoubtedly embarrassed by this accusation of war coming from an unexpected quarter. Ahmed Taha, an anchor at Al Jazeera Network, captured this embarrassment when he told Bakri Al-Jack, Taqaddom’s spokesperson, on his program that the two warring parties blamed the Framework Agreement for the war. This was the view of the Islamists, and now Hemedti agreed with them.

Some members of Taqaddom dismissed Hemedti’s criticism of the Framework Agreement and his accusation that it incited war in various ways. Both Bakri Al-Jack and Rasha Awad, the former spokesperson for Taqaddom, agreed that blaming Taqaddom for starting the war based on Hemedti’s recent attack was unfounded. Rasha questioned how a group like Taqaddom, which has no army, could start a war, while the Islamists have an army. She wondered what authority a civilian group like hers had over the Rapid Support Forces to command them to start a war. Bakri Al-Jack echoed Rasha’s sentiments, absolving the Framework Agreement and Taqaddom of responsibility for the war. He argued that the Framework Agreement is not an entity that gives orders for war. Instead, there are those who give orders for war, those who mobilize armies, and those who want the war to continue by providing supplies and armaments. So, where does the Framework Agreement fit in here? He labeled those who accuse the Framework Agreement or Taqaddom of inciting the war as naive, oversimplifying matters.

Both Bakri and Rasha believe that only those who possess an army can wage war. Bakri further stated that the agreement is neither a “person” nor an “army” to be blamed for inciting war. War, as the saying goes, starts with words. Documents like the Framework Agreement are just “words,” and if they lack wisdom, they may lead to war, which is politics by other means. The American Civil War, for instance, did not begin with armies being mobilized; it erupted over the “Fugitive Slave Act” (1850), which amended its earlier version (1793) in a way that angered the northern states due to its stricter measures in returning slaves to their owners compared to the earlier version. Bakri concluded that Hemedti’s recent attack on the Framework Agreement is proof that Taqaddom, which is often portrayed as the political arm of the Rapid Support Forces, cannot be blamed for inciting the war. The Rapid Support Forces clearly have a disagreement with them over the essence of the Framework Agreement. While Hemedti sees it as a cause of war, they do not share his view. If they were his followers, they would not have disagreed.

It seemed to me that neither Rasha nor Bakri realized that an agreement like the Framework Agreement is a dangerous risk if implemented prematurely, given the situation they both emphasized as risky. Bakri said that they came up with the agreement in the Forces of Freedom and Change to end the crisis that arose after the military coup in October 2021. The coup had reached a dead end for a year and a half, during which no government could be formed. He was astonished that they were being accused of starting the war when they were the group that came to resolve that crisis. It was as if the solution to such a serious problem that had paralyzed the state for a year and a half was to be determined not by its noble intentions but by its sound planning. I was surprised to hear Bakri describe the Framework Agreement as merely a “conceptual framework” to end the military coup in a politically volatile situation that he described as involving “multiple armies and multiple centers of leadership” and other issues through the reform of the military-security apparatus. This reform, which included the integration of the Rapid Support Forces into the Sudanese Armed Forces in agreed-upon stages, was the same reform, according to Rasha, that stripped the Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces of control over 80 percent of economic revenues. I do not understand how these policies that restructure multiple armies and deprive them of resources they had long monopolized can be called “a mere conceptual framework,” as if we were in an academic study session rather than dealing with policies that would impact the structures and interests of warring military forces.

The Framework Agreement is not a person, nor does it have armies, as Bakri said. We acknowledge that the Forces of Freedom and Change approached it out of a noble intention to resolve a crisis that was widely believed to have put Sudan “on the brink of collapse.” But nobility is not a strategy. Hemedti, for example, repeatedly brought up “issues” in the agreement that seemed unresolved for him. He kept asking whether their agreement would “hold.” It never occurred to the Forces of Freedom and Change to address his concerns about an agreement that aimed to erase the Rapid Support Forces from the military and political scene, but only “in stages” whose solutions had been contentious from day one.

Yes, Sudan was in a hole. And there is a law of digging that says if you find yourself in one, stop digging. But the Forces of Freedom and Change, with their Framework Agreement, continued digging. And the war erupted. It is said that when you break something, you own it, regardless of your good intentions.