Sudan Crisis: Peace may be elusive until military, civilians prioritise

The former Minister of External Affairs, Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi, spoke on several issues about the ongoing crisis in Sudan, including how a ceasefire can be achieved, and the challenges of evacuating stranded students to Nigeria. He was featured on a television programme monitored by The Guardian On Sunday’s GBENGA AKINFENWA

Can you tell us what triggered the Sudan conflict at this time?
Sudan has never known stability and so when there was a problem in the area called Darfur, in the South, the government of the day recruited some thugs called Janjaweed, which mean Arabs riding on camels, to come in and help them put down the disturbance in Darfur. If I could be sarcastic, they did a good job in the sense of killing every man, woman, child that they possibly could see. They were not under any control; even the international community had accused them of offences against human rights.

After they succeeded in suppressing the disturbance in Darfur, they became a problem for the government of the day under Omar al-Bashir, who was president at that time, on what to do with the thugs that he recruited. He then formed this Rapid Support Forces and put them in uniform. They never went through any training; they never went through any Sudanese military academy, nothing! They got their rank depending on how brutal they were in destroying a village; raping women; killing children, or what have you.

He then decided that he would use them as insurance against the main Sudanese military overthrowing him. So, it was like the Rapid Support Forces was like a counter force against the Sudanese military and so they existed side-by-side and he was so certain that there is no way the two of them will cooperate to overthrow him.

Well, he misjudged humans and nature because eventually, they did cooperate, they did overthrow him when the International Criminal Court even issued a warrant of arrest for him (Omar al-Bashir). They overthrew him along with civilians, and I must emphasise that because the civilian factor is a recurring decimal in this issue.

When they overthrew Bashir, they set up a tripartite council made up of the Sudanese military, whose General was the chairman; Rapid Support Forces (RSF), whose General was the vice chairman, and the civilian component at that time, which they gave the position of the prime minister to. But in 2019; they carried out another coup among themselves.

Throughout, the civilians decided to rule by themselves, but that didn’t work. So, they went back and brought in another faction of the civilians, but all these times, civilians continued to demonstrate on the streets that they wanted a full return to civilian rule, and not just a mixed-mass of military and civilians, where frankly, the civilians had no influence.

This amounted to going back and forth, and Sudan was never left alone, and surrounding countries including, Egypt; United Arab Emirates; Saudi Arabia, and Iran were all in there with their supporters in each faction of the armed forces. The United States, the European Union, and France were also there and also had their supporters. So, Sudan has never been left alone and the Sudanese themselves have allowed themselves to be used.

Finally, the immediate cause of what is happening in Sudan is the fact that an agreement was reached that power would be handed over to the civilians and that the military would be under the civilians, but not subject to civilian control. It also entailed that the Rapid Support Forces will be integrated into the Sudanese Armed Forces. But while the Sudanese Armed Forces wanted the integration to take two years, the Rapid Support Forces wanted it to take 10 years.

So, it became a battle for power and control, that is, which army will control Sudan, and its resources, including gold and other resources. Who would become the richest man in Sudan? That is what this present fighting is all about.

In one of your articles, you said that this crisis is a result of selfishness among leaders and that resource control is at the helm of this imbroglio. What role can the African Union play in resolving this deadlock?
Don’t get me wrong, I am not a militarized civilian angling for terror on the streets, violence, and others. But in a situation where those fighting have different objectives from those that you want to intervene in the matter, there is no doubt that we are all acting out roles. Obviously, you cannot hear about what is going on, and what the people are not talking about. So, the African Union must go through the process of making the usual noises – there must be a ceasefire; we must sit around the table, and we must resolve this the African way.

The Secretary General of the United Nations, of course, must come out and ask for peace. But while you are asking for peace, those doing the fighting know what they are fighting for. They are fighting for power, and until one party is so sure that it is going to be defeated, they are not going to listen to you.

Let me tell you something, when you have two people involved in a fight like this, whoever says, ‘I am ready to negotiate’ means that he is losing on the battlefield, but whoever says, ‘no interference, leave this to the Sudanese, we’ll resolve this matter by ourselves’ means he is winning on the battlefield. So, that’s the yardstick you could use to judge who is up, and who is down. But right now, there is very little that the African Union or any of the outsiders can do. Those who can supply weapons are supplying weapons to those they support.

The Rapid Support Forces has been the mercenary in that area, if it could pay them, they’ll do whatever you want them to do. Surprisingly, Saudi Arabia paid them to join them in fighting in Yemen, and the European Union paid them and is still paying them to help them police the southern part of Sudan – the Sahara Desert, where there is no order.

They are paying them to police that area to keep immigrants that are coming from Africa’s South of the Sahara from getting across to Europe. Egypt, of course, is paying; it is a mess, a whole mess.

Since it’s obvious that the factions are fighting for supremacy, does it mean that there’s no end in sight for this crisis?
The Sudanese have behaved like spoilt children, and I’ve been saying this from the beginning of this crisis. I have even asked what Sudanese civilians want. They have never been united. Each time the military comes up with an offer and some of the civilians are set for the offer, another set of civilians will be on the streets.

I think the Sudanese love demonstration; they are always on the streets and you will see banners from the league of medical people; the league of Journalists; the league of Students and others, yet within the government, there is a faction of the military.

Even the agreement signed with the military was done by a faction of the civilians, and when you listen to commentaries across the waves, non-Sudanese are more sorry for Sudan than the Sudanese civilians because it is like they all have support for different factions, and they are all happy about what is going on.

Well, not all the civilians because some come up and talk about food, medicine, and the people that are dying. Some come on smiling and saying that with what is going on, they think this section is right, or they think that section is right. You won’t believe it, but some civilians support the Rapid Support Forces. So, civilians should carry a major part of the blame and responsibility for the crisis. And until they can get their acts together and pursue a common objective, when you see a poor Sudanese, you’ll say, of course, they brought this upon their heads.

What really can civilians do in this case? We are talking about a fight between the Sudanese Armed Forces, and a paramilitary force that bears arms.
We often make a mistake by saying that civilians got rid of a military junta. Civilians have never succeeded in getting rid of a military junta. It is civilians aided by the armed forces, either a section of it or the entire armed forces that can get rid of military juntas.

So, that means that power is still in the hands of the armed forces and the civilians are always making a mistake by saying, ‘We did this; we got rid of them, therefore transferring power to us.’ No, you didn’t do it. It’s not only the Sudanese who have made this mistake, it’s been made in Burma as well, and finally the military struck back to let them know actually where the power is, and the demonstrations on the streets do not amount to power, they amount to influence.

That’s why I asked, what do they want?
The civilians should have realised that the guns are still in the hands of these armed forces, and what they should do is cleverly negotiate the exit of the armed forces of power. Don’t humiliate them, but give them a role to play and gradually ease them out over years, not over four years, that’s the mistake that Aung San Suu Kyi made in Burma, following the election she ensured that she voted out almost all the military representatives and the army said, is that so? We’ll show you who owns power and now she has been locked up I don’t know how many years sentence has been imposed upon her.

The Sudanese are again making the same mistake and that’s why I said that until the Sudanese (civilians) get their act together, right now, they have no role to play, it is a fight between those two factions.

Now, assuming that one faction wins, the civilians still have to deal with that faction. Both factions said they are prepared to hand over power to civilians provided the armed forces (whether unified or not) are under the direct control of the civilian government.

What impact will this crisis have on Sub-Sahara Africa, and how can the proliferation of arms be mitigated across the continent?
When Col. Muamar Gaddafi was assassinated and the government of Libya was destroyed, do you know what happened? All elements who were armed when Gaddafi was there couldn’t go into Europe. So, they came down south and started destabilising governments as they were going along. They also had to confront the consequences of climate change in the Sahara, and they were not going to stop in the Sahara; they were going to come down to where there is some form of agricultural produce available to them.

That is also why you have the ISIS for West Africa (ISWAP) that came into Nigeria and fought with Boko Haram. Right now, they are in some form of neutral existence in Borno State and parts of northern Nigeria. So, that’s also what is going to happen when the Sudanese sort themselves out, or do not sort themselves out.

Presently, there is evidence that some elements of the Rapid Support Forces that found themselves in the minority in the South are already moving into Chad and that is why Chadians are so worried that it is not all the Sudanese who are coming across that are innocent civilians. They believe that there are elements of the Rapid Support Forces amongst them.

If they get into Chad, Mali, or Burkina Faso and the places appear to be fragile, there’ll be consequences here because we already have problems in the Northern part of this country, whether you call them terrorists, bandits, or kidnappers. Churches are being blown up in Owo; in the East, some communities are trapped. There’s no part of Nigeria where there is no instability.

For the incoming government, this is an inheritance that it wished it did not have on its plate. So, we have problems, direct problems. Sudan is not only a foreign policy issue for us, it is becoming a domestic issue.

Let’s bring this further home, as it concerns students and other Nigerians who reside in Sudan. How would you appraise how the Federal Government handled the crisis as regards Nigerians stranded in Sudan so far?
I’ll say there are consequences for whatever moves or actions that are taken. Those consequences may not be immediate, but eventually, they will come on board. Practically, all Nigerians have to share the blame for what has happened over this issue of lifting or not lifting our students out of Sudan. Why do I say so? Nigerians have never been consistent and rational in the way in which they deal with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the issues are clear.

From about 1975, people have been agitating for a separate foreign affairs service that is not a ministry, but that is a service by itself, due to jealousy from the home service, this has never been allowed to mature, even under the military. When I was a minister, I fought this issue with the support of General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida all the way to the cabinet, but I still got defeated at the cabinet because all their ministers had been briefed by their permanent secretaries, and they were like, ‘why should we have a separate foreign service?

But the truth is that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is not just a ministry, they haven’t given it the capability to operate at crisis time, that’s number one. Number two, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ activities abroad are operated with a foreign budget, not with the naira, and yet you keep making their budget based on the naira.

We have explained a million times that the naira budget does not help the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and that’s why the embassies are incapable of doing the things that they should do. This is not the first time that we’ll be faced with this question of airlifting Nigerians from troubled areas. It happened in Ukraine, did we learn any lesson from that? No. We never do, we just move on, and I am sorry, this also applies to the media. The media does not focus on the core issues in foreign affairs. So, when trouble comes, you expect the ministry to perform miracles, how will it perform the miracles?

Third, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in Cairo, does not know anything about the Nigerians In Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM) and has probably never heard of it. It doesn’t know anything about the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs. It knows the embassy of Nigeria that takes its instructions, and that is under the orders of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in Abuja. So, when it wants to address a Nigerian issue, it is waiting for the embassy to approach it.

Now, these instructions coming from home are dysfunctional – The Diaspora Commission saying one thing, Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and others even do they know what to do when they get into Cairo? Do they know who to talk to when we have a problem? They don’t. So, we export from Nigeria our dysfunctionalities to Cairo, and this is the result.

There have been lots of conversations on how this crisis can impact Nigeria, and indeed the Sub-Saharan region. Many people also think that African leaders should wade into this matter and begin to intervene through conversations. So, what’s the way forward?
You’ll just have to allow both parties to wear themselves out. Honestly, the kindest thing you can do to the Sudanese now is to allow both parties to simply wear themselves out. The shortest cut to peace is to allow one party to win, whether you like that party or not, then peace will come. And then you can use your good offices to get some semblance of law and order in the country, get the United Nations special organisations like the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to bring in food, International Red Cross (IRC) to bring in supply and all those kinds of things. But as long as both parties still think they can win, there is nothing you can do.

Having said that, let me now contradict myself. If the United States wants this war to end tomorrow, it can do so along with NATO Forces. They are that strong; they are that powerful; they read the riot act to Egypt; they’ll read the riot act to Saudi Arabia and say enough is enough, and we have the resources either to sanction you (their supporters), while directly ordering the two generals to cut it out. But with the United States and NATO bucked down in Ukraine, would the United StateS wants to take on another crisis area, especially in this part of the world?

Remember what happened to American Forces in Somalia when almost a company of their forces was wiped out, by the Somali insurgents at that time? America pulled the forces out of that area, I think this was under President Bill Clinton, and it was under Barack Obama reacting to Russia’s incursion into Africa that they started to pull those troops back in. But I don’t think that the United States is ready for a frontal strategic engagement in Sudan right now.

So, the people who could issue direct orders to these generals to cut it out are not prepared to do so now, and to that extent, I don’t see any way forward, except to allow the generals to fight until they lose their mojo, or one of them is overrun by the other. That is the shortest way to peace.

With all the interventionist agencies that you talked about, which particular agency of government should deal with this kind of situation to safeguard Nigerians living in troubled spots, including Sudan?
The president should simply return responsibility to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs when it comes to dealing with foreign issues. Give them the resources, and give them the marching orders… When you are dealing in a foreign country, you are dealing with foreign cultures and part of the role of your ambassador and his staff is to be familiar with the culture of where they are operating.

So, if they get the marching order, they know whom to talk to in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; they know whom to remind that we voted for you at the UN. The ministry officials will also remind the country of some favours done them in the past like saying, ‘Remember that you were lobbying us for this, or for that. If you also help us here, it will help us to remind our people at home that they need to vote for you. That’s what diplomats do; they are familiar with the nitty-gritty of bargaining; of negotiation, not external forces that don’t know anything about groundwork.

Having said that, I must say that I am surprised that Egypt was asking for entry visas from people running away from a war zone. I am very surprised. But I supposed this is not the time to talk about the attitude of Arabs towards us black Africans. A conversation needs to be held about it if we want the Arabs’ mission in African Union, but not now… If you want them to have entry visas, issue one on the spot, and the embassy will pay for it…”

The president should simply return responsibility to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs when it comes to dealing with foreign issues. Give them the resources, and give them the marching orders… When you are dealing in a foreign country, you are dealing with foreign cultures and part of the role of your ambassador and his staff is to be familiar with the culture of where they are operating.