Why has the U.S. approach failed to make a breakthrough in Sudan?

Efforts are being made on more than one level to hold a meeting between Hemedti (right) and Burhan in order to stop the fighting (French)

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on the twentieth of this month that efforts by Washington helped reach an agreement to hold a direct meeting between the President of the Sovereignty Council Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and the commander of the Rapid Support Forces Mohamed Hamdan Hemedti in order to reach a ceasefire.

Blinken's statement at a press conference came shortly after the RSF took control of the strategic city of Wad Madani in Gezira state (central Sudan), which coincided with US lawmakers calling on the White House to adopt firmer policies to stop the bloodshed in Sudan.

Criticism of the performance of President Joe Biden's administration on the Sudanese file has escalated, as exemplified by a Foreign Policy report that points to "failed US efforts to mediate to stop the conflict" and calls for new approaches to make breakthroughs in the 8-month-old crisis.

Neutrality was one of the most prominent features of the U.S. approach to the war in Sudan.

Washington's diplomacy has also been active in supporting bilateral and multilateral initiatives, as is the case with the efforts of the African Union and the East African Development Organization (EGAAD), which resulted in the latter's announcement at its summit in Djibouti that Burhan (also the commander of the Sudanese army) and Hemedti agreed to hold a direct meeting between them, which was later rejected by the Sudanese Foreign Ministry.

The Jeddah platform, sponsored by Washington and Saudi Arabia, has succeeded for months in reaching tactical truces but failing to push the parties to commit to a permanent ceasefire.

Blinken spoke a few days ago about the success of Washington's efforts to hold a meeting between Burhan and Hemedti (French)

Blurred vision

This modest outcome is attributed by Sudanese political analyst Mohamed Torchin to the fact that "the American approach since the outbreak of the war in Sudan has not been clear," and he believes that it was crystallizing at each stage differently.

Torchin says to Al Jazeera Net that from the first glance Washington was talking about the need for the parties to engage in negotiations, and worked hard with Riyadh to be the Jeddah platform space for talks and negotiation.

However, Torshin says, the absence of a specific U.S. vision has left room for maneuver for the parties to the conflict: "For example, Washington always talks about the need for a civilian-led transition, but it does not address how to integrate the RSF into the Sudanese army, which was the lightning rod of the war last April."

RSF's entry into Wad Madani could further complicate political efforts to resolve crisis (French)

Between helplessness and non-intervention

For his part, political researcher Abbas Mohammed Saleh believes that Washington's approach to Sudan suffers from weakness and structural deficit.

Saleh, a specialist in African affairs, told Al Jazeera Net that Washington did not realize "the actual dynamics in the political scene in the country, where it occurred in a harmful stereotyping: military against civilians, civilians against Islamists, and the conflict of the two generals."

Over the past years, the United States has stressed that the issue of democratic transition occupies the top of its agenda in Sudan, which Mohammed Saleh believes that the US administration has launched in its treatment of "from a minor perception that reduced this transition to small political groups, considering them the only representative of democracy and civility, which is contrary to reality and excludes other forces that are more representative in the Sudanese street."

July 2019 witnessed the signing of a power-sharing agreement by the Forces of Freedom and Change and the Transitional Military Council in Sudan, which constituted one of the most important pillars of the transitional period, before the Freedom and Change Coalition disintegrated into conflicting blocs, while the Sudanese army fired a mercy bullet on this agreement by coup against civilian Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdok in October 2021.

In this context, Sudanese political analyst Abbas Mohammed Saleh believes that the US approach stuck to "ideal" things and neglected early diplomatic engagement towards the real threats to the unity and sovereignty of Sudan, represented by the military duality that emerged at the end of the transitional period, with which civilian forces became mere subordinates to one of the parties or an ally of its political project on the basis of the controversy over security sector reform.

Saleh believes that one of the main reasons for weakening the effectiveness of US involvement in Sudan is "Washington's tendency to appoint regional powers or organizations to deal with the developments of the conflict in Sudan, while these forces are either part of the conflict as an external party or 'gaining' from the interactions of this conflict."

Mohamed Khalifa al-Siddiq, a professor of political science at the International University of Africa in Khartoum, said the US deficit "is a premeditated deficit".

Khalifa stressed that Washington has many tools and mechanisms to intervene, whether through pressure, mediators, regional proxies or international organizations, "as we see in the American approach towards Gaza."

He adds friend of the island net that "the US administration is unwilling to end the conflict and may want to leave it to creative chaos until Sudan is formed again, and perhaps is with the division of Sudan and the emergence of new states in the region, which began with South Sudan and what may extend to other countries as is known in the map Bernard Lewis to dismantle the unity of the Arab and Islamic world."

Is there a shift on the horizon?

"Futile diplomacy and poor response," is how Michelle Javlin, a fellow at the Center on Foreign Relations, described Washington's approach to Sudan, an assessment not far removed from the perceptions of Washington's decision-making corridors.

US lawmakers called on the Biden administration to appoint a special envoy for the crisis in Sudan and pressure external powers that are fueling the conflict, in a call to activate the US role in ending the worsening disaster there.

Political analyst Abbas Mohammed Saleh commented on the US Secretary of State's statement that Washington's effort is based on the assumption that the war is just a conflict between two "generals" that can be resolved by organizing a direct meeting between them.

He considers it a dangerous approach because it hopes for a broken political settlement that, if realized, will reproduce multiple and dangerous conflicts if new realities are not accompanied in light of the grave violations that followed the outbreak of the conflict, thus restoring the situation to before the outbreak of war, "which means waiting for a major catastrophe to come."

For his part, Mohamed Khalifa al-Siddiq doubts that sitting Burhan and Hemedti at the dialogue table will lead to a solution, arguing that "unless this matter appears directly on the ground, we cannot talk about the possibility of achieving it."

Mohamed Torchin is optimistic about more effective U.S. engagement after attrition of both sides of the conflict, facilitating the restructuring of the Sudanese military institution with standards that take into account U.S. interests in the region.

He says that Washington's recent efforts are linked to the initiative of the Washington-backed IGAD organization, where the latter is expected to exert great pressure on the parties to the conflict to reach understandings, perhaps through the involvement of elements of political forces, adding that "this will be one of the challenges for the team of Secretary Antony Blinken in light of the division of the political incubator of the forces of freedom and change."

Source : Al Jazeera