The war in Sudan and the "Arab Spring", what relationship?

The conflict in Sudan so far is not a civil war, as the people and parties do not participate in it, and it has no sectarian, ethnic or ideological basis. Both the army commander, Al-Burhan, and the commander of the Rapid Support Forces, Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti), are from the same regime and military institution, just as the Rapid Support Forces and the army are The official is from Muslims and of the same Sunni sect and all of them are Arabs, without ignoring the tribal and regional character of Sudanese society, and therefore what appears on the surface until now is that it is a war and a struggle for power, which has been a struggle that has been going on since independence.

For decades, we have been hearing that Sudan, whose area is 1,882,000 square kilometres, is qualified to be a food basket for the entire Arab world due to the fertility of its lands and the raw materials stored in the land. It also has a strategic location in the Horn of Africa and its borders are open to seven countries: Egypt, Ethiopia and Libya. Chad, the Central African Republic, Eritrea, and South Sudan. Nevertheless, the country continued to be poor until it became unable to achieve its food security or achieve political stability. Since its independence in 1956, the country witnessed several successive military coups and civil wars, the most dangerous of which was in southern Sudan, which separated from its north in July 2011 after years of civil war.

There have also been attempts at rebellion and protests in the Darfur region since 2003, which have led to the loss of more than 300,000 lives and the displacement of 2 million, according to official statistics of the United Nations, and they were severely suppressed by the government of Omar al-Bashir with the help of the (Janjaweed) militia, which later turned into the Rapid Support Forces led by Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo, who is attempting a coup today against the army and the state led by Al-Burhan.

If we hope that the conflict will remain confined to the military establishment and that it will be stopped quickly, however, there is a fear of repercussions that may lead to the division of Sudan and open the way for the intervention of external parties, and its repercussions on Sudan and the countries of the region may be more dangerous than the repercussions of the chaos of the Arab Spring for several reasons:

1- If there is no sectarian and ethnic conflict, the Sudanese society is a tribal society, and tribalism is no less than sectarian and ethnic in its ability to mobilize and polarize, and Sudan consists of 18 states, each with its own specificity, and some of these states are formed from mixed Arab and non-Arab groups.

2- What is happening in Sudan coincided with the expansion of Russia and China's influence in Sudan and all of Africa, and talk about the role of the Russian Wagner Group in training and supporting the Rapid Support Forces.

3- What is happening coincided with a struggle between NATO, especially Washington, with both China and Russia for hegemony and control of Africa's vast resources, also with the Ukraine war and its potential for it to turn into a world war.

4- In the event of the weakness of the Sudanese state, extremist groups may transfer their terrorist activities to Sudan, especially from the neighboring countries, Libya, Chad and Mali, where these groups are active.

5- Sudan is of strategic importance to Egypt because of its control over the amount of water that reaches Egypt from the Nile River also because it is one of the countries that overlooks and controls the Red Sea, and any political regime in Sudan hostile to Egypt will affect the strategic security of Egypt, especially since Egypt's other borders with Libya and Israel are not completely safe. .

6- The commander of the Rapid Support Forces would not have attempted to seize power and confront the official army, which outnumbered him in numbers and equipment, had he not been supported by foreign parties or promised to support them.

7- Israel has a good relationship with the two parties to the conflict, and it has expressed its willingness to mediate. If it succeeds, it will strengthen its influence with the two parties, and if the mediation fails, it may support one party over another, especially since it has been looking forward for years to have a foothold in the Red Sea.

8- The US State Department's statement that Washington is concerned about the future of the unity of the Sudanese nation. NATO's warning that it will not allow the continuation of the war in Sudan indicates the possibility of direct Western intervention.

9- Even if the confrontations in the capital, Khartoum, are resolved in favor of one party at the expense of the other, this does not mean the end of the war, as the losing party will resort to its tribal support, and in this case we will plunge Sudan into a civil war.

10- In view of the existence of a long history of civil wars, some of which were within the framework of secession, the possibility of the emergence of separatist tendencies is possible, and the Darfur region will be the first to do so.

Someone might say that there is no need to employ the conspiracy theory and exaggerate what is happening in Sudan because what is happening is different from what happened in the (Arab Spring) countries, where the conflict in Sudan is confined to the components of the military institution, and therefore there is no relationship between the two events and there is no fear of the repercussions of the conflict in Sudan, whether on the unity of the state. community or neighboring countries.

We do not say that there is a coincidence between the two cases, but we have to recall that before the chaos of the Arab Spring, many reports and strategic studies leaked from Washington and NATO were talking about the plan (Balkanization) or the fragmentation of the countries of the Arab world, and these reports were talking about the fragmentation of Egypt, Sudan, Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon and Iraq into small states The American project for (The New Middle East 2004) and then (The Greater Middle East 2006) referred to this, and the West, especially Washington, with the help of internal parties, succeeded in achieving some achievements in this field, as happened in Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Syria, in the areas of the Palestinian Authority, and even in Sudan, where South Sudan separated from its north in the first year of 2011 from the chaos of the Arab Spring.

When the chaos of the so-called (Arab Spring) erupted in 2011, the prominent face of the conflict and its direct parties were the people in confrontation with the authority, and there was no direct presence in the political scene in the early days of the events of external parties or local armed groups or those coming from abroad, and the slogan of the demonstrators was (the people wants to overthrow the regime), but as soon as days passed, armed groups such as al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Muslim Brotherhood rode in, and foreign countries began to intervene, sometimes hidden by funding opposition groups or directly militarily, as happened in Libya, Syria, and Yemen, and sectarianism, sectarianism, and ethnicity emerged. regionalism, and instead of overthrowing the regime, the state fell.
May God protect Sudan and the people of Sudan from sedition and civil war.
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