[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: It's The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry.

[music]

Last month, violence took over Sudan's capital of Khartoum. It's now spread throughout the entire country, and thousands of civilians have fled from the chaos, seeking refuge. They fled to nations like Chad, Egypt, and other neighboring countries. Now, despite a second 72-hour ceasefire, violence has continued, and nations, including the US, have evacuated their diplomats and citizens out of Sudan.

Violence here is stemming from the long rivalry between two generals. The fighting between the two rivals has resulted in attacks on healthcare facilities and the destruction of the airport. Civilians trapped in the Capital are facing shortages of medicine, fuel, and food, and are unable to leave their homes without fear of being killed. To get a closer look at what's happening in Sudan, we spoke on Tuesday morning with Lynsey Chutel, New York Times reporter, from the Johannesburg Bureau. Lynsey, welcome to The Takeaway.

Lynsey Chutel: Thank you for having me.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right. Can you talk with me about who these two generals are?

Lynsey Chutel: The two men at the center of this conflict are General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan, widely known as Hemetti. General Al-Burhan has been a member of the Sudanese Armed Forces. He's a four-star general, he's later grinding county insurgency campaigns in several parts of the country, and he was also the man that helped crush the Darfur war uprising in the early 2000s. Hemetti's career, as we know it today, also stems from that uprising.

The story goes that he was a camel trader who became a militia commander. He was part of the Janjaweed, a group whose leaders still face charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court. Hemetti proved to be a wily political player though, and he used his position to amass wealth and power. Fast forward to 2019, when there was a massive civilian protest in Sudan that brought down the three-decade-long rule of Omar al-Bashir.

The two men turned on Omar al-Bashir and eventually backed the civilian uprising, but that didn't last long. By 2021, both of them had backed a military coup, removing the prime minister of the country. Those are just some of the steps that have led to the conflict that we're seeing today.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, this story is, in many ways, not a novel one, either on the continent or in other parts of the world, where these initial military efforts, presumably to throw up a civilian-led democratic government, result, sometimes within days, sometimes within years, instead in military control.

Lynsey Chutel: Yes, and I think that's what's so particularly heartbreaking about the Sudanese example, is that-- If you remember, in 2019, it was such a moment for the continent and the region, to see a civilian-led uprising, standing outside the military demanding change, and they seemed, for a moment, to get that change. There was a glimmer of hope and they had the backing of the military, but then, of course, that military council turned on the civilians, and we slowly saw this creeping military rule.

In part because neither man wants to let go of power. Up until days before this conflict broke out, both men were sitting with Western diplomats, sitting with diplomats from around the continent, discussing a path towards civilian rule, but at the same time, they were both [unintelligible 00:03:42] around the capital Khartoum, to make sure that they maintained power. In the event that they didn't get what they wanted on the table, that they would walk away, and they would go to war, and that's what we've seen.

The main issue here was that the rapid support forces, the group that is led by Hemetti, they are supposed to be subsumed as part of the Sudanese arm forces. The question is whether it'll be over 10 years, as Hemetti has asked, because that allows him to maintain power, or two years, as al-Burhan wants. That is the main issue that has dragged thousands of civilians into this conflict over these two men, and their power struggle.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I suppose I can understand what is at stake for these two men, but the fighting is at a level where, clearly, it is their armed forces willing to fight in this way. What is the story? Typically, the narrative moves beyond we're simply here to preserve the power of the leader. What is the story, the narrative, among the fighting forces, that is helping to drive this? That narrative, often, will continue to create fissures in a nation, long after the fighting stops.

Lynsey Chutel: We've seen, for example, the rapid support forces. They've been issuing statements along the line saying that General al-Burhan is a part of a group of Islamists who are trying to bring in a fundamentalist rule to Khartoum. On the other hand, we're seeing General al-Burhan's fighters saying that Hemetti's people are just upstarts, they have no real military training, they've come in from the outside, they've challenged what is the longstanding political elite of the country, and the military elite of the country too.

Also, Sudan, unfortunately, has had a history of [unintelligible 00:05:28] some were described as African and Arab leaders, and what we're seeing now is that, even though those words aren't exactly being used by the people that I'm speaking to, there's a sense that the rapid support forces are people who come from outside, people who come from the sticks, people who don't deserve to be in power and in leadership, and the others. the rapid support force are saying, "Well, now it is our turn."

With the rapid support forces, for example, because they're being seen as upstarts, because they're being seen as outsiders, they're pushing to be accepted into this Sudanese political elite.

Melissa Harris-Perry: That insider-outsider status, again, can have very long-term consequences, even beyond immediate fighting. I'm also wondering in the context of the immediate violence, is there any sense of it stopping anytime soon, given that the fighting seemed to continue right through both of the so-called ceasefires?

Lynsey Chutel: I think that's been the most difficult thing to predict here, because the fighting seemed to have caught so many people by surprise when it broke out. What's been happening is that, for example, when the State Department announced that there was a 72-hour ceasefire, that the State Department also said that it had been speaking to both sides of the conflict. These fighters are still negotiating to an extent, but they are also continuing to fight in the streets.

This is what makes a such a difficult battle to predict, because it's happening in the streets of Khartoum. Khartoum has been turned into a ghost town, that suddenly changes into an active war zone, with members of the rapid support forces having fanned out over the city. They've taken over buildings, they've taken over hospitals, taken over homes, taken over schools, they're fighting from those areas, and the Sudanese armed forces are using the air advantage, dropping air strikes on these buildings.

What happens is that it's very difficult. For now, most of [unintelligible 00:07:19] concentrated in the capital, and the only solution, it seems, from those I've spoken to on the ground, is to get the two generals at the table, but we know that the two generals have been at the table before, so there isn't a lot of hope from the people that I speak to, who are still in Khartoum, and those who have fled.

Melissa Harris-Perry: We're taking a quick pause. More on the brutal situation in Sudan right after this.

[music]

We're back with Lynsey Chutel, New York Times reporter from the Johannesburg Bureau, and we're talking about the conflict raging right now in Sudan. Can you talk a bit about the geographic importance of Sudan, and why it is so coveted among regional and international powers?

Lynsey Chutel: Sure. Sudan is a country in the Northeast of Africa and it has a strategic position. It's the third largest country in Africa. It has oil wealth, it has gold wealth. It also has a large professional class, which means it also has a wealth of people, which is something that we often overlook in these countries. Sudan, strategically, is on the Red Sea, which makes it a military advantage. It has Ethiopia to the south, it has Egypt to the north.

We know that these two countries have been debating, or rather, arguing, about the damming of the Nile River, which also runs through Sudan. Then we have Chad to the west, and Chad, in particular, is a country that has also recently had a coup. Then we have South Sudan to the South, which is the newest country in Africa, and that was, up until about a decade ago, also part of Sudan. South Sudan is in itself facing a humanitarian crisis.

A stable Sudan would've been a bull walk, in this particular region, but now Sudan's violence is not only tearing Khartoum apart, not only tearing the country apart, but it threatens to destabilize, but it's already a rather volatile area in the world.

Melissa Harris-Perry: As you've talked about this sense that civilians and Sudan are not feeling particularly optimistic, I'm wondering about other nations on the continent looking at this geographically critical space, and this conflict emerging again, after this at least brief but bright period of the possibility of civilian rule. What might this mean for both neighboring nations, as well as for the continent, more broadly?

Lynsey Chutel: The hope that Sudan carried in 2019 was the hope of democracy. It was a hope that you could change a country, after three decades of being ruled by the iron fist of one man and his army, and that you could see civilians in a professional class rise up to a country, rise up to lead a country. That was what we had for a short, short period in Sudan, unfortunately too short. What's happening now is that--

I think particularly when I talk to civilians and I listen to what people are saying, about how Sudan has fallen apart and what does that say about the power of democracy on the continent, what does it say, despite the push that we saw from people, that has not lasted, and instead, two men have been able to completely destabilize the country and lead to the deaths of more than 500 people, and thousands and thousands displaced? It also means that this is an area that is already volatile.

We have Ethiopia to the south, that is currently struggling with its own civil war, even though there have been calls for peace most recently, but the country itself has been battered in the Tigray region. We know that, for example, as I said, Chad, earlier, next to it, has suffered a coup most recently. The question then is, and I think it's a question that is held for decades-- What is required for peace in the Horn of Africa?

I think the loss that I'm hearing from some analysts is that Sudan, if it had been a peaceful, democratic Sudan, could have played a role in stabilizing the region. Unfortunately, for now, that seems to have passed.

Melissa Harris-Perry: As you talk about what a peaceful and democratic Sudan could have meant for stabilizing the region, do you have a sense of where the international community currently stands now, the international community beyond the continent, on this question of whether or not intervention of some kind is important here, for the interests of Asian, European, and North and South American nations?

Lynsey Chutel: What we've seen early on is that Sudan might be getting to also play a role in the competition on the African continent between the United States and Russia, and the United States and China. Early on in the conflict, we saw the Wagner group, which is a Russian private military force, they were arguing that they wanted peace and that they were arguing that the [unintelligible 00:12:04] was only after blood.

On the other side, we have the [unintelligible 00:12:09], particularly the United States, and we know that States Secretary Blinken was part of trying to negotiate that ceasefire, even though it didn't hold. We are seeing both. We are seeing a real effort to try and negotiate peace. We do know that the United Nations Secretary-General Office has dispatched someone immediately to the country.

There are these efforts to try and broker peace between the two generals and to bring stability to the region. However, we do know that even in the run-up to this conflict, within weeks before, possibly even days, both generals were dining with diplomats. That is the criticism from people on the ground, who were saying that diplomats were so eager to try and find a solution, and that they were almost contouring to the generals, that they were almost allowing too much.

This is now the position that civilians find themselves in, caught between these two men. I suppose the question now is, what approach will Western countries, and also, to an extent, Russia and China, what approach will they have towards bringing peace to Sudan? It is a strategic country, it is a wealthy country, and it is a country that could help stabilize the entire region on the continent.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Lynsey Chutel is New York Times reporter for the Johannesburg Bureau. Lynsey, thank you so much for taking the time here with us on The Takeaway.

Lynsey Chutel: Thank you so much for having me, and thank you for focusing on the story.

[music]

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.