Peace talks failed again, famine raged

Famine is raging in Sudan.

Earlier this week, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), which calls itself the Sudanese government, took a small step toward alleviating famine by allowing 15 UN aid trucks to cross the border with Chad to deliver food to the hungry.

Aid agencies hope the move will open the door to a full-scale rescue effort and save millions of lives.

But they fear it will be a symbolic concession — too late.

Four weeks ago, the United Nations-endorsed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system said famine had occurred in parts of Darfur, in Sudan’s far west.

This is not surprising.

Sudan has been suffering from the world’s largest humanitarian disaster for several months, with more than half of the country’s 45 million people in need of emergency assistance.

More than 12 million people have been displaced, including nearly 2 million refugees in neighboring Chad, Egypt and South Sudan.

Some food security experts fear that as many as 2.5 million people could die of hunger by the end of the year.

While the roots of hunger in Sudan lie in decades of economic mismanagement, the legacy of a devastating war, and drought exacerbated by the climate crisis, the drivers of today’s famine use hunger as a weapon.

War broke out in April last year between the Sudanese Armed Forces, led by General Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by General Mohammed Hamdan Dagolo, known as “Hemedti”.

The war quickly devastated the Sudanese community.

Like a swarm of locusts, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militias have rampaged through the capital, Khartoum, looting everything they can and reselling it. They have also destroyed vital infrastructure such as hospitals and schools.

The same story would repeat itself wherever the Rapid Support Forces advanced.

The granary areas of Gezira and Sennar along the Blue Nile, which housed large tracts of irrigated farms, have been destroyed.

For the first time in generations, people there are facing hunger.

Famine conditions are worst in Darfur, especially in El Fasher, the only city in the region still controlled by government forces and their local allies.

The city is surrounded by rapid relief teams and relies on shaky supply lines across the battle lines. In the Zamzam camp for displaced people near El Fasher, aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) reported famine-level malnutrition for the first time.

The army has reverted to a tried-and-true strategy of cutting off rebel-held areas, with the logic being that if it can cut off outside supplies, the RSF’s local supporters will become unhappy and some of its forces might defect.

This strategy worked well during southern Sudan’s long war from 1983 to 2005. Sudanese generals regret allowing UN aid, which they believe sustained the rebellion for so long that southerners could declare independence.

The Sudanese Armed Forces control Port Sudan, Sudan’s only port and main import route. More importantly, the United Nations recognizes the Sudanese Armed Forces as a sovereign government.

Although there are no Sudanese armed forces within 100 miles (160 kilometers) of the Chadian border — which weapons smugglers can cross at will — U.N. lawyers insist that WFP trucks must obtain formal government permission to travel the few miles along the sandy road from the Chadian border town of Adre to Darfur.

The Singapore Armed Forces has played the sovereignty card to the extreme.

In June, Sudan’s ambassador to the United Nations, Al-Harith Idriss al-Harith Mohamed, denounced talk of famine as a plot by Sudan’s enemies to find an excuse to intervene.

He threatened a “biblical Armageddon” if the United Nations declared a famine.

IPC experts evaluated the data, called his bluff, and declared a famine.

The Sudanese Armed Forces relented and opened the Adre border crossing—but only for three months.

They allowed only 15 of the 131 UN aid trucks waiting at the border to cross and insisted on starting negotiations on the inspection system.

Aid veterans expect the generals to use every bureaucratic trick to delay the approval process.

Darfur needs thousands of trucks delivering food every week, not one convoy.

It takes weeks to deliver food to Chad from the nearest port on the West African coast.

To get food to the hungry, every road needs to be opened – from Port Sudan, from South Sudan, and across the desert from Libya and Egypt.

Sudan’s local rescue committee is also in urgent need of funds.

Full aid efforts require the warring parties to agree to a ceasefire and stop looting and extortion.

But there is no sign that they are willing to do so.

The Geneva talks, hosted by Switzerland and co-convened by the United States and Saudi Arabia, ended on Friday without substantial progress.

The meeting was orchestrated by U.S. envoy Tom Perillo, who hoped the two warring generals would meet face to face and sign a ceasefire.

But the head of the Sudanese armed forces, General Burhan, refused to go, or even to send a high-level delegation.

He argued that as a precondition for negotiations, the Rapid Security Forces should first withdraw their forces from civilian areas – essentially asking them to withdraw from the territory they occupied.

Mr. Perillo tempered his expectations, settling on close meetings and phone conversations — including one with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken — in the hope of opening a path for humanitarian aid.

He simply said all was not lost and that negotiations would resume at a future date.

But diplomats know that no progress can be made unless the main backers of both sides – the UAE, the main backer of the RSF, and Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the main backers of the SAF – reach an understanding.

A rivalry between Saudi Arabia and the UAE over who should lead the region has so far stalled peace efforts.

Despite the UAE’s denials, there is evidence that the UAE has provided financial and gun support to the RSF, while Saudi Arabia tends to support the SAF.

The UAE did not want to attend the talks at their original location in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, hoping that any breakthrough would be credited to its Saudi counterpart.

At the same time, Saudi Arabia does not want to see the UAE decide who will lead Sudan’s next government.

Representatives of the two Arab countries attended the Geneva talks as observers, but this was just a diplomatic courtesy before the meeting of top Arab decision-makers.

Meanwhile, fighting continues and hunger grows.

Sudanese remain hopeful that this civil war can end quickly and peacefully, unlike previous ones that have lasted for years or even decades.

But the signs are not optimistic.

Alex De Waal is the executive director of the World Peace Fund at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.