I will not get tired of saying the truth. I was born during the day and the Sun is my light. I stand for Africa which has true light. The war in Sudan is a PROXY WAR.
I am glad that the Pan African message of defending Africa has taken a new root. Africa is waking up. More and more Africans are beginning to see what I predicted would happen.
I was encouraged by the new vision and the frankness of H E President Dr.William Ruto at IGAD summit on the Imbalances in the United Nations Security Council. I thank President Dr. William Ruto of Kenya for the candid message to the world on important African matters.
Fellow Africans unfortunately the African Union (AU) has remained confused and divided on number of issues and on most conflicts in Africa. There is no tough voice coming from African leaders in the Africa Union as the AUC has been captured by external forces. Now I am not alone.
It brings me to the current fighting in Sudan which is symptomatic of a new age of conflict in which wars last longer—fueled by regional power politics and jostling for hegemonic power between the West and Russia in the light of its control of the Red Sea routes and bases.
The dynamics at play in Sudan’s crisis mirror those of many wars over the past decade that have ushered in a new era of instability and strife, in Syria, Angola, Yemen, Libya and Somalia in the recent past.
The root causes of these conflicts lie in the hegemonic masculinity of two main global superpowers in their struggles to shake off decades and to carve out their interests in the Sahel, which is a strategic region between Africa, Europe .and the Middle East.
Sudan’s story is all too familiar to many in the past, one which could soon mutate into a proxy free-for-all. The AU has watched the war extend to a sharper conflict with USA trying piece meal pieces of 24hr ceasefires. The most recent one ended few days ago and bombs started falling on Khartoum again.
Up to this juncture, it’s no secret that what is going on in Sudan is a serious proxy war that has more implications than we know. The godfathers of the war are just across the Red Sea. They decide on how and when they can end it.
Is it not a matter of fact that the Russian mercenary company- Wagner Group is working with the Rapid Support Forces and supplying training, firepower, and logistics whilst the Sudanese Army has the support of the West, particularly through their allies on the ground like Chad?
This trend of proxy war should make the rest of Africa nothing but worried, like any other vulnerable country in Africa, Sudan is just one playground where turf wars are taking place.
To assume that the conflict between Russia and the West is localized is a very costly assumption and it might get even more costly because nobody can tell exactly where the next playground will be in Africa?
Right now, the international powers seem to be sanctimonious and hellbent in asking for obnoxious ceasefires, but do they really mean what they say? Are they trying to send more arms to one side?
I believe it is one thing to call for ceasefire in the Sudanese armed bloody conflict and it’s another thing to achieve it. Longtime ceasefires are got from real stake holders not from remote control operators far away to the conflict.
Africans know where this conflict began, anything else is just a decoy. When Omar Al-Bashir was President of Sudan, Russia and Sudan signed agreements for Gold mining concessions and for Russia to build a huge Naval base at Sudan’s largest Red sea port. This started in 2013 and was finalized in 2020.
In 2019 the Pro-Democracy protests sponsored by the CIA broke out in Sudan which led to the ousting of President Omar Al-Bashir and in August the same year a transitional civilian government was put in place but it unfortunately lasted for only few months.
In 2021 the civilian government was overthrown in a military coup which led to the formation of a military government with the Sudanese Army General Mohammad Al-Burhan as President and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo of (RSF) Rapid Support Force as Vice President.
The RSF paramilitary was formed in 2013 by former President Omar Al-Bashir and was heavily supported by the Russian Wagner paramilitary group.
Last year in September 2022 John Godfrey the first USA Ambassador to Sudan in 25 years warned the Sudanese Military government against rekindling the Sudanese agreements with the Russian government as they would be consequences for doing so.
The military government somehow complied with the USA directives. As a result, discussions of returning the government to a civilian democratic governance system commenced.
The first move proposed in the reconstruction of Sudanese Democratic Governance System was to reintegrate the (RSF) into the Sudanese Army within two years.
General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo of Paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) refused that proposal and counter proposed a ten years period. This is what has since ignited this civil war in Sudan.
The reason General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo is so adamant is because he knows he has a huge military backing from the brutal Russian Wagner Paramilitary group which already has its presence in several North African countries.
As I hit the homestretch and down my pen, the daylight truth is that the current conflict in Sudan is actually a proxy war between USA and Russia. Both global superpowers have huge interests in Sudan and this is the root cause of this conflict, it has got nothing to do with the rivalry of the two generals nor the Sudanese people.
As things stand, if there is no agreement of ceasefire reached as soon as possible this war may escalate into a chaotic regional civil war and its spillover to the already precarious neighbors of Sudan will terribly destabilize the continent of Africa.
Thanks.
13.06.2023 London
