At the current moment, matters in Sudan are quite dire. The political situation is severe, and a humanitarian crisis is prevalent. This humanitarian crisis is marked by the constant conflict happening between the SAF or Sudan Armed Forces as well as the RSF or Rapid Support Forces. This whole issue leads to violence as well as displacement.
Decisive decisions by the Islamist movement
The Islamist movement toppled in Sudan’s uprising in 2019 could support an extended period of army rule as it eyes a political comeback after deploying fighters in the country’s war, according to some of its leading members. In his first media interview in years, Ahmed Haroun, chairman of the former ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and one of four Sudanese wanted by the International Criminal Court, told Reuters that he foresaw the army staying in politics after the war, and that elections could provide a route back to power for his party and the Islamist movement connected to it.
The ICC or International Criminal Court is an intergovernmental organization with the jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for international crimes. These can include genocide, crimes against humanity, etc. More than two years of war between Sudan’s army and the RSF has caused waves of ethnic killings, famine and massive displacement, drawing in foreign powers and creating what the United Nations has called the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis.
Plotting down the humanitarian issue
A humanitarian crisis can so rightly be defined as a specific event or series of events that pose a very critical threat to the overall security, health, safety or general well-being of a group of people. While the RSF remains entrenched in its western stronghold of Darfur and parts of the south and there is no sign of a stop to the fighting, the army has made major advances in recent months, gains that Islamist operatives say they helped bring about.
Army leaders and former regime loyalists have played down their relationship, wary of the unpopularity of ousted ex-leader Omar al-Bashir and his NCP allies. But the army’s recent advances have allowed the Islamist movement to entertain a return to a national role, according to accounts from seven of the movement’s members and six military and government sources.
Mapping the potential future of Sudan
The movement’s resurgence could cement the reversal of Sudan’s pro-democracy uprising that began in late 2018, while complicating the country’s ties with regional players suspicious of Islamist influence – including hardening a split with the powerful United Arab Emirates. In a sign of the trend, several Islamists and their allies have been appointed since last month to the cabinet of Kamil Idris, the technocratic new prime minister named in May by the army.
Haroun, speaking to Reuters late at night from a hideaway without electricity in northern Sudan, said the NCP foresaw a hybrid governing structure in which the army retained sovereign control “until all threats are removed”, while elections brought in civilians to run the government. The revival of Islamist factions began before the outbreak of the war in April 2023, during a period when a transition towards civilian rule was veering off course.
The factions had established deep roots in Sudan’s ruling apparatus and in the army during Bashir’s three decades in power. When army commander General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who became head of Sudan’s ruling council shortly after Bashir’s overthrow in 2019, staged a coup two years later, he drew on their support. Sudan is a worrisome situation. Apart from what’s happening on the political front, other issues raise a similar level of concern. Malnutrition has hit the roof, so to speak, whilst maternal mortality is shockingly high. Cholera has wreaked its share of havoc Even farmers within the area will be confronting the upcoming planting season in fear.