2023-05-08 00:08:33
The head of UN humanitarian affairs discussed Sunday, May 7 in Saudi Arabia the access of aid to the Sudan with army emissaries and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitaries negotiating a truce following three weeks of deadly fighting.
Several “ceasefires” have been violated in the seconds following their announcement since the start of hostilities in Sudan on April 15, which have already killed some 700 people, according to an NGO. The UN speaks for its part of 335,000 displaced persons and 117,000 refugees.
Again on Sunday, fighting resounded everywhere in Khartoum where the inhabitants survive, barricaded without water or electricity and with reserves of food and money soon to dry up.
While Americans and Saudis assure that the belligerents are negotiating a truce in Saudi Arabiathe army, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, and the FSR of rival General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo say nothing regarding the talks.
“Lowest Common Denominator”
UN chief for humanitarian affairs Martin Griffiths joined talks Sunday in Jeddah following calling on the two generals in Sudan on Wednesday to make “commitments” to let in humanitarian aid and get out civilians trapped under crossfire.
For their part, Ryad and Washington urged the belligerents to “actively engage” but did not announce the formal start of the talks or their content.
Meanwhile, witnesses report fighting and air raids on different neighborhoods of Khartoum. “We were overflown by fighter planes and we heard explosions and anti-aircraft missiles,” said Ahmed al-Amin, a resident of the Haj Youssef district in northeast Khartoum, to AFP.
Before going to war, Generals Burhane and Daglo together ousted civilians from power with their 2021 putsch. in power for 30 years.
But the transition slipped, and negotiations under international auspices to integrate the FSR into the army only exacerbated tensions, triggering hostilities on April 15.
For Aly Verjee, a researcher at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, the negotiations in Jeddah focus on “the lowest common denominator of the international community”: the cessation of hostilities. “For the following, there is no apparent consensus”.
To discuss it, the FSR dispatched to Jeddah relatives of General Daglo and his powerful brother Abderrahim, who passes for the financier of the FSR via his gold mines. On the army side, there are high-ranking officials known for their hostility to the paramilitaries.
long war
Ryad, ally and funder of both camps, and Washington want to take precedence over regional initiatives. A neighbor of Sudan, Egypt has joined this joint initiative by inviting itself to a liaison committee that is supposed to lead to a ceasefire and secure humanitarian corridors. Their main competitor remains Igad, the East African bloc led by South Sudanese President Salva Kiir, historic mediator in Sudan.
The African Union lost its leverage when it suspended Sudan following the 2021 putsch, experts say.
With the UN, these two blocs nevertheless “welcomed” the negotiations in Saudi Arabia while the Arab League called for “support” the “indirect negotiations in Jeddah” to avoid “the fragmentation of Sudan”.
From the headquarters of the pan-Arab organization in Cairo, the head of Egyptian diplomacy Sameh Choukri warned once morest “a regional slippage” while his country, in the midst of an economic crisis, has already taken in more than 60,000 refugees. According to Cairo, he is going to the Chad and in South Sudan, countries bordering Sudan that have themselves hosted more than 57,000 people fleeing the war, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Thousands of people have also fled to neighboring Ethiopia, mostly third-country nationals.
“This is the second war I’m fleeing,” Salam Kanhouch, a Syrian refugee, told AFP in the Ethiopian border town of Metema. Those who flee do so by braving long perilous roads because, according to Sara, an Eritrean refugee: “our safety and our lives come first”. “We can’t think of what we might have left behind,” she told AFP, asking to be identified only by her first name.
If the war lasts, the UN has already warned, up to 2.5 million more people will suffer from hunger – a scourge that already affects a third of Sudanese.
(with AFP)
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