According to analysts, new alliances in Sudan’s civil war could lead to regional conflict by inciting a neighboring South Sudan.
The biggest development was an alliance in February between the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), who established a government to rival Sudan’s current de facto leadership.
Since April 2023, the RSF has been at war with the Sudanese army in an effort to expand its operational area.
The armed SPLM-N, led by Abdel Aziz al-Hilu, has fought the army of Sudan for decades and is in charge of the states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile, both of which border South Sudan.
Analysts said Sudan’s army is responding by backing South Sudanese militias to fight the SPLM-N and the RSF along their shared 2, 000km (1, 240-mile) border.
South Sudan is already at risk of resuming its civil war, which is already its own political crisis.
According to Alan Boswell, an expert on South Sudan and Sudan for the International Crisis Group, “if things start to deteriorate in South Sudan, it will be very difficult to tell the difference between the war in Sudan and the war in South Sudan.”
Strategic alliance
SPLM-N has received criticism for allying with the RSF, which is accused of murdering numerous UN and other observers.
Al-Hilu likely chose the alliance because he could no longer afford to be neutral, according to Kholood Khair, a Sudanese expert and founding director of the Confluence Advisory think tank.
“Abdel Aziz realised the RSF will soon be his neighbour]next to South Kordofan state] and he can’t fight both the army and the RSF at the same time”, she told Al Jazeera.
West Kordofan state, which borders South Kordofan on March 23, was taken by the RSF.
North and North Kordofan and the states of White Nile share border with South Kordofan. The latter serves as a major strategic point to reach central Sudan, including the country’s breadbasket state known as Gezira, which the RSF recently lost to the army.
Because it shares an international border with Ethiopia, the state of Blue Nile is also crucial.
According to Boswell, SPLM-N’s partnership gives the RSF a much bigger operational theater to smuggle supplies from South Sudan and Ethiopia and launch new attacks on the army and civilians in central and northern Sudan.
“The army wanted to push RSF west of the Nile]towards the western region of Darfur] by basically capturing all the bridges]in Khartoum]”, he told Al Jazeera.
However, he said, “If RSF can travel back and forth through South Sudan] from South Kordofan to Ethiopia and if it can do so through Blue Nile and into Ethiopia, that poses a significant threat and makes the army’s containment strategy that much more challenging.”
War by proxy
Prior to South Sudan becoming independent, Khartoum fought to undermine the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), the main force fighting for the south’s liberation, during Sudan’s second north-south civil war from 1983 to 2005. In order to do so, it supported militias from the south.
The war ended with a peace agreement that gave southerners the right to vote in an independence referendum, and in 2011, South Sudan became the newest country in the world.
The South Sudanese ruling elite has fought the Sudanese army before, and SPLM-N is a result of this.
Hafez Mohamed, who is the Nuba tribespeople of South Kordofan and Blue Nile, claimed that while the government “normally relied on proxies to fight its wars,” the Nuba tribespeople of South Kordofan and Blue Nile fought alongside the SPLM during the civil war.
In 1987, the government began arming nomads and pastoralists referred to as “Arabs” to fight against sedentary farmers in the south who are seen as “non-Arabs”.
This divide-and-conquer strategy would serve as the army’s strategy for battling national uprisings for years to come, most notably the RSF, which was founded in the early 2000s.
In a bloodless military coup in 1989, President Omar al-Bashir expanded his role by creating the Popular Defence Forces (PDF), a tool for the then-National Islamic Front ruling party to politically and militarily mobilise young men.
The “Arab” PDF forces became notorious for setting entire villages on fire and carrying out summary killings.
The terrifying abuses frequently exacerbated the local competition for farmland, which was a result of decades of aggressive state-backed land policies that benefited the country’s elites and forced local communities to adopt industrial farming.
By association guilty.
After South Sudan seceded, the Nuba felt left behind in Sudan.
The Nuba in Blue Nile and South Kordofan would engage in ambiguous “popular consultations” with the central government to address the conflict’s root causes, according to the peace treaty that brought an end to the civil war.
Due to Khartoum and the Nuba fighters’ lack of political will, the consultations never materialized.
The former was looking to consolidate control over what remained of Sudan through force. According to a report from Small Arms Survey from March 2013, the latter, who later became known as the SPLM-N, continued their rebellion with the exception of South Sudanese President Salva Kiir’s limited political and logistical support.
Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Sudan’s army chief, believes Kiir is secretly supporting the RSF and SPLM-N alliance because of these historical ties, according to Boswell.
“Kiir has always been close with SPLM-N”, he told Al Jazeera. And it holds South Sudan [of the]armed forces] accountable for everything SPLM-N does, according to the statement.
Kiir may even be surprised that his old comrades have inked a partnership with the RSF. The RSF was sent by the army to fight al-Hilu’s fighters in the Nuba Mountains in 2015.
The RSF, however, suffered a humiliating defeat largely because it was more accustomed to fighting in the sprawling desert of Darfur than in the lush Nuba Mountains’ uplands.
The origins of the RSF date back to the first Darfur war in 2003, in which “Arab” tribal militias were recruited by the army to crush a mainly “non-Arab” rebellion against state neglect and lack of representation in the central government.
The “Janjaweed,” which means “Devils on Horseback,” were the “Arab” militias, who committed numerous atrocities, including systematic rape and summary killings, earning them the name “Janjaweed.”
Al-Bashir reorganized the Janjaweed into the RSF in 2013 to support his regime and combat insurgencies across the nation, not just in Darfur.
Little did he know that the RSF would rebel against the army years later.
Re-establish the divide and rule?
To counteract the new partnership, the army now appears to be activating other old proxies in South Sudan.
South Sudan is loosely split politically between militia and regular forces loyal to Kiir and an array of militias nominally aligned with Vice President Riek Machar.
The largest ethnic group in South Sudan, the Dinka, is represented by Kiir, whereas the second-largest tribe, the Nuer, is represented by Kiir.
Their rivalry dates back to the civil war before independence, when Machar accepted Khartoum’s government’s assistance in an effort to overthrow its then-leader John Garang.
In July 2005, seven months after the war came to an end, Garang died in a helicopter crash. The SPLM was quickly under the control of Kiir, who was his deputy.
A Machar and Kiir power struggle erupted into a civil war in South Sudan in 2013, two years after the country’s independence.
Most Nuer forces loosely aligned with Machar coalesced into the SPLM-In Opposition (SPLM-IO) to differentiate themselves from Kiir’s SPLM.
Before a flimsy power-sharing agreement was signed five years later, the violence claimed the lives of about 400 000 people.
While violence in South Sudan’s capital, Juba, calmed down after the peace deal, atrocities continued in the peripheries due to the government’s practices of appointing corrupt governors, coopting local militias and extracting resources, according to Joshua Craze, an independent expert on South Sudan and Sudan.
He cited clashes between some SPLM-IO commanders and the RSF this month as evidence that Sudan’s current conflict has been extending into South Sudan’s conflict-ridden peripheries. Along the shared border with South Kordofan, which borders Unity and Upper Nile, the RSF and SPLM-N are present.
Some of the clashes with the RSF reportedly took place with an SPLM-IO armed group in Upper Nile. Sudan’s Blue Nile state is said to have experienced more fighting.
By supporting some SPLM-IO commanders, the Sudanese army essentially wants to obstruct RSF’s movements along the [South Sudan-Sudan border],” Craze told Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera sent written questions to Sudanese army spokesperson Nabil Abdullah asking if the army was providing logistical and material support to SPLM-IO factions. By the time of publication, he had not responded.
integrated conflict
On Thursday, Kiir sent his security forces to place Machar under house arrest, a move that now pushes South Sudan closer to the brink of an all-out civil war, according to the UN.
Kiir claims that Machar is a supporter of the Nuer community militias, which engaged in combat this month with government forces.
Craze claimed that Machar does not have any control over these militias and that they are responding to their region’s arbitrary and oppressive government.
“What we are facing is very disturbing and dangerous. South Sudan is completely fragmented, according to Craze.
According to Boswell, many young South Sudanese men may end up fighting as mercenaries in Sudan if this prediction is accurate, noting that army-backed organizations like the RSF are already recruiting South Sudanese and “recruitment could pick up.”
He warned that if South Sudan slips back into civil war, the RSF would likely benefit.
