Malign external actors' role in the intra-state conflict reinforces a longstanding New Zealand conviction that the United Nations Security Council is not fit for purpose and must be reformed.
Nanaia Mahuta says New Zealand is “deeply concerned” about the outbreak of civil war in Sudan and is calling for an end to the bloodshed there.
The Foreign Minister’s statement reflects the recognition that in an increasingly interconnected world New Zealand has indirect but potentially significant interests at stake in what is a brutal power struggle within Sudan’s military leadership.
Sudan is located in the Horn of Africa and is the third-largest African country. It is one of the poorest countries in the world and encompasses the Nile river whose waters are shared, somewhat warily, with regional powers, Egypt and Ethiopia.
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Egypt depends on the Nile to sustain a population of over 100 million, and Ethiopia is constructing a massive dam that has rattled both Cairo and Khartoum.
Following a military coup in 2021, Sudan has been governed by a council of generals led by two military figures that are now at the centre of today’s conflict.
The clashes are between the regular army led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and a paramilitary force called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by Burhan’s deputy, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
Burnhan and Dagalo have apparently fallen out over the proposed move towards civilian rule in Sudan. Both leaders insist they support this move, but a major sticking point appears to be the question of integrating the 100,000-strong RSF into the army and who should lead this new force.
In essence, the showdown between two ‘strongman’ figures in this resource-rich African nation is about power with the victor expecting the presidency and the loser facing imprisonment, exile or death.
The fighting, which erupted on April 15 in the Sudanese capital Khartoum, and other parts of the country, has devastated residential areas.
Air and artillery strikes have already killed more than 500 people, severely damaged hospitals, and serve to limit food distribution in a nation where a third of the population relies on food aid.
The UN Security Council reacted on April 23 by urging the warring parties to immediately stop fighting and by the following day the US and Saudi Arabia had managed to broker a shaky 72 hour ceasefire principally to enable foreign governments and the UN to evacuate their diplomats and nationals from Sudan.
Like Somalia in early 1991, the diplomatic community in Khartoum have responded to an internal bloody power struggle in an African state by leaving, a move which in the eyes of many Sudanese with nowhere to go amounts abandoning them at a time of extreme vulnerability.
Unless the fighting is swiftly ended, Sudan could follow the pattern of Syria, Libya and Lebanon where multi-sided internal conflicts have involved international actors pursuing their own interests at cost of expense of national and regional stability
As well as Ethiopia and Egypt, Sudan shares borders with five other countries – Libya, Chad, the Central African Republic, Eritrea and South Sudan – and has been the subject of a lot of external interest.
In 2021, following a military coup in Khartoum, the US suspended billions of dollars in loans and aid that had been made available following the end of the hardline al-Bashir Islamist regime, the lifting of sanctions, and Sudan’s agreement to establish diplomatic ties with Israel in 2020.
Meanwhile, China and Russia have considerable economic and geopolitical interests in Sudan. Beijing was Sudan’s second-largest trading partner in 2022 and Moscow has been a major provider of arms and plans to develop a naval logistics base on Sudan’s Red Sea coast.
Russia’s Wagner military group, which has close ties with the Kremlin, has partnered with the RSF in providing security for Russian-owned mining companies involved in the extraction of lucrative resources from Sudan, including gold.
Furthermore, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have close ties with the RSF, which provided thousands of fighters to support the military intervention by UAE and Saudi Arabia against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.
NZ and Sudan
In contrast, New Zealand has had a relatively light presence in Sudan. It does not have an embassy in Khartoum – the nearest New Zealand diplomatic establishment is in neighbouring Addis Ababa – and until recently only had a handful of Kiwis were situated in Khartoum.
Nevertheless, as Sudan continues to descend into a full-blown civil war, the economic, political and diplomatic implications for New Zealand are noteworthy.
First, Sudan flanks busy Red Sea shipping lanes through which oil tankers pass and continuing conflict in this region could disrupt global supply chains.
While New Zealand mainly imports refined fuel from Singapore, Japan and South Korea, it is to fair to assume that a substantial chunk of the crude oil that supplies those refineries comes from the Middle East region and so New Zealand’s access to fuel imports would certainly be affected in terms of supply and price.
Second, New Zealand cannot be indifferent to the fact that the transition to democratic civilian government in Sudan pledged after the demise of Bashir’s regime in 2019 has been further derailed by military infighting between factions with links to external actors, some of which strongly oppose any democratic future for this troubled country.
Third, the intra-state conflict in Sudan can only reinforce the longstanding New Zealand conviction the United Nations Security Council is not fit for purpose and must be reformed.
To date, the UN Security Council has confined itself to issuing appeals for an immediate ceasefire, but it is unrealistic to expect the current UN Security Council to do more to stop this carnage.
The Council’s veto-wielding permanent members – US, UK, France, China and Russia – do not share an equal commitment to Sudan’s democratic transition and can, if necessary, block any proposed action with which they disagree.
Currently, it is difficult to see how the political violence in Sudan can be halted and, more worryingly, the prospect of scenarios like Sudan cannot be ruled out elsewhere.
