“The absurdity” exceeds its seventh month. Does the eighth see its inevitable end?
Abdallah Rizk Abusimaza
In the course of the eighth month, the likelihood of stopping and reversing the war is equal, according to available data. The past two weeks have seen the resumption of the second round of negotiations of the Jeddah Platform between the parties to the April 15 war, the Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, which ended after 10 days of deliberations, with an agreement on confidence-building measures between the parties and the acceleration of humanitarian access for those affected. However, this positive development, which was brought about by the negotiations, has been necessitated by the stalemate between men and men, which has been marked by an unprecedented escalation of fighting in Greater Darfur, resulting in the capture of Nyala, Zalingei, El Geneina and Umm Kadada by RSF, as well as the death, injury and displacement of tens of thousands of citizens to the deserts of asylum and displacement.
However, the facilitators failure to persuade the parties to the war and to negotiate the need to agree on an immediate and unconditional ceasefire was not only a source of disappointment for millions of war-torn citizens and to resist displacement and forced displacement, but also, in the view of many, a warning of a new round of violent fighting. This is what really happened. This failure has also raised doubts about the usefulness of what was agreed in the last round of negotiations and the possibility of enforcing confidence-building measures and facilitating the passage of humanitarian assistance, in the light of mutual bombardment, escalation and counter-escalation.
The end of the seventh month of war saw two significant events, in terms of evidence of developments, the first of which was the destruction of Kubri Shambat, which connects the cities of Omdurman and Khartoum Bahri and is widely believed to be used by the Rapid Support Forces to supply their units between the two cities. The event elicited wide, often angry, reactions in various quarters, while the remnants of al-Bashirs graveyard regime met with cheering. At the same time, the parties to the war have exchanged responsibility for the operation, which constitutes a crime against humanity in accordance with global humanitarian law. The event, which reflects the wars utmost absurdity, bankruptcy and madness, reflected a determination to continue the war by targeting infrastructure.
In contrast, the risks of possible confrontations between the two sides of the war in Fasher Abuzkariya, after the fights of El Geneina, have declined amid heightened fears from the international community of new humanitarian tragedies. This decline appeared to relate to broad understandings between the relevant parties, both at home and abroad, and to the dossier of peace negotiations, which is expected to resume, after a pause of days, dictated by the Kingdoms hosting of the Saudi-African Summit and the Arab-Islamic Summit. Nevertheless, the spectacle is not without indications that the eighth month could mark the end of the war, an intense political and diplomatic external multilateral movement. Among these are General Abdelfattah al-Burhan, President of the Sovereign Council, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Foreign Affairs, and, most importantly, his visit to Kenya, which resulted in an agreement to convene an emergency IGAD summit in the framework of the ceasefire endeavour to speed up the Jeddah negotiations, reflecting a new direction of the army leadership towards a cessation of war.
