This week Sudan marked two years of devastating civil war between the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces that has killed thousands and left millions displaced. Mediation efforts have been dismal thus far, but a major summit led by the United Kingdom, held earlier this week, appeared to offer a glimmer of hope. Sadly the summit ended with the failure to establish a contact group to facilitate ceasefire talks after Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, all accused of backing armed factions, failed to sign a communiqué that might chart a path toward ending the conflict.
In this episode of ICDI Dialogues, the podcast that accompanies our monthly newsletter Diplomacy Now, two of Sudan’s leading experts, Dr. Suliman Baldo and Kholood Khair, take us through the conflict, its causes and the prospects for peace. Baldo and Khair discuss the role that the military has played in Sudan’s political history and how and why the democratic transition faltered after the 2019 popular revolution.
“This is an anti-revolutionary, a counter-revolutionary war. It is very much designed to minimize the civilian voice and to minimize the civic space,” Khair argues, adding that support of foreign actors and globalized nature of the conflict has made mediation especially challenging.
Khair and Baldo guide us through recent mediation efforts and why they have failed and explore the possible role the UN could play in mediation.
“There are also worrying signals that a very flimsy roadmap for peace that the Sudan government has sent to the UN is finding positive reception,” said Baldo.
Both argue that the popular resistance groups that played a role in the 2018-2019 grassroots uprising must be included in mediation efforts if Sudan is to get back on its democratic course.
As with every edition of Diplomacy Now, the views expressed by the guests appearing on ICDI Dialogues are not necessarily our own. However, ICDI remains committed to the ethos and philosophy that open debate, dialogue, diplomacy, and mediation, rather than armed conflict and war, offer the way forward to resolving any conflict.
We hope you enjoy listening and we welcome your feedback at diplomacynow@dialogueinitiatives.org.
Guest Bios
Dr. Suliman Baldo
Dr. Suliman Baldo is a widely recognized expert on conflict resolution, emergency relief, development and human rights in Africa and on international advocacy related to these issues. He has worked extensively in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan and served for seven years at Human Rights Watch as a senior researcher in the organization’s Africa division. He worked as a senior analyst before becoming the director of the Africa program at the International Crisis Group and at the International Center for Transitional Justice.
Now Suliman serves as the Executive Director of the Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker that he established in 2022 to respond to the need for more organized and sustained anti-corruption campaigning. Since the outbreak of war in Sudan in April 2023, the organization has also been monitoring human rights abuses and mediation efforts.
Kholood Khair
Kholood Khair is a Sudanese political analyst and the founding director of Confluence Advisory, a “think-and-do” tank based in Khartoum. Kholood is also a radio broadcaster, hosting and co-producing a weekly radio program, Spotlight 249, that is Sudan’s first English-language political discussion and debate show aimed at Sudanese youth. Khair has over a decade of experience in research, aid programming and policy in Sudan and across the Horn of Africa.
She has written for Foreign Policy, Al Jazeera English, The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy and other international outlets and organizations, and has been quoted widely as a political analyst in the media, including in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the BBC and NPR.
