THREAD on the implications of the longterm objectives of the RSF and the Sudanese military.
The former seeks to remain autonomous and to redraw Sudan's traditional fault lines through the barrel of the gun. The latter fears any rival to its supremacy in politics. #Sudan
The former seeks to remain autonomous and to redraw Sudan's traditional fault lines through the barrel of the gun. The latter fears any rival to its supremacy in politics. #Sudan
The only viable option for political stability is to suppprt Sudan's street movement. Unlike the RSF, the Resistance Committees aim to dismantle the country's post-coloal structure altogether, not just redraw the traditional fault lines.
This entails rejecting elite deal making between riverian elites and/or between militia and military actors. From Khartoum to Juba, these arrangements have reproduced centralized governance that has caused militia violence in the peripheries, and the militarization of the economy
With the economic pie shrinking, the ongoing competition for legitimacy, power, and resources between the RSF and military could result in the fracturing of the October 25 coup alliance.
Regional players like Egypt and the GCC may try to strike a deal to avert a civil war that would indeed threaten their agricultural investments, assets and security pacts. In their eyes, the faster global development aid resumes, the faster they can return to business as usual.
The issue is that no external arrangement will pacify the resistance committees (and good luck to anyone that tries to co-opt them). Rather than stabilize #Sudan , any top down deal would amplify unrest in Khartoum and across the country. But why?
The answer: RCs are fighting to destroy an exploitative economic structure, not just remove the military from politics. They also want to remove any militia and military influence from the economy. That includes recapturing assets stolen by the military's patronage networks.
Once this is accomplished, RCs believe that #Sudan can finally be a) less reliant on foreign aid and thus less subjected to crippling austerity and b) free from the central/periphery divide that has generated so much violence and militarization in the country's margins.
Now here is the million dollar question: will western powers back RCs in their quest for genuine freedom and economic sovereignty?
I umfortumately fear that the tendency to look for band aid solutions will prompt western diplomats to push for the only "peace" they know how to make: elite deal making that reproduces the root causes for instability, unrest, and conflict.
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