CGTN Europe spoke to Dr. Matthew Sterling Benson, LSE's Sudans Research Program Director.
Category
🎵
MusicTranscript
00:00Dr. Matthew Sterling Benson is Director of the Sudan's Research Program at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
00:06He joins us now. Hello, Matthew. I think you might have heard what Naba had to say.
00:10The Sudanese army says it's RSF. We haven't heard from RSF yet.
00:16For you, how significant is this latest development?
00:20It's very significant, and it's very significant for at least three reasons.
00:23First and foremost is really that we see a sustained war in which civilians are being used as pawns, effectively,
00:30so their lives are really not counting for much in this war, which is extremely devastating.
00:34There's mass displacement. There's numerous people who have been killed, and the violence does not seem to be stopping.
00:40Secondly, it really shows that the RSF is trying its best to demonstrate that it's not going to be contained to Darfur.
00:47It's trying to show that it can reach Port Sudan, the de facto head of the country, and it's showing this as a threat.
00:54So I view it as kind of almost like a caged animal that's now fought in a corner and realizes it's very vulnerable,
01:01and it's trying to prove to everyone, well, if you do this, I'm going to really show what I can do.
01:05And third, it can really showcase what's taking place with external patrons.
01:09I mean, these drones will not have been coming just from Sudan.
01:12They will have really relied upon the UAE and China and so forth.
01:16So it shows that the RSF and, of course, the SAF and different warring sides still have their external patrons,
01:23which are still vested in maintaining this war.
01:26You know, in March, government forces reclaim most of the actual capital, Khartoum.
01:30So is it possible to say who actually has the upper hand in this conflict?
01:35Things are volatile, as this current event shows, and that's the point of this event as far as I can really see it.
01:43So, yes, there is de facto control, relatively speaking, in Khartoum,
01:49but at the same time, there are still loads of unexplosed ordinances.
01:52There's still this looming threat where you have drones that are being used in order to terrify people
01:56and really provoke public reaction in order to push it to one side or to the other.
02:01And in the midst of all of this, of course, is the thing we have to keep holding on to,
02:04is that it's crowding out civilian voices, which really should be centered
02:07when we think about how potentially and hopefully as soon as possible
02:11a post-conflict Sudan is going to look like,
02:14because it's putting violence, centering violence and centering this modality
02:18as a way of getting people's attention.
02:20And the real risk here is that you begin to reward the bad guys for fighting a war
02:23while crowding out these civilian voices, which are calling for a new way of doing things in Sudan's history,
02:29which is to really think about public service delivery
02:31and to think about restraining violence and not using it as the way that you obtain legitimacy,
02:37which is really what I see taking place with the RSF right now.
02:40Yeah, it's really troubling.
02:42And we know it's called the Forgotten War.
02:43Many, many millions of people at risk, not only from the war itself,
02:49but also from a humanitarian point of view and famine.
02:53Talk to me about the regional instability, though.
02:55We know that Chad has taken a lot of people fleeing Sudan,
02:59but we also know that there are conflicts within South Sudan.
03:02And I'm just wondering about the region as a whole.
03:06Well, the region as a whole is extraordinarily fragile.
03:08And the reason as a whole we need to really be thinking about,
03:10and it's great that you're bringing that perspective in.
03:12This is not a war that is simply about Sudanese and about these.
03:16It's also just wrong to call it a civil war.
03:18It's really a regional war that's not only drawing in neighboring countries,
03:22but as I've mentioned already, it brings in Gulf countries and the UAE and so forth.
03:26So it's much more of a Red Sea arena, a conflict arena that's taking shape.
03:31And how this plays out is going to have devastating consequences
03:34or decisive ones for how the region as a whole will play.
03:37And this is not just the Red Sea, but also thinking about the broader Sahel.
03:40So depending on which side is able to maintain some sort of semblance of control,
03:47moderated through extreme violence, as we're seeing at the moment,
03:51there's likely to be different criminal networks that emerge throughout the Sahel,
03:54going through Chad and into neighboring countries through the broader Sahara.
03:59And then the Red Sea will have its own sort of dynamics as well.
04:01And I think that poses some real serious challenges about how you maintain
04:05any semblance of stability that can lead to flourishing of human lives,
04:09not the flourishing of these militarized and very business-oriented regimes.
04:13I mean, backing all of this is a lot of, it's all about businesses.
04:16It's not actually about controlling territory.
04:18It's about maintaining the ability to predate upon the international system
04:22and upon a period of civilians in Sudan who, as we've consistently seen,
04:26do not seem to matter to the belligerents as they go and fight these wars
04:29in the way that they're doing.
04:30Thank you so much for speaking to us.
04:32That's Dr. Matthew Sterling Benson.
04:34He's director of the Sudan's research program
04:36at the London School of Economics and Political Science.