The delicate attempt to unite Sudan’s political class around a common roadmap fell apart on the margins of talks in Addis Ababa at the start of June. Beneath the veneer of agreement on a preparatory committee, deep fault lines paralyzed international mediation.
The fuse had been lit well before the opening of the international mediation sessions in the Ethiopian capital. On 1 June, while the components of the Democratic Bloc were still negotiating their common position, Darfur governor Minni Minnawi bypassed collective approval and unilaterally announced the group’s participation in the Addis Ababa talks, sending his adviser Ali Trayo in his place.
In the aftermath, several parties and figures within the Democratic Bloc, which is close to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s Sudanese Armed Forces, announced they would boycott the Ethiopian gathering. Among them, the bloc’s leading figures, Jaafar al-Mirghani of the Democratic Unionist Party-Original, Gibril Ibrahim of the Justice and Equality Movement, Al-Tom Hajo of the Revolutionary Front Unionist Party, and Mohamed Amine Turk of the Beja Council, chose the empty-chair tactic, refusing to attend the event alongside Tasis, the civilian coalition emerging from the Rapid Support Forces of General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as “Hemedti”.
Tasis, for its part, refused to negotiate any political track before a truce had been signed, said its spokesman Ahmed Tugod Lisan, who was present in the Ethiopian capital. Organized under the auspices of the Sudan Quintet – bringing together the African Union, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, the Arab League, the European Union and the United Nations – the conference had banked on a format of direct talks with each represented party in an effort to sidestep these cross-vetoes.
Backlash
The gamble failed. Instead of building a unified civilian front capable of forcing Burhan and Hemedti to lay down their weapons, the mediation mechanism found itself facing a political class more fragmented than ever.
Having made his move, Minnawi tried to impose the inclusion of the National Congress Party, the body of ousted former president Omar al-Bashir, who ruled from 1989 to 2019, in the future process. The demand immediately triggered a backlash among the leaders of Somoud civilian coalition, led by former prime minister Abdallah Hamdok. Omar el-Degeir, president of the Sudanese Congress Party, and Al-Wathiq al-Barir, secretary-general of the Umma Party, issued an outright veto.
Faithful to the principles of their “Declaration for the Building of a New Homeland”, signed in mid-December, Somoud’s leading figures – backed behind the scenes by Ali al-Rayah al-Sanhouri of the Baath Party – are calling for the total exclusion of the apparatus of Bashir’s era, going so far as to demand that the NCP be listed as a terrorist organization by Washington.
Fundamental disagreements
Despite the tensions, representatives of the various political factions did manage to extract a signed document creating a 40-member “Preparatory Committee”, co-led by Minnawi’s adviser Ali Trayo and Mubarak Ardol for the Democratic Bloc, alongside Taha Osman and Khalid Omer for Somoud. Behind closed doors, the signatories verbally committed to jointly reject the NCP and Tasis – wording that was absent from the official communiqué.
Yasir Arman, head of the revolutionary democratic current of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, and his deputy Buthaina Dinar, refused to recognize the committee’s legitimacy, citing fundamental disagreements over the lack of an explicit written rejection of the NCP in the final text.
Sally Zaki, an assistant to Mirghani, subsequently announced her resignation from the Democratic Bloc after travelling to Addis Ababa. She said she would not endorse the hastily approved final text validated by Minnawi and Ardol, arguing that the two men had no mandate to commit the bloc without prior consultation.
