NAIROBI, Kenya – Sudan’s nightmare scenario is unfolding.
Fighter jets hunted over the capital Khartoum on Sunday and fired rockets at a city of millions. Artillery fire pounded the military headquarters, turning it into a tower of flames. Civilian planes were bombed at the city’s airport, where frightened passengers huddled on the terminal floors.
The country has been walking a tightrope for four years, desperately clinging to the dream of the 2019 popular revolution, when protesters toppled a brutal dictator and raised sweet hopes of democracy.
But two power-hungry generals still dominate Sudan. And if their relationship fall into violence This weekend, it sparked a breathless descent into what appeared to be the fulfillment of many people’s worst fears.
Fighting spread to all corners of the country, where the army and a paramilitary entity called the Rapid Support Forces fought for control of airfields and military bases. One of the factions even captured and detained Egyptian soldiers along with seven Egyptian warplanes, threatened to draw a powerful neighbor into battle, and raised the specter of a regional conflagration.
Fighting has also spread deep into Darfur, the region the size of Spain that has been tormented by its own cycle of violence for the past 20 years.
For a country just beginning to emerge from international isolation, the chaos is a devastating blow. As Sudan slowly moved closer to democracy, the United States had removed its designation as a state sponsor of terrorism. International aid was promised, and Russian attempts to gain a foothold there increased their geostrategic value.
But the revolution in Sudan, like many others, has run aground.
For Omar Farook it means the end of a dream.
Like tens of thousands of others, Mr Farook once risked his life to join the protesters in 2019 that caused resistance the fall of President Omar Hassan al-BashirSudan’s autocratic ruler of three decades.
But this weekend, as Mr Farook and his wife huddled in their home in the Khartoum suburbs listening to the sound of bombs and gunfire, their hopes for democracy evaporated.
“We feel powerless,” he said on the phone. “Everyone is concerned that this will go the way of Yemen or Syria. The specter of the civil war is here.”
Since April 13, more than 83 people have been killed and over 1,126 others injured, most of them over the weekend. said the World Health Organization. The toll includes civilians caught in the crossfire and is expected to rise.
The United Nations World Food Program said three of its staff were killed in the western Darfur region and one of its planes was destroyed at the airport. The group announced an immediate suspension of all programs in Sudan, where a third of the country’s 45 million people are in need of food aid.
Sudan was set to usher in a momentous new era this month: a return to civilian rule. The army had promised to hand over power last Tuesday, the fourth anniversary of Mr al-Bashir’s ouster. But that transition depended on the two generals running the country – the army chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan; and his deputy, the paramilitary commander Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan – keeping their smoldering rivalries in check.
Instead, they began fighting, dragging Africa’s third-largest country into a chaotic spiral that many fear will end in full-blown civil war.
So far, the world’s attention has been focused mainly on Khartoum, where uninterrupted internet service has allowed residents to broadcast clips of the terrifying street battles raging outside their doors.
Stunned by the sudden eruption of violence early Saturday, powerful Western and Arab countries stepped up efforts on Sunday to persuade General al-Burhan and General Hamdan to stop fighting.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke with his counterparts in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, jointly calling for immediate peace talks. The Arab League, to which Sudan belongs, called on the warring factions to “stop the bloodshed.”
At an emergency meeting of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, a regional bloc that includes Sudan, the presidents of Kenya, South Sudan and Djibouti agreed to visit Khartoum together, an official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. No date has been set.
Even the UN Security Council issued a statement rare since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, condemning the violence and urging both sides to resume talks.
Sudan’s warring generals didn’t seem to be listening.
As rival troops exchanged gunfire and rocket fire on the streets of Sudan, General Hamdan and General al-Burhan launched violent verbal attacks on television and the internet. Both men claimed to be winning the battle and made threats of war that seemed to leave little room for negotiation.
In an interview, General Hamdan said General al-Burhan “will die like any dog” if he is not brought to justice. And as the violence spread, the Sudanese army posted a video on Facebook shows soldiers in the eastern city of Qadarif stepping on a photo of General Hamdan.
Another unpredictable factor emerged in a somber episode involving at least 30 imprisoned soldiers from Egypt, Sudan’s northern neighbor and former colonial ruler. General Hamdan’s forces captured the Egyptians and seven fighter jets at an air base in Meroe, 125 miles north of Khartoum, on Saturday.
Egypt said the soldiers were on a training exercise in Sudan.
But a relative of General Hamdan, Izzeldin Elsafi, said over the phone that the detained soldiers are mainly pilots and aircraft mechanics who have come to Sudan to conduct airstrikes on behalf of the Sudanese military. He blamed Egypt for airstrikes that hit General Hamdan’s Rapid Support Forces in Port Sudan and Omdurman, across the Nile from Khartoum, on Sunday morning. The planes took off from a second Egyptian base in Sudan, he said.
These claims could not be verified, but events highlighted the volatility of the conflict and its potential to draw other states into it. They also highlighted a critical imbalance between the two clashing forces: the Sudanese army has fighter jets. The Rapid Support Forces don’t.
The fighting in Darfur added another combustible element to the conflict. Darfur is home to several rebel groups that could be drawn into the fighting, and it was a base for Russia’s Wagner private military company that prospects there and is allied with General Hamdan.
In Khartoum, satellite images on Sunday showed black smoke filling the sky over the airport, where two large Ilyushin transport planes were ablaze. At least four other planes have been burned since Saturday, according to satellite imagery verified by The Times.
Many Sudanese said they could hardly believe what was happening.
Although tensions between General al-Burhan and General Hamdan had been rising for many months, foreign officials pushing for a transition to civilian rule had insisted it was on the right track – a source of bitter reproach among Sudanese, they say , the foreigners should have defuse tensions within the military.
And while Sudan has seen numerous wars, disastrous as they have been, in its 67-year history, most of them have played out on the country’s periphery, hundreds of miles from the capital.
The conflicts led to South Sudan’s secession in 2011; Indictment for genocide in Darfur before the International Criminal Court; and monumental amounts of death, displacement and suffering, Marginalized ethnic groups are particularly affected.
But they rarely affected Khartoum directly.
That changed dramatically this weekend as residents of the capital experienced the kind of trauma previously confined to more distant parts of the country. It coincided with the last 10 days of Ramadan, the month-long fast that is the holiest in the Islamic calendar.
Even after the warring factions announced a three-hour ceasefire in Khartoum on Sunday to allow residents safe passage, the gunfire and explosions didn’t stop, several people said over the phone.
In Kafouri, an affluent neighborhood north of the Nile, Reem Sinada watched in horror on Saturday as a line of paramilitary combat vehicles carrying more than 50 fighters pulled up on her doorstep. Her family fled to her brother’s house nearby – but a day later she cowered again as the windows and doors of her new shelter shook from shells that landed nearby.
“I am overwhelmed with very sad feelings,” Ms. Sinada said over the phone. “But hopefully that will be behind us soon.”
Reporting was contributed by Farnaz Fassihi And Christoph Koettl from New York; Vivian Yee from Cairo; Andres R. Martinez from Seoul; Edward Wong from Karuizawa, Japan; And Isabella Kwai from London.
