"Following the coup that overthrew al-Bashir in 2019, a fragile civilian-military transitional arrangement failed to unite competing factions. Political instability, localised rebellions, and a simmering rivalry between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) the successor to the Popular Defence Forces, government-backed militia known as the Janjaweed who committed war crimes in Darfur in the early 2000s escalated into full-blown conflict."
"Although geographically removed, the European Union played a consequential role in these developments. For nearly a decade, it pursued a strategy of externalising migration control, directing aid, training, and equipment to African states ostensibly to reduce irregular migration towards Europe. In Sudan, this approach produced unintended and devastating consequences that the EU is yet to be held accountable for. Funding initially justified under migration management and capacity building intersected with opaque arms flows, Gulf intermediaries, and weak oversight."
Decades of authoritarian rule under Omar al-Bashir left Sudan with a fragile economy, fragmented security forces, and entrenched paramilitary structures. The 2019 coup produced a fragile civilian-military transition that failed to unify competing factions. Rivalry between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) escalated amid local rebellions and political instability, culminating in open conflict by April 2023. Major cities became battlefields and millions of people became internally displaced or refugees. European Union policies to externalise migration control channelled aid, training, and equipment to Sudanese forces. Those interventions, combined with opaque arms flows and weak oversight, inadvertently reinforced actors committing war crimes.
Read at www.aljazeera.com
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