Sudan Crisis Talks Make Progress on Humanitarian Aid Access
The two parties agreed to the establishment of three access routes to bring humanitarian aid into “areas of famine and acute hunger,” Perriello said.
WASHINGTON DC, United States (Kurdistan 24) – Last month, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, announced that the U,S. was providing a large, additional tranche of humanitarian assistance to help address Sudan’s humanitarian crisis.
“The people of Sudan are facing the worst humanitarian crisis in the world,” she said, in announcing the new aid. “Much more needs to be done,” and “I’m proud to announce that the United States is providing an additional $203 million in humanitarian funding to support people in Sudan” and neighboring countries to which Sudanese have fled—namely, Chad, Egypt, and South Sudan.
Earlier this month, Washington sponsored talks in Geneva between the warring Sudanese factions. Other interested parties also participated in the talks, including the African Union, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Nations.
The two weeks of negotiations fell short of securing a ceasefire, but they did achieve one important objective. They secured the agreement of the two Sudanese factions—the Army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)— to approve safe corridors to allow for the provision of humanitarian aid.
Sudan’s Support for Saddam Hussein
Sudan has a long history of political instability. It includes the period from 1989 to 1996. The senior figure in Khartoum then was Hassan al-Turabi, a Sudanese politician, with strong Islamic leanings.
Turabi was also aligned with Saddam Hussein. In 1986, even before he assumed power, Turabi lured to Sudan a major figure in the Shi’ite opposition to Saddam, the London-based Mehdi al-Hakim. Once he was in Khartoum, Iraqi agents assassinated him.
In 1990, after Saddam invaded Kuwait, Sudan, under Turabi’s leadership, supported Iraq, as the U.S. secured a U.N, resolution demanding Iits withdrawal from Kuwait. Saddam did not withdraw, and the U.S. mobilized a large coalition to drive Iraqi forces out of the sheikhdom. All the while, the government of Sudan supported Baghdad.
Two years later, in the spring of 1993, Sudan’s U.N. mission provided diplomatic plates to conspirators in New York who planned to drive a bomb-laden vehicle bomb into the U.N.’s underground parking garage.
The U.S. responded by designating Sudan as a terrorist state and imposing sanctions on it. Two years later, in 1995, as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak visited Ethiopia to attend a summit of the Organization of African Unity, Sudan tried to assassinate him.
The U.N. Security Council responded by imposing international sanctions on Sudan, leading to Turabi’s marginalization and then his removal from power.
Current Destruction in Sudan
The conflict in Sudan has gone on since April 2023, when fighting broke out between the Army and the RSF. On Thursday, Tom Perriello, the U.S. Special Envoy on Sudan, briefed journalists about the situation and the two weeks of discussions that the U.S. has sponsored to deal with that situation.
Perriello began by emphasizing the humanitarian disaster in the country. “The scale of suffering in Sudan truly shocks the conscience,” he said, “and it so rarely gets the coverage that it needs, whether that’s in the Western media, African, or Gulf media.”
The highly-regarded British news magazine, The Economist, agreed. “The war in Sudan has received a fraction of the attention given to Gaza and Ukraine. Yet it threatens to be deadlier than either conflict,” it reported on Thursday, as it described the disaster in far more vivid terms than a U.S. diplomat can.
“Africa’s third largest country is ablaze,” it said, “Its capital city has been razed, perhaps 150,000 people have been slaughtered and bodies are piling up in makeshift cemeteries visible from space,” while “more than 10 [million] people, a fifth of the population, have been forced to flee from their homes.”
Humanitarian Aid Corridors—but no Ceasefire
In his briefing, Perriello explained that the U.S. had three objectives in the Geneva talks: 1) humanitarian access; 2) protection for civilians; and 3) cessation of hostilities.
Of the three goals, only the first made substantial progress. The two parties did agree to the establishment of three access routes to bring humanitarian aid into “areas of famine and acute hunger,” Perriello said.
This “would open up food, medicine, and lifesaving services for 20 million people,” he explained.
Some progress was also made on developing a mechanism to improve discipline among the fighters to better protect civilians. However, there was no progress on securing a ceasefire.
“We, unfortunately, see a lack of political will at the time for the parties to stop fighting,” Perriello stated, “and, in fact,” the conflict is “accelerating.”
Yet this is not what the Sudanese people want, Perriello affirmed, Rather, “the people have been very clear and unified in wanting a cessation of hostilities;” ensuring “access to all 18 states for food and medicine;” and “wanting to return to the values and aspirations of the revolution back in 2019 of an inclusive, democratic Sudan in which the people are able to define their own future.“