Last April, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan found himself in
a bloody confrontation that almost cost him his life. According to one of Burhan's bodyguards, the head of the Sovereign
Council, the de facto ruler of the
state, had to carry a Kalashnikov assault rifle to defend himself and exchange
fire with RSF fighters who stormed his headquarters before his men pulled him
to safety. According to this account, more than 30 guards were killed in the
battle that accompanied the attack before the withdrawal of the RSF fighters
from the residence of the head of the Sudanese Armed Forces. Sudan's most
powerful man was close to being assassinated in the first moments of the
fighting, which in its third month nearly descended into all-out civil war in a
country exhausted by divisions and conflicts.
On 26 June, the Rapid Support Militia, which owes
allegiance to the clan of Dagalos and the Rizeigat tribe, seized the headquarters of the Central
Reserve Forces, a militarized Sudanese police unit. The army's presence in the
capital's three cities, Khartoum, Bahri, and Omdurman, decreased compared to a
large deployment of the Rapid Support Forces. However, the army forces are
practically greater in number and firepower than the Rapid Support Forces. The
army is also suffering from a retreat in Darfur
and its cities and is unable to secure its positions. Recent events prompted
General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan to urge citizens to take up arms "to gain the honor of defending the survival of the
Sudanese state. " This indicates that the army has lost control of the
situation and is trying to mobilize and recruit to heal the growing rift in
military performance. The disastrous military performance of the Sudanese army
has raised the old question once again, why do armies in Arab and African
countries collapse in front of ideological and tribal militias that are not
comparable in number or firepower?
Reasons for the decline in the performance
of the Sudanese army:
Despite the
superiority of the Sudanese
army in the number of more than 200 thousand fighters (trained) and in the
firepower, where it has air superiority that dominates over the sky, as well as
armored vehicles and heavy artillery that the Rapid Support Militia does not
have, which relies on four-wheel drive vehicles for its transportation. Still, the
army declining combat performance in the recent battles and its loss of
positions in the capital itself, which was seen as its fortified stronghold, is
one of the Military puzzles. What are the reasons behind this military puzzle
for the decline of the Sudanese army's combat in its fight against a militia
that does not have the military knowledge that army officers who graduated from
military institutes possess? Some of the reasons can be summarized as follows:
1- The ideologization of the armed forces: Islamists' attempts to penetrate the army and security services initiated by Hassan al-Turabi (the historical leader of the
Islamist movement in Sudan) in the seventies succeeded in creating loyal and
ideological military cadres loyal to the Islamist movement, which led to the
1989 coup against the elected government after a political crisis that
Islamists contributed to exacerbating in the government and parliament. After
the Islamists succeeded in seizing power, it expanded The army's ideology and transformation into
an ideological institution that owes allegiance to Islamists and not a
professional institution. Ideological armies are transformed into reward
institutions in which promotion and escalation are carried out according to ideological
commitment and loyalty to the Islamist movement rather than professional
competence considerations.
2- The business interests of the generals: Decades of control of the military's alliance with Islamists have led
to the growth of so-called security/military "business," companies
that benefit and are managed by military officers and security employees either
in service or retirement. In June 2022, the Center
for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS) report published data identifying 408 enterprises controlled by security
and military elites, including agricultural companies, banks, and medical import companies. In
general, the growth of the commercial interests of military and security elites
is the most critical challenge facing third-world countries whose armies are
politically active. The overlap between security, military, economic and
political dimensions leads to severe damage to politics and economy, as well as to military and combat readiness.
According to the C4ADS report, the Bashir regime has empowered the cartel of
security and military elites that formed the deep state of Sudan, laying the
foundation for those elites to exploit corruption and exclusive economic rights
within the authoritarian regime in Sudan.
Attention to the economy has diverted the
attention of army leaders from developing the combat capabilities and training
of the Sudanese army, shifting their priorities to commercial and economic
interests intertwined with the state, which explains the degree of poor
training and degrees of military and combat discipline of military personnel in
recent battles. In light of this situation, the role of the military
professional has declined, and what we can call the military businessmen has
emerged, a pattern in which efficiency considerations are centered on
generating wealth and maximizing profit, not professional capabilities, which
consequently affects the readiness and effectiveness of armies.
3- Multiple command and control centers. Modern armies are based on unifying command and control in a single
structure so that operational or strategic decisions do not conflict and
differences between multiple command structures do not lead to armed conflicts.
This is not the case in Sudan, where armed groups breed like mushrooms in
wetlands.
Each
group has a state-recognized command and control structure under the Juba Peace Agreement, which includes main
armed groups such as the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Army (Minawi's faction), active in Darfur, and the
Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (Malik Agar's faction), active in
Kordofan and Blue Nile.
These
movements are also awarded recognized military ranks. According to local
media, military ranks awarded to the movements semi-officially are sold at
a rank market in Khartoum. The state has lost its primary constituent,
exclusive control over legitimate violence. It has granted political and social
legitimacy to the diversity of armed loyalties and multiple leadership, making
armed conflicts palatable to the public as an armed protest and not a departure
from the state itself. Here, the lines between opposition and armed
rebellion blur producing endless wars in which no final victor or apparent defeat.
In such an atmosphere, the official army
turns into another armed group that does not represent all Sudanese, as each of whom has the right to choose the
armed group that expresses them or defends their interests, first and foremost,
their interest in life itself, after the state has been involved for long
periods in ethnic cleansing or organized looting.
4- Weakness of combat doctrine: The multiplicity of armed groups, multiple loyalties, and the ideologization
of the army undermined the perception of many Sudanese towards their national
army, as the military lost its national character and turned to be an elitist
and ideological group. As the conflict began, Hemedti and Burhan were seen by
large segments of the Sudanese as "two sides of the same coin." Sudanese groups, intellectuals, the
so-called Resistance Committees, and the Forces of Freedom and Change also
raised the "No to war" slogans. These slogans equated the conflicting
parties and harmed the army based on national mobilization, unlike the RSF
militia, which derives its human reservoir from tribal ties in the first place.
The military's previous positions have also
weakened the doctrine of its fighters, especially its involvement in the brutal
suppression of protests, its political role, and doubts about the loyalty of
some of its leaders to the Bashir regime. All these factors have played a role
in weakening the army's combat doctrine and confusing the perceptions of a
large number of its members, many of whom are fighting for an imagined state
that does not exist in the consciousness of many Sudanese, whose loyalties are
divided between tribe, ethnicity and religious belief.
Various factors intertwined that led to the
decline in the performance of the Sudanese military. Still, the Sudanese case
remains a harsh and sad lesson that may answer the questions of the readiness
of militaries, their combat efficiency, and how armies were affected by
politics, just as armies harmed politics.
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