SUDAN INSIGHT ALERT: Foreign Policy - Sudan Is Remaking Its Relationship With the Rest of the World
Former US diplomat Cameron Hudson argues that the Sudanese military shares the government’s desire to see Sudan reintegrated into the international community – citing moves to handover Omar al-Bashir to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the “radical” expansion of UN operations in Sudan – “both of which seem to run counter to the military’s interests.”
Hudson attributes the cooperation between military and civilian leaders to the military’s attempts to undermine Himedti and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), “the single most powerful force [in Sudan]” and “a threat to the military’s traditional role.”
With growing ICC-Sudan relations a “direct threat” to Himedti given his past leadership of the Janjaweed militia accused of abuses in Darfur, Hudson concludes that military leaders may be playing the strategic long game that “marginalises the RSF and secures their survival under a new political dispensation.”