Today, Sudan is experiencing a severe political, security, and social crisis due to the ongoing internal war, a crisis that threatens the very foundation of the state and is even more dangerous than the situation that led to the secession of South Sudan in July 2011.
What is happening to Sudan as a result of international schemes supported by regional alliances is only met with Arab decline and retreat, where the remnants of hope appear only as ruins that evoke nothing but tears. Sudan today is like a mourning orphan, longing for the support and embrace of their kin to save them from their predicament and hold them close.
One only needs to reflect with sorrow on the dynamics of Arab events over the past few decades to grasp the tragic reality of the Arab situation, which is not only plagued by the incapacity of its League to undertake any positive action but is also marked by a complete absence on the regional and international stage. The Arab League has become an empty shell, devoid of meaning or substance, barely making any impact or sound.
Sudan was not pleased with the statement from the recent Arab summit held in Bahrain last May. This summit was seen as the first to coincide with this critical situation, raising Sudan's hopes to the sky!
The Arab League has become an empty shell, devoid of meaning or substance, barely making any impact or sound.
Although the section concerning Sudan in the summit's statement expressed “full solidarity with Sudan in maintaining its sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity, and preserving its state institutions, at its forefront the national army,” the statement simultaneously urged both the Sudanese government and the “Rapid Support Forces” militia, which is rebelling against the army, to seriously and effectively engage with crisis settlement initiatives.
Because the Arab League's statements and decisions do not align with what’s right as long as there is even one objecting member to the majority opinion, the statements are often distorted to accommodate such objections, satisfying the opposing member. This section of the statement overlooked the agreement within the same document to uphold the leading state institutions of Sudan, i.e., the armed forces, as acknowledged by the statement itself. It equated the army with the rebellious forces, which have turned into a terrorist militia committing acts of genocide and crimes against humanity. These are not merely the descriptions given by the Sudanese government; these painful truths have been documented on the ground by United Nations reports and credible international journalistic sources.
Yet, the statement of the Arab League arbitrarily called on the Sudanese army to “settle” with the militia to resolve the conflict. This means overlooking the crimes and rushing towards a political approach that grants the militia lost moral legitimacy before giving it political legitimacy, which would perpetuate the crisis in the future. It was hoped that there would be condemnation of the militia's rebellion against not only the armed forces and its subsequent terrorist crimes but also against unarmed Sudanese civilians whom they displaced from their homes, violated their honor, and robbed.
Strategic Importance
There is no doubt that the idea of the Arab League remains a visionary concept, rooted in the aspirations of every Arab to achieve unity, solidarity, economic prosperity, and the establishment of a strong and influential regional and international entity. This entity would reflect the cultural and value richness of the region and its people, in addition to its natural wealth in energy resources, water, and livestock.
However, the Arab League, with its structural composition and bureaucratic decision-making process that dwells in a gray area, has never been able to make decisions capable of realizing Arab dreams.
The astonishing irony is that the Arab League includes the largest agricultural country, known as the “bread basket of the Arab world,” while at the same time including the largest wheat-importing country in the world!
The League’s structural composition and bureaucratic decisions have never been able to make decisions that achieve Arab dreams.
Efforts by the Arab League towards economic integration have remained confined to the realm of promotional campaigns and forums that excel in public relations. The meetings and invitations of the Arab Economic Council have been noisy, yet they have not yielded any tangible results. Neither has the League, as a regional organization, demonstrated strong will, nor have its member states individually shown such determination. The result is a collective failure compounded by individual failures.
Unless Arab funds, which have fattened banks in America and Europe, return to their homelands, Arabs will not succeed in achieving economic prosperity. Their success is not just about achieving economic abundance but also about bridging the gap and filling the voids for millions of poor people in the Arab world, struggling under the influence of Western hostile strategies that support Israel, the occupying state.
Geopolitical Dimension
The presence of 10 Arab countries that are members of both the Arab League and the African Union could potentially serve as a strong incentive for Arab-African strategic cooperation. This is particularly significant because more than half of Arabs live in Africa (about 60%), and 25% of Africans are Arabs. Arabic is also one of the most spoken languages in Africa.
For over two decades, Sudanese issues have been referred to the African Union for resolution. The Arab League has had little notable contribution in this regard, except for Qatar's role in facilitating the Darfur Peace Agreement in July 2011. The Sudanese government may heavily owe the African Union at that time on several current issues, including its stance on the International Criminal Court's pursuit of Sudan's President. This contrasts with the Arab League's positions; at the Arab Summit in Nouakchott in 2016, Sudan requested the Arab League to adopt a similar stance as the African Union, which had decided not to engage with the ICC, but to no avail.
For two decades, Sudanese issues have been referred to the African Union, and the Arab League has had no significant contribution.
After the secession of South Sudan in 2011, Arabs across various Arab countries mourned the separation of a beloved part of the greater homeland. Beyond the internal and historical dynamics that led to this split, we can say that the secession of South Sudan was an inevitable outcome of structural deficiencies in Arab national security. This compromised security has already lost Palestine, and many other threats continue to menace this nation.
National security, in its comprehensive sense, encompasses both economic and political dimensions. The Arab League has not sufficiently moved towards Sudan from an economic-security perspective. Arab abandonment of Sudan economically is nothing compared to the political and military abandonment.
There is a bitter sense among Sudanese that some Arab countries view the current crisis in Sudan as merely an African or semi-Arab issue, not a strategic conflict affecting Arab regional security that necessitates addressing it as such.
It appears that the Arab League, knowingly or unknowingly, is becoming entangled in the Western strategic plan aimed at fragmenting and disintegrating significant geopolitical Arab states rich in natural and human resources. Its role remains to soften and pave the way for this scheme, buying time through general exhaustion and through the fourth generation of asymmetric warfare, manifesting in creating internal wars within targeted countries through regional militias and ethnic divisions that lead to the declaration of independence of its regions. In this way, those colonial states achieve dominance and their objectives without sending a single soldier to the battlefield or shedding their blood, instead causing the bloodshed of the children of the targeted state.
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