Sudan's de facto ruler, army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has said his government will not join peace talks in Switzerland and claimed the military would “fight for 100 years” if necessary to defeat the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Burhan, who heads the ruling Transitional Sovereignty Council, told reporters in Port Sudan on Saturday that the talks were aimed at “whitewashing” the RSF and countries that support the paramilitaries.
“We will not lay down our arms as long as the rebellion continues. We will not coexist with the rebels and we will not forgive them,” he said.
The United States launched talks in Switzerland on August 14 that concluded on Friday with the aim of alleviating human suffering and achieving a lasting ceasefire.
Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates also acted as mediators in the talks, which aimed to secure more aid as Sudanese civilians face famine, mass displacement and disease.
Although an RSF delegation was present, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by Burhan, did not agree with the format and did not attend, but were in telephone contact with the mediators.
“While we have been in constant communication with the Sudanese Armed Forces virtually, we regret their decision not to be present and believe this limited our ability to achieve more substantial progress on key issues, in particular a nationwide cessation of hostilities,” the mediators said in a statement on Friday.
The war in Sudan, which began last year, has caused one of the worst humanitarian and displacement crises in the world.
The Sudanese army and the RSF – led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as “Hemedti” – have been competing for power and control of the African country of 46 million people.
Human rights groups have called on both sides to avoid harming civilians and allow humanitarian access.
More than 25 million people are facing acute hunger in Sudan, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a United Nations-backed body that monitors global hunger.
The war has also displaced more than 10 million people and caused a public health disaster.
Last week, the warring parties agreed to improve access for humanitarian aid, with two routes identified to ensure the flow of resources to civilians, mediators said.
One was the Adre border crossing with Chad, leading to the Darfur region, and the other was along the Dabbah road from Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
US envoy to Sudan Tom Perriello told a news conference in Geneva on Friday: “We hope this will be a source of momentum for much bigger steps and progress in the future.”
But he acknowledged that progress had been slow due to the absence of the Sudanese Armed Forces and that results were inadequate to address the scale of the humanitarian crisis.
Moreover, overlapping efforts to achieve a ceasefire, including talks led by Saudi Arabia and the United States in Jeddah, have not eased the fighting.
“We believe that a national cessation of hostilities is possible. We know that this will require a lot of work,” Perriello said.
In an interview with Al Jazeera on Friday, Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, said the international community has not exerted the necessary pressure to ensure decisive action in Sudan.
“These are two armies locked in an existential battle. The last thing they are interested in is respecting agreements to which they do not consider themselves parties,” he said.
“I think the only thing that will change their perspective is if we put real pressure on them, if there are consequences for not showing up in Geneva.”
