It is – again – time to take a deep breath and remind that as much as there are superbly strong reasons to be concerned and alarmed by the seemingly never-ending crises elsewhere, indeed expanding crises as in the new case of Iran there remain the tragic and humanely alarming cases of Sudan and South Sudan, largely neglected still today by the “International Community”, this reflecting both the stiff competition (for attention) from other burning crises and the decline of FN-led multilateralism – and US/Trump administration deprioritization. The Sudanese civil war is soon entering its devastating fourth year without an end or exit in sight, and in the case of South Sudan – with a civil war raging soon after independent (2013-18) – ominous indications seem to doom the world’s youngest country to renewed armed conflict. So sad.

To put things in perspective, the background to the current disaster(s) is that this once promising and resourceful country and former British colony at the White Nile and the Blue Nile descended into two separate and consecutive civil wars as from soon after Independence, the first between 1955 and 1972, the second 1983-2005 and the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that finally put an end to the bloodshed and paved the way for the rather unique outcome, the partition between the Arab-Muslim north and the African-mixed religion south and the creation of South Sudan, amid dark clouds of uncertainty. Then followed South Sudan’s civil war, ended by a provisional agreement in 2018, then an “Arab-Spring-style” uprising against Khartoum’s long-time dictatorial ruler, al-Bashir, then some years of attempts at democratization, then its halting by a military coup and then, in April 2023, the falling apart between the two coup leaders and the start of the civil war, in parallel with spiraling enmity in South Sudan between its infighting warlords for decades, Salva Kiir (with the big black hat, a gift by Bush J:r) and Riek Machar, the two representing the region’s dominant tribes, Dinka and Nuer, respectively.

This history tells us that a person born in, say, the early 1950s will – if he or she survived – have lived to see three protracted and devastating civil wars and a few years of relative peace in between, a record of sorts hard to beat. Casualty figures, produced by UN and other bodies, are necessarily vague albeit huge, for instance estimating that in the second Sudanese civil war (1983-2005) some 2 million Sudanese fell victim – and that in South Sudan’s civil war after Independence (2013-18) some 400 000 people were killed (as a direct result of the war). These background figures indicate what people in this part of Africa have had to endure and what the conflicts have done to the political of these countries, in spite of great – albeit intermittent – international efforts at conflict mediation and humanitarian assistance. There was after all a time when a large proportion of total world political, economic and diplomatic attention was focusing on the Sudanese tragedy. Not so now. The accumulated burdens of affected Sudanese stand in reverse proportion to the accumulated assistance fatigue of international actors, in spite of brave efforts by the UN and other helpers.

And now fast forward to the present situation, carrying the burden of the very serious experience from decades of devastating conflict, and the question raised by a concerned African Union: was it at the end of the day a big mistake to allow Sudan to be partitioned, would things have been different, notably more peaceful, had the partition temptation been resisted, somehow? Those of us who were part of the process leading to partition, including this author, might quickly agree that the process towards partition was inevitable, impossible to halt at the time for want of viable alternatives. Still the question is valid, a lesson learned for other cases of threatening partition. Especially since so much of the tragedy of both Sudans are dictated by clashes of self-seeking personalities, Kiir versus Machar in the case of South Sudan, Al-Burhan, leader of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) versus Dagalo, leader of the rebellious Rapid Support Forces (RSF), in Sudan, year after year. And since so much of the tragedy especially in Sudan, both duration and intensity (and humanitarian consequences), depends on the destructive degree of involvement in the conflict by neighboring states. So, by comparison, whereas in South Sudan, looming political conflict is added to a refugee crisis (internally and as a spillover from Sudan’s war) and a climate disaster to create an overwhelming socio-humanitarian challenge more or less contained inside the country, the case of Sudan displays the combined factors of foreign involvement prolonging and deepening the crisis while on the other making Sudan and its war a factor of instability in the wider region. Nonetheless, the crises in the two sister countries are interlinked.

Hence the question regarding the end result in the form of partition. Hence, also, why some kind of settlement, at least a ceasefire in Sudan, should be of profound international interest, even for all the global crisis competition.

But with global humanitarian and peacekeeping financing in decline, under US leadership, and with the overall weakening of UN-led multilateralism and US security priorities looking elsewhere (and an element of Sudan rescue fatigue permeating Western offices), such international interest, apparently, is not to be, nor even to be hoped for to be operationalized. Even after soon three years of fighting (in Sudan) US-led attempts – for yes, there have been attempts – at mediating a three-months ceasefire have repeatedly failed, faced with a refusal by both sides to accept anything else than the opponent’s surrender.

And meanwhile Sudan itself – and certainly if one adds the accumulated suffering in South Sudan – has developed into the world’s largest humanitarian disaster, in terms of number of people threatened by famine (up to some 25 million) and being displaced internally or as refugees in neighboring countries (17-18 million), or being killed – estimate numbers vary between some 150 000 and as high as 400 000.

Given all this, it is saddening and amazing that Sudan’s – and South Sudan’s – crisis, or disaster, remains ignored, neglected, and unseen, largely and essentially. Yes, competition for attention is stiff, also from other African crisis areas and multilateralism is weakening. But we must – in this perhaps unwelcome reminder – face the fact that leaving the Sudanese crises burning without seriously committed efforts at halting the fire and the enormous suffering in untenable, both morally (to the extent internationally morality still exists) and from a security point of view: the stability of the entire region is clearly at stake. Certainly if de facto partition is threatening – again – as the perceived only path to peace.

Michael Sahlin