Sudan’s military government has reportedly offered Russia what would be its first naval base in Africa in return for a promise of discounted weapons. Could this be the spur the western powers need to make a serious effort to end the country’s brutal civil war?
A wake-up call from a forgotten war
The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) government has offered Russia a 25-year deal to establish a naval base at Port Sudan with up to 300 troops and four warships, including nuclear-powered vessels. This would give Moscow a perch on the Red Sea, which is used by about 12 per cent of global trade, about 1,000km northwest of Djibouti where the United States and China have bases right next to one another.
The deal would also give Russia access to mining concessions in Sudan, the third-biggest gold producer in Africa. The SAF would receive advanced Russian anti-aircraft systems and other weaponry for its fight against the rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
An estimated 150,000 people have died and more than 12 million have been displaced by the conflict, which began in April 2023 when the two groups who had been sharing power fell out over plans to integrate the RSF into the SAF. The military advantage has shifted between the two groups, with the RSF gaining momentum since October when it captured El Fasher in West Darfur and conducted a massacre on such a scale that the blood-soaked ground was visible from space.
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Both groups franchise out their killing to local militias and each has powerful foreign backers, with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) supplying arms to the RSF while Egypt and Saudi Arabia support the SAF. These outside powers are motivated as much by Sudan’s gold and rich agricultural land as by strategic or ideological interests and Russia backed the RSF at first before switching its support to the SAF.
Last September, a Quad made up of the US, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt proposed a three-month humanitarian truce, followed by a permanent ceasefire and a nine-month transition to a civilian-led government. The new government would not be controlled by either the SAF or the RSF, and Islamists associated with the Muslim Brotherhood would be excluded.
In the wake of the international outrage that followed its slaughter in El Fasher, the RSF said it would accept the Quad’s plan, although it continued fighting and claimed this week to have captured the strategically important town of Babnusa. But SAF leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan rejected it as “the worst document yet”, complaining that it sidelined the military and left the RSF in place.
The Quad’s plan calls for an end to all external military support for the parties in Sudan’s civil war but some of its members are among the biggest arms suppliers to the RSF and the SAF. Without a halt to the supply of weapons, there is little prospect of a sustained truce, much less a settlement of the conflict.
Donald Trump last month promised to make ending the war in Sudan a priority but his entanglements in the Gulf could complicate efforts to put pressure on external backers of the SAF and the RSF, particularly the Saudis and the Emiratis. The SAF has dangled the prospect of a Russian naval base in Sudan before and by reviving it now, could increase the incentive for Washington to play a more active role in ending the war.
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