Once a key player, Britain takes a backseat in Sudan's crisishttps://en.majalla.com/node/297706/politics/once-key-player-britain-takes-backseat-sudans-crisis
Once a key player, Britain takes a backseat in Sudan's crisis
Geopolitically, the West’s influence in Sudan, the Middle East and Africa is waning in general and, after Brexit, the UK is a weaker player within the Western block.
Albane Simon
Aid cuts and a decline in relative power within the Western bloc and of the West in general, alongside the rise of influential global powers make it hard for Britain to engage like before
Once a key player, Britain takes a backseat in Sudan's crisis
The Sudan crisis shows no sign of abating. Since April the Sudanese army and its rivals in the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have fought across the East African country, causing over 2.4 million people to be displaced and reducing several districts of the capital, Khartoum to rubble.
Efforts have been made by the international community to mediate the escalating conflict. Saudi Arabia and the United States have worked together to broker numerous, ultimately unsuccessful ceasefires via talks in Jeddah.
On its part, the East African regional body, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) has similarly offered to mediate and deploy peacekeeping forces, while Egypt has recently hosted a further summit of Sudan’s neighbours to explore peace options.
Though these efforts have thus far made little headway, Britain seems to be noticeably quiet. Britain is the former colonial ruler with deep historical ties and is the current penholder for Sudan at the UN, responsible for leading negotiation and drafting of resolutions at the Security Council.
Moreover, it has been one of the most engaged external actors in Sudan since the overthrow of Omar al-Bashir in 2019, a member of the influential informal ‘Quad’ alongside the US, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.
London had also suggested in the March 2021 Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy that East Africa was a region where the UK could increase its involvement as it pushed the ‘Global Britain’ agenda after leaving the European Union.
Sudanese children board a vehicle crossing the Sudan-Chad border to escape fighting in Darfur on August 4.
The UK has evacuated more than 2,100 people from Sudan thanks to the efforts of UK Government staff and the military who have been working around the clock on the evacuation. pic.twitter.com/wAMUXGdSiS
— Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (@FCDOGovUK) April 30, 2023
Yet despite these ambitions and its strong position to get involved, London has been comparatively quiet since the fighting began in April. Its first focus was on evacuating civilians — a task it was viewed by many to have done ineffectively. Since then, however, ministers have had only limited engagement.
A long-standing interest
Britain’s interest in Sudan is longstanding. Partly as the result of its colonial rule, the UK has a significant Sudanese community of over 20,000. Britain ruled what became Sudan from 1899-1956, theoretically with the Egyptians but with London enjoying de facto control.
Britain's interest in Sudan is longstanding. Partly as the result of its colonial rule, the UK has a significant Sudanese community of over 20,000.
Like Egypt, Iraq and other parts of the Arab world occupied by Britain, Sudan opted not to join the Commonwealth after independence, but London retained commercial and diplomatic interests.
The UK's influence grew as Sudan's second civil war ended. Britain played a leading role as a member of a 'Troika', along with the US and Norway, in helping to broker the 2004 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended the war and prepared the way for South Sudanese independence.
In the years leading up to South Sudan's breakaway in 2011, London developed an important role. According to a 2023 report by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), in the eyes of the Sudanese government, the UK was able to moderate and influence the US, which was instinctively more sympathetic to Juba than Khartoum.
London was pragmatic but no friend of Omar al-Bashir, the dictator that ruled Sudan from 1989-2019. The UK condemned the alleged genocide in Darfur and endorsed International Criminal Court indictments against al-Bashir and other leading regime figures.
Yet at the same time, Britain saw the value in keeping Sudan stable in the wake of South Sudan's secession. It was the principal donor to the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel for Sudan (AUHIP). It similarly helped organise training for security officials, provided humanitarian aid and even seconded a Ministry of Defence attaché as a military adviser.
British officials at a UN refugee camp in the city of Nyala, in South Darfur, on January 9, 2017.
The RUSI report argues this presence may have helped avert a new war between north and south following tensions immediately after South Sudanese independence. A UK-Sudan Strategic Dialogue was established for officials to discuss key issues like sanctions, trade, and migration – a particular concern for the UK.
Though al-Bashir was not engaged directly, but instead through intermediaries, it gave the UK a degree of influence and, according to RUSI, increased credibility in Khartoum.
Highpoint of influence
These engagements laid the groundwork for arguably the high point in British influence in modern Sudan, after the fall of the al-Bashir regime in 2019. Britain played an outsized role compared to other global and regional players.
After the fall of the al-Bashir regime in 2019. Britain played an outsized role compared to other global and regional players, It was arguably the high point in British influence in modern Sudan.
Interviews by Simon Rynn and Michael Jones of RUSI suggest that the UK — alongside the US, African Union and IGAD — played a substantive role in convincing the military that had led the anti-Bashir coup to sign a Constitutional Charter that would pave the way for democratic government.
Britain pushed hard to ensure that civilian and democratic rule was given a chance in the aftermath of al-Bashir's ouster. Dominic Raab, then Britain's foreign secretary, visited Sudan in person in January 2021 to show his support for the new civilian prime minister Abdalla Hamdok.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab meets with Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok (R) during his visit to Khartoum on January 21, 2021. Britain announced almost $55mn in aid to Sudan during a visit by its foreign secretary.
This came alongside a surge in British aid, from £93m in 2019 to £139m in 2020, in support of the transitional government, briefly making Sudan the 10th largest recipient of UK aid.
In October 2021, following protests over rising prices, the RSF and the Sudanese army launched a coup against the civilian government, arresting Hamdok.
Britain reacted by suspending some of its aid. However, once again Britain came to play a prominent role in negotiations between the coup leaders and representatives of the civilian government.
The US-UK and key GCC states came together to come up with the December 2022 Framework Agreement that saw the two sides agree to a gradual transfer of power and eventual elections to a civilian-led government.
While this proved ultimately doomed, when fighting between the army and RSF from April 2023 made the agreement somewhat redundant, it was yet further evidence of Britain's quiet but significant influence.
Absent player?
Yet despite this past influence, the UK has been largely absent from efforts to broker deals between the RSF and the army since fighting began. London's priority was evacuating its citizens.
The UK was able to rescue 2,450 British and other nationals from Sudan on 30 flights between 25 April and 3 May 2023, although this followed criticism from some British-Sudanese citizens that too little was being done to help them.
Earlier today the first aircraft took off from RAF Akrotiri to support the @FCDOGovUK with the evacuation of British nationals from Sudan.
Yet beyond this, Britain's involvement has been muted compared to its activism between 2019-22. Britain supported the mediation efforts of others. It endorsed the African Union's calls for the "immediate resumption of the political process."
It likewise worked with GCC allies to support the various negotiations in Jeddah, led by Saudi Arabia and the US. But this was far more of a backseat role than the prominence it had previously.
It has been suggested that Britain's inability to influence the situation better might be related to cuts in the aid budget. Britain's aid to Sudan was being scaled back in the run-up to the 2023 crisis.
Britain cut its aid budget from 0.7% to 0.5% of GDP in November 2020, and this filtered through to Sudan. UK aid to Sudan totalled £223m in 2021-22 but fell to just £31.5m in 2022-23. Many of these cuts fell on NGOs such as Saferworld that had engaged across Sudanese society and gave Britain insights beyond the elites in Khartoum.
Kholood Khair, founding director at the think tank Confluence Advisory, told the UK Parliament's International Development Committee that aid cuts such as this had impacted the level of understanding Britain has about the Sudan crisis. As a result, when it erupted, Britain was less well placed than before to engage and influence.
Cuts and distractions
Cuts to the aid budget are just one reason why Britain's influence in Sudan has declined. While Britain pledged an additional £5m in relief funding once the fighting broke out in 2023, it is nothing on the amounts cut since 2021.
But it was not just the cut in funding, but administrative changes that impacted Britain's capabilities. Khair told the UK parliament that the 2020 merger of the Department for International Development (DFID) with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office had not been a "seamless transition."
This confirms several reports from former DFID officials that Britain's development work has been relegated in importance since the merger, impacting London's effectiveness in a field it once excelled in.
Kahir also noted that Britain's decision to pull its defence attaché from Khartoum in protest at the 2021 coup meant it had no one on the ground reporting developments in the Sudanese military and RSF, with the nearest defence officials being based in Cairo.
Members of Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF) stand guard during the General's meeting with his supporters in the capital Khartoum on June 18, 2019.
But these Sudan-specific issues are only part of a picture that has also been influenced by domestic and geopolitical developments for Britain. Domestically, the UK government has been distracted by other issues and lacked the bandwidth to focus on Sudan.
Britain's engagement with Sudan from 2019-21 overlapped with then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson's efforts to re-establish the UK on the global stage after several years distracted by Brexit. This may be why East Africa was included in the 2021 Integrated Review and why Raab visited Khartoum that year.
Since then, however, Johnson's Conservative party has ejected him from power and spent most of 2022 engaging in internal squabbles that only ended when Rishi Sunak became premier in November.
Yet Sunak is far weaker than Johnson and has his hands full with domestic issues, trying to avoid the resounding defeat that looks likely at the next general election. What capacity he does have for foreign affairs is mainly limited to the Ukraine war and improving ties with the EU. It is unsurprising that Sudan has fallen down the priority list.
Geopolitically, the West's influence in Sudan, the Middle East and Africa is waning in general and, after Brexit, the UK is a weaker player within the Western block.
Meanwhile, external powers like China and Russia are increasingly visible in Sudan. Russia's Wagner group has a small but significant mission, while China continues to be a key investor.
Geopolitically, the West's influence in Sudan, the Middle East and Africa is waning in general and, after Brexit, the UK is a weaker player within the Western block. Meanwhile, external powers like China and Russia are increasingly visible in Sudan.
The US, EU and other Western powers remain present, but they lack the dominant position they had, for example, when the CPA was negotiated in 2004.
A sign of things to come?
Rynn and Jones in their RUSI report note that, "informed Sudanese commentators expect UK influence in their country to wane in the years ahead."
This is perhaps unsurprising. While there was clearly a concerted effort to engage in Sudan after 2004, and then once again after 2019, Britain's capacity and willingness to become a serious influence in Sudan is declining.
Aid cuts, distractions at home, and a decline in relative power within the Western bloc and of the West in general, alongside the rise of influential global and regional powers make it hard for Britain to match the ambitions of its 2021 Integrated Review. Indeed, perhaps these goals of increased influence were unrealistic in the first place.
Yet this is not a phenomenon unique to Sudan. Britain's aid cuts are across the board, and the geopolitical shifts are impacting the UK's position everywhere, not just in East Africa.
Future British leaders may face fewer domestic distractions and the Ukraine war will eventually end, but even a more engaged and active London will face the same geopolitical hindrances. Sudan may prove just one of many countries in which Britain becomes less influential.
