Sudan Clashes Expose Failures of Democratic Transition

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at ongoing fighting in Sudan, the G-7 sets new renewable energy goals, and the killing of an Indian mafioso on live TV.

Sudan is facing a bloody reckoning. Violent clashes have engulfed the streets for three days as rival forces loyal to the country’s two leading generals, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemeti), battle each other for total power. Burhan is the country’s de facto ruler and leads its military. Hemeti commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which evolved out of the janjaweed, militias that once sought violent control over the Darfur region during the genocide and yearslong war that began in 2003. It’s unclear which side currently has the upper hand, but in an interview with Sky News, Burhan said he feels certain of the RSF’s defeat and is willing to negotiate for the RSF’s surrender.

More than 180 civilians have been killed and 1,800 people wounded since fighting began on Saturday. Artillery and warplane bombardments struck the capital, Khartoum, on Monday, with locals hearing fighting intensify near Khartoum International Airport and strikes by both sides reportedly hitting hospitals already low on lifesaving equipment. Fighting has also erupted in other areas of the country.

Burhan and Hemeti were not always enemies. The pair joined forces to oust then-President Omar al-Bashir in 2019 after he had served almost three decades in power. In the aftermath, they agreed to the demands of pro-democracy protesters to form a transitional civilian-military council. That fragile arrangement—backed by the United States, the United Nations, and others—was intended to help the country transition from decades of autocracy to democracy. But in 2021, Burhan and Hemeti orchestrated a coup, dissolving the transitional power-sharing agreement and returning power back to the military. However, tensions sparked during negotiations to integrate the RSF into the country’s military. Those tensions eventually erupted into this weekend’s outbreak of violence.

But the clashes are also a result more broadly of the international community’s failure to fully support and help solidify the country’s democratic transition when it had the chance in 2019. “There was a window of opportunity to make important reforms before a counterrevolution that was missed not only by these technocrats but also by those foreign nations and institutions that wanted to support democracy,” journalist Justin Lynch wrote for Foreign Policy following the 2021 coup. “The story of the international community’s role in Sudan details the limits of foreign assistance, but also a story of self-delusion and negligence.”

Foreign governments’ past failures to facilitate a lasting transition to democracy in Sudan aren’t stopping them from trying again. Both Egypt and South Sudan offered to help negotiate a peace agreement on Sunday, stressing the need for a cease-fire before the situation spirals out of control. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, also called for one, saying, “We urge Sudan’s security services to end hostilities, end them immediately, without preconditions. Now is the time to renounce violence and return to negotiations.” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with his counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to call for an immediate end to hostilities—without promising tangible aid. And the United Nations World Food Program temporarily suspended operations on Sunday after three of its emergency workers were killed in the crossfire.

• Macron Said Out Loud What Europeans Really Think About China by Benjamin Haddad

• What if Kemal Kilicdaroglu Wins Turkey’s Election? by Steven A. Cook

• How Gamers Eclipsed Spies as an Intelligence Threat by Jonathan Askonas and Renée DiResta

Tuesday, April 18, to Friday, April 21: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visits Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba.

Tuesday, April 18, to Monday, April 24: Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court begins hearing cases regarding the first 100 people accused in Brasília’s Jan. 8 riots and attempted coup.

Wednesday, April 19: Jack Teixeira attends a hearing to determine his continued detention for allegedly leaking classified U.S. intelligence documents.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visits Portugal.

Friday, April 21: The World Meteorological Organization releases its 2022 State of the Global Climate report.

Saturday, April 22, to Sunday, April 23: Japan hosts G-7 labor and agriculture ministers.

Monday, April 24: Belgium hosts the North Sea summit.

G-7 renewable energy goals. This weekend, climate and energy ministers at the G-7 summit in Japan established updated collective targets to increase solar power and offshore wind capacity. They agreed to speed up both renewable energy development and fossil fuel reductions. Although they reaffirmed their goals to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, they stopped short of pledging to phase out coal by 2030.

But one G-7 nation is facing one step back for every two steps forward. Germany’s government closed the country’s last three nuclear power stations on Saturday; Berlin began shifting away from nuclear energy after Japan’s 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster. However, critics, including German opposition parties, fear that eliminating nuclear energy will make decarbonization more difficult, especially as Europe faces an energy crisis worsened by Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Killed in custody. Atiq Ahmed, a Muslim Indian former parliamentarian and notorious mobster, was killed on live TV on Saturday along with his brother while being escorted by police to a medical examination in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Ahmed was serving a life sentence for kidnapping as well as facing murder and assault charges. The former politician had expressed fear for his life after officers gunned down his son days earlier.

This extrajudicial killing was just the latest in a series of so-called encounters, as they are called in India. The killing also carried clear communal undertones. The shooters allegedly yelled “Jai Shri Ram,” or “Glory to Lord Ram,” a Hindu god, after killing Ahmed and his brother.

Déjà vu in Japan. On Saturday, Japanese citizens were once again shaken by a violent attack on a politician in broad daylight. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was campaigning in the western city of Wakayama on behalf of a Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) candidate when a smoke bomb detonated; he was safely evacuated unharmed. The suspect, a 24-year-old man, was immediately apprehended, and no motive has been shared thus far. This comes less than a year after Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, was assassinated while giving a campaign speech on behalf of an LDP candidate.

Penny for your thoughts? How about two silver coins from the Roman Empire? Archaeologists discovered the ancient currency on a remote, uninhabited island in the Baltic Sea—and have no idea how the coins got there. Some theories suggest they were lost in a shipwreck, left by Norse traders, or brought over by a Roman voyage.