President William Ruto has read the riot act to the two warring Sudanese generals responsible for the war in the country.
Speaking at the Pan-African Parliament Summit on Climate Policy and Equity in Midrand, South Africa on Wednesday, Ruto lamented that the two generals were reducing Sudanese infrastructure to ashes through their indiscriminate bombings.
“We have a situation in Sudan. The generals in Sudan are bombing everything. They are bombing roads, they are bombing bridges, they are bombing hospitals, they are destroying airports using military hardware bought by African money. Just imagine,” Ruto told the Pan-African Parliament.
The Kenyan president further asked the two warring generals to ‘stop their nonsense’.
“We need to tell those generals to stop the nonsense. Military capacity is for fighting criminals and terrorists it is not for fighting children and women and destroying our own infrastructure,” Ruto said.
Ruto, however, blamed African states for lacking the capacity to stop the war in Sudan. He nonetheless assured the Pan-African Parliament that they (African heads of state) will correct the problem.
“But as it is, we have no capacity to stop this nonsense in our own continent because our own peace and security fund is funded by others. (Shakes head) We have a problem. But I am telling you we are going to correct this problem. It is us to do it,” Ruto stressed.
Moses Kuria’s sentiment
Ruto’s sentiments about the conflict in Sudan appear to echo Trade CS Moses Kuria who called for a military intervention from AU to end the war in the north African nation.
Kuria, in a tweet on Sunday, May 14, 2023, suggested that the African Union should marshall a strong army to bomb Khartoum to act as a lesson to other countries experiencing instability.
But in a statement on Monday, May 15, Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Korir Sing’oei dismissed the CS’s remarks terming them as personal.
In what appears like an attempt to avert a possible diplomatic tiff with Sudan, the PS insisted that Kenya would continue to support efforts to resolve the Sudan crisis peacefully.
The 2 generals
Sudan’s war represents a power struggle between two generals: Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan and Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.
Burhan leads the Sudanese military, the country’s official army, while Dagalo heads up the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group that is vying for more power in the government.
The war in Sudan erupted on April 15, 2023, when forces allied to Burhan and Dagalo clashed.
Tension had been building for months between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary RSF, which together toppled a civilian government in an October 2021 coup.
The friction was brought to a head by an internationally-backed plan to launch a new transition with civilian parties. A final deal was due to be signed in early April, on the fourth anniversary of the overthrow Omar al-Bashir who ruled Sudan from 1993 until 2019 when he was ousted in a popular uprising.
Both the army and the RSF were required to cede power under the plan and two issues proved especially contentious. One was the timetable for the RSF to be integrated into the regular armed forces. A second was the chain of command between the army and RSF leaders and the question of civilian oversight.
When fighting broke out, both sides blamed the other for provoking the violence. The army accused the RSF of illegal mobilisation in preceding days and the RSF, as it moved on key strategic sites in Khartoum, said the army had tried to seize full power in a plot with Bashir loyalists.
Over 500 people have been killed in the ensuing conflict in Sudan while an estimated 334,000 individuals have been displaced within the country since fighting began
