“The Government of the Republic of Sudan has notified the Secretary General of the United Nations that it has declared Volker Perthes […] persona non grata as of today,” the Sudanese Foreign Ministry said Thursday, June 8 in a statement. German Volker Perthes, the UN envoy to Sudan, was in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on Thursday for a series of diplomatic talks, the UN announced earlier on Twitter.
The head of the Sudanese army, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, had called for the dismissal of the senior diplomat, accusing him of being responsible for the war which broke out on April 15 between his troops and the paramilitaries of the Support Forces (FSR) of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo. In a letter to the UN, General Burhane notably accused Volker Perthes of having “concealed” in his reports the explosive situation in Khartoum before the outbreak of hostilities. Without these “lies”, General “Daglo would not have launched his military operations”, he argued.
The fighting broke out the day the two rival generals were to meet for negotiations aimed at integrating the FSR into the regular army, as the UN had been calling for for weeks. While many observers predicted a failure of these talks, Volker Perthes proclaimed his “optimism.” He also admitted to being “taken by surprise” the day the war broke out.
Volker Perthes was in New York when General Burhane sent his accusatory letter, and authorities have not issued visas to foreign nationals since the start of the war. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres affirmed his “full confidence” in his envoy. But at the beginning of June, the Security Council had only extended for six months the United Nations Integrated Mission for Assistance to the Transition in Sudan (Minuats), of which Mr. Perthes is the head.
Created in June 2020 to support the democratic transition in Sudan after the fall of Omar el-Bashir the previous year, Minuats had since been renewed each year for one year. For several months, thousands of people supporting the army and the Islamists had demonstrated against Volker Perthes and alleged foreign “interference”.
For a long time, pro-democracies have accused General Burhane of being instrumentalized by the Islamists of the regime of Omar el-Bashir (1989-2019). General Daglo also plays on this rhetoric: he repeatedly fights “the Islamists” and the “vestiges of the old regime” and champions “democracy” and “human rights”, so even that its thousands of men are accused of having committed atrocities on Bashir’s behalf during the war in Darfur (west) in the 2000s.
The war in Sudan has claimed more than 1,800 lives, according to the organization ACLED, which specializes in collecting information in conflict zones. Nearly two million people have left their homes, according to the UN, which estimates that 25 of the 45 million people in the country, already one of the poorest in the world, needed humanitarian aid.
The situation is at an impasse, none of the multiple truces declared by the two rival generals having been respected. A mediation attempt sponsored by Saudi Arabia and the United States was suspended on June 1. The day before, the army had withdrawn from negotiations aimed at creating secure corridors to let civilians and humanitarian aid through.
Hospitals located in combat zones no longer function only partially, when they are not closed. And the crisis should worsen with the approach of the rainy season, synonymous with resurgence of malaria, food insecurity and child malnutrition.
