There is no civil war in Sudan; there is a proxy attempt at occupying the country

Israel's genocide, which continues systematically in Gaza despite the ceasefire, its barbaric usurper terror in the West Bank, its routine attacks on Iran and Lebanon, and the stirrings of recent days in Yemen and Libya may be pushing the human tragedy that has been going on in Sudan for nearly 3 years off the agenda. Yet what is happening in Sudan is not independent of all these events. The aim, again, is to advance one more step in the Zionist plan of occupation and influence, but, as usual, a resistance is also developing as a result.

News coming from Sudan shows, a little more clearly with each passing day, that the war continuing in the country is not merely a power struggle played out on military fronts. According to statements by Sudanese authorities, about six thousand people are being held in prisons controlled by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in El Fasher. Save the Children, for its part, reports that more than five thousand children have been displaced anew within a short period.

These reports prove that the humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan is not merely an inevitable side effect of war; that the displacement and detention of civilians, the plundering of cities, and the shattering of the social fabric attest to the existence of an act of occupation.

From the very beginning we have said that still describing the war in Sudan as "a civil war between two equal parties" misses both the political and the legal reality. Such a description produces a misleading symmetry that places the legitimate state and an armed formation seeking to bring it down, and of course the foreign intervention, the attempt at occupation, behind that formation, on the same plane.

In Sudan there are not two equivalent legitimate sides. On one side stands the Sudanese state and its armed forces, recognized by international law despite all their shortcomings, weaknesses and past mistakes. On the other side stands the RSF, which has never carried the responsibility of being a state, which has grown through a war economy, which has turned plunder into a form of financing, and which sustains its military capacity thanks to foreign support.

Therefore, what is happening in Sudan is not an ordinary internal conflict arising from two armies' inability to share power. It is the existential struggle of the society's legitimate state against a paramilitary formation that is supported from outside and aims to plunder the country's resources, cities and institutions.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's saying that the war in Sudan has turned into a proxy conflict among various countries is important as an admission of the situation. However, the "proxy war" label also has the consequence of blurring the relations of responsibility in the war by presenting outside actors as holders of equivalent interests.

The real issue in Sudan is not merely the confrontation of different regional powers. It is an attempt to bring down a legitimate state from within by means of an armed formation supported from outside. Therefore, while acknowledging the proxy dimension of the war, one must also speak openly about who supports which formation and for what purpose, for when it comes to that point, what we encounter is not the usual suspects but the usual culprits.

The RSF's record to date clearly shows that it has no aim such as building a state or governing a society. The massacres committed against civilians in Darfur, the accusations of ethnic cleansing, systematic sexual violence, the use of children in armed conflict, forced displacement, and the plundering of private property and public institutions reveal the character of this formation.

The prisons in El Fasher where thousands of people are detained are part of this picture. If an armed formation produces fear, plunder and arbitrary arrest in the areas it controls, instead of producing law, public services and security, it cannot be said to be an alternative to the state. This is at most an attempt at occupation by proxy.

The Sudanese government has long accused the UAE of providing military, financial and logistical support to the RSF. Reports by international organizations, media investigations and debates conducted in various countries are making the allegations about this support increasingly visible. The Abu Dhabi administration, for its part, rejects the accusations.

However, the UAE's role in Sudan cannot be addressed independently of the other crisis zones of the Islamic world. When the support given to Khalifa Haftar in Libya, the weakening of the central state and strengthening of separatist formations in Yemen, the network of influence built through ports and military bases in the Horn of Africa, policies in line with Israel's security priorities regarding Gaza, and the allegations about the support given to the RSF in Sudan are considered together, what emerges before us is a strategic line broader than isolated incidents.

The common result of this line is the weakening of strong, independent states resting on their own social legitimacy in the Islamic world, and the emergence in their place of fragmented, mutually conflicting armed formations dependent on outside support.

One of the most important winners of such a regional order is Israel. For Israel's long-term security conception rests not on strong and independent states around it, but on structures preoccupied with internal conflicts, fragmented and open to outside intervention.

Sudan is one of the important links in this strategic picture. Its long coastline opening onto the Red Sea, its position between Africa and the Arab world, its agricultural capacity, its natural resources, gold foremost among them, and its geopolitical depth place the country at the center of regional rivalry. Sudan's survival as a strong state has the potential to directly affect the balances of power in the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa.

For this reason, the struggle in the country is not only about who will hold power in Khartoum. It is about whether the Sudanese state can preserve its existence, territorial integrity and sovereignty.

The solution in Sudan cannot be sought in hybrid formulas that reduce the state to the level of one of the armed groups. A lasting solution is possible through the reestablishment of state authority, the cutting off of outside military support, the subordination of all armed formations to the state's legitimate institutions, and the creation of a process in which the Sudanese people can claim their own political future.