Sudan’s warring sides held three unannounced high-level talks in Bahrain in January

Senior leaders from Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) reportedly met three times in January for unannounced talks in Bahrain, the first such contact between the two warring sides in nine months of conflict, just as the United Nations has warned that the number of people uprooted by the war is almost eight million.
According to sources familiar with the talks, the three meetings in Bahrain’s capital Manama were attended by influential deputies from both warring parties and by officials from Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, key supporters of Sudan’s army and RSF respectively. The talks, which were reportedly also attended by the United States and Saudi Arabia, come after repeated failed attempts by both powers as well as East African nations to broker a ceasefire and a political deal to end the war. Talks held last year in the Saudi city of Jeddah featured lower-level officials and neither side maintained its commitments.
The latest high-level talks come amid RSF’s recent swift military advances that has helped extend its control of most of Khartoum and western Sudan, raising fears that the country, Africa’s third largest by area, could fragment. While the ongoing conflict between both warring sides has so far largely spared Sudan’s eastern regions, with the frontline inching ever closer, and reports of military training camps across the border in Eritrea, the fragile peace in the area is in jeopardy. With the number of people uprooted by the war soaring to almost eight million, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi on Wednesday (31 January) called for “urgent and additional support to meet their needs.” Both sides have been accused of war crimes, including the indiscriminate shelling of residential areas, torture and arbitrary detention of civilians.