 Fierce fighting across Sudan has left hopes for a peaceful transition to civilian rule in tatters. Forces loyal to two rival generals are vying for control, and as is so often the case, civilians have suffered the most. At least 459 people have been killed, and more than 4,000 injured in the unrest so far, according to the World Health Organization, while parts of Khartoum have become a war zone. At the heart of the clashes are two men, Sudan's military ruler, the head of the army, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagal, wildly known as Hemeti. Now, the country's deputy and head of rapid support forces paramilitary group is who he is. Now, until recently, the two men were allies who worked together to topple and ousted Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in 2019 and played a pivotal role in the military coup in 2021. However, tensions arose during the negotiations to integrate the Arasif into the country's military as part of the plans to restore civilian rule. The key question is, who would be subordinate to whom under this new hierarchy? Well, joining us to discuss this is Peter Powell. He is a South Sudanese in Diaspora and a Rotary International Peace Fellow. Thank you so much, Peter, for joining us, and I think it's good morning where you are. But good evening. Good morning. It's 4.30 a.m. in Australia. All right. Great. Let's start with looking at what's behind this fighting. Many would have hoped that by now there would have been a transition back to civilian rule after the toppling of Omar al-Bashir. But here we are in 2023 in almost a very chaotic circumstance that many fear might become a civil war all over again. What my view is through what's happened so far? Well, thank you for the opportunity. I think you put it very right. After the toppling of the President al-Bashir in 2019, the Sudanese civilians in the neighboring country were hoping that Sudan was in transition to realize a democratic civilian rule. But in 2021, as you previously mentioned, the current two stakeholders of the conflicts were to call to a transitional council of the government that were going to facilitate that transition to civilian rule. But it didn't really last for long. So now we are in 2023 where those two members representing different factions of the army are now fighting for control of the government. And I'm thinking, we're seeing two generals at war now and we've seen what's happened. Many people are being displaced. International communities are trying to rescue their people and get them out of the regions where the fighting is continuing. I beg your pardon. Do you see any end in sight? Because you see if these people were in talks and these talks are broken down and these are two generals, just like my question at the beginning. Who's going to say, well, I'll stand down and hope for this person to lead? Do we see international communities trying to intervene in this matter, or is Sudan going to continuously be at war? Well, it's unfortunate to say so. Sudan is going to be at war. The African Union and the Higat bloc which Sudan is part of has been trying to negotiate a way out from this conflict. But the two warring parties show no willingness or interest to really negotiate this issue. The international community are also very concerned. They have no might to really control now or even to say, given that the development prison in Sudan from different countries, the international NGOs, including UN, has to cease operating in Sudan. So the help from outside is very limited. So it is very hard to predict the livelihood for peace in Sudan at the moment. Let's look at what's at stake now in that region because we know that Sudan, those of us who are listening to the news, we know that it's been a volatile region and it's bordering the Red Sea, the Sahel region and the Horn of Africa. Now, let's look at what other countries have to suffer, the likes of Ethiopia, Chad, South Sudan, your country. We're seeing that even countries like Nigeria are having to evacuate their people, some by road, some by boat and some by air. And there are countries whose nationals are still stuck. How does this conflict affect neighboring countries? And how do you think that they will be able to deal with this? Because, of course, many more people from Sudan are becoming refugees by the day. You're very right. It is going to impact the neighboring country very severely as it has already been affecting them. There's a lot of people now who are really in the chat, some are praying from Sudan to Egypt and to South Sudan, but also to Ethiopia and Eritrea. So the instability of Sudan is not going to be very much seen as something that will affect the livelihood of the local citizens in Sudan. It will interrupt the livelihood and the movement, the economic sort of development that is being also run between the country with Sudan. So the more we have peace, the better the livelihood of the people will be restored. But I don't see it at the moment that it is going to become a reality. What exactly do you think is at the core of this, aside from two generals fighting, do you think that there are international political interests that seems to be at the core of this, that may be fueling this crisis because there are those who are whispering in some courses that there might be international powers, world powers who are behind or supporting these two generals? Well, two things that I've observed that united this conflict. I think the call for a democratic transformation of Sudan's system of governance has been the call for many years that resulted to many coups and military government leading Sudan. So this call for a democratic transformation is going to continue creating more problems in Sudan until they have really realized this aspiration. Number two, I think the control of power. I mean, the two general now seem to be running after controlling the system and the government and even the resources management of the country. So it is going to be really discussed and talk about these two things because as soon as one is leading the country, the resource management and exploitations will be in the hand of one of them. Although they might not be committed to the democratic transformation, they will invest very much in positioning their power, having resource in their hand. Let's look at what happens next after this deadly fighting because I mean, you're an international peace fellow, even though you're from the other side of Sudan, are there peace talks that are happening one way or the other? I mean, you spoke about the fact that the African Union has been somewhat trying to mediate on this matter. But what do you see happening after now? Because of course, this fighting can go on for as long as, but will there be a country for these people to lead at the end of the day? I mean, before it became what it is today, South Sudan and Sudan, it used to be one country. And then of course, one would have thought that with the division, there would be some peace in both countries. Unfortunately, that's not the case today. Is there any plan for the South of Sudan to lead some peace talks in Sudan? Well, South Sudan has been one of the platforms for the warring party in Sudan for some time now. Since the 2021 coup, to let the civil council administration that was formed after Baqir was toppled upon power was formed. And the South Sudan was the facilitating platform for the negotiation and the re-institution of the Sudan government. There are things South is doing at best at the moment to really mediate between the two warring parties so that Sudan can remain in twist. Because when Sudan, which is a war, then the operating of South Sudan in terms of the government will be very much affected because the resources that South Sudan is realizing on delivering its services are facilitated or cleansed through Sudan. So any conflict in Sudan that will last long will have long-term impacts on South Sudan's stability. So South Sudan requires to be very permanent in terms of calling and support for a peaceful resolution coming back to the country itself, I mean Sudan. Otherwise, it will have so much challenges in terms of how it could manage its own priorities, but also a lot of people of South Sudan are also in Sudan from there. So South can do much to bring this to an end and call for the regional blocs such as the Guard and the African Union to calm this situation down. Finally, before we talk about more on peace, we hear that when there was a call for a cessation of fire, experts had agreed that the likes of Egypt were backing Al-Burhan while the United Arab Emirates was backing Hamidi. Now, we also realize that there's a possibility that the likes of Libya and the Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia and Eritrea are likely to play some political and even military roles in the conflict. Now, let's talk about Africa. I mean, if we were to look at several countries across the African continent that are facing some form of unrest or terror, one would hope that we would be helping one another to bring peace as opposed to fueling some of these conflicts. I mean, with the fact that some of these countries like Egypt and Ethiopia might be getting refugees. Why would they want to be backing politically and even funding this war knowing that more and more people might die? Well, that's a very big question that you are asking. And we too in diaspora and some other members in Africa would also have the same thing. We would hope for feasible resolution in a state of supporting or propagating war that is devastating the civilian life. The very interesting thing that we have observed and I have also shared this observation with other peace scholars is that more of the conflicts that are displacing people in Africa and as we have seen now in Sudan are very internal. They are not come outside. So it is the leadership that has been really propagated.