Resti (Iai): “Sudan is crucial stability, it is a transit country for migrants to Europe”

The stability of Sudan “is of great interest to our country and to the European Union” because it is an “important transit country as regards irregular migration routes to Europe” and “the less Sudan controls its territory, the its borders, already very porous, the more likely it is “that the humanitarian crises in the region,” with the associated migratory flows, will easily extend to North Africa, to Italy with the repercussions we already know “. This is how he talks with Adnkronos Jacopo Resti, junior researcher at the Iai in the Mediterranean, Middle East and Africa Program, who between 2019 and last year was United Nations Fellow in Sudan, from where the news of the coup d’etat comes today of the military, a little over two years have passed since the end of the Omar al-Bashir era, in the midst of a tiring transition. “At the regional level – observes Resti – it is a situation that adds to the instability we already know in the area”. The reference is to Somalia, but above all to neighboring Ethiopia, Tigray, South Sudan. “Too many uncertain and open variables”, says the expert, who notes “an already particularly unstable regional situation in the Horn of Africa”. Internally, Resti does not see “risks of open confrontation, civil war” because – he says with optimism – the “open confrontation does not suit anyone” and “sooner or later somehow a formula that discontent both parties in the same way will be found, sooner or later we will return to dialogue”. “A new transition agreement will be favored.” Rather, the risk is “the first of all socio-economic implosion” because Sudan is a country that “is already on its knees economically” and the “consequences of the coup, with the general blockade, the state of emergency they particularly affect the most vulnerable groups, the informal economy “. ‘coup d’état most sensational outcome of the tug-of-war between military and civilians’ The stakes are high. According to Resti, “more or less the forces” protagonists of the clash “are the same” because “even if the military demonstrate to control the game, to make the good and bad times of this transition, the protest is strong and is under the eyes of the international community “. Therefore, he observes, “it is difficult not to find the square” after the “coup d’état, which is perhaps the most sensational outcome of what it is and has been for a long time now the tug-of-war between the military and civilians”. A period in which, just over a month after the coup attempt denounced on 21 September by the government of Khartoum, “the civil component has grown a lot” as well as “the protests”. And, according to the analyst, what happened in the last few hours was “also a reaction of the military to the growth of the protest movement” after the massive demonstrations on October 21 against the military. “It was a signal that the military has feared and responded by putting the record straight with a show of strength, but also fear for what – he observes, thinking about the reactions that have arrived in the last hours from the EU to the UN – is an increasingly strong protest, which also enjoys attention of the international community “. “There are important players in this transition – he concludes – It is true that the military may seem more and more with their backs to the wall, but it would be naive to believe that they are not the ones who really control what is the transition underway in the country”.