Over the last month, Sudan has been convulsed with violence as a power struggle between two rival military leaders erupted into full-scale warfare. Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands more injured, with more than three hundred thousand Sudanese displaced from their homes.

The rival claimants to power are Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti. The two men previously joined forces in October 2021 to stage a military coup and clamp down brutally on Sudan’s revolutionary movement that was struggling for democracy. Now they have turned their guns on each other.

The descent into violence discredits the approach of the US and other Western governments that legitimized the coup instigators and sought to build a negotiating process around them. This did not begin after the coup: since 2019, international diplomats had strongly supported a partnership setup that kept the two generals in power, claiming that it would result in a transition to civilian rule.