Biden Administration: A Hopeless Case of Incompetence

Al-Obeid Ahmed Muraweh
Sudanese citizens in the Levant woke up on the morning of Wednesday, 18 September, to news of a personal statement issued by President Biden regarding the situation in their country. Some were optimistic when they read the headline, believing that the systematic destruction of their country, ongoing for the past seventeen months, was not a priority for the White House. This belief was reinforced after the recent presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, which did not mention Sudan’s situation. When they saw the headline and realized that the president of the most powerful country in the world had remembered them, they felt a fleeting joy that quickly turned into false hope.
In his statement, President Biden described the war in Sudan as “senseless” — a term frequently used by senior officials in his administration, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken. To be fair, Sudan’s President Burhan also used this term during the first week of the war. We can’t blame anyone for using it, even if it misses the core truth about the nature of the war or if their intentions differ.
Describing the war as “senseless” isn’t the only striking thing in President Biden’s statement. It seems that the president had little involvement in crafting it. What stands out are the fundamental errors in the statement, some relating to the nature of the war, others to the U.S. stance on it. Throughout the statement, Biden equates the national army, responsible for defending the country and its people, with the “rebel forces” — call them what you will, be it a terrorist militia or an army of mercenaries. This comparison is, to say the least, astonishing.
Moreover, President Biden blamed “both sides” for the suffering of the Sudanese people, accusing them of committing “war crimes.” However, he did explicitly accuse the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of crimes against humanity. While this latter accusation comes close to the truth, his earlier comments unfairly target the Sudanese army. It is the army’s constitutional duty to pursue the rebels through direct combat and airstrikes as long as the rebels continue to occupy civilian homes and structures and as long as they refuse to honour the commitments they made over a year ago in Jeddah, witnessed by the Americans themselves. If President Biden views the Sudanese army’s actions as “war crimes,” then he should also have the courage to state what Israel is doing in Gaza and elsewhere or acknowledge what the U.S. military has done in Afghanistan and Iraq.
President Biden’s statement is, in truth, a reflection of the American administration’s flawed understanding of the nature of the war in Sudan. It also reflects a deliberate disregard for those fueling this war, who continue to supply the militia with money, arms, and military equipment. Curiously, Biden made no mention — neither implicitly nor explicitly — of these actors, despite the fact that reports from his administration and the UN committee responsible for monitoring the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1591 on Darfur identify clearly and name those stoking the flames of war in Sudan.
We don’t even need to refer to reports and files — the U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan, Tom Perriello, admitted in private meetings with Sudanese politicians in various capitals that his country has numerous interests with the UAE. They prefer not to publicly hold it responsible for prolonging the war and exacerbating the suffering of the Sudanese people. This explains why President Biden, despite elaborating in his statement on the suffering of the Sudanese, deliberately avoided mentioning the real culprit behind this suffering and the prolonged war.
In practice, the U.S. administration deliberately acts as if it does not recognize the legitimacy of the Sudanese government, viewing it only as a de facto authority. This was evident in the recent events at the UN Security Council when the U.S. tried to replace the term “Sudanese government” with “the authorities in Sudan” in its draft of the technical extension of sanctions on Darfur. It was also seen in the Jeddah talks led by the Minister of Minerals and in Geneva afterwards, where the U.S. envoy insisted on negotiating with the army, not the government. President Biden’s statement on Wednesday further confirmed this approach.
Despite the double standards in President Biden’s statement, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the Transitional Sovereignty Council, responded with grace and rationality. In less than 24 hours, he issued a measured statement agreeing with Biden’s description of the suffering of the Sudanese but placing responsibility on the “real culprits” — the RSF rebels and the regional powers backing them, which no longer hide their involvement. Burhan’s statement also challenged the U.S. to take its historical responsibility seriously in stopping the war, expressing hope for a meeting with U.S. officials — though he did not specify who — on the sidelines of the upcoming UN General Assembly and the high-level summit in New York next week.
Meanwhile, the White House officially announced that President Biden would meet with UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed on Monday. Reuters reported that the wars in Sudan and Gaza would be on the agenda. However, I am not optimistic that there will be a breakthrough in the Sudanese crisis to stop the war, despite everyone knowing that the two parties meeting in the White House hold the key to stopping the destruction and devastation of Sudan and the killing and displacement of its people. The current U.S. administration is too weak to tell those responsible for the war that they are wrong, and the situation in Sudan is just one example of this.