By Mbugua Ng’ang’a
Kenya has averted a possible diplomatic tiff with Sudan after a press conference scheduled to be addressed by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo was called off at the last minute on the evening of Wednesday, January 3. Dagalo is the leader of Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Dagalo was in Kenya, where he held talks with President William Ruto at State House Nairobi, just hours before his scheduled conference, which was to be held at the Villa Rosa Kempinski hotel, was called off.
He was in Djibouti at the weekend, and held talks with long-serving President Ismael Omar Guelleh. His shuttle diplomacy had also seen him visit Ethiopia and Uganda where he held talks with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and President Yoweri Museveni respectively amid a scramble to broker a truce between him and Sudan army Chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.
On Tuesday this week, Dagalo said he was ready for talks that would lead to an immediate and unconditional ceasefire to end the fighting that has rocked Sudan since April 2023. According to a Reuters report, RSF had signed a declaration with the Taqadum civilian coalition and had invited the army to do the same.
Were this to happen, it would end what has threatened to become one of the world’s severest displacement crisis outside Gaza — where Israel is involved in a war with Hamas that has led to over 22,000 deaths — and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has been in the throes of a civil war and where peace has been left on sinking sand after a presidential election last week that has been disputed by the Opposition and questioned by election observer groups.
Countries in the region have been racing to end the violence under the stewardship of the Inter-Government Authority on Development (IGAD), currently chaired by President Guelleh. Kenya has been part of that effort but its offer to mediate the conflict has been rejected in the past by the Sudan army leader, Gen al-Burhan.
“We must inform you that the press conference has been rescheduled,” a terse communique from RSF said yesterday. “We shall promptly communicate the updated date and time as soon as it becomes available.”
In July 2023, a group of Sudanese hackers opposed to Kenya’s involvement in the peace process attacked government digital services in Kenya through what is known in the technology space as Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS).
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