Independent Thinking
Independent Thinking is the new podcast from Chatham House.
Each week our director, Bronwen Maddox, will host conversations with leading policymakers, journalists and our own Chatham House experts to provide insight and depth on the big international questions of the week.
Independent Thinking gives you, the listener, the opportunity to engage with the high-level conversations that the institute hosts, and, for Chatham House members, to ask questions directly to the participants in each episode.
Apr 28, 2023
This week on the podcast we look at the crisis overtaking Sudan. Since fighting broke out in Khartoum twelve days ago, the country appears to be descending into outright civil war, with intense fighting between the Sudanese military and the Rapid Support Forces. We discuss how Sudan’s military bifurcated into two opposing camps, who leads and supports the two factions, and what if anything can be done to stem the fighting now underway.
We also look more widely to the Horn of Africa and what the crisis in Sudan means for a region already wracked by conflicts in Ethiopia, Somalia and beyond. With international forces evacuating Sudan and US-backed ceasefires failing, could Sudan destabilise the Horn, and plunge Ethiopia, Eritrea, and South Sudan back into instability?
Joining Bronwen Maddox on the show this week is Rosalind Marsden, the former EU Special Representative for Sudan, as well as the former British ambassador and now an Associate Fellow with our Africa programme; Justin Lynch, a researcher who has written extensively on Sudan for Foreign Policy magazine, as well as more recently for CNN, and finally, joining them from Khartoum is Professor Mohamed Hassan Al Taishi, previously a member of Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council.
Read our expertise:
Cleverly’s calculation makes ambivalence a clear policy
Resolving Sudan’s crisis means removing those fighting
Coordinating international responses to Ethiopia–Sudan tensions
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Presented by Bronwen Maddox. Produced by John Pollock. Sound by Abdul Boudiaf and Matthew Docherty.