Just over three months have passed since Sudan’s transition to civilian rule was scuttled by a war between two generals. Abdel Fattah al Burhan, who leads the country’s army, and Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo “Hemedti,” leader of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), remain locked in mortal combat, with civilians stuck in between them, especially in Khartoum, the capital.

The war has displaced almost three million people. In a spectacular reversal, Ethiopia (whose own recent civil war sent a flood of refugees into Sudan) and South Sudan (which seceded from the country in 2011 after a brutal war) are now hosting some of the 700,000 Sudanese refugees who have fled the country. It’s almost as if the region is cursed with an eternal cyclic propensity for instability.

Thankfully, the fear that major foreign powers would be drawn into the conflict hasn’t panned out (yet). Russia has had eerily similar problems of its own to sort out. China doesn’t seem too interested in military interventionism in Africa just yet. And regional Arab powers, like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, seem keener on brokering a negotiated end to the conflict than on backing either side.

In fact, the United States and Saudi Arabia have brokered multiple ceasefires from Jeddah. Sadly, however, both warring parties have violated them over and over. Not even requests to allow the free flow of the scant available humanitarian aid – which nearly half of the population needs – seems sufficient to persuade them to still the guns. Even worse, both have looted aid caches that were already in the country.

What’s going on in Sudan is tragic. But contrary to appearances, it is not a civil war. The people of Sudan have not taken up arms and risen against each other. This war is the flare-up of a personal dispute between two selfish men who control armed forces, and are willing to hold the country hostage, with brazen impunity, to show each other who’s boss.

Though they have both attempted to portray it as an attempt to secure the country’s democracy, their fight has little to do with democracy. It primarily concerns which of them should answer to the other, given that the March agreement to transition to civilian rule, to which both men assented, called for the RSF to be folded into the official military, and for both to eventually come under civilian command.

The war’s immediate spark was Hemedti’s refusal to do this before the transition, ostensibly because he thought that, by insisting that the RSF be integrated before the transition, army leader al-Burhan was fishing for a grievance with which to scuttle the transition itself. His brother and deputy, Abdel-Rahim Dagalo, went on to demand that al-Burhan should “…hand over power to the people without further stalling.”

But this was a silly argument: Hemedti himself had signed the agreement that indicated that the RSF would join the army; the question of timing would have been trivial had he been serious about this. It was also a hypocritical, given what happened after. The RSF has perpetrated the worst excesses of the war so far, such as terrorising civilians, looting their homes and, most concerningly, moving to reignite the civil war in the restive Darfur region.

Contrary to his pontifications, therefore, Hemedti simply doesn’t want to take orders from al-Burhan. He has been angling for leadership of the combined military ever since it was agreed that it should be combined. Having emerged as a leader of the genocidal Janjaweed militia during the War in Darfur, and thereafter been cultivated as a counterbalance to the army by Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s former dictator, he has been a power unto himself for too long to countenance being directed by another.

But Hemedti knows he cannot win a war against the military, which not only has a lot more troops and more powerful equipment, like airplanes, but also retains control of most of the country outside Khartoum. His fight, therefore, is obviously a cynical play to strengthen his negotiating position. It has nothing to do with a desire to see Sudan transition into a civilian-led democracy.

Al-Burhan, for his part, is no less guilty for beginning the conflict. Not only did he draw a line where there was none (there was no requirement in the transition agreement that the RSF should be folded in before the transition), but he has also overthrown civilian-led transition governments twice and, in the present war, violated ceasefires and shown himself quite willing to put civilians at risk.

Recently, he refused to send a delegation to the start of negotiations convened by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), an eight-member regional bloc, claiming that Kenya, whose president, William Ruto, was appointed to chair the initiative, was hosting a sick Hemedti. Ruto denied these claims. But that’s beside the point. The truth is that, had al-Burhan been really interested in peace, he would have sent a delegation regardless of Hemedti’s location.