The UAE's Bloody War in Sudan with Sami Hamdi

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Not done this in a while, a new thread!

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Blurb

At the time where our attention is fixed on Gaza, rightly, another conflict is taking place with horrendous cost to human life. Sadly As always, our ummah has become subject to the political ambitions of egotistical actors and their outside backers. Sudan is burning. There are 8 million people on the move, escaping the indiscriminate murder, rape and pillage of what can only be described as two warlords that thwarted a people’s revolution – aided by external powers.

Today we explore these two conflicts. In a way, they are one. They are recent episodes of a Muslim world in crisis. Our ummah today lives in a perpetual state of conflict, can we escape this dire situation. We are now 100 years since the formal demise of the Ottoman state, what does the next 100 years look like.

 

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Another update.

Sudan Watch

When African nations met in Burundi for the 23rd summit of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa last month, they called for all acts of violence and hostilities in Sudan to cease. Sadly, they devoted just one sentence to it in their 11-page final communique.

This reflects how little impact the horrors in Sudan currently have on the world news agenda. Sudan has been in meltdown since violence began in Khartoum in April 2023 between the Sudanese Army (SAF) and the RSF, a paramilitary force evolved from the janjaweed, an Arab militia notorious for atrocities in Darfure in the 2000s.

In 2019 the RSF and SAF worked together to eject former president Omar al-Bashir and share power. But the RSF resisted integration into the army and the two are not fighting for supremacy. Violence has spread across Sudan, provoking a catastrophic humanitarian crises: 250000 confirmed civilian dead (some estimate 150,000); 11.3m displaced; a quarter of the population starving and another quarter hungry; cholera everywhere; healthcare collapsed and half the under-5s at risk of serious disease.

There is no 'good party' to save them: each side commits horrific abuses in the areas they control, so sure of their impunity they upload footage of the torture and murder of civilians without bothering to hide their identities.

Both sides also use sexual violence as a weapon, with the RSF currently subjecting Khartoum in particular to serial gang rape. Victims range from nine upwards, with many young girls dying in the process. Most civilian deaths though result from bombing of civilian areas by both sides, mainly with drones.

Desperate civilians are pleading for UN protection. Last month the UN Human Rights Councils independent fact finder found that both sides were violating international humanitarian law; they too called for an impartial protective forces. On 28 October, however, UN secretary general Antonio Guterres rules this out given the current chaos. Instead he urged cutting off arms supplies and pressuring both sides to stop the atrocities.

A vain hope. Both sides would have run out of weapons if they weren't receiving fresh supplies - including armed drones, anti tank missiles, rocket launchers and mortar munitions. - made by companies in China, Iran, Russia, Serbia and the UAE. The UN 2004 Sudan sanctions prohibit supplying weapons to belligerents in Darfur but they dont cover all of Sudan - and enough UN members argue that they shouldnt. Russia says the SAF is the legitimate party and should be armed, while according to the New York Times, they UAE was smuggling weapons to the RSF via eastern Chad.

AS for asking both sides to stop committing atrocities, this may mean waiting until no one is left on whom to commit them. Perhaps if the abusers felt the worlds media focusing unforgivingly upon them this might change, because scrutiny brings fear of justice. But for that to happen the world needs to take a collective interest in halting the savagery.

PE No 1637 p 21.

Another short summary

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