[SPEAKER_00]: Hello American Presti's listeners, it's Derek.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am very pleased to be joined for this episode by Matt Natchett, freelance journalist, covering Sudan since the revolution he's covered it for several outlets.
[SPEAKER_00]: You may have most recently found his work at Al Jazeera.
[SPEAKER_00]: Matt, thank you so much for coming on the program.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, we've wanted to do a Sudan episode, another Sudan episode on the conflict for a while now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm very glad to have you on to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we first reached out to you around the time that Elfasher had fallen to the Rapidsport forces group, and so it's been a little while since then, but I want to start with that event.
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe we can get into first before we talk about the takeover of the city.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know we've talked about the RSF in previous episodes of this podcast and it's background and sort of the the the Darfur genocide and it's it's roots but maybe we could talk a bit just to give context for people about the RSF.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's actions both, you know, take it back as far as you want, but I'm thinking specifically in Darfur leading up to what happened in Elfasher, but obviously, you know, whatever context do you think people would need to understand what's going on?
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can draw a quick throughline between the events that we saw at the end of October and the beginning of the conflict or what many analysts and observers, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: you know specifies what they believe was the catalyst of the first round of mass killing 22 years ago in 2003.
[SPEAKER_01]: That catalyst started in a fashion.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was when rebel groups that were
[SPEAKER_01]: mostly belonging to groups that are more sedentary farmers, that are seen or perceived to be as non-arrives and they classify themselves as such, but it's more, you know, a term that's linked to their livelihoods being sedentary farmers.
[SPEAKER_01]: historically, and these groups protesting their, you know, their marginalization of their people economically and politically, and also their increasing persecution and the loss of land, a number of factors.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was it led to an armed rebellion and they stormed Elfashion, the captured Elfashion Airport.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was quite a prominent moment 22 years ago, because after capturing out fascist airports, it spooked the then-government of Omar Bashir who had been fighting and was still fighting, though he was in negotiations at the time, rebels in the south.
[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, as you know, and we all know the south, he eventually seceded, you know, several years later in 2011.
[SPEAKER_01]: But during that 22 years of conflict, there had been no ambush and quick victory that appeared to be almost as prominent as capturing the airport and an air base which took place in just a few days and was the first kind of lightning rod attack from these rebels.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fast 4, 22 years later, those same rebels now were allying under the branner of the joint forces they were allies with actually the Sudan armed forces, which is the military, which has been really the main institution that has
[SPEAKER_01]: governed and consolidated control over Sudan and really Bashir himself grew out of that institution through a cooped-to-top that took place.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so now these two opposing foes were now on the same side as they were essentially under siege by the rapid support forces which I know you and your viewers have heard about before and understand a bit of their origins.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the rapid support forces were besieging the city for more than 550 days and then eventually they were able to to finally storm the city much different from the way the non-Arabrabbles did it 22 years before which they did in just a matter of a few days but the rapid support forces did it after you know essentially a war of a attrition 550 days or more they broke through
[SPEAKER_01]: And what we saw essentially how it can be categorized in a lot of ways is the throughlines that what they've essentially, the abuses they've committed there are still committing until the stay, though it's a black box, there's little connection, little information coming out.
[SPEAKER_01]: The abuses they're committing in a lot of ways isn't continuation of the state back to
[SPEAKER_01]: that they had committed 22 years earlier.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is, you know, what's impidimized with this is that al-Fasher and North Darfur, which is, you know, the the broader region, which al-Fasher is the capital.
[SPEAKER_01]: This was the safe haven for a lot of internally displaced people throughout the first bout of conflict in Darfur.
[SPEAKER_01]: People are
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, central Darfur, and they would make it to the internally displaced camps in North Darfur, and eventually many of them, often to destitute to flee, they were the ones that were being besieged as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we have was a generation of victims in a lot of ways, along with the residents that are native to North Darfur, but also generation of victims,
[SPEAKER_01]: that were uprooted and were relocated essentially, forcefully relocated to Elfasher.
[SPEAKER_01]: The generation of victims from the first Darfur War were now again being victims by the latest incarnation of the same Genjiweed Force, which we know is to be the RSF.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so essentially all hell is broken loose and then everybody could, could tell that that was exactly what was going to happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even until now, I know you reshout to me in mid November, but until now just to give you you know a little bit of a harrowing statistic, the IOM, you know, which is a UN agency for migration, says that a little over a hundred thousand people have fled of fashion.
[SPEAKER_01]: since the RSF stormed it.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was according to UN statistics roughly 260,000 people still in the city.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that means there's still around 150 to 160,000 people that, you know, like, what happened to these people, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody knows what happens to these people.
[SPEAKER_01]: What reporting coming out now is that almost everybody's been uprooted in ran away.
[SPEAKER_01]: But many of them have not been able to probably, you know, more than 100,000, or maybe more have not been able to flee either to an area of which is controlled by neutral forces, a nearby area called Douila, or to try to reach chat.
[SPEAKER_01]: Instead, they're systematically being held for ransom by the RSF, or, you know, aligned groups with the RSF.
[SPEAKER_01]: And often people that have
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the politics of a war economy, when you place a place under siege, then all of the prices start to inflate and boom immediately, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So people are not able to afford the basics.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really quite impossible to imagine any of them can afford freeing their loved ones.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of them have been able to do it, but the question that lingers and nobody really knows this, but just how many people have been killed, either directly, you know, just through
[SPEAKER_01]: that took place from the RSF storm the city or in the the weeks afterwards when people aren't able to cough up ramps and then they just they just killed them presumably you know or they're still holding them hostage and detention.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is the picture of of of what's
[SPEAKER_01]: what we're seeing today, and what we're seeing today has a through line directly to 2003.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's, you know, the war of Darfur started and ended in the same place.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the, the victims, generationally, from the first one, are again bearing the, the, the brunt of the violence today, they become victims once again.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, so generationally, even, these people can't escape.
[SPEAKER_01]: This, you know, whether or not you want to believe a little
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I would certainly say it to genocide, I don't know how it's, and I think that's the consensus for most of the international community.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe not all.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can talk about talk about that in a bit, but it really is there's there's so many layers of people who are affected here.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got, you know, as you say, these people who were families of people who were displaced.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the original, you know, 2003 conflict, 2003 genocide, you've got families who have been displaced over the course of this conflict from other parts of Darfur by the RSF carrying out.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, capturing places, you know, the normal displacement that happens in a conflict, but also credibly accused of carrying out massacres and other atrocities and other parts of Darfur.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got the people who live there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it's just a massive, I mean, it was a massive number of people that I was almost surprised it was as few as 260,000 were estimated to be left left there when the actual city fell because of how many had been there, you know, prior to that and suffered through parts of the siege.
[SPEAKER_00]: But let's talk about
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... what we do know and and as you say it's sort of it's a black box it's very difficult to get any firm information out uh... international organizations are sort of doing guess work based on how many people they've registered uh... as displaced and have arrived somewhere else versus how many people they believe we're in the city when it fell but we do have uh... you know like the other university has done work on this there been other places that are recorded on satellite imagery that appears to show things like mass graves burning sites
[SPEAKER_00]: The story about ransoming survivors, that one I just saw piece about in the last couple of days that they're holding people and those who can't pay or, you know, beaten or killed eventually executed.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what do we, what can we sort of piece together factually in terms of what's happening?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really difficult.
[SPEAKER_01]: We know that
[SPEAKER_01]: In the first few days, the RSF stormed a hospital and they murdered, I think, all of the patients, if I, you know, recall that correctly, and I think the UN reported that as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that showed the systematic nature of it, there were reports that members of communications.
[SPEAKER_01]: They call them Takia.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are, you know, they are members of what's called this network of neighborhood groups that are essentially sustaining people within the war, you know, with basic sustenance and just community initiatives.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're called emergency response rooms.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of these volunteers, I think the volunteers in general were systematically targeted.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of them,
[SPEAKER_01]: were killed from my understanding, journalists as well were targeted, essentially people that were notable civil society were viewed immediately as being perceived as supporters of the army and they were targeted.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you had targeting both on an ethnic lens or from an ethnic framework, and then also in terms of political opposition.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, this is a dumb diagram.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they
[SPEAKER_01]: who you're with and you're perceived to be with the army accordingly and and things of the sort.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, the heel humanitarian, that research lab and the Thanny of the does great work there, he observed from space just how much of the killing was was taking place on an industrial scale or
[SPEAKER_01]: a number of news outlets and advocates that the killing could be seen from space, that the coloration of satellite imagery, who was indicating that it was, you know, the massive blood that was being spelled from the victims, and this was was resulting in the
[SPEAKER_01]: in the Covolution that the research humanitarian lab had detected at the same time, yet there's been reports of burning the bodies in order to try to hide the evidence.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, just just harrowing harrowing accounts.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then where you have from there is just thousands upon thousands, upon thousands of people that are for lack of a better word to support.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, like what has happened to these people.
[SPEAKER_01]: in a way that's even more harder, you know, victims either, yeah, we know many of them are being read some doff, others have no idea whether or not, you know, their loved ones were just robbed at a checkpoint, which which happens often, you know, if in the best case scenario,
[SPEAKER_01]: if you were fleeing, then you were robbed, which means that you lost all of your, you know, any phone device you might have to be able to contact friends or family, a robbed of all of your money, who knows whether or not you can make it on the long road and the desert if you're already starving.
[SPEAKER_01]: to people perish that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean there's so many different scenarios and that's probably you know the terrifying thing is that that's that's you know one of the better scenarios you know like if anybody can even call at that the other scenario is your young man or your your your not literally man and you try to go through checkpoint and they just execute you know that's the other scenario right and so your fate is so so so so so so somebody loved one so
[SPEAKER_01]: of, you know, of their relatives, of their friends, the things of the sore, and you're having other reports that children, you know, that they were going through checkpoints as well, and, you know, that because the fleeing was just so, so completely chaotic, and as people were fleeing as well, effectively, children got lost, and they just
[SPEAKER_01]: So when they were getting to Toila, for instance, which is in neutral territory and, you know, quite quite around to make it there, but it's, you know, an area that's housing $650,000 displaced people, eight agencies are, you know, that they noted two fundamental things, one that people that were arriving were just so.
[SPEAKER_01]: withered away from malnutrition, and they were at such an emergency level experiencing such visible signs and physiological signs that they were suffering from such extreme cases of malnutrition.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the other is that somebody family just showed up with children that weren't there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so this, this indicates two things, one that, you know, even if you were able to get out somehow that doesn't necessarily guarantee that you were able to survive the journey to the destination of refuge.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the second that, you know, the getting out aspect were just so chaotic that everybody, you know, just,
[SPEAKER_01]: you know what was split from each other and separated from one another.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so this number of disappeared is going to be quite quite harrowing because that the scars aren't going to be you know healed right after even the initial extreme trauma that people have faced and lived through.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you have the immediate trauma.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have the generational trauma.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, you don't even have closure because you have no idea what happened to your loved ones.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's actually these areas aren't very far away.
[SPEAKER_01]: Elfash is only 60, 70, 80, or 100 kilometers away from a lot of these places that people have fled to if they fled to neutral territory.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yet, they can't even go back there because they know that they'll be killed.
[SPEAKER_01]: So then you also have the very real sense of the term,
[SPEAKER_01]: in June and July and West our fort as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: And all of this was very, very predictable if I may add as early as 2019, I would say.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a bit of context to add there if you're interested to know it because
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, North or Forest, I was saying it is somehow epitomizes also the international acknowledgment that a genocide was taking place in Darfur because it's also where the base of UN peacekeepers were throughout the first duration of the conflict.
[SPEAKER_01]: And sorry, sorry, if it wasn't sure if you were.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, so I mean, I think that would be good to go into some of the context there.
[SPEAKER_00]: What you're talking about is really just as horrifying as it is, it's like the tip of the iceberg, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's the stuff that we can start to guess at based indirectly on, you know, hard math, like the number of people who are showing up versus the number of people who were there.
[SPEAKER_00]: But things like torture, sexual violence against women,
[SPEAKER_00]: this kind of stuff is only going to come out maybe down the road and just add to the horror of what's happening here, but I just wanted to sort of stress that like there's a whole array of things that are probably going on here that are just horrible to contemplate.
[SPEAKER_00]: But sorry, I got ahead with, we don't know if we're going with that.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, no, you're right.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the the Reuters investigation that I think you alluded to earlier mentions this.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are already reports from other local relief groups of women that have been abducted women that have been raped.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a clear.
[SPEAKER_01]: logic, which isn't a defense of the barbarity of the actions, but there's a clear logic behind this.
[SPEAKER_01]: The RSF also, and why I want to harp on this, a lot of part of the recruitment strategies to recruitment is
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a multi-pronged approach, so it's often based on recruiting or striking deals with the leaders of quote unquote native administrations, which are kind of tribal leaders essentially within
[SPEAKER_01]: the regions in Darfur and within the Purfys of Sudan in general.
[SPEAKER_01]: And these native tribal leaders, they exist within across the tribal spectrum, so whether you identify as non-Arab or Arab, but within, of course, the bulk of the recruitment for the RSF are coming from the Arab tribes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, usually, you know, there's an understanding with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: So then you have community pressures, well, that we're going to give you two, three, four, five thousand that there's an agreement between them and the RSF.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are perceived existential fears.
[SPEAKER_01]: These communities have, I say perceived, because it doesn't mean these fears of legitimate, especially when their recruits are being involved and committing some of the worst abuses within this war until today, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's actually other communities within Darfur that have a much more founding
[SPEAKER_01]: and legitimate, you know, lived experience of being removed existentially, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: But essentially, you have this is one form of the recruiting measure, so then you have a lot of communal pressure.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then at the same time, you know, there's a political economy to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you pay these people?
[SPEAKER_01]: And the RSF can't always pay.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's recruits.
[SPEAKER_01]: So essentially, it incentivizes them also.
[SPEAKER_01]: And also incentivizes communities to recruit as well, by essentially giving them, you know, war bounty,
[SPEAKER_01]: or telling them they can pillage whatever they want essentially, which was also, this is also the modus operandi that the army, the first agreement that the army, backtrend the first genocide, told also the gentruy, did that, hey, you guys can go and get whatever you want, including the land, land is the most lucrative aspect of it, but almost everything else, also the weapons, the resources, the water, personal belongings, gold, but then another
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and this is that the extreme manifestation of misogyny, a lot of ways is women.
[SPEAKER_01]: Women and girls.
[SPEAKER_01]: Women and girls, they're viewed through their objections very clearly, as their property.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like taking gold for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have my right to take a woman a girl.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there was even reports, I think.
[SPEAKER_01]: taking place during the RSF's conquering of Gazeera, which has now been retaken by the Army.
[SPEAKER_01]: Gazeera is with the Central Sudan, but it was retaken by the Army sometime last year.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I forget exactly the which date, but that's irrelevant.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there was a video of Narasaf Fighters saying, you know, it's my right.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's my right to take the women here.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's my right to take whatever I want here.
[SPEAKER_01]: what I'm saying is not to portray these people as barbarians.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think this is the case what I'm trying to say is that the leadership, it's not that I don't think is barbarians, but you know, I don't want to completely remove the human element of these people.
[SPEAKER_01]: What I'm saying is that they're socializing condition within this because they're being told from also, you know, culturally within their community, but also from their leadership.
[SPEAKER_01]: Their leadership is saying,
[SPEAKER_01]: This is how you're going to be rewarded.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when you have the leader of the RSF, for instance, Muhammad Hamdandagul, who goes by the name of himitti, saying that, oh, some of my fighters commit abuses, some of my fighters kind of get out of control.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there's, there's,
[SPEAKER_01]: indications that he has lost control of his ranks, but it's also a systematic policy, like he manifested a destiny that now longer is that now is growing too big even for himself, which sounds familiar.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's exactly what happened with the army and the RSF to begin with.
[SPEAKER_01]: The army created it, and then no longer can translate.
[SPEAKER_01]: and himity at the same time incentivized again using the same logic you guys can pillage to do whatever you want and now he has no control over the franchise of guys at the same time you know but at the same time just because he doesn't have control he still bears responsibility for how is materializing because this is the you know the the the the logics that he promised to them these these are exactly the how we said you guys can conduct warfare
[SPEAKER_01]: So they're doing it according to his orders at the same time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he bears full, full response to the him, his brother, the whole family.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's just one thing I just wanted to mention on how to make sense within the fighters themselves of why they keep repeating these abuses.
[SPEAKER_01]: They feel entitled to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: These are their possessions.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's just what I want to do out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think that's a great point.
[SPEAKER_00]: And even, you know, the RSS made a big show after Darfur fell of saying that they were, you know, they'd seen the videos and they were a pop-up look or the fighters.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's all, it's all k-fabe to use a wrestling term, like it's all for show.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, even if you arrest a couple of guys who get caught on video, the problem is that they get caught on video, it's not really
[SPEAKER_00]: that you mind the atrocities, because the atrocities are what has gotten you to the point where you're in control of the dove.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's just a kind of fiction.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I wanted to turn from the direct atrocities is sort of indirect suffering that's going on here and talk about
[SPEAKER_00]: what we know regarding the humanitarian situation in the towns and villages to which people have fled around Alfash or obviously not equipped to handle a rapid influx of thousands or tens of thousands of people in a situation where there already wasn't much aid or any aid by the end of it getting through.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do we know about the situation in this area and then maybe we could pull
[SPEAKER_00]: conflict and and start with the the overall humanitarian situation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean the humanitarian situation was always quite dire within these areas, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a 650,000 people in Douila, which is where most people of scape too, and it's controlled by this, you know, neutral force or, you know, it clears itself as a neutral force.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, one of the founders of the early Rebellion during the first Darfur war or Darfur genocide.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's Sudan liberation army up to the Wahids, so the beaters up to the Wahid and it's his forces that are controlling that area.
[SPEAKER_01]: So because they haven't, you know, chosen the side between Saf or the RSF.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, vocally yet and it seems that they had understandings with the RSF in order not to, you know, attack each other one points even though the RSF, you know, with all their abilities and all of their weapons and ammunition and then backing.
[SPEAKER_01]: They would be able to to overtake them if they wanted to.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's there's fears that they could potentially do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure how found that they are, but, but it's possible.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, so there were 6,150,000 people that were there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, to answer your question, I mean, I don't think it's fundamentally changed.
[SPEAKER_01]: This isn't unfortunate answer.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think the humanitarian crisis as diers it was before the sense that has fundamentally ballooned or become worse in these specific areas.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because again, everybody's gone missing.
[SPEAKER_01]: How could it, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like how could it get worse, basically?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think it could get worse, it could always get worse if you have a hundred or hundred twenty thousand people that arrive.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're already dealing with six hundred fifty thousand people where there's chlor epidemic.
[SPEAKER_01]: But my point is, is that most people haven't had the luxury to even arrive.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, there's still not right.
[SPEAKER_01]: That makes a lot of sense, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's even like the luxury would be that we
[SPEAKER_01]: But it raises, again, as I was saying, the much spookier and terrifying question that maybe they're just not going to be that many arrivals because people have been kidnapped, offer ransom, executed, and that the genocide is just continuing and ongoing in silence.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, it's a much more, it's a much more, it's a much more, it's a much more, it's a much more
[SPEAKER_01]: kind of terrifying reality.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, actually, grimmer than what I was going with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the idea that there's not, there's just aren't that many people left to sort of support because because they're, you know, because of whatever happened in Alfassure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe now, I do want to talk about sort of where things stand overall and kind of pull the lens back from Darfur.
[SPEAKER_00]: This might be a good way to do it in terms of pulling back on the humanitarian situation around the country.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know there's been a Colorado break that's been fueled partly by weather.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to put the entire blame for that on the
[SPEAKER_00]: The conflict, although certainly the conflict makes it impossible to get in and treat or help people.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I know that's been going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is there that people should know about kind of how severe the humanitarian crisis is, writ large in places that like cartoon that's been recently, fairly recently still retaken by the military or in court of fond.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll get to the conflict and court of fond,
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's a, it's an neglected crisis, you know, by all metrics, in terms of size of populations, you know, in terms of numbers, right, not per capita, but in terms of numbers Sudan is, is, is the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, I think it's more than 12 or 13 million people that are displaced.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the vast majority of those, maybe 8 million or so, 9 million or so, don't quote me exactly on these numbers, but these are rough approximates are internally displaced, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: The rest, they're uprooted cross border, whether or not to
[SPEAKER_01]: to Egypt, or Ethiopia, or Chad, in the case of Darfur, what we're seeing is most likely stage, you know, at least stage four across the country in many areas of the country, stage five catastrophic hunger, which, you know, is essentially just
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you're just, you know, you're just inches away from slipping into what is declared famine.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as, you know, a colleague, I spoke to some time ago, Alex DeWalt, who's an expert on famine, an expert on Sudan, as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, mentioned to me a few months ago that even within stage three, or certainly within stage four, that even within these stages that it's conceived of the hundreds of thousands of children are going to die from hunger-related.
[SPEAKER_01]: you know factors, you know whether or not it's malnutrition, up in the contract diseases or chlorine epidemics or things of the sorts, that's the amount of people are going to die from that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Famine, it's a label much like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, just to add to that when you talk about children, these are, there are also life-long impacts.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I know this is something was talked about in Gaza, but it's, you know, just generally true, like for young children, especially life-long.
[SPEAKER_00]: harm from the kind of family that they're experiencing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, the catastrophic impact for this entire population of more than 40 million people is going to be there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And unfortunately, you have both sides that weaponize hunger.
[SPEAKER_01]: This isn't just an RFF issue.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also very much an army or civilian armed forces issue.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is, you know, the way that they can conduct a war on the cheap.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you so many bureaucratic impediments to deny almost any aid going to areas that the RSF controls.
[SPEAKER_01]: They've also denied famine that there is famine taking place with UN agencies, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So then, you know, this makes it very, very difficult when you're not able to monitor.
[SPEAKER_01]: and just how bad famine is reaching across the country because the whole idea, like genocide, originally, famine, it is a word that is weighted so heavily, even though all the damages are already done, but the point of the word and the point of the classification is to galvanize international support to try to save as many people as possible.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the whole concept of it, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a lot of concept never again.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a pretty similar concept with famine at the same time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so how can the army essentially evade public pressure from allowing as much aid into RSF areas as possible?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you just deny that there's a famine, or you prevent the ability to try to survey, to determine just how severe and widespread the famine is.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's on one end, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: They're doing a number of other things which I don't want to get so, you know, bottled into at the moment, but they're weaponizing hunger and they're denying the extent of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: On the RSF side, we just talked about Elfasha.
[SPEAKER_01]: Elfasha was a city of a million people.
[SPEAKER_01]: they were massaging a city of a million people and hardly allowing anything in.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is just in one area and people near the end of that siege while they were chanting for their lives, trying to muster up as much money in order to bribe people to escape.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is why the population was gradually declining at declining over 550 days in which it reached from a million down to
[SPEAKER_01]: But aside from that, the people that were too destitute and couldn't leave, or they didn't have the energy to leave, or they were, for a number of reasons, people just can't leave, they ended up eating embass, which is essentially food that the community makes out of the remnants of peanut shells and sesame seeds and peanut seeds and things of the sort and they crush it, and they usually are supposed to feed it to livestock.
[SPEAKER_01]: and let's call them buzz.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they started essentially making it into a swirly and feeding it to their children and then they would eat it themselves and that was their one meal a day.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was the one meal a day for most people near the end stages of the siege and famine.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are a self also engineers.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would say,
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think SAF severely exasperates the hunger crisis, collectively punishes populations by denying aid to everybody, but the engineering of it, I would argue was more the RSF because again, as we talked about, through their whole, you know, recruiting strategy in which they're promising the pillaging of entire cities and towns imprinted on the recruiting of people, but then when you start to do that essentially,
[SPEAKER_01]: what it means is that you're uprooting people from their crops, you're displacing everybody that has the means to get out.
[SPEAKER_01]: So then if people are uprooted from their crops, if you're conquering land, if you're, you know, if you're intentionally trying to also create a scenario,
[SPEAKER_01]: where people are dependent on having to join the RSF or get any kind of small hand-off from the RSF or deal with the RSF in some sort of way, then you have to make them as dependent as possible.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so by essentially uprooting so many farmers from their lands, what we've seen is also people can harvest their crops.
[SPEAKER_01]: people are not able to to seasonly produce the food that Sudan needs.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is all a very intentional war strategy and a war on civilians at the RSF carries out.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is the engineering of a crisis.
[SPEAKER_01]: So not only are they preventing you know the planting of crops and the harvesting of crops, but then they're pillaging all of the things, all of your money, all of your belongings, they're kicking you out of your house.
[SPEAKER_01]: So then you also are denied the means to afford food on the market at the same time.
[SPEAKER_01]: We know which in some cases, course people sometimes to join the RSF or to resist, for instance, the induction of their wives, their children, or things of them sort, or to resist being robbed of the less little money they've had, and then unfortunately, parish and could kill does a result of it, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So the RSF in a lot of ways is,
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's almost like it's two competing logics, but it's systematic, but they also are like highway robbers, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's usually no think highway robbers can be that systematic, but this is the kind of, you know, thing that we're dealing with.
[SPEAKER_01]: So then the two forces compliment one and other in exasperating a hunger crisis that, you know, outside of Gaza, where it was, you know, you can't judge it by numbers.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was per capita there where everybody was in famine
[SPEAKER_01]: In terms of sheer numbers, the Sudan crisis is just a severe or significantly more severe in terms of numbers, though I don't like to characterize things in that way, but just to bring the urgency of just how bad it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's because it is a cheap way for both forces essentially to kill as many people as possible.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so yeah, that's also, the thing about hunger and the thing about weaponizing it is that we talk so much also about all of the people that have been killed that's which grew some ways typically from the RSF, though, at times, also by staff in the army.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then it's the vast number of these casualties, which also was the case during the first day of war.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our people that perish from waterborne diseases, that perish from, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, a number of other mosquito, you know, contagion disease is as well, or caring disease is also, and a lot of these effect populations significantly more particularly children, because they are already severely malnourished.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, so it's hunger might not be the last thing that kills you, but essentially crushes your immune system.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not able to fight off anything else you'd be able to fight off anyways.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, and as you were saying, it creates, even if you survive, it's so many long-term effects down the line.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's really mass murder on the cheat.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is what I would say, the weaponization of food.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: The state of the conflict, let's talk about where things stand now
[SPEAKER_00]: most of Darfur now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you can talk about some of the less populated areas of North Darfur still nominally being out of RSF hands, but in terms of the major population centers, the states, Darfur is essentially under RSF control.
[SPEAKER_00]: the the the locus of the fighting has really shifted to the court of on region and you know the the arms have claimed a couple of days ago to have captured Baba Nusa and west court of on there's a siege of L.o.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bay the capital of North court of on where the military still has presence but but court of on I think largely in RSF control except for a few outposts that the military still holds and would be necessary for the military to to establish a firm or footing there if they
[SPEAKER_00]: an operation in Darfur to dislodge the RSF from any part of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we have a situation and I know the big fear that gets articulated here that sets up basically with with cartoon now in the military's hands and these regions more or less under RSF controlled that sets up very well for a partition of the country de facto partition
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you seeing in terms of where the conflict itself has gone?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then of course there are other things to talk about drone strikes.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got the RSS seems to be increasing its capabilities in terms of long-range drones.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that gets into the UAE, which we'll talk about in a moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to get into the international side a bit later.
[SPEAKER_00]: But just sort of in terms of where the conflict stands.
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you saying?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think Codafon is, is remains contested almost at this moment, but L.O.
[SPEAKER_01]: by it is the price.
[SPEAKER_01]: L.O.
[SPEAKER_01]: by it is partially under siege at the moment, it's not fully under siege.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's still a roadout from my knowledge from L.O.
[SPEAKER_01]: by it to, to Colste, which is why now state, and this is where people are, you know, some people are heading, but, you know, when when that fashore fell,
[SPEAKER_01]: it's spooked a lot of people and a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the army, very similar to when, sorry, sorry, you wanted to get in.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, I only wanted to add, which I should have included in my question, sorry, the complication of the RSF introducing its own government, which I know is months old now, but just, you know, as we're talking about the state of the conflict and the possibility of partition,
[SPEAKER_00]: to throw that in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, no problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so the battlefield is shifting to court of fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think Ello Bayet is, that's the eye of the prize for the RSF.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what they're going in on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Babonosa was important.
[SPEAKER_01]: They control all about one area.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's hagglegg in West court of fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: South court of fun remains heavily contested.
[SPEAKER_01]: It generally has a large presence of the RSF and also the Sudan people's liberation movement, north, the branch of Appalazis, which has long-hand animonist, has long-hand animonist animonist with the Sudan army, and actually also historically the RSF, but at the end
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, yeah, I think Baba News is significant precisely just because, you know, this is going to provide the supply line in order to mount a much larger salt on the city of Illinois.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we see in surrounding villages around Illinois that continue to be contested generally controlled by the RSF once and a while the army will come in and kick the RSF out but the army always has struggled to consolidate territory.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the day after the army would come in, then two days later or even a week later than the RSF would come out again and then often commit atrocities when they're coming in.
[SPEAKER_01]: I should mention this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, and so these atrocities and advances from the RSF has generated hundreds of thousands of displaced getting to a low-biode, and now there's rear-fear real fears that now that they're in Babel Nusa, that this is going to be the supply line that they need to sustain a cell, because of fascist quite far away from the court of fond regions, and so the court of fond wasn't, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, so so conducive to melting in the salt in that region itself.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, this is the staff is worried about this.
[SPEAKER_01]: They have, you know, called on, you know, a campaign, you know, of, you know, they call them the most unforeseen or stunts, stunts for, you know, it's it's like
[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of people have gone to villages around or the station to sell type of L.O.
[SPEAKER_01]: by it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they picked up weapons, a lot of students approached and picked up weapons.
[SPEAKER_01]: Something very similar that we saw when Gazeera fell.
[SPEAKER_01]: in the end of 2023, if I'm not mistaken, one gazetor fell to the R.S.F.
[SPEAKER_01]: before it was retaken by the army many months later.
[SPEAKER_01]: It also created a huge need for, you know, our huge,
[SPEAKER_01]: it generated a huge hysteria as many young people started picking up weapons across so many states within eastern and central Sudan and rushing to training camps with the army and in a large part, it's complicated how
[SPEAKER_01]: We describe this, but it's a quite an indictment on the army and its failure to protect civilians on one hand.
[SPEAKER_01]: On the other, you know, it's completely understandable because people are seeing essentially that when the army is coming in, then they're there.
[SPEAKER_01]: it's a war on all civilians, they're not discriminating essentially, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're pillaging everything, including people, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so this is also a rallying cry for people to defend their communities, of defense, a lot of people are doing this.
[SPEAKER_01]: At the same time, there are some other
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, groups that, you know, might have ulterior genders that then also try to play into these fears to try to tap into a kind of a historic, you know, love that try to emphasize the conflict a little bit, you know, and they'll paint it as it's not the RSF.
[SPEAKER_01]: specifically, but it is these people that are coming from the West, or they're all mercenaries, or they're coming from Chad, this alien force, they're going to come and they will, you know, rake your women and kill you all and things of the swords, and actually what the force will do isn't far off from that they've demonstrated, that is exactly what they will do, the RSF.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the framing of it is a framing that, you know, generation of the conflict at the same time, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So then this also puts in a lot of people in danger from, you know, we'll see a lot of people from West Sudan or from the Darfur regions, or the Kurdifan regions that are also running away from the RSF.
[SPEAKER_01]: But not always do they find safety, you know, when they reach east or rough Sudan and are we controlled areas.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's a lot of reports if human rights abuses, atrocities, things of the soar, because they're also under immediate suspicion about where their legions is lie due to the geography or the tribes that they come from.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's a complicated question with so much this packaged into it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But what we're seeing essentially is,
[SPEAKER_01]: Another understandable call for mobilization, if I would say it's understandable, it's in the sense that the army is not able to protect the civilian population.
[SPEAKER_01]: So again, it's calling on the civilian population to take up arms.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that this is essentially a trend that we're seeing again, this taking place.
[SPEAKER_01]: So hello, why it is going to be...
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, ground zero like this is where the battle is and for the RSF strategically they are it seems that they're particularly the eyeing areas where the RS or where the army has has an air base where they're able to launch off from so they often launched off milliviod to vomit fascia for instance at the fascia also had an air base and it's not only in order to take away the army's uh what which once had air supremacy arguably doesn't have it anymore actually
[SPEAKER_01]: it's on the weaker end in terms of area warfare, but it's also the same time if the RSF can take a low-byad, then suddenly you mentioned the drones.
[SPEAKER_01]: They have clear pathway from a low-byad to start striking areas like heart-toom and then striking again into central Sudan, which they already capable of, but not all of their drones have that same length capacity to flying the air all the way from Darfur.
[SPEAKER_01]: So then they can use a number of other ammunition that they have as well to try to target the
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's quite a pivotal battle field here right now and yeah and on all sides it seems usually it's the UAE they do this not just in Sudan but elsewhere they they up the anti they up the anti in terms of the amount of weapons that they're that they're going to supply and when they up the anti then
[SPEAKER_01]: It's countries that are backing the army that, you know, now they, okay, like how deep involved do they really want to get, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there's some reports, for instance, that the army requested Egypt to lend it, you know, use of its air base in order to shoot down drones.
[SPEAKER_01]: You use, you know, one of its air bases as air defense to shoot down drones that are coming
[SPEAKER_01]: in Eastern and North Sudan.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Egypt is ambivalent about doing this, of course, because if it doesn't, they're shooting down UAE, supply drones, the RSF, and it is directly in the conflict right now, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the same time, the
[SPEAKER_01]: the supports not stopping from the UAE to the RSF.
[SPEAKER_01]: So then you have, which is just about every other regional countries back in the Army from Saudi Arabia to Turkey, to Qatar, to, I mean, essentially the UAE is managed to forge an alliance between, you know, a strange,
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, regional bedfellows that never saw I die on a number of issues beforehand, but they all, you know, let's see, I want to prevent the army from collapsing here, but yet, which one of them really feels that this is existential for them to get completely involved.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what I want to contrast this with is in 2019, the UAE was also supplying along with Russia considerable support to Huffdar.
[SPEAKER_01]: which, again, broke you in negotiations.
[SPEAKER_01]: The UA has a habit of doing this whenever there's political negotiations of some sort and it steps up support for an actor and then that actor will essentially use the guys of negotiations to make significant advances on the battlefield, the taking over Elfasher.
[SPEAKER_01]: also took place while there's political negotiations involving the UAE in Washington.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was part of the same playbook.
[SPEAKER_01]: In 19, sorry, I'm going all over the place, but in 19 and Libya, when the UAE was providing all the support for Haftar, Haftar was close taking his loose array of armed groups and mercenary, some of them, which were actually fighting this warrants to down right now on the side of the army, some of them were fighting also with Haftar.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were
[SPEAKER_01]: But Turkey at the time, it was just because the Turks decided that the trippling government at that time is too important.
[SPEAKER_01]: We need to directly intervene and we need to provide our own Syrian mercenaries on the ground.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they were able to stop this as well with their drone warfare and things of the sort.
[SPEAKER_01]: Does Turkey want to get that much more involved?
[SPEAKER_01]: be on supplying the drones directly to Sudan Armed Forces in this case.
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't seem Sudan they're calculating as important for them as Libya was.
[SPEAKER_01]: How about the Egyptians?
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is a trend with the UAE where they almost want to call your bluff.
[SPEAKER_01]: how like how we're we're going to double and triple at the same time we're going to put so much money into lobbying so that nobody's going to even dare claim anybody in government at least that we're actually a major belligerent in this conflict and that we're actually supporting the RSF and then we're just going to go and double triple and quadruple support because we can.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then all you guys, you know, like, how about do you guys want to really play poker with us?
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, what hand do you have?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like show us what you're really actually going to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it ends up being terrible on both ends because if people don't, you know, well, pop up the
[SPEAKER_01]: the army or prop up the army or or come to the rescue with more weapons.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then what you're having is the RSF eventually is going to capture a low-by-it, eventually is going to make more advances.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is also going to de-encentify the power dynamics for political agreement.
[SPEAKER_01]: If they do step to the table and they do it, well then you're just having even more and more deadly weapons
[SPEAKER_01]: of two sides, not saying that they're equal, the R sub commits for more abuses, but two sides of the demonstrated, they don't really care about, you know, civilian casualties in the conflict.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd say one does it deliberately, the other one, sometimes deliberately, but certainly, indiscriminately.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so just the civilian toll of the conflict is going to explode, the more the weapons are storming into Sudan.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the catalyst for this is the UAE in a lot of ways, just calling the bluff of regional backers that are supporting the Sudan army.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's a good way to look at this in terms of the UAE.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can see the SAF like casting around for somebody.
[SPEAKER_00]: who will be a foreign banker who's not beholden to the way because right like you you talk about Egypt which is historically you know been closer to the news military and it's the number one kind of you know support framework if they get to directly of all this like that the Egyptian government
[SPEAKER_00]: depends on the emperor money did like function.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean it's like an existential thing for them like they can't go too far in opposing like and pissing off the the emirates here and and like you know it seems like increasingly you've got the Saudis sort of deciding that they would prefer the military remain
[SPEAKER_00]: in control at least, but the extent to which they're willing to go in terms of supporting it in terms of like helping to bring the war to an end as opposed to just dropping it up is an open question.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know they were just an offer reported from the staff to the Russians to give them a naval base on the Red Sea if the Russians, you know, kind of, which is a big flop because the Russians
[SPEAKER_00]: that arm had been supporting the RSF, but apparently they've they've shifted or they're looking for new new opportunities.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, but that seems again, like how how invested is Russia would Russia really get in this conflict.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can sort of see them casting around for a patron.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I guess I don't know if you saw.
[SPEAKER_00]: the Burhan editorial of the Fathil Burhan, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the
[SPEAKER_00]: But I wondered what you made of that if you had a chance to read it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a fictional narrative, basically, about the war, about the, the staff's relationship with the RSF, which you would take from his telling to have just emerged out of nowhere in like 2019 as opposed to being, you know, tied at the hip to the military until they broke with each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm curious if you had any thoughts on that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can sort of, we can put a link to the, the editorial in the show notes of people
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think, you know, it's what Burhan is essentially trying to achieve in my mind is in what many Sudanese are calling for as well, you know, not all but many certainly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Others remain in Biblin.
[SPEAKER_01]: is to try to frame the war as a war on terror, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So they're really trying to get an FTO designation in Washington against the RSF.
[SPEAKER_01]: And essentially saying that the army, the people are one, and this is a counterterror operation, and this is a rebellion against the government.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then with that, you know, which intellectually, it would be,
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's no sympathy for the RSF and intellectually, yeah, that they're acting like terrorists.
[SPEAKER_01]: You mean, in every way possible in the crimes that they're committed, but that's not the issue here.
[SPEAKER_01]: The issue is about, you know, the army is made very clear that they're not interested, or at least Burhan is not interested in a political settlement.
[SPEAKER_01]: This can be speculated for a number of reasons.
[SPEAKER_01]: Likely, he doesn't have the buy-in, from competing centers of power within his own army, to ink a political settlement right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: It seems that the Egyptians really, really want a political settlement, but how much...
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, how much can they actually convince and barhan to do it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Barhan is also beholden to a number of domestic considerations.
[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't want to be overthrown.
[SPEAKER_01]: There could be a consider to there could be concerns that it would create disputes within the army afterwards.
[SPEAKER_01]: Could there be a mutiny?
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so many.
[SPEAKER_01]: issues that could potentially take place.
[SPEAKER_01]: And at the same time, if there's any weakening of, I mean, the army already essentially hollow itself out into a miniature neoliberal enterprise that just outsourced fighting over the last 25 or 30 years and who had typically outsourced to use the RSF.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the army itself is really a shell of itself.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's more of a military ink.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it relies on so many militias as well and so many recruits.
[SPEAKER_01]: that if there is any kind of mutiny due to signing a piece of agreement with another everybody's on board with within the very centers of power then you know the RSF who's to say that they're even going to attempt to respect it the moment that they smell blood if they think that the military is framed for more and other.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this is something as well, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a lot of considerations to think about here.
[SPEAKER_01]: But all of that's saying.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Burhan is a result of that through the OPED.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's really trying to frame it at this point.
[SPEAKER_01]: And at the same time, he's also very concerned about accountability measures towards the army itself.
[SPEAKER_01]: So framing this as a war on terror also,
[SPEAKER_01]: absolves him and absolves the military of abuses that they are also committing within the swore out by with the disclaimer that the abuses aren't on the same level as the abuses that the RSF are committing simply all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the army has committed massacres.
[SPEAKER_01]: It has killed hundreds of people at once with baroboms.
[SPEAKER_01]: It has done these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: It just bombed a school
[SPEAKER_01]: So, and the reason why I'm saying this is not to try to create any equivalents as some might accuse, but there's a reason why the army isn't so crazy about tapping into accountability measures both domestically and internationally.
[SPEAKER_01]: They just denied, not that I'm saying that they would have acts that had access anyways.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's a politics of posturing, as much as there is the real politics that takes place within offices and headquarters across the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And within the politics of posturing, there was a UNFAC fighting mission that was saying that they were seeking what government approval, the army is portraying itself as the legitimate government,
[SPEAKER_01]: But they rejected it and it's like why would they reject a fact-finding mission to Elfasha which would almost entirely you know implicate all of the horrific abuses of the RSF is committing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I mean why are they still protecting the RSF from a punity up until this day because they're also concerned that that's going to set a precedent that oh maybe there should be a fact-finding mission somewhere else.
[SPEAKER_01]: or maybe there should be one here in which maybe both sides are, you know, implicated in abuse is not just one.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think it, I think at highlights, like that the big fiction to me and, you know, the way Burham writes about this conflict and as you said, that the portrayal of the sap is the legitimate government, which I guess is true on some technical international level, but
[SPEAKER_00]: He's framing of this conflict as the R.S.F.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rebelling against the state versus what I think it really is, which is two illegitimate actors trying to hijack the state and the people of Sudan and engage in this conflict.
[SPEAKER_00]: with each other without buy-in, without popular support, just, you know, functioning kind of floating on top of a civilian population as being brutalized from both ends is really just that that to me is the most appalling.
[SPEAKER_00]: Think about the way he sort of characterizes this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would agree.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would also say that like I try to look at the two of them, not in sense of because I think there's there is, you know, if you're starting with the same amount of legitimacy, which neither them have any.
[SPEAKER_01]: then your conduct within the war will also determine, you know, how much less religion is he one has in the other.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are some conduct in this war has been absolutely, you know, a horrific has been next level despite the many war crimes and potentially crimes against humanity that the army has also committed.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the ours of a just sunk so low in a bar in terms of what they do if, if, if, you know, if I can characterize it that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's not the conversation I think.
[SPEAKER_01]: that is always helpful in understanding the dynamics between the two of them in this war and after.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think even in war time.
[SPEAKER_01]: both of their political narratives, both of their conduct in the war as well, and both of the relationships within their own, quote-unquote, you know, soldiers or fighters and constituents.
[SPEAKER_01]: All of this is predicated on the relationship between one another, which consistently reinforces one another.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they consistently enable one another at the same time.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the the fact that
[SPEAKER_01]: you know right now Burhan is attempting to get nephew designation and he and he there's this real real fears that the army long term hair precisely because of the support of the UAE doesn't have the bandwidth to protect civilians from you know massacres and mass atrocities moving forward and maybe not even protect itself you know there's this very real concerns that that this is going to shift though I don't think either side has had
[SPEAKER_01]: has the ability to fully vanquish or conquer the other, but I think what we're trending right now is that the R stuff is having the upper hand, especially because they're equally even more powerful with an arrow supremacy right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: But even within this dynamic, you have one that refuses to negotiate.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: The other one that really, really wants to negotiate because they want political legitimacy through a political deal because they know they have a non-right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is the only way they're going to get political legitimacy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then through these this sort of clash of diplomatic posturings, what this does is that it enables essentially one side to continue to to mass
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the other one essentially to say, okay, but at the end of the day, the self preservation of the top brass of the army right now is going to be more important than a political deal.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so this is this is sort of where we're having this this contradiction at the moment and so they continuously enable one another.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, and also enabling one another in terms of just no calls for accountability.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're all against this.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're their political narratives, consistently enable one another as well in every respect.
[SPEAKER_01]: And at the end of the day, they both,
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, portray themselves as having quite a lot of power.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, the messy aspect of this is that, you know, neither of them really have that much.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was just a many rebellion within Northern State, Chimaliah State, and against the army from one of the groups that it was weaponizing.
[SPEAKER_01]: They reportedly were able to crush the rebellion early on, but this is again, kind of, you know, it's a foreshadowing.
[SPEAKER_01]: of especially within once a political deal is made, usually political deals, they don't vanquish conflict.
[SPEAKER_01]: Typically, what it does is that it reconfigurates conflict because you have new winners and losers.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you don't have to homogenize forces, and you actually just have two leaders or kind of any roaded institution that's relying on a mosaic of forces with a common enemy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And another essentially mafia family supported by
[SPEAKER_01]: another, you know, Mafia family.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is, right.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's a part of another Mafia family that is relying on a, you know, a loose array of tribes that also they're all, you know, jockeying for position and power in terms of what would be a post-war dispensation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then also, even if they didn't get political deal, then you would imagine that it would create new winners and losers and then just create new conflicts within both of their zones.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so they both are enabling each other through the way that they're carrying out diplomacy, to the way that they carry out the war, and at the same time through the things that they both mutually agree on even when they're enemies, which is no concepts of accountability for either of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, it's it's it's like even this this one more thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll add even the the the attenization of the conflicts you know from both sides is enabling one another as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean you have within the army side there was people when the army took over cartoon many people ended up fleeing to not not the majority by any means but many a number of people did end up fleeing to
[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of these people from what my sources were saying was it was just based on they weren't looking to stay in Darfur.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were looking sometimes to get to Chad or maybe to get to Niyada or wherever they could get to essentially.
[SPEAKER_01]: But they were going towards RSF areas.
[SPEAKER_01]: Further further, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, just for any person that's, that's, you know, looking at this conflict, you know, just within the news, anybody wonder, why would somebody go there?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's because they were worried because of where they came from, demographically, and also where they, you know, also their accents and their tribal background, even though they were born and raised by doom, people felt that if the army came in, then they were going to cleanse a certain people and that the city would belong to, you know, other particular people, which is what happened in a number of cases.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there were videos of people that are essentially being mass-led to detention.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were reports from the UN of masculine to the Hall of Fame, and they were heard that things like this happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: We saw this happening also in Gazeera as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so this enabling also just created, you know, it, it, it, it, it, uh, exasperates the perceived existential fears of Arab tribes elsewhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: The think, oh, we're going to be targeted at the same time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, the carrying out ethnic killings on their own accord, which then leads to more mobilization and people also ethnicizing it accordingly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the ethnicization of the conflict has also somehow created communal existential fears, which both of the legends have been able to tap into in order to keep the war going, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So so there is, you know, well, they're not equal and the abuse is that they've
[SPEAKER_01]: that they've committed.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is an enabling here in the way that they frame the conflicts and the way that they frame it both domestically and internationally, accordingly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, that's real long.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, that's really good.
[SPEAKER_00]: It leads me into what I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: could be the final question or should be the final question, because it relates to the latest development off of the battlefield, which is that, you know, would be Nobel Prize winner Donald Trump is now going to get involved and roll his sleeves up and he should really get a lifetime achievement from the Nobel people who would have lifetime achievement award from them at this point.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he's going to get in there and solve this.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a concern ever, you talked about the military, the staff,
[SPEAKER_00]: trying to portray this as a war on terror.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, any everything is a war on terror now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, we're in the 2050 or the war on terror, every conflict is a war on terror.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody wants to appeal to the United States and claim that the people they're fighting are terrorists, and won't you come in and help us, send us weapons, whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's also happening on the other side.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this has been an interesting, I think, development.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've really seen what seems like a concerted effort, which I, I, has suspected,
[SPEAKER_00]: has origins in the the Persian Gulf region, not to identify any particular countries, but you know money certainly coming from that region to portray the RSF as fighting a war on terror because there are Islamists, scary Islamist elements tied to the Omar al-Bashir regime that are working with the Sudanese
[SPEAKER_00]: military.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe as a final question and you know how that might play out because we've got St. Tanks and D.C. that are you know sympathetic to that line of argument let's say I don't want to get into where their money comes from but you know sympathetic to that kind of argumentation that are making the same point that the RSF is fighting a war on terror even after that what we saw in our fashion that they were pushing this line that like
[SPEAKER_00]: the real terrorist here, and so the RSF is trying to fight a secular war to establish a republic, and all it's just so, so much bullshit basically, but maybe you could talk a little bit about that dynamic and the role that the Islamists are playing here to the extent that they're playing one, and just how that might play out, and the, you know, as this,
[SPEAKER_00]: public debate or really argument this again has an audience of just one person Donald Trump.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it's it's it's a good question.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm glad you you you brought it up.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll start with with just two caveats one yeah there there are Islamists which I don't even really love.
[SPEAKER_01]: framing it as Islamists.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are members from the former regime.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's about power more than fundamentally about ideology.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are members from the former regime and the former regime was an Islamist regime and came to power with Bishyan Turabi.
[SPEAKER_01]: Turabi was
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the face of the Muslim brotherhood in Sudan, and then eventually they split off, but they were, but that created split within the Islamic movement as well up until when Bashir was, was, was removed, both the army and the RSF.
[SPEAKER_01]: we're operating as two of the very security services or security forces under Bashir.
[SPEAKER_01]: So by the logic that they are both purporting and particularly the one that you offered to me, they were all part of the code and code islamist regime, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, open the other, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So they're just trying to essentially say, you're a part of the former regime, no, you're a part of the former regime,
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know, both of you bozos were part of the form of research.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: How we got here.
[SPEAKER_01]: That said, they are playing a role.
[SPEAKER_01]: However, the other caveat is, you know, I think just that the war on personally, I think the war on terror narrative in either direction often tends to reduce upstairs and reduce nuances.
[SPEAKER_01]: as opposed to actually reveals them accordingly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And on the RSF side, what I'll say is it's not that I don't think that their actions are, you know, amount to terrorism, but I am concerned with a few
[SPEAKER_01]: issues in regards to, what does this kind of mean for, you know, the mutual aid networks and society networks that have no choice but to keep people alive in RSF areas, are they suddenly going to be hit with being affiliated as terrorists because they're operating there or transactions can no longer go to people within these areas or things of this sort, are they going to qualify for humanitarian exemptions?
[SPEAKER_01]: because if not, that what we're doing is that we're just exasperating, for instance, both parties use the weaponization of food and the weaponization of aid, effectively, under the banner of the war on terror or worse, even legitimizing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this will also kill many, many, many, many people, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's caveats, and there's other ways to address the RSF, that I think would be more important.
[SPEAKER_01]: The other is issue with the RSF.
[SPEAKER_01]: is a terror, you know, designation going to stop U.A.E.
[SPEAKER_01]: support when it's already claiming that it's not supporting them to begin with, and essentially paying out money and lobbying from Washington to Europe in order to claim that they're actually not supporting the RSF whatsoever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, then the issue here isn't about whether or not it doesn't make the group as terrorists, but it's about finally getting an international consensus and acknowledgement that they can say
[SPEAKER_01]: that the UAE is backing a genocide of force, because then we can go to the root of the issue and get our UAE can stop backing this genocide of force.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if nobody's saying who's backing the court and court terrorist, it's not going to matter because the money just going to keep coming to the terrorist, and nobody's going to say anything about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because, you know, everybody's just see no evil here, no evil.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a number of,
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, perspectives I have on that personally about how constructive that designation would be in regards to actually, you know, ending the war cornering the RSF shutting off the supply lines and and protecting aid workers on the ground.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's a bit complex on the is from the side is the same thing, you know, and not all of the same concerns.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, there are members from the older gene that are Islamists, that appear to be a very active on social media, they appear to be very, very active within the recruitment process of the Mustafa Reen or the mobilized again.
[SPEAKER_01]: They seem to have taken according to number of reports and sources.
[SPEAKER_01]: They've seemed to have taken, you know, a leading hand within various communities in trying to recruit as many people as possible that doesn't meet people that recruited are suddenly Islamless or things of the sword, but they're playing this role because for them I think it's very much narrative role and with this as well they're introducing toxic discourses, they're very much ethnicized the conflicts at the same time.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think this is quite problematic.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are Islamless militias that the army is relying on on the ground, one of the most notably is buttered with magic.
[SPEAKER_01]: which has been implicated a number of human rights abuses, particularly after the retaking of Gazeera.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were seeing essentially killing anybody that looked like they were from Darfur, Kordefon, and these encampments, agricultural encampments, which were historically exploited poor labor from the margins of Sudan that came to the large agricultural scheme, which is in Gazeera, Gazeera scheme.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is why
[SPEAKER_01]: where the territory was.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it was a lot of these people that didn't look like the people of Central Sudan or they were clearly, you know, because they were living the kind of these not the people of Central Sudan.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were targeted by butterman Malek, but they're also targeted by non-ismist militias as well, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So again, like that it wasn't a one or the other thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they are playing a role.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think they are playing a role again and very much tapping into
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, tapping into, you know, not the best impulses of people that feel understandably threatened, because an army that is professed to protect them has not been able to do so, and now they have to come in essentially protect their own communities.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, yeah, they are playing a very nefarious role.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the same in the same breath, this one's movement, as I mentioned, within the 90s,
[SPEAKER_01]: 2000 I forget when it's split but they had split then and they are they're they're also not united now there's splits within the Islamist movement just like there's splits within the the non-islamist movement so within you know even you're probably disagreeing with the RSF I think they are one center of power that shouldn't be ignored they can play they can play you know a significant size moral but I also don't think that we can reduce at all by any since they are one
[SPEAKER_01]: within the various centers of power that staff is beholden to.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are not exclusively the only one.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of people that are picking up weapons on a community basis because they feel directly threatened by the RSEF.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are Darfurri tribes for Darfurri tribal leaders.
[SPEAKER_01]: from non-error communities that are part of the joint forces that also feel that they want to place in the political marketplace and high positioning and a future piece of agreement and that any future piece of agreement that excludes them is going to be a major issue.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, staff is also beholden to these guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's also Eastern tribes.
[SPEAKER_01]: that feel that they're probably going to be owed some compensation because in many of their eyes, despite their own differences as well and their own local dynamics, they're the ones that have quote unquote rescue staff and then given them their base when they lost hard to whom, right, and ports of times become the new capital.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's also considerations that
[SPEAKER_01]: communities there.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's another militia men named Kaiko who defected from the RSF and went to SAF and again was given absolute impunity and you know there's some reports that he might have been injured.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure I can't verify it, but he you know was said and you know people close to him and other analysts to have political ambitions and if he was left out of a political dispensation with what that mean, could that mean a potential rebellion who knows especially because
[SPEAKER_01]: He is seen as somebody that is, you know, you know, responsible for for also converted and the the military, the the military quote unquote protection of his community or his tribe into political capital, which is the entire, you know, political marketplace and Sudan.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, there's also South that's beholden to this.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the Islamists are a factor.
[SPEAKER_01]: But they are not the irreducible factor that this is all just an Islamist plot and that this is all that we can say and yad yad in the Sudan equals the Sudan army equals the Sudanese and this is the Sequel Sudan army.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is far too over simplified at the same time, but they are, but they are an actor.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I like to think of them more as
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, there's a number of counter-revolutionary forces that, you know, that the army is beholden to, and one that they're directly fighting, regardless of the rhetoric of the RSF, they are perhaps the worst incarnation of a counter-revolutionary force, regardless of their talks of democracy, and one, you know, major player of these counter-revolutionary forces,
[SPEAKER_01]: are, you know, movements from the old Islamist regime that are looking to try to exploit this war and try to exploit their support for staff and the army in order to find an opening to return to power.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we are seeing this as well, one more thing allowed on this.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are seeing this also within aid networks, for instance, in Khartoum.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was just speaking with somebody earlier who's an aid volunteer in a cartoon locally volunteer, you know, just a member of community.
[SPEAKER_01]: And for months now, he and others have been telling me that essentially there's these new, you know, there's these new Karama committees, meaning
[SPEAKER_01]: Dignity committees that are trying to replace essentially the emergency room committees which are essentially the emergency rooms are neighborhood groups of sustained the population through community initiatives through de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic de-sporic
[SPEAKER_01]: contributions and donations and things of the sort and allow these neighborhood committees or emergency response rooms.
[SPEAKER_01]: Their genesis was actually through the resistance committees which were responsible for generating a grassroots political consensus and also creating a long resistance sort of speak.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, coordinating protests against the junta which was, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: And now these essentially, these networks that are so embedded and trusted by communities are being swept aside for these dignity committees.
[SPEAKER_01]: So who are these dignity committees?
[SPEAKER_01]: More and more people are telling me that these are people that are affiliated with the former regime and aid has always been connected to political legitimacy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so there seems to be concerted attempt or tune for instance to try to delegitimize essentially
[SPEAKER_01]: the, you know, community initiatives that are linked or somehow symbolically linked with the revolution and trying to essentially shift that legitimacy or make populations beholden to, you know, new committees essentially that are tied to the army but are counter revolutionary and also tied with many, many people from the former Islamist regime.
[SPEAKER_01]: So so we're seeing it on
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, this is one incarnation of it as well within the politicization of eight.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, they are a factor, but a long story short, so it's not a matter of if we can just sideline them.
[SPEAKER_01]: I disagree with this that everything will be somehow fixed, but they are certainly an actor that is, you know, that they put a lot of wood on the fire.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think both
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think there's so much more we can talk about here, but I've kept you well past what I was hoping to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I will let you go on that, Matt.
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe you could give people just a couple of places if they're interested in following your work where they could find you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, sure, I post most of my work on Twitter.
[SPEAKER_01]: Matt Nashett is my handle or on Instagram, also Matt Nashett.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm the one sitting in the chair.
[SPEAKER_01]: Apparently there's a fake account to me, but you'll know by the followers.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you can find me on LinkedIn as well where I post my stuff, also Matt Nashett.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's, that's wild, I think you may be the first guest we've ever had, who has somebody faking them.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a special media, that's my musical mind, that's forever, and I'm supporting the big count, but still there anyways, let's, let's say conference or anything, then.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can pull Matt, thank you very much, and I'm sure we will have a occasion to continue the conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sounds good, sounds good, any time, thanks for having me by the way.