Special Edition of Suffer the people
On Saturday April 15, 2023, many innoncent residents of Khartoum, the Sudanese capital and the wider world were shocked by the street fighting and urban battles between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF or Army)and the Paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) the reincarnation of the Janjaweed. Civilians have been trapped in their houses, schools, offices and unable to leave their homes since they were ordered to shelter in place on Saturday. The brief ceasefire on Sunday allowed some residents to venture outside to buy food and other supplies before being forced back inside their homes with an uptick in the urban battles still ongoing unfortunately between the Sudanese Armed Force and RSF. The residents and civilians have grown frustrated with the slow pace of creating and installing a civilian government in office and ending the hated military rule and state of emergency. Since 2019 Sudanese revolution, ordinary Sudanese have been out in the streets of Khartoum, Port Sudan, Wad Madani and El Obeid protesting every other week to demand the Sudanese Army step down and allow a civilian government to rule the country without delay.
After three days battle, some 100 civilians have been killed and 600+ civilians injured around the capital. Among the killed include three World Food Program employees who were delievering humanitarian aid in Darfur. The UN and other aid groups have briefly halted humanitarian aid until the fighting subsides in the capital. UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres has condemned the violence and called for an immediate ceasefire as the urban battle enters its third day. The urban battle is not a Civil War it is a power struggle between the Sudanese Army and the RSF originally composed of armed militiamen from Darfur in Western Sudan. The air bombing of the Khartoum International Airport, the skirmishes at Meroe Airport, Port Sudan, El Obeid Airport and Omdurman, a residential suburb of Khartoum to the West of the city, has terrified residents and shocked many people across the world. The fighting also comes during Ramadan and Orthodox Easter on April 16th, coming a week after Western Easter. Peaceful city at the end of the street Khartoum has been until Saturday a safe city and is a metropolis of some 8 million people. It's a very modern city with few ancient quarters and some monuments from the 19th century and before. Most of the famed pyramids of Meroe, ancient Nubia and Kush are over one hundred kilometers North of Khartoum unlike the Pyramids of Giza adjacent to Cairo in Egypt. Khartoum is divided into three cities, the main city of Khartoum, Omdurman technically the largest city in Sudan if not included in Khartoum's metropolitan area. Khartoum and the wider capital region and riverine Sudan including cities such as Wadi Halfa, Dongola, Kerma, Wad Madani, El Obeid, Kordofan province in Central Sudan were not affected at all by previous wars and conflicts around the country. Most of the intercommunal violence, heavy fighting, aerial bombardments and civilian attacks by the Sudanese army to fight rural rebel/insurgent groups were confined to rural provinces of Darfur, South Kordofan, the rural areas of Port Sudan's Red sea state. These provinces are physically hundreds of miles away from the Khartoum and other major cities. In essense Khartoum and other large Sudanese cities live in their secure bubbles and is relatively safe for visitors. The Khartoum residents are not used to warfare or bombings. There was only one other time that the capital was besieged by Darfuri rebels mostly JEM group led by Khalil Ibrahim was in May 2008 when JEM rebels launched an attack on Khartoum but was stopped in Omdurman by the Sudanese Army just as JEM and other Darfuri rebels were crossing the Nile bridge into Khartoum proper. Ibrahim and a few of his commanders were later killed in a targetted attack by the Army. The Battle of Omdurman only lasted for three days at the most and the rebels were arrested and detained and pushed back to Darfur. Many of the shocked people watching the unimaginable air bombings at the airport and tit for tat fighting in some streets around the capital include local residents, businessmen and even tourists and adventerous visitors who had started traveling through Sudan as a new, slowly growing off the beaten path tourist destrinations as Sudan's long overlooked ancient history, numerous archeological sites, hospitality, culture and food is starting to attract curious travelers and content creators tired with the usual and predictable tourist sites of other countries. Journalists and diplomats inside and outside the country are equally shocked by a possible transitional government deal to a sudden turn to physical battle that places civilians in harms way. They had all been following and hoping that the military rule in the North African country was finally coming to an end with last week's negotiations on finalizing a new agreement on a civilian transitional government and security reforms on intergrating the RSF with the Sudanese Army. The current two day fighting makes no sense with the onging agreements and dialogue between the pro Democracy oppositon parties, civil societies, the military government and militia groups finally coming to agreeent on moving the country forward through civilian rule and removing the army from civilian affairs and govermnet offices back to its original function as a nationa security forces. Last week the deal seemed closed to being inked despite the Sudanese public's frustrations at the slow pace of implementing civilian rule and ironing out how intergrating security forces. The RSF just proved that it would be unreasonable and unable to work with civilian soldiers or critics if it were to be intergrated into the regular army. Hemedeti and RSF some 100,000 soldiers are more concerned with maintaing power than providing security for civilians in Khartoum, other major Sudanese cities and towns. The Arab League called an emergency meeting in neighboring Cairo to address the situation in Sudan as its a major concern for Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states. Egypt and Chad have closed their borders for the time being. Egypt being Sudan's brotherly nation, trade and economic partner and . The Arab League has called for a ceasefire on both sides to stop the violence from spiraling out of control. The regional organization IGAD, Intergovernmental organization on East African Development will send the Presidents of Kenya, South Sudan and Djibouti to Khartoum in the coming days to push for a longer ceasefire. Djibouti is an unusual addition to the triple peacemaking group as Djibouti and Sudan hardly interact with one another nor are close trading partners. Over the last year, the Sudanese government had signed a deal with Russia to allow it to build a military base in Port Sudan, the major port city and the country's chief port. China who has been a long time ally and trading partner in Sudan has also been strenghtening its relationship and working on infrastrcture deals with the Sudanese.
The Frankenstein that turned on its creator The RSF was a creation of the former President Omar al Bashir. Beginning in 2003, Bashir with help from the Sudanese Army armed Arab militiamen part of the local Janjaweed group in Darfur to fight against Justice and Equaity Movement (JEM), Sudan Liberation Movement headed by non Arab African ethnic groups Zaghawa, Masalit and Fur in hopes of crushing the Darfuri insurgency and keeping himself in power. Janjaweed not only targeted the Darfuri rebels/insurgents, they extended their anger and carte blanc war of attrition on the local Darfuri civilian population mostly farmers and families in towns and villages across Darfur. While the JEM and SLM-Minnawi, Hilu, etc has since fragmented into multiple rival groups jocking for power in Darfur, the Janjaweed was transformed and upgraded from a regional militia group by the government in 2012 into a mobile military unite rebranded as the rapid response forces. The government did little to disarm the Janjaweed fighters and veterans afterwards. The RSF were deployed outside of Darfur and to other provinces of Sudan such as South Kordofan, Eastern Sudan and around the cities of Port Sudan and Kassala and El Obeid. The RSF was designed to aid the Sudanese Army as a security force that was unofficially part of the Sudanese Army but not fully intergrated into it. When Bashir was overthrown in 2019, both the Army general Abdelfattah al Buran and Hemedeti the leader of the RSF worked together to overthrow Al Bashir government. Inspite of working together, Hemedeti had been attempting to inch closer to power seeking to become president and have the RSF commanders rule the government similiar to how Libyan militias insist that they have a part in the national government. Burhan feeling threatened by Hemedeti and the RSF, a Frankenstein monster that he and the military could no longer control, have been ignoring the RSF's insistant demand to join the Sudanese Armed Forces as part of last week's transitional civilian rule agreement deal. At the moment, both the Sudanese Army and RSF agreed to a brief ceasefire and has continued fighting in Khartoum and other cities. The Army is currently attempting to push back the RSF out of Khartoum and encouraging defectors to join the the Army's side to regain control and eventually dismantle the RSF as it could have done years ago when it was smaller and weaker. Yesterday, the Sudanese Army declared the RSF a rebel group and
Along with demonizing Russia as the boogeyman, American and European media have been trying to paint Russian interests in Sudan as a nefarous stepping stone to aid in Russia's war in Ukraine via gold smuggling from Sudanese artesanal mines. Which is a stretch beyond the imagination as Sudan has been neutral in its stance on Russia and Ukraine war. Most Arab and African countries see the war as an internal European conflict that doesn't involve the wider world. The media pundits have been holding up the Ukraine war as the singular issue of international concern while ignoring more crucial conflicts and pressing issuses. The pundits have tried to link the Ukraine war to every part of Russian Foreign policy and interests in other countries that have nothing to do with the Ukraine. The pundits have even tried to place shadowy Russian mercenary Wagner Group inside Sudan where there are not present.
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