The urban warfare in Khartoum has taken its toll on the once peaceful, cosmopolitian city of 6 million. While some 6 million Sudanese have fled the country since the outbreak of the war or humanitarian crisis in April 2023, many Khartoum residents have remained in the city despite some media headlines declaring Khartoum as a "ghost town." Millions of people weren't able to evacuate as easily as foreign and dual national Sudanese were in the early days of the conflict. The Rapid Support Forces led by Hemedti and his brother Adelrahman Daglo in Darfur, still insists that the RSF's war with the Sudanese Army is to bring democracy to Sudan by either militarily defeating the Sudanese army, we are talking about the national army here or overthrowing the Sudanese government which is still functioning based out of Port Sudan. The RSF through its social media network and tech saavy members and supporters often paints the current Sudanese government or military junta as no different from the old regime of Al Bashir. Keep in mind, the conflict is not a fight between two equal sides as most American and European journalists and analysts assume. Part of the reason why the journalists view the conflict as a fight between two rivals and not between the national government and a undisciplined paramilitary group is they see it as the another version of Libya's current conflict or Syria. Almost as musical chairs of political choas. Since Sudan's conflict and geopolitics is unique to Western journalists who are more familiar with Ethiopia and Somalia's geopolitics, the journalists are scrambling to compare Sudan's conflict to their neighboring countries as way to familiarize their audience with Sudan again simplifing the conflict down to "two generals fighting over government rule" when the Sudanese conflict is far more complex than that. Some journalists see stopping the war as hopelessly given how long the conflict has lasted. But many Sudanese remain hopeful and optimistic that the war will end sooner than later and haven't given up on their country. Many don't want to live as long term refugees in neighboring countries and some have returned home.
Forgotten Sudanese Peace activists and End the War organizations
Oddly enough, the journalists and pundits continue to ignore Sudanese civil society organizations and groups who have been meeting and hosting conferences (Sudanese Diaspora Women's Conference in London in October) to hammer out civilian led intiatives, agreements and proposals for finally ending the war in Sudan and bringing about permanant peace, calling for genuine Sudanese Demorcracy as Khartoum's various resistance committees have protested and fought for. The call for democracy goes well beyond elections into the realms of citizen rights, economic and political development, etc. Also ignored by the mainstream media is the Sudanese Anti War movement in Sudan and in the Sudanese Diaspora who in the early days of the war raised the world's awareness to the Sudanese conflict and called for its end with a permanent ceasefire and killings of civilians. Sudanese women who have fled the war and others living in the Diaspora have joined together and been working in Cairo and other cities on coordinating lasting peace efforts and permanent end to the war. Even the former Sudanese Ambassador to the United States Nureldin Satti has called for a diplomatic solution to the war. The United Nations Security Council recently voted to end the UNTIMAS mission in Sudan after the Sudanese government under Abdelfatteh el Burhan declared UN mission has been suspended saying that the government can solve its own internal problems. The UN gave the UNITMAS mission three months until February 2024 to drawn down and close its operations. Not only El Burhan but even ordinary Sudanese citizens had been suspicious of the UNTIMAS' true intentions and genuin concerns when the mission first began in the early days of the war. In May, Sudanese citizens in Port Sudan protested against UNTIMAS head Volker Perthes and called for the UN envoy to be expelled from the country and being accused of favoring the RSF, though there are no evidence that UNITAMS or Perthes favored the RSF as they reiterated again their concern and priority are the Sudanese people.
The US Policy Taking out Sudan and 6 Middle East countries and NATO's fears
RSF members have been threatening to take the destructive conflict to the rest of the country beyond the current urban battlefields of Khartoum, the Sudanese capital and its suburbs and Darfur. Remember that most of the conflict hasn't engulfed the entire country. Port Sudan, is peaceful and so is Northern Sudan, Eastern Sudan and parts of Central Sudan. While the RSF has taken over four of five states of Darfur, in Sudan's Western region, the RSF are not seen as liberators or alternatives to the current Sudanese government. Nor are they considered as plausible future government rulers as Hemedti hopes to become Sudanese president someday. The Rapid Support Forces have destroyed critical infrastructure, continue to harass, torture, kidnap and kill civilians in Khartoum and with intensity in Darfur. This doesn't excuse the Sudanese Army from its own bombing campaigns of markets and neighborhoods suspected of being filled with RSF fighters. Not to mention committed war crimes and the RSF including Hemedti and his brother have been sanctioned by United States. The sanctions also include "Islamist" Sudanese politicians the US claims were part of the former Omar al Bashir government. American sanctioning of Sudanese officials is an old method that goes back to the early 1990s when Sudan was accused of being a supporter of terrorism and regarded by American foreign policy analysts and pundits as a pariah state. Another missing piece in American foreign policy on Sudan following Henry Kissinger's real politik strategy is Project for a New American Century or PNAC the Defense policy from the Neo Conservative think tank with the same name which calls for the U.S. to topple 7 countries in 5 years, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Somalia. The mentioned countries are Muslim and in the Middle East or North Africa with the exception being Somalia, in East Africa/Horn of Africa. Nearly all the countries minus Iran have been destablized and destroyed by the United States and its NATO allies. The destabilization predates the war on terrorism and goes back decades to the 1980s with US supporting Iraq and Saddam Hussein against Iran, bombing Libya Syria, Iraq and dropping a bombing on Khartoum's Al Shift Pharmacuetrical factory in 1998 in the aftermath of the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam where Sudan was accused of hosting the Al Qaeda terrorists who carried out the attack. It is not coincidental that the NATO countries were both surprised and than later didn't seem phased by the dragging out of the current war in Khartoum and Darfur. Like Libya and Syria before it, Sudan had been caught in NATO's spider web of horrific urban warfare and choas of unchecked, free flow of the latests military weapons and drone warfare reminsct of Libya's extra weapons flowing over its borders to neighboring countries. To add insult to injury, the Western countries want to blame Russia and in particular the Wagner Mercenary group as the ones responsible for igniting the current war. The Center for Strateig and International Studies even published a report claiming that Wagner had been working with the RSF out of interest in Sudan's gold mines to fuel the Ukrainian war. Despite the fact that Wagner had nothing to do with Sudanese Army disagreement with the RSF leading to the conflict's origins. It comes as no surprise that the U.S. blames most geopolitical conflicts in various countries on Russia even when the country has nothing to do with internal problems. Pointing to Russia might have to do with the Americans' fear of Russia building a small navy base on Sudan's Red Sea Coast near Port Sudan, the country's major trading port and economic hub. It was ironcally Hemedti, as the former Deputy chairman of the Sudan Soviernity Council who met with Russian officials last year to formalize the deal. The Sudanese government has been warming up Russia. The Russian naval base deal had been given the green light in Febraury 2023 when the war broke out in Khartoum two months later. Sudan recently restablished relations with Iran, its former ally. Connecting with Egypt's Suez Canal the Red Sea is a strategically located region and a major trade and shipping lane of the world. Both Russia and China have been strengthening their respective trading ties, foreign policy interests and economic ties with Sudan, Egypt, Yemen, Somalia and Ethiopia. Once the war ends in Sudan, there is no doubt that the BRICS will reach out to Sudan as it has to neighboring countries to grow the regional economic bloc. The rise of BRICS as an alternative global economic and political bloc challenging the U.S. and wider Western hegemony, has the U.S. and Europe playing catch up as it races aganist China's global belt and road intiative to regain its trust with Middle Eastern and African countries who have critized and condemned U.S. and NATO's militarily focused foreign policy and full spectrum dominance of Red Sea region and the wider Middle East. NATO sees Russia and China's geopolitical and economic strenghte around the world as a existential threat. The United States ability to militarily and economically control the world's most strategic regions has been diminished and simiiar to its older imperial cousin Britain, America's domineering control over the world's countries through the use of its long standing military industrial complex has been broken. As all empires have done, the United States Army is stretched out to thin in its 800+ military bases network. The U.S doesn't have the money, manpower or rapid intelligence as it used to decades ago to keep its eyes and ears everywhere. The American people themselves have turned against military industrial complex and protested against US/NATO destabalization foreign policy. The European Union can't keep up with the Americans' insistance on jumping into every new war be it directly or indirectly. The EU is economically struggling and has its own societal problems to confront ranging from high cost of living, poverty, immigration policy, keeping the far right politicians and organizations at bay, future relations with Russia. Europe's problems mirrors the United States' own internal problems that the country has ignored for decades well before this century. For now, the U.S. and NATO countries are taken a diplomatic approach to the Sudanese Conflict and monitoring it while it focuses on brutal war in Palestine and cheerleads for Ukraine's collapsing war against Russia.
The war still continues in Khartoum's outer neighborhoods, suburbs and its twin cities in Omdurman and Khartoum Bahri turning the once peaceful and safe capital city into a nightmare of random bombings and traumtic night terrors for its trapped residents. The Good samaritarian doctors, volunteers, medical staff and pyschologists part of the Pro democracy resistance committees continue to aid the trapped Khartoum residents, other IDPs and as urgently and empathitically as they can as the war passed its 7th month. The samaritarians have also been recording and documenting injuries, deaths and other war violations. The Sudanese army has managed to start pushing the RSF out of some neighborhoods in Khartoum. But it is a grueling task as the RSF are better equiped with MLRS missles, drones and mobile military weapons and humvees sent from the United Arab Emirates via Chad. The UAE has been accused by Sudanese civilians and the army as a large supporter of the RSF against the Sudanese government by extention the Sudanese Army. The RSF had been forced some Khartoum residents out of their homes, taken the homes over and looted personal items from jewelry to cars and burned other homes and apartments. Than try to blame their actions on the Sudanese Army. The fighting in Khartoum isn't as intense as in Darfur but it has destroyed a few bridges, hospitals, turned some schools into IDP centers, nearly collapsed the health system in the capital, made operating shops and super markets difficult, led to sparodic electricity and internet issues. Humanitarian aid has been flowing into Khartoum and other neighboring cities gradually from Port Sudan. Most of the fighting has occured in Khartoum and Omdurman's outer suburbs, where RSF troops have embed themselves in civilian neighboorhoods while fighting the army with heavy weapons. The RSF have not been accused of using civilians as human shields yet. Though their actions suggest they are and they have broken both international law and commited war crimes. Most of the heavy fighting is in Khartoum's poorer, informal suburbs known as the southern belt or black belt which is home to rural migrants and South Sudanese who moved to the capital to escape from the earlier conflicts in South Kordofan's Nuba Mountains, Darfur and Southern Sudan when it was still united with Sudan. Exception being the South Sudanese who went from being internal displaced to becoming refugees when South Sudan gained independence in 2011. Stripped of their Sudanese citizenship right after S. Sudan's independence, the South Sudanese refugees had been stuck in a legal and invisible limbo were they became stateless and weren't able to repatriate to their new homeland due to beaucracy and logistics. Granted some South Sudanese from Khartoum have since returned to their country after weeks of grueling travel with help from good samitarians and UNHCR who faces limited funding. There are still millions of residents in the capital who can't easily evacuate or move from their homes and remain trapped in their neighborhoods. There are millions of IDPs waiting for the war to end to be able to go back home. The Sudanese Army has been going from neighborhood to neighborhood pushing out the RSF forces in recent months. Given the last several decades, the Sudanese government knows it doesn't need foreign intervention or a United Nations mandate to save Sudan. It has been able to pull itself out of destabilzing wars before. It can possibly do it again.
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