Martin Plaut

Sudan Is on the Brink of a New Catastrophe

Martin Plaut

Dec 23

Source: Fair Observer

Sudan Is on the Brink of a New Catastrophe

Rebels have taken over Sudan’s second-largest city. The latest fighting is exacerbating a terrible humanitarian crisis and 6.7 million have fled their homes. Foreign actors are backing their respective horses in this civil war, which has major implications for the entire region.

BY MARTIN PLAUT

‏The picture shows a huge fire in one of the ancient markets in Sudan (Amdurman market) likely due to the war between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces.

DECEMBER 23, 2023 01:42 EDT

On Tuesday, December 19, Sudan’s second largest city, Wad Madani, fell to one of the most brutal armed groups worldwide. This made few headlines in a world obsessed with the fighting in Gaza.

The Sudanese war — which erupted in April this year — has pitted the Sudanese Armed Forces against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). On the surface, it was no more than a quarrel between two generals. However, behind the military men are a range of outside forces. While the army has been the traditional bastion of the state, the RSF grew out of the notorious Janjaweed, a notorious Sudanese Arab militia charged with genocide for its activities in Sudan’s western region of Darfur.

As Kate Ferguson of Protection Approaches wrote:

“The RSF is the Janjaweed rebranded, the “devils on horseback” used by the Sudanese government from 2003 to implement widespread and systematic crimes against non-Arab communities across Darfur. The RSF was, and still is, commanded by Gen Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo.”

The war is a tragedy for the Sudanese people. It has forced an estimated 6.7 million people to flee from their homes. According to aid agencies, this is “the largest displacement crisis globally.” Although apparently no more than a regional issue, Sudan’s conflict has the potential to reshape the politics of the region, with implications for the entire Middle East.

That reshaping might come later. At the moment, the humanitarian crisis is dire and can be grasped from two maps. The first map, by the International Organisation for Migration, shows where the population has fled.

International Organization for Migration (IOM), Dec 12 2023. DTM DTM Sudan Weekly Displacement Snapshot 13. IOM, Sudan.

The second map, by the Famine Early Warning System, shows just how close many Sudanese are to famine, having been forced off their lands. Over half the population — 25 million people (including 13 million children) — urgently need humanitarian assistance.

The fall of Wad Madani after three days of fighting left the RSF with a precious resource. Not only did it capture a city that was home to the army’s first infantry division, the RSF now holds the urban area to which most aid agencies decamped after the fighting erupted in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. Now, the rebel RSF holds most of Khartoum and large parts of Darfur, while the Sudanese army, under General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has had to decamp to the relative safety of Port Sudan.

Chatham House analysts neatly summed up the situation: “An effective partition has emerged in Sudan, with the army controlling the east and northeast and the RSF controlling much of the capital and west of the country.”

International forces fueling the conflict

The African Union (AU) and its regional body — the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) — have made little headway in attempting to end the fighting. South Sudan, Djibouti and Ethiopia are attempting to appoint a special envoy, but even if they manage to select an appropriate mediator, it is hard to see how this envoy will make progress. The much vaunted African Standby Force, on which the AU and the international community have spent vast sums of money, is yet to be deployed. Instead, the only viable peace talks have taken place in Jeddah, which indicates that the Arab world, not the AU, is playing a more significant role in Sudan.

The fighting between the Sudanese army and the RSF is backed by external supporters. Burhan and the army look north for support. Historically, most Sudanese have looked to Egypt for support. Burhan was trained in Egypt and is a regular guest of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has just won a third term in office. The Sudanese general can also rely on the Saudis for some backing. Also, the US gives Burhan and the army lukewarm support.

The reason US support is lukewarm is simple. President Joe Biden is bogged down by the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza. With his reelection bid kicking off, Biden has little time to concentrate on Sudan. This apparent indifference is a mistake. Alex de Waal argues that benign neglect does not serve Washington’s interests. The Sudanese crisis will only end when the US engages more robustly.

Note that Burhan and the army have a poor support base. The RSF is much better resourced. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, generally referred to mononymously as Hemedti, leads the RSF. He is a former Janjaweed leader who was the deputy head of the Transitional Military Council following the 2019 Sudanese coup d’état. Hemedti has backers and the RSF has more money, men and motivation than the army.

Hemedti has links across the border in Chad, which he has exploited to the full. In fact, the RSF, is a revamped version of the Janjaweed and has terrorized Sudan. Its Arab fighters have attacked and killed African populations in Darfur.

Hemedti has also taken control of the resources of the region in general, and its gold mines in particular. He was encouraged and supported by Russia’s Wagner Group, which has taken a share of the spoils in return for supplying weapons to the RSF. This supply was tracked and traced by CNN. There is now clear evidence that the Wagner Group has been providing the RSF with missiles. Sudanese gold, flown out of Libya and on to the Russian base at Latakia paid for the weapons. This gold has not only funded Wagner, but also President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.

Apart from Russia’s Wagner Group, the UAE is the RSF’s other major backer. The Sudanese army says it has “information from intelligence, military intelligence, and the diplomatic circuit that the UAE sends planes to support the Janjaweed.” The UAE has established hospitals in Chad to provide treatment for refugees fleeing from the fighting. Although the UAE denies it, there is a widespread belief that the aid is little more than a front for weapons supplies for the RSF.

Uganda is seen as an alternative route for the UAE’s support for Hemedti’s operations. Reportedly, when a plane landed at Uganda’s main airport Entebbe in June this year, its flight documents said it was carrying humanitarian aid sent by the UAE for Sudanese refugees. Instead, “Ugandan officials said they found dozens of green plastic crates in the plane’s cargo hold filled with ammunition, assault rifles and other small arms.”

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Little surprise then that the Sudanese army declared 15 members of the UAE embassy persona non grata on December 11. But outgunned and with limited diplomatic support, Burhan’s position appears to be weakening. At this moment there seems little chance of his allies providing the Sudanese army with the backing they require to hold off the Hemedti-led RSF. If Hemedti was to succeed in his campaign to oust the Sudanese military (and he is still some way from that objective) it would be a huge boost for his backers. The UAE would have extended its influence deep into Africa. The Wagner Group would have enhanced its operations across a vast swathe the Sahel. Hemedti’s victory would strengthen Putin’s influence and finances. It would also be a major blow to the US and the West. Already the Wagner Group has effectively chased the French out of Mali. Needless to say, a great deal is riding on the outcome of the Sudanese civil war. The future not only of a country but also of an entire region is at stake.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

Following Emperor Haile Selassie’s illegal dissolution of the UN-voted Eritrea-Ethiopia federation in 1962, Ethiopia’s occupation army pursued a scorched-earth strategy in Eritrea aimed at creating a country without a people.  As a consequence majority of civilian Eritreans in their villages, cities and even Eritreans inside Ethiopia became victims of indiscriminate imprisonment, torture and executions.

  
The worst phases of their policy of ‘drying the sea to kill the fish’ were witnessed in 1967 when large-scale killing and burning operations were launched everywhere in the land with the futile object of separating the revolution from the Eritrean people and starving it of lack of support base. To this effect, the occupation authorities issued a decree ordering the people to abandon their villages and concentrate in a few locations under government control. Following the passing of this law the regime started to burn villages and commit massacres against civilians residing in the Eastern and Western lowlands. Some of the worst hit villages that were wiped out together with most of their inhabitants included Ad’Abrihim, Ad’Kukui, Tekhombia, Mesyam, Hazomo. Soyra, Aylet, Akhwar, Gemhot, Hirgigo, Jengeren, Halhal, Medeka, Funa …etc. As a result of those countless atrocities, more than 30,000 Eritreans sought refuge in the Sudan in the early months of 1967. Most of those refugees have not to this day returned to their homeland.

Eritrean Liberation Army (ELA) units that were taking different measures they could   to stop the criminal operations of the Ethiopian occupation army in late 1970 ambushed and killed the head of the Ethiopian army in Eritrea, General  Teshome Ergetu. The general with his convoy was on his way from Asmara to Keren to visit the centre of operations for their burning and killing mission.

In retaliation for the general’s execution and the huge loss that was inflicted on the Ethiopian forces, the occupation authorities embarked on more barbaric atrocities targeting villages around Keren. On 30 November and 1^st December 1970, it was the turn of Besikdira and then Ona to bear the brunt of the worst attacks for that week.

The residents of Besikdira, estimated at over 200 souls, were asked to separate themselves on religious lines – Christians on one side and Muslims on the other. But the villagers refused to do so saying that they were inseparable brothers and sisters. Following this united stand by the people, the enemy gave instructions to the Muslims to enter the Mosque leaving the Christians outside it. The people again decided to have a united response choosing to live or die together. Then all were forced to enter a crowded Mosque, and all were machine-gunned inside it. Only a few survived the slaughter by some miracle.

The next day, 1^st of December 1970, the occupation army surrounded nearby Ona which was by then a huge concentration camp sheltering residents from many other villages. It was another barbarous day in which hundreds of innocent men, women and children were mercilessly murdered point blank. Not less than 900 souls perished in this single one-day massacre of Ona, a couple of kilometres near Keren.

On this 53rd anniversary of the massacres of Ona and Besikdira, we pay tribute to all of our heroic people who faced death as one people for their national cause. Today, Eritreans have the same obligation to stand as one people. May the souls of all Eritrean Martyrs Rest in Peace.

EPF Higher Transitional Body

08 December, 2023

Martin Plaut posted: " Eritreans will mourn the death of Glenys Kinnock - someone who stood by the Eritrean people in the hardest of times. She was the most senior Labour Party politician who visited Eritrea in March 1988 during its liberation struggle, a trip she recalled in " Martin Plaut

Martin Plaut

Dec 3

Eritreans will mourn the death of Glenys Kinnock - someone who stood by the Eritrean people in the hardest of times. She was the most senior Labour Party politician who visited Eritrea in March 1988 during its liberation struggle, a trip she recalled in this article in the Guardian dated 28 October 2015. As can be seen, she never compromised on her support for Eritreans, but had no time at all for the dictatorship of President Isaias.

Here she is with the Eritrea All Party Parliamentary Group in 2014

 Martin

There must be no compromise with Eritrea's tyrannical Afewerki regime
Glenys Kinnock

Proposals for financial aid to Eritrea to help stem the refugee tide must be rejected and robust action against the regime continued

Wed 28 Oct 2015 10.02 GMT

Human rights violations, relentless cruelty, tyranny and oppression are, tragically, everyday experiences for Eritreans.

It is horrifying. It is also so far away from what so many Eritreans heroically fought for, and what campaigners outside that country were supporting, in the struggle for liberation.

Twenty-seven years ago, in March 1988, I travelled to Eritrea with a War on Want team to look at water projects and to assess other ways of developing partnership and support with Eritreans. I have been there twice since in delegations from the European parliament.

In 1988, in the midst of conflict, incessant Ethiopian air attacks meant we could only travel at night, and the devastating effects of the then 27-year war between Eritrea and Ethiopia were painfully plain.

At the hospital in Orotta, on the night after the battle of Afebet, we saw men and women fighters of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) army with the most terrible battlefield injuries, and we also witnessed the bravery, skill and inventiveness of the people of Eritrea.

This, and other experiences at that time, made me even more determined to continue to show practical solidarity with the Eritreans who were demonstrating the indomitable spirit, which had, for years, enabled them to fight poverty, famine, and armed Ethiopian aggression.

When I returned to Britain, I wrote a book in which I expressed great admiration for the people, for organisations like the National Union of Eritrean women… and for the EPLF leader, Isaias Afewerki.

When Eritrea finally achieved independence in 1993, we rejoiced at what we, and countless Eritreans, thought was the beginning of a future of freedom.

We were so wrong.

Twenty-two years later, Eritrea is now being described as Africa’s North Korea – and the cruelty that is inflicted on Eritrean people by the Afewerki regime justifies that description. The national assembly hasn’t met since 2002; the 1997 constitution has never been implemented; there is no independent judiciary; extra-judicial executions, torture, arbitrary detentions of journalists, teachers, and members of religious groups are common; Eritreans are not allowed to move, speak, assemble or organise freely; indefinite compulsory military conscription and forced labour prevails.

The recent UN commission report calls such conditions “slavery” and said that “some of the gross and widespread human rights abuses which are being committed in Eritrea, under the authority of the government, often constitute crimes against humanity”.

A member of that UN commission of inquiry said: “We seldom see human rights violations of the scope and scale as we see in Eritrea today.”

The list of atrocities goes on. Women face discrimination and sexual and gender-based violence and are denied access to justice. Few, if any, detainees are brought to trial. “Disappearances” are commonplace.

According to Human Rights Watch, prisoners are held in crowded underground cells or in shipping containers with no space to lie down.

The regime in Eritrea is, in short, a secretive, reclusive, authoritarian tyranny, which is ruthlessly controlled by president Afewerki.

His rule of terror is a complete betrayal of the cause of liberation and self-determination for which so many Eritreans fought and died.

Nothing can obscure the fact that Eritreans ​are being terrorised and trapped into what amounts to enslavement

That is why such large numbers of Eritreans are prepared to risk everything – including the “shoot to kill” system operated in border areas – to escape their country to seek a better life for themselves and their families.

The scale of that exodus is huge: in 2014, almost as many men, women and children fled from Eritrea (a country of 6 million people, which is not at war), as fled in that year from Syria (a country of 18 million people, torn apart by four years of war).

Clearly, a very large proportion of the people who cross land and sea in the desperate effort to reach Europe are Eritreans.

And they are unquestionably refugees under every definition of that pitiful status.

What is needed is decisive action, and a clear and unequivocal policy on maintaining and fully enforcing UN sanctions against the Eritrean regime.

The UN commission urges us to offer protection to Eritrean asylum seekers.

Knowing that, in Britain and the EU we must surely uphold the principle of providing refuge to people who have a genuine and justified fear of persecution, and are fleeing from what manifestly constitutes crimes against humanity.

There can be no good reason to say that giving refuge will simply encourage more to take awful risks. Living in Eritrea is an awful risk, thinking about leaving is an awful risk, doing it is an awful risk.

It isn’t the prospect of refuge that makes people flee, it is the dread of staying that makes them abandon their homeland.

Eritrea is isolated politically, regionally and internationally and UN sanctions are firmly in place.

We are hearing now, however, some suggestions that substantial financial aid should be given to Eritrea as part of efforts being made to stem the exodus of refugees.

Such a course, if it was ever taken, would be disasterous, not least because – on the basis of all the evidence about the regime – any EU aid offered to Eritrea would be seen as an endorsement of the government and used to entrench a repressive regime, not to help those in need. It would almost certainly breach the EU’s commitment that states “human rights is at the forefront of EU development co-operation”.

Nothing can obscure the fact that Eritreans are being terrorised and trapped into what amounts to enslavement by a regime that imposes tyranny, cruelty and oppression.

Nothing should diminish the reality that Eritrean victims of that persecution deserve our solidarity, and need to be supported by all of us who believe that conciliation and concession to regimes such as exists in Eritrea will surely fail.

No such softening should ever be contemplated. Our own freedom compels us to fulfil our duty to those who are not free, and never will be until the vileness that imprisons Eritrea is ended.

The Eritrean Political Forces (EPF), first initiated in February 2020 by a call from  the late Berhane Woldegebriel, former director of Eritrean Education and Publication Society, aims to enhance the voice and action of the Eritrean opposition camp under the slogan of “Let us unify the political forces to save the Nation.”   

In view of our past experiences and the multiplicity of viewpoints and organizations, the work to unify our ranks was not taken to be an easy mission. However, progress was made through an accord reached in July 2020 to launch a phase of cooperation at the level of joint work in selected fields, and by April 2022, the partners agreed in principle to upgrade their relationship by eventually forming a wider political umbrella.

And it is true that the coordination phase did not only succeed to facilitate the EPF partners know one another better but also helped them to start conducting joint tasks, know each other’s thoughts and viewpoints and in the process build mutual trust and tolerance. On top of this, the joint platform helped enhance common understanding on the urgency of removing the dictatorial regime that brought untold suffering to the entire nation, and avert the looming threats to Eritrea’s national sovereignty. Yet, no one can deny that there existed differences that made joint works less effective. Those differences also delayed by at times stalling the process of establishing a wider umbrella. Nonetheless, breakdown of the lofty initiative was not acceptable to all EPF partners who were determined to continue the networking by acting only  in areas in which full agreement was reached. It indeed was a stage full of challenges requiring persistence in continued dialoguing and giving more chance to keep the ideal going.   

It is to be recalled that the EPF accord on the formation of a joint provisional leadership that could lead to the creation of a wide political umbrella within one year was made public on the occasion of celebration of the beginning of our armed struggle that took place on 2 September 2023 . However, on 10 November 2023, all four EPF partners held a meeting at which the ENCDC side informed that their alliance had encountered some misunderstanding that could not let the body to continue in the unity process at this stage, and wished success for the remaining three EPF partners. On their part, the remaining three forces hoped that the ENCDC would eventually clear their house and rejoin the ongoing process to form an inclusive national political umbrella for the opposition.

Soon after, the other three EPF partners, namely: the Eritrean United National Front (EUNF); the Eritrean People’s Democratic Party (EPDP), and the Red Sea Afar Democratic Organization (RSADO), met under the leadership of Gherezghiher Tewelde and his deputy in EPF, Yassin Abdalla, and formed four joint work departments. The EPF is, therefore, happy to announce that the 9-person body representing the three coalescing partners shall commence work under the name of Higher Transitional Body of the EPF.

The Higher Transitional Body shall be guided by the fundamental principles agreed upon by EPF on 1^st of January 2023 as listed below:

• Remove the PDFJ dictatorship and in its place establish a constitutional democratic system of governance;
• Safeguard the unity of the Eritrean people;
• Defend Eritrean independence and sovereignty, and
• Secure and guarantee the basic rights and liberties of the people.

By taking into consideration the untold damage already done to the nation by the dictatorial PFDJ regime in the past three decades in addition to the ongoing threats to the very existence of independent Eritrea, we in the EPF are of the strong belief that it is now the 11^th hour for all the Eritrean political forces and other forces for change to suspend their differences and close their ranks than ever before without delay. Indeed, we all have no choice other than rallying under a slogan of  action to save the people and their hard-won independent state.  

As EPF, we consider ourselves to be only at an early stage in unifying our ranks. Thus, this restart is backed by a determination to work effectively with all change seekers to remove the repressive regime based on the full understanding and conviction that the task of change in Eritrea cannot be done by specified forces, say by the EPF working alone. In short, the EPF is not for rivalry or competition with other forces but to complement the ongoing coalescing of our forces for change. Therefore, at this high momentum of resolve for joint work by all forces of change including civic formations, youth movements and women’s groups, we in the EPF solemnly call upon all of them concretize united action than at any time in our past history.

Victory to the Eritrean People’s Democratic Struggle!

Downfall to the Dictatorial PFDJ Regime!

Eternal Honour and Memory and to Eritrean Martyrs!  

17 November, 2023