Nobel laureate and author Elie Wiesel once wrote: “Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.”
Regrettably, the conflict in Sudan is not because the world’s attention has been diverted to other hotspots such as Ukraine and Gaza. Yet, this does not make what is occurring in Sudan any less important.
As U.N. Humanitarian and Emergency Relief chief Martin Griffiths said recently, Sudan is “one of the worst humanitarian nightmares in recent history.”Last year, 12,000 people died and 5 million were displaced in a conflict that began in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and a militia known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Griffiths added that 25 million Sudanese would need humanitarian assistance in 2024. However, the conflict has prevented relief from reaching those most in need. Funding has also been difficult to obtain; in 2023, $2.6 billion was sought by the UN but only 39 percent of that sum was received. A new urgent appeal has been issued for $4.1 billion, according to a press release by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
In Sudan’s North Darfur state, Claire Nicolet, head of emergency response for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), said, “What we are seeing in Zamzam camp is an absolutely catastrophic situation.” A child dies every two hours and estimates by MSF indicate that 13 die each day.
Officials worry about the violence spreading beyond Sudan. In the ten months since the conflict began, 1.5 million people have fled to the Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, and South Sudan.
As Sudanese civilians flee to neighboring states, it will become increasingly difficult to care for them, as Griffiths pointed out in a press statement in January.
Five years ago, there was optimism after the Sudanese rose up and removed long-time dictator Omar al-Bashir in a revolution that saw people exercising political will for civilian rule and peace. However, those aspirations have been dashed.
Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the SAF, succeeded Bashir only to become embroiled in a violent struggle against the RSF led by Mohamed Hamden “Hemedti” Dagalo. Dagalo, who was recently feted in six African countries, has seen his forces overwhelm four of the five main cities in Darfur, the region in western Sudan that was the scene of ethnic genocide two decades ago. Each incursion was followed by slaughter and mass atrocities against non-Arab Darfuris in a grim echo of past crimes.
On or about Nov. 4, 2023, in Ardamata, El Geneina, West Darfur, the RSF and allied Janjaweed (“devils on horseback” in Arabic) militia massacred an estimated 1,500 people following the SAF’s retreat to Chad. Ardamata had been host to a SAF base and a camp for internally displaced persons.
Some 20,000 people fled to Chad after this violence, which some reports indicate was targeting the Massalit community, an ethnic group inhabiting western Sudan and eastern Chad. Massalit fleeing the violence told Human Rights Watch about atrocities committed by the RSF in Ardamata.
The RSF is stronger than the SAF and the assumption is that the campaign of pillaging, looting, killing, and ethnic cleansing of non-Arabic speaking peoples in Darfur will continue unless and until the international community summons the courage and means to end it.
Human Rights Watch recommends that the U.N. Security Council develop ways “to strengthen the U.N.’s presence in Sudan that could deter further atrocities and better protect civilians in Darfur.”
The international non-governmental organization (INGO) posits that the “African members of the Security Council, the United Arab Emirates [UAE], and other governments… should make certain the Security Council can carry out its …responsibility to protect civilians in West Darfur” and Sudan more broadly.
A U.N. fact-finding mission on Sudan began work on Jan. 18 and urged the Sudanese combatants to stop fighting, protect civilians, and bring those guilty of crimes to account.
On Jan. 30, Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, told the UN Security Council that he had “grounds to believe” crimes were being committed in Darfur. He called the situation there “dire by any metric.”
But given Dagalo’s recent “victory lap,” there is little incentive for the RSF to halt its offensive.
The composition of the Security Council also suggests that the body will not fulfill its responsibility to safeguard international peace and security.
Security Council permanent members China and Russia have their own interests in this region and both seek to widen their influence globally. One way is through military engagement, as China has done through the establishment of naval bases. In addition, China has important economic interests in Africa through its Belt and Road Initiative.
Russia’s interests include a possible “return to Soviet-era levels of influence through arms sales, joint military exercises” and bringing in contractors to train the Sudanese military.
Sudan is an appealing prize as the third largest country in Africa with 45 million people, a land mass of 1.89 million square kilometers, and a 750-km long Red Sea coastline where several nations, including the U.S., Russia, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China, and Turkey, are seeking control over Sudanese ports.
The United States’ Role
To date, the U.S. response to what is happening in Sudan, especially Darfur, has been at best timid, consisting mostly of formal statements and press releases. The U.S. did convene talks with Saudi Arabia in Jeddah to push for a cease-fire but without results. On Jan. 31, the State and Treasury Departments announced sanctions on three Sudanese companies linked to the combatants.
The world’s foremost expert on Sudan, Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University, and a former official on the African Union High-Level Panel on Darfur, has urged the U.S. to do more. An op-ed he wrote with Abdul Mohammad, a former official of the U.N.- African Union Mission in Darfur, outlined steps to stem the slaughter.
They urged President Joe Biden to tell the president of the UAE, Sheik Mohammad bin Zayed al-Nahyan, to cease “covertly” supplying arms to the RSF. The weapons, according to De Waal and Mohammad, have allowed the paramilitary force to overpower the SAF. Biden could exert pressure on the UAE leader by telling him that it is “unwise” for him “to be branded as a facilitator of a potential genocide,” the two experts wrote. They also suggested that Biden work with Egypt and Kenya, two key regional players with a big stake in the outcome of the Sudanese conflict.
The world has long struggled with how to prevent genocide and other mass atrocities.
In 2000, then Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, posed the following question in a report titled, “We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations, 21st Century.” “If humanitarian intervention is, indeed, an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica, [to a Darfur] – to gross and systematic violations of human rights that offend every precept of our common humanity?”
The concept of sovereignty has been considered sacrosanct in international relations since the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. With the creation of the U.N. in 1945, states appeared more willing to surrender some sovereignty, yet did not stop the horrors of Rwanda in 1994 and Srebrenica in 1995.
Lately, there has been an evolution of the principle of sovereignty through the creation of the norm of “responsibility to protect” developed in 2001 and adopted in 2005 at a U.N. World Summit. Global leaders stated that they were prepared to take “collective action” to prevent such atrocities.
In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Sept. 9, 2004, then Secretary of State Colin Powell remarked, “Call it civil war; call it ethnic cleansing; call it genocide; call it ‘none of the above.’ The reality is the same. There are people in Darfur who desperately need the help of the international community.”
Powell’s words resonate as the world finds itself in the same place twenty years later.
Michael Curtin is an adjunct professor of Political Science and International Relations. He is the author of “Challenging the Misconceptions of the United Nations: Promoting a Greater Understanding One Blog at a Time.” He is also a writer for International Policy Digest.
Sudan, the “Forgotten War”
By Michael Curtin
Middle East & North Africa
Nobel laureate and author Elie Wiesel once wrote: “Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.”
Regrettably, the conflict in Sudan is not because the world’s attention has been diverted to other hotspots such as Ukraine and Gaza. Yet, this does not make what is occurring in Sudan any less important.
As U.N. Humanitarian and Emergency Relief chief Martin Griffiths said recently, Sudan is “one of the worst humanitarian nightmares in recent history.”Last year, 12,000 people died and 5 million were displaced in a conflict that began in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and a militia known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Griffiths added that 25 million Sudanese would need humanitarian assistance in 2024. However, the conflict has prevented relief from reaching those most in need. Funding has also been difficult to obtain; in 2023, $2.6 billion was sought by the UN but only 39 percent of that sum was received. A new urgent appeal has been issued for $4.1 billion, according to a press release by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
In Sudan’s North Darfur state, Claire Nicolet, head of emergency response for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), said, “What we are seeing in Zamzam camp is an absolutely catastrophic situation.” A child dies every two hours and estimates by MSF indicate that 13 die each day.
Officials worry about the violence spreading beyond Sudan. In the ten months since the conflict began, 1.5 million people have fled to the Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, and South Sudan.
As Sudanese civilians flee to neighboring states, it will become increasingly difficult to care for them, as Griffiths pointed out in a press statement in January.
Five years ago, there was optimism after the Sudanese rose up and removed long-time dictator Omar al-Bashir in a revolution that saw people exercising political will for civilian rule and peace. However, those aspirations have been dashed.
Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the SAF, succeeded Bashir only to become embroiled in a violent struggle against the RSF led by Mohamed Hamden “Hemedti” Dagalo. Dagalo, who was recently feted in six African countries, has seen his forces overwhelm four of the five main cities in Darfur, the region in western Sudan that was the scene of ethnic genocide two decades ago. Each incursion was followed by slaughter and mass atrocities against non-Arab Darfuris in a grim echo of past crimes.
On or about Nov. 4, 2023, in Ardamata, El Geneina, West Darfur, the RSF and allied Janjaweed (“devils on horseback” in Arabic) militia massacred an estimated 1,500 people following the SAF’s retreat to Chad. Ardamata had been host to a SAF base and a camp for internally displaced persons.
Some 20,000 people fled to Chad after this violence, which some reports indicate was targeting the Massalit community, an ethnic group inhabiting western Sudan and eastern Chad. Massalit fleeing the violence told Human Rights Watch about atrocities committed by the RSF in Ardamata.
The RSF is stronger than the SAF and the assumption is that the campaign of pillaging, looting, killing, and ethnic cleansing of non-Arabic speaking peoples in Darfur will continue unless and until the international community summons the courage and means to end it.
Human Rights Watch recommends that the U.N. Security Council develop ways “to strengthen the U.N.’s presence in Sudan that could deter further atrocities and better protect civilians in Darfur.”
The international non-governmental organization (INGO) posits that the “African members of the Security Council, the United Arab Emirates [UAE], and other governments… should make certain the Security Council can carry out its …responsibility to protect civilians in West Darfur” and Sudan more broadly.
A U.N. fact-finding mission on Sudan began work on Jan. 18 and urged the Sudanese combatants to stop fighting, protect civilians, and bring those guilty of crimes to account.
On Jan. 30, Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, told the UN Security Council that he had “grounds to believe” crimes were being committed in Darfur. He called the situation there “dire by any metric.”
But given Dagalo’s recent “victory lap,” there is little incentive for the RSF to halt its offensive.
The composition of the Security Council also suggests that the body will not fulfill its responsibility to safeguard international peace and security.
Security Council permanent members China and Russia have their own interests in this region and both seek to widen their influence globally. One way is through military engagement, as China has done through the establishment of naval bases. In addition, China has important economic interests in Africa through its Belt and Road Initiative.
Russia’s interests include a possible “return to Soviet-era levels of influence through arms sales, joint military exercises” and bringing in contractors to train the Sudanese military.
Sudan is an appealing prize as the third largest country in Africa with 45 million people, a land mass of 1.89 million square kilometers, and a 750-km long Red Sea coastline where several nations, including the U.S., Russia, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China, and Turkey, are seeking control over Sudanese ports.
The United States’ Role
To date, the U.S. response to what is happening in Sudan, especially Darfur, has been at best timid, consisting mostly of formal statements and press releases. The U.S. did convene talks with Saudi Arabia in Jeddah to push for a cease-fire but without results. On Jan. 31, the State and Treasury Departments announced sanctions on three Sudanese companies linked to the combatants.
The world’s foremost expert on Sudan, Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University, and a former official on the African Union High-Level Panel on Darfur, has urged the U.S. to do more. An op-ed he wrote with Abdul Mohammad, a former official of the U.N.- African Union Mission in Darfur, outlined steps to stem the slaughter.
They urged President Joe Biden to tell the president of the UAE, Sheik Mohammad bin Zayed al-Nahyan, to cease “covertly” supplying arms to the RSF. The weapons, according to De Waal and Mohammad, have allowed the paramilitary force to overpower the SAF. Biden could exert pressure on the UAE leader by telling him that it is “unwise” for him “to be branded as a facilitator of a potential genocide,” the two experts wrote. They also suggested that Biden work with Egypt and Kenya, two key regional players with a big stake in the outcome of the Sudanese conflict.
The world has long struggled with how to prevent genocide and other mass atrocities.
In 2000, then Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, posed the following question in a report titled, “We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations, 21st Century.” “If humanitarian intervention is, indeed, an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica, [to a Darfur] – to gross and systematic violations of human rights that offend every precept of our common humanity?”
The concept of sovereignty has been considered sacrosanct in international relations since the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. With the creation of the U.N. in 1945, states appeared more willing to surrender some sovereignty, yet did not stop the horrors of Rwanda in 1994 and Srebrenica in 1995.
Lately, there has been an evolution of the principle of sovereignty through the creation of the norm of “responsibility to protect” developed in 2001 and adopted in 2005 at a U.N. World Summit. Global leaders stated that they were prepared to take “collective action” to prevent such atrocities.
In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Sept. 9, 2004, then Secretary of State Colin Powell remarked, “Call it civil war; call it ethnic cleansing; call it genocide; call it ‘none of the above.’ The reality is the same. There are people in Darfur who desperately need the help of the international community.”
Powell’s words resonate as the world finds itself in the same place twenty years later.
Michael Curtin is an adjunct professor of Political Science and International Relations. He is the author of “Challenging the Misconceptions of the United Nations: Promoting a Greater Understanding One Blog at a Time.” He is also a writer for International Policy Digest.
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