Not Your Casual News Week 18: Darfur is on the brink of famine and genocide
Also about a missile of North Korean conception that fell on Kharkhiv, a state of emergency in Rio Grande do Sul in southern Brazil and a 300-year-old town that rose from the waters
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The battle for El Fasher, the last town under Sudanese army control in Darfur, may have begun — and could end in bloodshed.
On the morning of Tuesday 30 April, the Sudanese army and its allies launched air strikes against the positions of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on the outskirts of El Fasher. Since then, the situation has only escalated and looks bleak for the people trapped inside.
El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, is the last major city in the region not currently under RSF control. RSF has taken over the other four: Zalingei in Central Darfur, Ed Daein in East Darfur, Nyala in South Darfur and Geneina in West Darfur.
They have been besieging El Fasher, the last one standing, since the end of last year. All major roads linking El Fasher to other parts of Sudan remain closed, cutting off water, food and fuel supplies to the town.
El Fasher is the most important humanitarian hub in Darfur. Its fall would spell disaster (it already is) for the region, home to a quarter of Sudan’s 48 million people.
The UN warned that a full assault would have “devastating consequences for civilians,” precising that the city of around 800,000 people is situated “in an area already on the brink of famine.” The alarm was raised again by the World Food Programme (WFP) on 3 May, which warned that “that time is running out to prevent starvation”, citing the intensification of fighting in El Fasher as “hindering efforts to deliver vital food assistance into the region.”
“The RSF is planning an imminent attack on el Fasher [...] History is repeating itself in Darfur in the worst possible way and an attack on el Fasher would be a disaster on top of a disaster. It would put 500 000 internally displaced persons at risk. People who traveled across Darfur to seek refuge.” said Linda Thomas-Greenfield, US Permanent Representative to the United Nations.
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Many people fleeing the fighting in Darfur are now refugees in El Fasher. They fled not only the fighting between the generals — Abdel Fattah al-Burhan of the Sudanese army and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (also known as Hemedti), leader of the Rapid Support Forces — but also the massacres, raping and starvation that followed.
The war that broke out on 15 April 2023 has reignited ethnic divisions in Darfur. Last July, Idriss, a 29-year-old who saw the horrors of el-Geneina, showed Middle East Eye pictures of Masalit Sudanese shot by the RSF in the streets of his town. Bodies were lined up in what appeared to be an ethnic cleansing, the continuation of the genocide of 20 years ago. Other witnesses describe scenes where children, still alive, were being “piled up and shot” by the RSF.
One report from the Raoul Wallenberg Centre, a Canadian NGO dedicated to human rights, found out that there are “reasonable grounds to believe the RSF and allied militias are responsible for genocide against non-Arab groups other than the Masalit, including the Fur and Zaghawa.”
With an attack on El Fasher on the horizon, the safety of the people in the El Fasher displacement camps is critical. These camps are home to many people who were affected by the genocide in the 2000s. The Janjaweed militia, which later became the main force of the RSF, were the perpetrators of this genocide. Between 2003 and 2005, an estimated 200,000 civilians died from mass killing, disease, and starvation in Darfur orchestrated by the Janjaweed.
In 2013, the Janjaweed were officially incorporated into the Sudanese state as the Rapid Support Forces, and the head of the RSF, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the former Janjaweed commander better known as Hemedti, became indispensable to Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s ruler since 1993.
In 2019, Hemedti, along with current army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, removed Omar al-Bashir from power in response to a popular uprising against the autocrat.
Two years later, in October 2021, the two men staged a military coup to end a civilian power-sharing agreement, before going to war in April 2023.
Both the Sudanese army and the RSF are implicated in human rights abuses during the conflict.
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The war is now being fuelled by geopolitical interests. The Russians are playing both sides, one through their state, which supplies weapons to the Sudanese army, and the other through the Wagner Group, which supports the RSF. The United Arab Emirates supplies arms and ammunition to the RSF. Iranian drones have been spotted on the army side. Sudan is considered a key access point to the Red Sea, and its soil it full of natural resources, including gold and oil.
“The international community could play a very big role in mediation, if they put their weight on it. Sudan currently is more of a geopolitical war of political interests rather than any national threats or national security to anyone”, Shaheen El Sharif, director of the YASudan organisation, told France 24.
According to Unicef, an estimated 8.9 million children are currently facing acute food insecurity, with 4.9 million reaching emergency levels, while some 730,000 are expected to suffer from life-threatening severe acute malnutrition. 90% of the 19 million children who should be in school do not have access to education.
According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), the death toll in the first year of the war is estimated at 15,550. However, the true human cost is hidden behind the little information that has emerged from Darfur and may be much higher.
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What Else Happened?
A missile that landed in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on 2 January was of North Korean origin, according to a report seen by Reuters from the UN’s sanctions watchdog. In the 32-page report, the UN found that “debris recovered from a missile that landed in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on 2 January 2024, derives from a DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] Hwasong-11 series missile”, in violation of the arms embargo on North Korea. An additional report by The Asahi Shimbun, one of the oldest newspapers in Japan, explains that the missile contained fake components to disguise its origin. Examining debris from the missile, The Asahi Shimbun found a bearing labelled “JAPAN”, written in Roman alphabet (smart), alongside the name of a Japanese manufacturer and a model number — the manufacturer confirmed it was fake. More than 90% of the 290 parts were said to be from major technology powers such as the US, Europe and Japan. Companies confirmed to the Japanese outlet that many of these “foreign” parts were in fact counterfeit.
The European Union will provide Lebanon with €1 billion ($1,07 billion) in financial assistance over three years to support the country’s economy, strengthen basic services and help meet the challenges of hosting Syrian refugees. The aid, announced by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, will be disbursed until 2027 and will also facilitate more effective EU assistance and the voluntary return of displaced Syrians. “We understand the challenges that Lebanon faces with hosting Syrian refugees and other displaced persons. It is vital to ensure the well-being of host communities and Syrian refugees,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Lebanon is hosting 210,000 Palestinian and 1.5 million Syrian refugees — and the EC fears that regional instability could trigger a wave of migrants heading for Europe via the island of Cyprus.
Canadian police have arrested and charged three Indian men in connection with the murder of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar. The suspects have been charged with first-degree murder, but no further details about them or the circumstances of the crime have been released as the investigation is ongoing. Police are also investigating possible links between the murder and related events in India, suggesting that this may be a crime with international dimensions. “This investigation does not end here. We are aware that others may have played a role in this homicide and we remain dedicated to finding and arresting each one of these individuals,” said Supt. Mandeep Mooker, the officer in charge of the B.C. RCMP’s Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT). Nijjar was a prominent figure within the Sikh community in Canada, but was also considered a terrorist by the Indian government. He advocated the creation of a sovereign Sikh state, Khalistan, in the Punjab region of India.
Climate News
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Heavy rains and flooding have led to a state of emergency being declared in 336 municipalities in the state of Rio Grande do Sul in southern Brazil. The decision is aimed at speeding up federal funding for the disaster-stricken areas. The Guaíba River, which flows near the state capital Porto Alegre, has reached unprecedented levels, cutting off water supplies to around 70% of the city’s 1.3 million inhabitants. State officials report that the severe weather and subsequent flooding have caused at least 78 deaths, displaced more than 95,000 people and left around 100 people unaccounted for. “I have nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat, we have nothing,” said one flood-affected resident in an interview with Channel 4. In the same interview, another man explained that he “almost drowned” and was saved by “a guy who saw me and pull me into the boat.” This disaster is considered the most devastating climate event in the state’s history, and potentially the most catastrophic in Brazil’s annals.
The fourth global mass coral bleaching event is well underway. The Great Barrier Reef is experiencing its worst bleaching on record due to rising ocean temperatures caused by climate change. The bleaching is caused by prolonged exposure to warmer-than-average water, which causes corals to expel the algae that give them colour and nutrients. Some corals may also “cook” because of the high temperatures. “What is happening now in our oceans is like wildfires underwater,” said Kate Quigley, chief scientist at Australia’s Minderoo Foundation, in an interview with CNN. “We’re going to have so much warming that we’re going to get to a tipping point, and we won’t be able to come back from that.” Scientists have already observed bleaching across different reefs in the northern and southern Great Barrier Reef in mid-February — Many areas saw temperatures that were unprecedented. The destruction of coral reef ecosystems would wipe out around a quarter of all reef species, threatening the livelihoods of around a billion people who depend on reef fish for food and income.
Image of the Week
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The ruins of an almost 300-year-old town in the Philippines called Pantabangan have risen from the waters of a large dam due to drought. The city was submerged in the 1970s when the dam and reservoir were built.
It only rarely resurfaces during extremely dry and hot weather. The water level in the Pantabangan dam has dropped almost 50 metres due to the lack of rain. Tourists now visit the exposed ruins of the city, about 200km from the capital Manila.
As discussed in week 17’s newsletter, much of the Philippines (and of South Asia in general) is currently experiencing an extreme heatwave, with high temperatures affecting millions of people through school closures and recommendations to work from home.
Experts say that climate change coupled with El Niño is causing warmer temperatures in the Philippines, and the heat could continue to rise.