Widespread Atrocities in Darfur, Sudan

"Our main concern is that though we have seen approximately 5,000 people coming out of El-Fasher toward Tawila, we don't know where the other hundreds of thousands have gone."

"That is worrying given the ethnic nature of targetting of violence toward civilians by the RSF."

"I've never seen anything so shocking in all my 15 years of my work." 

MSF President Javid Abdelmoneim

This image grab taken from handout video footage released on the paramilitary RSF's Telegram account on October 26, 2025, shows RSF fighters holding weapons and celebrating in the streets of el-Fasher in Sudan's Darfur region [AFP]

 

The fate of hundreds of thousands of Sudanese in flight from ethnically targetted violence in the western Sudanese city of El-Fasher remains unknown in the wake of satellite images indicating suspected mass graves. At war with the Sudanese military since 2023, with which it was once allied, the Paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized control of the strategic city of Al-Fasher in the Darfur region following a brutal 18-month siege.

 

Emerging reports of executions, sexual violence and abductions in and around El-Fasher has alarmed aid groups and the United Nations to the fate of ethnic minorities in yet another impending disaster rivalling the slaughter in Darfur when the RSF were known as the Janjaweed, Arab horsed tribesmen who attacked and raped and murdered hundreds of thousands of Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa minorities mostly engaged in farming, as opposed to the Arab herdsmen, competing for territory.

 

New satellite imagery analyzed by Yale researchers suggest that mass graves are appearing in the city from which thousands have fled. Survivors in the town of Tawila, some 70 kilometres west of El-Fasher recounted to Medecines sans Frontieres 'harrowing' stories of "ethnically targeted torture, rape and summary executions", revealed a Sudanese-Iranian national.

 

Paramilitaries have taken full control now of all five state capitals in Darfur with the fall of El-Fasher, raising troubling concerns that Sudan could be partitioned along an east-west axis. The Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale University has revealed its finding of evidence consistent with "body disposal activities", leading to the worst fears being realized. "At least two earth disturbances consistent with mass graves - were identified -- at a mosque and at the former Children's Hospital."

 

Tens of thousands of people have been killed, millions have been displaced in the Sudan civil war which has also led to the largest displacement and hunger crisis in the world today, where both sides have been accused of widespread atrocities. 

“It’s been almost a year since the State Department determined that the RSF is committing genocide in Sudan.
"These harrowing images from Yale University’s Humanitarian Lab demonstrate that the genocide continues unabated and largely ignored by the international community."

"The testimony of refugees from el-Fasher also leaves no doubt that ethnically targeted killings are the order of the day.” —  

Clifford D. May, Founder and President, Foundation in Defense of Democracies

 

Niarchos -- El-Fasher--Getty Images

 

 

Starvation in Sudan

"Even we're [medical personnel] eating animal feed."

"People [the international community] seem to have forgotten  us."

"Oh my God, it's a very painful story." 

Dr. Omar Selik, El Fasher, Sudan 

 

"Since April 2023, more than 600,000 people have been displaced from El Fasher and its surrounding camps. Inside the city, women and girls are enduring famine-level conditions, as classified by the IPC. With food stocks depleted and efforts by the United Nations and its partners to move in with supplies hampered by attacks, families are now surviving on animal feed and tree leaves. There have been repeated attacks on humanitarian personnel and assets in North Darfur over recent months."

"More than forty-one health and educational facilities in the state have been destroyed, and supplies of medicine have been depleted. Pregnant women are giving birth into the hands of unskilled attendants with no access to emergency obstetric care.  Women in need of reproductive health services and survivors of rape have no access to any medical services."

UN Women 

El Fasher has been under siege for months as RSF paramilitary forces try to take control of western Sudan

 

Some 40 severely malnourished children arrive daily seeking help at the last functioning hospital in El Fasher, Sudan which has been bombed over 30 times, and there is nothing to give the children, other than animal feed. This Sudanese settlement is the peak battleground of the brutal civil war raging in Sudan. The city in Darfur's western region has been under siege by the paramilitary intent on starving it into submission. A 30-kilometer earthen wall has been erected around the city's outer boundaries, effectively locking everyone in, and keeping others out. 

 

If residents make the agonizing choice to remain they risk being bombed or starved. Should they decide to leave in desperation, they risk being killed, robbed or sexually assaulted. Over two years earlier, clashes between Sudan's military and its paramilitary rival, the Rapid Support Forces, broke out, a conflict that has forced some 12 million Sudanese from their homes, killed tens of thousands, and set the stage for a major famine which aid groups speak of as the world's largest humanitarian crisis. 

 

The Rapid Support Forces were expelled from the capital, Khartoum, in March and the group has since redoubled its campaign to capture Darfur, the vast area where most R.S.F. fighters (once known as Janjaweed, Arab horsemen who savagely attacked Black Darfurian Muslim farmers) originated. The focus on El Fasher is to dominate the last city standing in their way to capture the entire Darfurian region under their command. 

 

The RSF allowed food to reach displaced people in Tawila, but not El Fasher, which they kept under a tight siege, 27 April. Photograph: Jérome Tubiana

 

In April the R.S.F. rampaged through the famine-stricken camp of Zamzam, located 11 kilometers south of El Fasher, killing between 300 and 1,500 people, leading to a half-million people from El Fasher fleeing the city in a panic of desperate survival. What followed was the erection of the giant berm to keep people in and humanitarian groups out. Now some 260,000 residents are left in the besieged city where a kilo of pasta costs ten times the normal price. The Emergency Response Rooms, a humanitarian aid group, recorded the deaths of 14 children from malnutrition over a recent two-week period, where cholera has now been spreading.

 

United Nations food convoys have been unable to deliver aid to El Fasher for over a year, since they were attacked by drones in their approach to the city. Five aid workers were killed when a strike in June on a 15-truck convoy and another in August destroyed three trucks, forcing the remainder to turn back.  When young men  scrambled over the berm during the night in an attempt to flee the city, they were executed by R.S.F. fighters.

 

Tawila, a small town 65 kilometers to the west, packed with over 600,000 refugees, was able to be served by international aid groups but the journey to reach Tawila is perilous, fighters roaming the area, robbing or extorting fleeing civilians, raping the women, on a road lined with shallow graves and abandoned bodies. At the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Tawila, about 40 women, victims of rape, are treated weekly, with evidence suggesting "that is nothing compared to the true rate". 

 

A UN truck carrying aid to El Fasher destroyed by an RSF drone attack. Photograph: X/PresstvExtra

 

Some residents smuggle small amounts of food and medicine into the city, through during the night scrambling over the earthen berm, but those the fighters catch face beatings and threats. Of some 200 medical facilities in El Fasher prior to the war, one only remains, the Al Saudi hospital, where a handful of medics are hanging on, despite the bombing, starvation and a dwindling supply of medicines. An R.S.F. drone fired a missile into a crowded ward in January, killing 70 patients and staff.

 

Doctors at the hospital shelter in foxholes during bomb raids, while malnourished patients are sustained with animal feed. Known locally as ambaz, the animal feed is a dangerous alternative to human-grade food, given that it is prone to fungal contamination. Thus far, 18 residents have died recently after consuming ambaz. "But there is no other option", explained a senior doctor who has received death threats for his work, and chose to be quoted anonymously. 

 

 

 

Another Blighted Rescue of Quasi-Canadians

"There has been a loss of integrity in the Canadian immigration process."

"Most of these people have been living in Sudan for years."

"Sometimes they never really lived in Canada and don't speak English or French."

Unidentified insider source asking for anonymity 

"[Statistics  on the phenomenon known as] Canadians of convenience [during the Lebanon evacuation are not readily available."

"I don't know how common it is, but it's likely not negligible. We only tend to get a sense in cases like Lebanon and now Sudan."

Andrew Griffith, former director general, Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada

Signs of a ceasefire in Sudan are scarce as the two warring factions have returned to fighting that has temporarily derailed rescue attempts for Canadians still trapped in the country.  CBC

Thousands of Lebanese-Canadian citizens were evacuated at Canadian government expense in 2006 during the war in Lebanon, to bring them back to safety in Canada. Most of whom, after the fact, turned out to be citizens in name only, who had acquired and maintained citizenship as a type of 'insurance' in case of emergencies. In this realm of convenience citizenship, Chinese Hong-Kongers represent another group from abroad who famously went to great lengths to acquire Canadian citizenship as a future haven should their lives in Hong Kong suddenly become 'complicated'.

 

For the Lebanese emergency, it cost $94 million for Canada to evacuate some 14,000 Canadians from Lebanon at war. Half that number returned to Lebanon when hostilities ceased. Now, in Africa there are sources suggesting there may be a repeat of this 'rescue' operation of 'citizens of convenience' in Sudan where a civil war has been unfolding. According to government figures, 550 people were flown out of Sudan to Kenya on Canadian evacuation flights.

 

Of that total, 175 were Canadian citizens or permanent residents. On flights organized earlier by other countries, another 210 Canadian citizens left. According to an individual familiar with the situation, it has emerged while the evacuees were being processed that as many as half of the 175 Canadian citizens and permanent residents happen to be refugees granted status in Canada who returned to Sudan, some continuing to claim welfare and child benefits.

 

A ferry transports some 1,900 evacuees across the Red Sea from Port Sudan to the Saudi King Faisal navy base in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.  (Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images)

Some are refugees who are in the process of becoming Canadians, which means they should not have left the country to return to Sudan while the process has not yet been completed. All of the evacuees in Kenya were accommodated and cared for in hotels at Canada's expense. In the past five years, Canada accepted 2,120 refugee claims from Sudan; individuals who are accepted are given protection in Canada. If they return to their country of origin, however, they effectively relinquish refugee status.

 

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada had "no response to offer" when a spokesperson was approached for clarification on the matter. Nor could the government provide cost estimates of an operation involving the Canadian High Commissioner in Nairobi, the embassy in Cairo, Egypt, the embassy in Amman, Jordan, the consulate in Djibouti and 200 Canadian Forces on the ground in the region helping to expedite the 'rescue'. 

 

The Canadian portion of the relief effort has been described as "chaos" by sources in Africa. A C-130J Hercules transport aircraft left Jordan to head to Port Sudan on the Red Sea on a mission to retrieve stranded Canadians after the Wadi Seidna Air Base north of Khartoum was seen as too dangerous. According to a Forces spokesperson, Sudanese authorities reused to permit personnel to disembark, and the flight was forced to return to Jordan empty following a "diplomatic credentials mix-up".

After the fiasco in Lebanon, the-then Conservative government in Canada, instituted limitations on citizenship by descent, limiting it to one generation born outside Canada, revoking citizenship of thousands of Lebanese who obtained status through fraudulent means. Should it be established that some Sudanese evacuated to Nairobi have similarly cheated the system, they should have their citizenship invalidated.

Status can be revoked under the Canadian Citizenship Act, if it becomes clear that the person involved obtained citizenship by "false representation, fraud or knowingly concealing material circumstances". In Canada, refugee claimants must establish they have a subjective fear of persecution should they return to their home country. Those people who obtained Canadian citizenship for the purpose of escaping persecution in Sudan should not be in Sudan.

Canada has suspended its evacuation operation at a Khartoum airfield after a ceasefire unravelled and violence escalated, but Canadians are still stranded in Sudan and escape options are limited.   CBC

Khartoum Imploding

"There were power cuts, no running water, no access to cash. So I left with only $20. The city was complete mayhem when I left."

"There were women, children, families who were escaping villages along the way. I thought at the time that only Khartoum had seen the most destruction, but we saw villages that had clearly been devastated by the war."

Lakshmi Parthasarathy, 32, U.S. Citizen

 

"There is no way to go outside of Khartoum. You can be shot, everything can happen to you in the street."

"All the streets are captured by the militias."

"If this war continues for two or three months more, most of the Sudanese people are going to die from poverty because the situation is very, very difficult."

Musa Osman El Sayeed, 55, Sudanese citizen

A Spanish air force plane carried evacuees from Sudan to Madrid on Monday. A European airlift has pulled out a wide variety of private citizens from many countries. Spanish Defence Ministry via AP

For the people of Sudan, seeing the frantic international airlifts of foreign nationals is a heart-sinking moment, indicating to them that the international community holds out no hope that the two sides in the conflict will reach an agreement any time soon, and the conflict of which several ceasefires have been brokered and subsequently broken will only escalate, leaving them in the middle of a maelstrom they will be helpless to escape.

Foreign governments have committed to airlifting hundreds of their diplomats and other citizens out of the country to safety while Sudanese are left to their own devices desperately seeking out ways they can leave the chaos behind, believing that the two rival generals will raise their present relatively low-level conflict to all-out civil war in their battle for power, awaiting the completion of the foreign evacuations before embarking on full-scale warfare.

Convoys of foreign diplomats, civilian teachers, students, workers and families from various countries made their way past the combatants at front lines in Khartoum in an orderly but tense purpose to reach arranged extraction points, while others drove to the country's east coast, hundreds of kilometres distant. 

At the airport a steady stream of European, Mideast, African and Asian military aircraft flew in throughout the day Sunday and Monday to collect the evacuees and fly them out to safety elsewhere; for many the first leg of their trip back to their home countries. The last  nominal ceasefire with little reduction in fighting due to expire on Monday evening.

Over 420 people of which total at least 273 were civilians have died, while over 3,700 people have been wounded since the April 15 date when fighting began. The country's military vows to fight to the end until it accomplishes the crushing of the country's paramilitary opposition group. Adequate reason why many Sudanese fear a dramatic escalation in violence.

Sudan's power-sharing negotiations with the ultimate goal of the military to hold democratic elections and relinquish their power role to elected civilians after the military coup, is being challenged by the paramilitary troops with which it had a shared power agreement, but which rejects elections and a civil, democratic government to be returned in the East African country.

Canada is one country that has not made plans to send in military aircraft to evacuate the almost 1,600 Canadians formally registered in Sudan. It has suspended consular services from the capital, noting that Canadian diplomats would "temporarily work from a safe location outside the country", while still making an effort to aid their citizens in Sudan.

The New York Times reported that U.S. special forces evacuated six Canadian diplomats, along with 70 American diplomats and some as well from other countries. Canadians were among a group evacuated by sea to Saudi Arabia. An Egyptian expert on Africa, Amani el-Taweel, warned of "horrific suffering" for Sudanese unable to leave. It is not possible, after all, to evacuate an entire population of any country under military duress. All the more so of a population of 46 million people.

This is a country where humanitarian aid was already required by a third of its population. And with an active conflict, aid agencies will no longer be capable of reaching most Sudanese. "Warring parties will not heed any calls for a truce or a ceasefire" once evacuations are complete, warned Ms. el-Taweel. Despite the ceasefire set to expire, intensified airstrikes hit Khartoum's Nile-side Kalakla district until the area was "razed to the ground".

Continued fighting between the Sudanese military and their rival paramilitary group the Rapid Support Forces saw heavy gunfire and thundering explosions rock the city. 

Civilians evacuated from Sudan arrive at a military airport in Amman, Jordan, on Monday. Foreign powers have sought to use a lull in fighting to get citizens out. Raad Adayleh / AP

"One of the fighting parties had seized control of the central public health laboratory in Khartoum and kicked out all of the technicians."

"That is extremely, extremely dangerous because we have polio isolates in the lab. We have measles isolates in the lab. We have cholera isolates in the lab." 

"There is a huge biological risk associated with the occupation of the central public health lab in Khartoum by one of the fighting parties." 

"[The expulsion of technicians and power cuts in Khartoum mean] it is not possible to properly manage the biological materials that are stored in the lab for medical purposes."

Dr. Nima Saeed Abid, World Health Organization representative in Sudan

The New Day Dawning of Arab/Israeli Rapprochement

"I do not know nor do I ask about the nationality of everyone I take a photo with."

"Anyone can take a photo with me so long as they are human."

"I never ask about his color, religion, or nationality. All of us are human.":

Egyptian actor and rapper Mohamed Ramadan

The picture in question of Omer Adam and Mohamed Ramadan. Photo: Twitter.

"[Pakistan] categorically rejects baseless speculation regarding [the] possibility of recognition of the State of Israel by Pakistan."

"The prime minister [Imran Khan] has made it clear that unless a just settlement of the Palestine issue, satisfactory to the Palestinian people, is found, Pakistan cannot recognize Israel."

"For just and lasting peace, it is imperative to have a two-state solution in accordance with the relevant United Nations and Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) resolutions, with the pre-1967 borders, and Al-Quds Al-Sharif [Jerusalem] as the capital of a viable, independent and contiguous Palestinian State."

Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesperson Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri

Where Arab leaders of Muslim-majority countries might wish to finally lay aside their belligerent malice at the presence of a Jewish state returning to its Biblical-era heritage from the diaspora to which it had been exiled only to discover that no place on Earth guaranteed Jews equality, freedom of religion, the right to practise their distinct culture without eventually disowning and turning on them, with blood slanders, expulsion, pogroms, disentitlements, ghettoization, and finally genocide, the opinion 'on the street' will always reflect the campaigns embarked upon to delegitimize the presence of Jews on territory Islam claims for itself.

Arab and Muslim states in the Middle East utterly rejected the United Nations plan for official Partition, apportioning territory to each; Israel and Arab Palestine. Israel accepted the 1948 'permission to proceed' by the world body, while the Palestinians obdurately refused it and the surrounding Middle East states came to their side, swiftly assembling a joint-Arab military invasion to oust the Jews from their fledgling state. And failed. But the sting of failure and the insult to Islam mandated further military assaults, all of them failing. 

Eventually the sting of failure faded at the executive government level for Egypt and Jordan, but the propaganda lessons of Israel=enemy never did. So while both Egypt and Jordan have long since signed peace treaties with the 'enemy' whose presence they could never defeat, all quietened on that front, even as hostility from their populations remained. Turkey, the sole Islamic nation that supported the existence of Israel, did a turnabout with the introduction of an Islamist government.

Gulf nations that never aspired to military victory over Israel, and who unlike Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Egypt did not expel their Jewish populations Arabized over the millennia of living side-by-side with Arabs in near-fraternal order came to the final realization that the failure of the Palestinian cause to found a nation of their own rested with the Palestinian leadership that adamantly refused all offers at the bargaining table with Israel that met Palestinian demands with the exception of two; the 'right of return' and Jerusalem as a Palestinian state capital.

Before the advent of Islam in the 7th Century, the Arabian Peninsula and particularly areas around the now-sacred city of Medina, was the home of Jewish tribes. Tribes that Mohammad battled against for refusing his offer to leave Judaism and accept Islam; exiling those he failed to kill in combat, and restricted residence in what became Saudi Arabia to only Muslims. In the modern era, the House of Saud contested control of Arabia with another powerful tribe, the Hashemites; with British mediation, the Hashemite Kingdom was given TransJordan to rule, and the Sauds took Arabia.

 

Now, the United Arab Emirates, a cosmopolitan, open society of moderate Muslim rule, and Bahrain with similar cultural values have chosen to normalize relations with Israel, once considered a sacrilege. Sudan followed suit. And more Arab states are expected to follow, under the aegis of U.S. diplomacy. Those Islamic states which have over the past decades turned increasingly Islamist like Turkey will continue their distance from Israel, spurning diplomatic overtures. Sadly, there is no depth of 'normalization' between Israel, Jordan and Egypt.

 

The Egyptian actor/singer who embraced Israeli entertainers at a casual entertainment event is being sanctioned by his own Egyptian entertainment union, and lawsuits are being brought against  him for his friendly actions toward fellow entertainers in a comradely environment of relaxation and personal relations. His behaviour, the charges go, insult and degrade Egyptian values. He has apologized and will perform the necessary public penance required to redeem himself in public opinion. Nor do Jordanian citizens bear a warmer relationship to their Israeli counterparts. 

The normalization agreement and the process taking place now between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain are of a different quality altogether. There is a warm reception on either end, mutually respectful and generously appreciative of the qualities each brings to a burgeoning new relationship. And the most difficult of the Arab states of all to pacify in their traditional distance with Israel, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia may now be warming to the concept of 'normalization' with the Jewish State, as  the Saudis turn toward moderation of their stern practice of Islam.

 

  Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump and United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed sign agreements as they participate in the signing ceremony of the Abraham Accords at the White House in Washington, D.C., USA, September 15, 2020. © Tom Brenner, REUTERS

These events are taking place under the imprimatur and guidance and diplomacy of the departing U.S. Trump White House administration, a goal and an achievement that no other American administration has ever succeeded with. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu travelled to Saudi Arabia to meet its crown prince to discuss between them an issue of great importance both to Israel and to the Gulf Sunni states; the aggressively hostile ascendance of the Islamic Republic of Iran, threatening stability and the status quo in the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia is officially denying that any such meeting between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmon, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu took place. But undoubtedly, it did. A meeting that the Saudis would like to keep under wraps, at least for the present, but which the other two, Messrs. Pompeo and Netanyahu, would prefer to have out in the open as a symptom and symbol that peace is achievable and good relations between neighbours opens the way to peace.

National flags of Bahrain, UAE, Israel and the US are projected on the walls of Jerusalem's Old City [File: L Ronen Zvulun/Reuters]

 

The Tsar of the Chessboard

"Russia plans to establish a military base on Sudan’s Red Sea coast to serve as a logistics center for the Russian navy, according to a draft agreement between Moscow and Khartoum signed by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and released publicly Nov. 11."

"The agreement states that Sudan will provide a land plot for the Russian base free of charge for a period of 25 years. It will automatically renew for subsequent 10-year periods. To terminate the deal, one of the parties must notify the other party of its intention at least one year before the expiration of the next period."

"While the base’s capacity will be capped at four ships at a time, nuclear-powered ships are permitted to dock, thus significantly increasing the combat capability of the Russian navy in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. The number of military personnel permanently staying at this facility should not exceed 300 people, according to the agreement. Also, Russia will have the right to import and export through the seaports and airfields of Sudan 'any weapons, ammunition and equipment' necessary for the operation of the base and 'for the performance of tasks by warships'. Sudan, according to the published document outlining the agreement, will not collect import and export duties and taxes."

Kiril Semenov, Al-Monitor

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin inspects the Arktika nuclear-powered icebreaker at the port of Murmansk, northwestern Russia, Oct. 21, 2020. (Photo by Alexander ASTAFYEV / SPUTNIK / AFP)

Moscow also succeeded in persuading Syria's president Bashar al-Assad in exchange for Russian air power enabling the Alawite administration to put down a rebellion by its Syrian Sunni population, to agree to a Russian naval facility in Tartus as a leased military installation of the Russian Navy located on the northern edge of the sea port of the Syrian city of Tartus, its deep-sea base in the Mediterranean. And then there is the little matter of seizing Ukraine's Crimea naval base for Russia's Black Sea Fleet. Spreading itself around, in Vladimir Putin's ambitions to restore elements of Russia's lost status as a regional and world power.

Mr. Putin has been a busy man, negotiating deals, and when negotiations are inconvenient, simply stepping in, marshalling Russian military might and imposing itself where it believes it belongs, in a position of authority and manipulative power. No one could ever accuse Vladimir Putin of not intimately knowing the very best chess moves. Of course there are also clumsy and not-too-intelligent, visceral moves to rid himself of 'enemies' of his aspirational rise for Russia to more closely resemble the Soviet model.

Poisoning critics is one of them, whether they take place in London or in Russia itself. More effective has been the incidental and mysterious killing by snipers of intrusive reporters and pestiferous political opponents. There have been incursions in Georgia, Ukraine and Belarus, in Nagorno-Karabakh of such an open extent that Russia's neighbours in its near-abroad have shrunk back in fear of once again being forced into Russia's tentacle-orbit. NATO has done its best to allay such fears, but Mr. Putin is still smiling.

For years, Russia has been accused of attacking hospitals and clinics as part of a strategy to help President Bashar al-Assad of Syria secure victory in the civil war.   Credit...Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

His expansion and military presence in Syria, Libya and even in the Arctic have been gratifyingly useful. And should U.S.President Trump proceed with his intention to pull American troops out of Afghanistan, Mr. Putin will feel free to once again pop up there, too. This time perhaps not as an occupying force where an ignominious departure has left deep scars in the Russian psyche, but as a friend to the Taliban who are certain to reclaim the country once again.

Belarusians are once again becoming intimately acquainted with their neighbour whose troops moved in conveniently to prop up its choice of dictatorship, a ploy that failed to proceed as anticipated in Ukraine, where the standoff between the government of Ukraine and Russia's proxy ethnic Russian 'Ukrainian' loyalists defy Ukrainian sovereignty. Russia has to date escaped responsibility for the downing and murder of passengers aboard Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 when it was downed by a Buk missile, leaving all 283 passengers and 15 crew dead.

 

"Putin appears to have achieved a significant victory in Nagorno-Karabakh that threatens to alter the geopolitical balance throughout the former Soviet space in his favour."

"He has succeeded in expanding Russia's military presence in the strategically important region ... without encountering any Western pushback."

Anders Aslund, former economic adviser to Russia, Ukraine, Sweden, member of the Atlantic Council

In the Republic of Moldova, an election pits a democratic, pro-European Union candidate for president against a pro-Russian incumbent backed by Russia. Moldova too lost part of its territory, the region of Transnisria in 1992 to Russia. Similar to Russian troops occupying South Ossetia in Georgia, since 2008. Vladimir Putin is having a good time with his geographical chess game, and there's no one to interfere with his grandiloquent plans as the new czar.

 

Nabad al Hayat Surgical Hospital in southern Idlib Province served around 200,000 people before being destroyed in a Russian airstrike on May 5. In a Russian Air Force transmission obtained by The Times, a pilot can be heard receiving the hospital’s exact coordinates before bombing it.  Credit...Orient News

"The argument by the Russians or the regime is always that hospitals are run by terrorists."

"Is it really possible that all the people are terrorists?"

"The truth is that after hospitals are hit, and in areas like this where there is just one hospital, our houses have become hospitals."

Nabad al Hayat’s head nurse, who asked to remain anonymous because he feared being targeted

Sudan Rehabilitated?

"There is no direct money exchanging hands."
"But the European Union basically legitimizes an abusive force."
Suliman Baldo, author, research paper, Europe's migration partnership with Sudan

"We are not encouraging Sudan to curb migration, but to manage migration in a safe and dignified way."
Catherine Ray, spokeswoman, European Union

AFP   EU Migration deal emboldens war criminals in Sudan

The International Criminal Court named Omar al-Bashir, the President of Sudan, and his military chiefs guilty of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in 2005. An investigation by the ICC was initiated when the United Nations Security Council referred the matter for that singular purpose in light of the horrific slaughter, rape and displacement undertaken by the government of Sudan against Black Darfurian farming communities. Government military helicopter gunships targeted the helpless Darfurians, as did the mounted Arab Jajaweed, in a widespread slaughter.

Sudanese rebels from the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) survey the still smouldering ruins a day after the abandoned village of Chero Kasi was set ablaze by Janjaweed militiamen in the violence that plagued the Darfur region in 2004 [Getty]

A dozen years later there has been no accounting nor semblance of justice for that terrible atrocity. Instead, the European Union now depends on the government of Darfur to help it stem the living tide of Eritrean refugees flooding Europe. Thousands of East Africans trudge 3,000 kilometers on a route that takes them through Sudan's eastern border as the migrants attempt to reach the Mediterranean and go on toward Europe.

Sudan's secret police have been tasked to prevent the migrants' progress. The very leaders of the Sudanese military who stand accused of war crimes (also accused of torturing migrants, like the Libyans with whom similar arrangements have been made), now work for the interests of the European Union. It is a different Europe now from what it was three years earlier when the first tide of migrants began to reach Europe's shores and were greeted with open arms.

Europeans have reacted with anger at the unending migrant flood, informing their governments that they no longer wish to see their culture, traditions and values diluted any further. The politics of haven offering has undergone a great shift; the welcome has been replaced by stringent efforts of avoidance. And in attempting to staunch the human flow the EU has seen fit to outsource border management. And it is working, with the migrants' numbers greatly diminished since 2016.

Eritrean refugees in Shagarab   Ahmad Mahmoud, IRIN

The EU pays billions of euros to Islamist Turkey to stop the efforts of Syrian refugees fleeing regime massacres, looking for haven in Europe, while in Libya Italy is known to bribe the militias who themselves profit from the smuggling trade, many of them also accused of committing war crimes. The link to Sudan is that of Europe requiring borders to be closed so migrants cannot reach Libya. In exchange Sudan sees its helpfulness to Europe working to end the aura of disgrace in human rights violations, to make it more acceptable to the West.

And though many Sudanese leaders remain international pariahs dating to Darfur, Europe enforces the arms embargo against Sudan, yet the Khartoum Process is a recognized platform for 20 international migration conferences between EU officials and counterparts from African countries, including Sudan. The EU has avoided bribing Sudan directly with funding, and instead funnels millions of euros through aid agencies and independent charities, whitewashing their bribery.

One of several Sudanese officials known to have orchestrated attacks on civilians in Darfur, from the Sudanese security forces, is Salah Abdallah Gosh. A division of the Sudanese military called the Rapid Support Forces was formed from the Janjaweed militias that attacked civilians during the conflict in Darfur. In Khartoum the countertrafficking coordination center is staffed jointly by Sudanese police officers and European countries such as Britain, France and Italy, relying on data sourced by Sudanese security forces.

The head of the immigration police department, General Awad Elneil Dhia, denies claims by deportees that they were tortured on being returned to Sudan. One of these men was a Darfuri political dissident detained in late 2017 in Khartoum and tortured. Accused of profiting from the smuggling trade, General Dhia places the blame on isolated instances in the security services. "We are not very far from your (Western) standards", he stated, speaking of Sudan as an effective partner in the battle against irregular migration to Europe.

It's The South African Way

The man is an unrepentant war criminal, responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of black Sudanese from Darfur. People who were dispossessed of their villages, their farms, who fled in their hundreds of thousands from the rampaging murderous intentions of the janjaweed, Arab horsemen who raped countless women and girls from Darfur, and killed countless men, women and children. The Sudanese military sent army helicopters to strafe fleeing villagers as they fled their bombed-out homes in a panic of self-preservation.

The conflict in Darfur has forced more than a million people from their homes

"It is on this basis, among others, that the ANC calls upon government to challenge the order now being brought to compel the South African government to detain President al-Bashir. [African and Eastern European countries] continue to unjustifiably bear the brunt of the decisions of the ICC."
"[The ANC stated South Africa granted immunity] for all (summit) participants as part of the international norms for countries hosting such gathering of the AU [African Union] or even the United Nations."
African National Congress statement

Situation in Darfur

The seal of the International Criminal Court
File no.	02/05
Referred by	UN Security Council
Date referred	31 March 2005
Date opened	6 June 2005
Incident(s)	War in Darfur (Haskanita raids)
Crimes	Genocide: · Causing serious harm · Destructive conditions · Killings Crimes against humanity: · Extermination · Forcible transfer · Inhumane acts · Imprisonment · Murder · Persecution · Rape · Torture War crimes: · Attacks against civilians · Destruction of property · Murder · Outrage upon dignity · Pillaging · Rape
Status of suspects
Ahmed Haroun	Fugitive
Ali Kushayb	Fugitive
Omar al-Bashir	Fugitive
Bahar Abu Garda	Charges not confirmed
Abdallah Banda	Case in pre-trial stage
Saleh Jerbo	Case in pre-trial stage
Abdel Rahim Mohammed Hussein

How surprising can it be, after all, that South Africa has not deigned to honour its international obligations to recognize rulings of the International Criminal Court. It was the United Nations Security council itself which referred the case of the Darfur region of Sudan to the International Criminal Court, to evaluate and to assess the situation and make their determination of the guilt of those involved in the horrendous assault on basic human rights by the Government of Sudan.

Not surprising, given South Africa's record on finding it unnecessary to confront Zimbabwe's ruinous condition thanks to President Mugabe's misrule of the country and the human rights violations that are somehow acceptable, because they take place in Africa.

And we can cast our minds back to when Nelson Mandala was President of South Africa and welcomed Charles Taylor to his presidential home as an honoured guest, when international celebrities were also being entertained, one of whom was given a gift of blood diamonds by Charles Taylor. This was, needless to say, a man convicted of war crimes in using diamonds to pay for the bloody civil war in Sierra Leone where more than 50,000 people lost their lives.

Charles Taylor was sentenced to a 50-year prison term; striking similarities to Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir.

A South African judge had ordered authorities to ensure that Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, present in South Africa for an African Union summit, did not leave the country in consideration of an international order for his arrest. Wanted by the International Criminal Court, "President Omar al-Bashir is prohibited from leaving the Republic of South Africa until a final order is made in this application", stated Judge Hans Fabricius, who ordered that all border posts enforce his decision.

Needless to say, other countries, such as those in the Middle East where President al-Bashir presented himself in attendance at Arab League meetings, also ignored the ICC's order for the arrest of the man. South Africa, however, likes to present itself as a democratic equal to any Western country, with an eye to human rights. Which is why, presumably, it condemns Israel, as is also done by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, referring to the 'plight' of the Palestinians who continue attacking Israel, and which Israel defends itself against.

The hypocritical contortions engaged in by South Africa do it full credit as a pseudo-democratic state with a focus on human rights. As long as vast episodes of unspeakable human rights violations occur within African nations they cannot be taken seriously. But South Africa will be quick to join in condemning countries whose human rights record is sparkling in contrast to its own experience and that of its allies, to prove it is a proud member of the international community.

The 300,000 Darfurians who were slaughtered, and the two million displaced in a deliberate government campaign happen, unfortunately, to be a figment of a malign imagination attempting to attribute nasty behaviour to a solidly respected African country. Omar al-Bashir, along with visiting the Middle East, with no consequences to follow, travelled to Malawi, Kenya, Chad and Congo, all of them member states of the International Criminal Court, all choosing to ignore the warrant.

But all is well, irregardless, for through a series of machinations, it was arranged that President al-Bashir hurriedly leave the summit and he was well on his way home to Sudan before he was in any real danger of being detained to be held accountable for his dreadful misdeeds. It's the African Union Way. It's the South African version of justice.

Cheering supporters greeted Mr Bashir at Khartoum airport

Sudanese Islamist Justice

"They didn't even take Meriam to a hospital -- she just delivered inside a prison clinic. But neither her husband nor I have been allowed to see them yet."
Elshareef Ali Elshareef Mohammed, lawyer for Miriam Ibrahim

"If they want to execute me, then they should go ahead and do it because I'm not going to change my faith. I refuse to change. I am not giving up Christianity just so that I can live. I know I could stay alive by becoming a Muslim and I would be able to look after our family, but I need to be true to myself."
Miriam Ibrahim, 27-year-old Sudanese Christian doctor

Meriam Ibrahim and husband Daniel Wani

"Apostasy and adultery should not even be crimes. It's a personal choice who to marry and what to believe."
"The human rights situation has been deteriorating for the past few years. It's an extremely repressive regime, with opposition activists tortured and the targeting of anyone who dares to defy the regime."
Manar Idriss, Sudan researcher, Amnesty International

Of course Sudan is a repressive regime. One only has to look at the mass atrocities that took place in Darfur, with the Arab Sudanese government dispatching attack helicopters and Janjaweed terrorists to slaughter black Sudanese Muslims who rebelled against a government that increasingly marginalized and oppressed them. Hundreds of thousands of Darfurians were displaced, tens of thousands of women were raped, thousands killed.
Picture Credit: interet-general.inf
The International Criminal Court in 2005 undertook an official investigation concluding with the issuance of an international warrant for the arrest of Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity, stopping short of charging him with genocide. The African Union, on the other hand, passed a resolution that members not turn over al-Bashir to the ICC. And nor did the Arab League feel compelled to other than congratulate him on his excellent administration.

That a Sudanese woman has been sentenced to hang for refusing to renounce her devotion to Christianity, a religion she grew up with, simply affirms the country's fanatical Islamist fundamentalist credentials. Meriam Ibrahim, who married Daniel Wani, a a biochemist and fellow Christian, has been charged with apostasy. Her mother was Christian, her father Muslim, a man who abandoned his family when Meriam was a child, leaving her mother to bring her up a Christian.

She was charged with apostasy at the urging of her husband's family, and ordered to return to Islam, which she refused, for to do so would also force her to dissolve her marriage to a Christian. Her 20-month-old son has lived with his mother inside the prison since she was charged and imprisoned in February, and where she has been shackled by the ankles, impeding her movement, despite that she was heavily pregnant.

Martin, above, is pictured with his father on a visit. His family claim he is American because his father has been granted U.S. citizenship. He is being held with Meriam because the authorities claim he is a Muslim and will not release him into the care of a Christian

Now she has given birth, inside the prison, to a little girl. She will be permitted, charitably, to nurse her baby for two years. When the infant is weaned, her mother is to be hanged for the cardinal sin of abjuring Islam for Christianity, a hanging criminal offence. This is Islamic justice. Amnesty International has launched a petition on her behalf, to have her freed, one signed by 660,000 people worldwide. Unfortunately they have been banned from Sudan since 2005, unsurprisingly.

Father Daniel Wani, a U.S. citizen from Manchester, New Hampshire, holds Maya for the first time after being allowed to visit his wife, Meriam Ibrahim, who was sentenced to death for marrying him, a Christian

Her lawyers, filing an appeal, hope to take her case to Sudan's Supreme Court and Constitutional Court. Apostasy is defined in Sudan as the renouncing of your religion. Considered a crime of the highest order, based on a Hadith from the Prophet Mohammad, who stated: "Whoever changes his religion kill  him."

Relentlessly Islamist

"The judge has exceeded his mandate when he ruled that Meriam's marriage was void because her husband was out of her faith. He was thinking more of Islamic Shariah laws than of the country's laws and its constitution."
Lawyer Al-Shareef Ali al-Shareef Mohammed, Khartoum, Sudan

Meriam Yehya Ibrahim Ishag, right, is pictured in this undated image with her husband Daniel Wani, left. 

Muslim women in Sudan under Sharia law are prohibited from marrying men who are not Muslim. Muslim men are not forbidden from marrying outside their faith, on the other hand. Sharia law holds that children must follow the religion their father practices. In the early 1980s Sudan introduced Islamic Shariah laws offending the mostly animist and Christian south of the country. A brutal civil war ensued, leading eventually to the creation of South Sudan.

Under the rule of Sudanese President Omar Bashir, whose infamous brutality in Darfur created a refugee crisis still unresolved as Darfurians are still being attacked by government forces, the International Criminal Court declared Sudan's president guilty of war crimes in the slaughter, mass rape and brutalization of hundreds of thousands of black Sudanese, and his use of Janjaweed militias to commit atrocities against Darfur.

President Bashir has sworn to implement more strict Islamic law in the country he dominates. And so, another injustice has been perpetrated that has taken the attention of the world, this time on behalf of a woman, Meriam Ibrahim, whose father was Muslim and whose mother was an Orthodox Christian from Ethiopia who had raised her daughter as a Christian, after the father left them when Meriam was an infant.

Meriam has been convicted of "apostasy". She was given a period of four days' introspection, after which time she must either repent or face death. She is 27 years of age, and eight months pregnant, the mother of an 18-month-old little boy, who is in prison with her. Meriam, a medical doctor by profession committed a gross insult to Islam by marrying a Christian man from South Sudan.

Since she is considered to be a Muslim despite that she is not, her marriage is void under Islamic law.

It was the family of her absent father who complained that Meriam was born a Muslim, yet married a man of the Christian faith. Daniel Wani, Meriam's husband, had fled Sudan for the United States as a child, to escape the civil war in southern Sudan. And then he returned to the country of his birth, with dual citizenship. Meriam and Daniel were married formally in church in 2011.

While Daniel Wani was acquitted of the charge of harbouring an apostate, his wife has been sentenced to hang after refusing to surrender her Christian faith to Islam. She was also sentenced to flogging by 100 lashes for adultery, since her marriage is considered illegal. So she is destined first to be tortured, then to be hanged for her crime of being a human being in a country which recognizes humanity only through the lens of Islam.

US and Israeli officers in mediation bid to avert South Sudan civil war

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report December 20, 2013, 7:23 PM (IDT)

Tags:  South Sudan,  civil war,  US,  Israel,  Iran,  Red Sea,

South Sudan President Salva Kiir

The US and, more discreetly, Israel are working together to prevent the world’s newest state, South Sudan, slipping over what President Barack Obama called “the precipice of civil war,” as clashes in the capital Juba spread Thursday, Dec, 19, across the country. Some 400-600 people have died in the tribal and ethnic warfare since last weekend, when President Salva Kiira accused his ousted deputy Riek Machar of a failed coup. 

 

US and Israeli officers were trying to restore discipline to the South Sudanese army and pursuing a mediation effort to reconcile the quarrel that has triggered brutal warfare between the president’s Dinka tribe and Machar’s Nuer ethnic group.

The bloody clashes have put 100,000 people to flight from their homes. More than 30,000 refugees have reached the camps of the UN Mission in South Sudan at Akobo, in Jonglei state, where Thursday two Indian peacekeepers were killed in an attack on the compound.

Obama said 45 US military personnel had been deployed to South Sudan Wednesday to protect American citizens and property.

Israel has been cagey about its activities in the new republic. However, debkafile’s intelligence sources report that a large party of IDF officers and intelligence experts, some of them IDF reservists, arrived in Juba Thursday, ready to use their years of association with the president and his ex-deputy in pre-independence South Sudan to help resolve their differences.

The American-Israeli plan is to attach to Kiir and Machar the Israeli officers they know and personally trust as former advisers for an attempt to mark out common ground between them in the interests of national and tribal reconciliation.

The US-Israeli operation therefore has as two urgent goals:
1. To lay the foundations for negotiations between the president and his deputy who was sacked with the rest of the governing cabinet in July.

2.  To restore discipline to the divided army and put a stop to the bloody battles waged between soldiers of the Dinka and Nuer tribes and prevent their division into two hostile armies.

If these two goals can be accomplished, it may be possible to prevent the conflict tipping over into outright civil war, a peril which began looming large Thursday, Dec. 19, when Machar’s Nueri tribal troops captured the town of Bor 200 kilometers north of Juba.

Money is needed to oil the wheels of reconciliation and so Secretary of State John Kerry announced from the Philippines Thursday night that Washington was transferring $25 million to South Sudan for promoting stability. It was then that the US-Israeli mediation bid began to take off.

President Kiir said: “I am ready for dialogue with anyone who is willing.”
His former deputy Marchar replied: “There was no coup. What took place in Juba was a misunderstanding between presidential guards with their division.”

A misunderstanding between president guards, he implied, was no reason for war or even a falling-out with the president.

However, according to debkafile’s sources, it is still early days and the reconciliation process is fragile enough to be blown over by some unforeseen happening.

South Sudan gained its independence in 2011 after 22 years of fighting the Sudanese government in the north. Its path to independence was laid in 2005 when President George Bush brought Gen. Omar Bachir’s government in Khartoum to sign an agreement for the country’s partition.

President Kiir has maintained close ties with the United States and Israel, depending on their assistance and advice for helping the new republic stand on its feet.

The South has acquired strategic importance for America as an important base and an obstacle in the path of the spread of Al Qaeda and radical Islamic influence out from Khartoum. It provides the US with a foothold on the western shore of the Red Sea, opposite a mainline Saudi oil route from the Persian Gulf via the Suez Canal.

Israel’s close ties with South Sudan’s Christians go back 50 years and were often expressed in financial aid, diplomatic support, military training and weapons.

One of the constants of Israel’s foreign policy under all its governments has been to cultivate friendships with fellow non-Muslim enclaves on the African continent - and especially on its eastern coast. South Sudan also controls most of the country’s oil reserves and some of the sources of the Nile River, Egypt’s lifeline.

The focus of Israel’s interests in this region tends to fluctuate. At present, its presence in South Sudan is useful for keeping track of the spread of Iranian influence in that part of the continent - most pressingly, to keep an eye on the construction of an Iranian naval and logistic base on the Red Sea coast of northern Sudan.

Together with this base, Tehran was enabled to establish outside Khartoum an industrial complex for the manufacture of arms, including missiles. From Sudan, these products have relatively short supply routes to Iran’s terrorist arms and allies, the Lebanese Hizballah and the Palestinian Hamas and Jihad Islami.