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Sudan: Another Forgotten War · UK Column Radio

0:08
Hello and welcome to the UK column today I'm delighted to be
0:10
joined by ESA Bloomy ESA is professor of Asian and Middle
0:15
East Studies at Stockholm University Institute of Turkish
0:18
Studies in in Sweden and welcome to the programme ESA.
0:23
I, I want to talk today about Sudan, the situation Sudan,
0:27
which is about as grim as it gets, I think pretty unpleasant
0:33
war conflict going on there since April 2023.
0:37
Well, as we'll discuss, no doubt it's something that's actually
0:40
been going on for a lot longer than that.
0:42
But the latest iteration, at least for a couple of years now,
0:48
aside from, you know, the occasional UK government press
0:52
release, which never gets any coverage in the mainstream
0:55
press, most people in the UK at least know almost nothing about
0:59
this conflict that's going on without any major media coverage
1:04
in this country at all. So although we have talked about
1:07
it several times in UK column news, I can't say that we are
1:12
particularly familiar with the with the detail of it.
1:15
So I suppose my first question is, is this a civil war?
1:22
It's being described as a civil war, or is it another conflict
1:26
which is being driven by external forces?
1:31
Yes, it's the latter. Much of Africa and neighbouring
1:35
countries like Yemen especially, are the unfortunate target of
1:44
rival, sometimes corporate therefore private.
1:49
But they they they form useful unions, alliances with actual
1:55
states with still the ability to borrow lots of money and buy
2:01
lots of weapons or make them themselves and deliver them to
2:05
era areas where natural resources of Africa are highly
2:10
coveted. Strategic pressure points that
2:14
will allow for access to other regions are targeted.
2:19
So unfortunately Sudan, just like many of its neighbours,
2:23
especially to the South, with the Democratic Republic of Congo
2:28
being perhaps the most notorious with Rwanda being a close
2:33
second. They are all been targeted since
2:36
the end of the Cold War, at least for plunder and chaos is
2:42
an actual wonderful context and condition to actually realise
2:47
very profitable plunder of natural resources.
2:52
I mean, Sudan has been in a country of interest to the
2:56
British Empire for many for a very long time.
3:00
And of course, Kitchener, Khartoum, this is all something
3:04
which is part of British history.
3:05
Is this just the latest iteration of that same colonial
3:09
project? Indeed, it was actually Muhammad
3:13
Ali, the soldier of of Ottoman association, who successfully
3:20
expanded Egypt's influence deep into the tropical areas of East
3:25
Africa, Central Africa in the 1820s.
3:28
Eighteen 30s already and one of the primary reasons was open up
3:32
trade from Central Africa to the Mediterranean Red Sea, as well
3:37
as more importantly, secure access to gold in Sudan in those
3:43
days was much like West Africa, considered to be the equivalent
3:49
of California and other places where gold was highly it was
3:54
accessible and and considerable profits could be made from
3:58
mining. Now that's one one way of
4:02
understanding the development of Sudan's connection to Egypt and
4:05
how the British would inherit that when they occupied Egypt in
4:10
the 1880s. And unfortunately, the kind of
4:13
calculations that come with thinking about these areas are
4:18
primarily political, economic as opposed to moral or interest in
4:24
the quite very complex cultural checkerboard, if you will, of
4:32
the of the peoples who live in these like difficult areas of,
4:37
of Africa. So yes, the British still have
4:41
an interest through their their own kind of proxies, although
4:45
it's there are multiple layers of separation now between those
4:50
who are really responsible for all of this and the ones who are
4:54
actually being blamed for it. So if we can maybe get into that
4:59
in more detail about who are actually the primary foreign
5:04
actors at the moment. But let's not forget ever that
5:08
whether it's the UAE or Turkey or our other players out there,
5:12
that they are still deeply connected to the North Atlantic
5:16
Empire that have emerged in the 19th century.
5:20
Yes. So do you think this is, is this
5:24
conflict sort of as a result of Chinese and and Russian
5:30
interests in this, in this area? And you know, on, on one side
5:33
and the other side, we've got British players like the Tony
5:37
Blair Foundation, Institute, whatever you want to call it
5:40
these days, very, very interested in this.
5:43
But also the European Union viewing North Africa, the Sahel
5:48
region right across the the southern area of the Sahara,
5:53
right across the Horn of Africa as being its southern
5:57
neighbourhood and and an area of its interests and influence.
6:01
My goodness, yeah. I mean, there's so many things
6:03
that come into play here. You mentioned Russia, which
6:08
especially private military capacities since the end of the
6:13
Cold War, they were out and provided services for various
6:17
dictatorships. I mean, Yugoslavian forces also
6:22
had a certain expertise and delivered and offered in
6:25
neighbouring Zaire. In those days it was called
6:27
Zaire military forces that helped shore up national armies.
6:34
Sudan, If we can go back maybe to the end of the Cold War,
6:39
where political Islam really starts to play an important
6:43
sedative role in subduing potentially very dangerous
6:49
regional actors. Who like Muammar Gaddafi for
6:53
instance, who had long been in the neighbouring Chad, which is
6:59
an important part of this story. What's happening in Sudan had
7:02
been involved in influencing and expanding Libya's influence in
7:07
this anti colonial struggle that cut across much of Africa since
7:11
the obviously the beginning of the ninth of the 20th century
7:17
and use of political slum in with the man named Turabi Hassan
7:22
Turabi became notoriously connected to these Muslim
7:25
Brotherhood outfits that started to spread and gain influence
7:30
throughout the Middle East and the Arabic speaking world in
7:36
sometimes obvious connections with what was happening in
7:39
Turkey. The rise of Erdogan first as a
7:44
mayor of Istanbul and then becomes this kind of shining
7:48
star of of political Islam and a kind of a realliance if you
7:55
realignment of the Islamic world in relation to North Atlantic
8:00
world. And Turabi became this kind of
8:03
useful target for at least media LED campaigns against political
8:10
Islam where in fact there was actually deep partnerships.
8:14
We know that the the armed forces that were being used by
8:20
and funded and trained by the CIA and MI 6 around the world
8:25
did find safe haven also in Sudan during the 1990s, even
8:30
though periodically would be again a useful justification for
8:35
the war on terrorism. You know that Khartoum was
8:38
attacked by American forces at some point and notoriously the
8:43
hospital or factory building producing generic drugs was hit,
8:50
But that initiated or signalled to us that Sudan's oil wealth,
8:56
Sudan's potential for mining. But more importantly, again,
9:01
it's it's geographic location, the Red Sea, the the Nile rivers
9:09
that were going to converge in Khartoum and continued to be a
9:13
big Geo strategic issue. And there were already in the
9:18
90s recognition that with the end of the regime in Ethiopia,
9:23
that Ethiopia and Eritrea, which divided Somalia, which would see
9:29
a process of disintegration, that Sudan was more or less
9:32
following the same track. Where it would became clear that
9:36
like Yemen, like Iraq, like Libya, breaking up these larger
9:41
amalgamated territories into zones of conflict, of chaos
9:46
would make it easier for determining or dictating the way
9:51
these regions would be integrated into the global
9:53
economy moving forward. And unfortunately, Sudan would
9:58
first be on the radar screen, if you will, through this, right.
10:03
I think still Sudanese capable Sudanese resistance to this
10:08
process. Now it would be undermined by
10:11
political Islam, the relationship that political
10:13
Islam had in the narrative of as far as the British and the
10:16
Americans were concerned. So a lot of capacity, violent
10:21
capacities was brought to Sudan that led to civil war or
10:26
conflict between rival factions. As opportunities that were
10:30
opened up, South Sudan was encouraged to pursue war of
10:36
independence, which was ultimately secured with the
10:42
incredible violence in the interim period leading to the
10:46
crisis in Darfur in the early 2000, where I think many of your
10:50
listeners in the UK or elsewhere are probably remember.
10:54
Still, it was a legitimate humanitarian disaster which
10:59
pitted Muammar Gaddafi's forces who wanted to secure, protect,
11:05
chat, their partners in Chad, against these encroachments of
11:10
now increasingly Gulf countries with their Muslim Brotherhood
11:16
assets. To take over the enterprise of
11:21
steering the Muslim world into the direction of cohabitating
11:27
comfortably with globalisation, with neoliberalism.
11:31
And again, a lot of principled peoples around the world,
11:34
including Sudan, had a very articulate stand against that
11:38
process. They were not happy seeing a
11:42
potentially very rich independent country being
11:45
parcelled out, its assets being privatised as being demanded by
11:50
international agencies and development groups tied to the
11:56
United States, Britain, the UN, etcetera, the IMF.
12:00
So sadly much what we see the kind of playbook elsewhere in
12:06
the world, it's playing itself out in Sudan.
12:08
And the consequences are large parts of this vast country had
12:13
been parcelled off. Warlords were rewarded with
12:18
diplomatic recognition. They found secondary support
12:25
from countries that seemingly were at odds with each other.
12:29
But if you actually go for deeper into their connections in
12:32
the global political economy, they actually share common
12:36
patrons, Israel, the United States, Britain.
12:40
So Turkey, Qatar seemingly at odds and in rivals against the
12:46
UAE, Saudi Arabia and who are playing the kind of leaders of
12:51
these proxy wars in place like Sudan are actually in other ways
12:57
very well connected to the same usual suspects, if you will.
13:02
And unfortunately, when the Russians and the Chinese get
13:05
involved, their weapons, their soldiers, their know how they
13:10
are not very effectively able to demonstrate a separation from
13:15
this process either. They are implicated in this
13:18
violence and and it becomes in the media, it becomes in the
13:23
scholarship, classic example of Africans killing each other,
13:27
right. So civil war, that's the
13:30
narrative as it's been played out in elsewhere, but it is in
13:34
fact an invasion of global capital using various means to
13:39
disaggregate countries that could have very easily steered
13:42
their way after the Cold War into being independent, wealthy,
13:48
self sustaining society. And unfortunately for Sudan,
13:52
it's like Ethiopia, like the Horn of Africa, like Yemen, very
13:57
rich countries, a lot of its territory started to get
14:00
privatised and sold off, especially to investment firms
14:05
attached to sovereign wealth funds that were simply providing
14:10
the kind of capital, if you will, for this process of
14:17
globalisation, of forcing Sudanese to surrender their
14:21
sovereignty to global capital. Yeah, use the term political
14:28
Islam. There are a number of times.
14:30
Could you just say a little bit more about that?
14:32
And are are you talking about the influence of Muslim
14:35
Brotherhood or Boko Haram and and Chad and Niger and so on?
14:39
Is that is this all part of that same process?
14:42
Yes, we we lose again. We get distracted by seeing
14:50
jihadist takfiri groups as somehow a threat to Western
14:55
stability, where in fact they work and work in tandem with
15:01
agencies that see them as auxiliaries for otherwise what
15:05
would be necessarily overt invasions.
15:08
So again, while there were NATO plates dropping bombs in Libya,
15:13
it was actually these kinds of forces that were doing the heavy
15:17
lifting of killing and and taking over territories.
15:21
And the same would be applied in northern Nigeria, in Burkina
15:28
Faso, Niger, Mali, even though now there's been a response to
15:32
that misfit efforts by the peoples of the silo region to
15:36
try to reorganise and defend themselves from these tools of
15:41
Western imperialism, in Sudan, they have not, they have not
15:45
been able to escape that. And so again, the personalities
15:49
that sometimes are very articulate like this, Hassan
15:53
Turabi has long been marked as someone who actually stood on
15:57
principle against globalisation, against westernisation and is
16:03
supposedly steering their societies towards traditional
16:07
values basing based on something called Sharia law.
16:13
But they are simply just cookie cutter characters that have been
16:17
created and and are marketed as easy targets for justifying
16:23
heavy investment in destroying these societies.
16:27
They you cannot distinguish them from the origins which are again
16:32
intermediaries like Saudi Arabia or Qatar.
16:35
But if you just look deeper at the how Saudi Arabia and Qatar
16:39
are entirely serviceable to larger global capital interest,
16:46
then it's it's hard to see what happened to Sudan in two in
16:50
1990s and 2000s as anything but a manufactured externally
16:55
manufactured very quickly rapidly decline the security
17:01
situation for the peoples of Sudan.
17:04
Again, people get a little confused in Sudan.
17:06
They got confused, they they became partisans in these so
17:09
called ideological battles. Sudanese are very well educated,
17:15
they speak, they have Khartoum University.
17:19
I actually visited in 1993 this country and very, very
17:24
impressive society who are well represented around the world and
17:30
they had their responses. They had something called
17:32
neighbourhood resistance committees by the thousands
17:35
throughout Sudan organising fermenting kind of civic
17:39
resistance to this structural transformation of their country.
17:43
But they were always pushed aside and brutalised by militant
17:48
groups who were functionally armed by the security forces of
17:54
Sudan or supported by intelligence agencies from
17:57
abroad. And again, just simply in the
18:01
kind of discourse about the Middle East, about the Islamic
18:05
world in Sudan, this became easily just marketed as simple
18:10
conflict between Islamists and or between ethnic groups, Arabs,
18:16
between Arabs and Africans. And it's just not that easy.
18:22
And so political Islam became one of those animating forces
18:29
that force people to have into certain corners, if you will,
18:34
and became actually even more divided amongst themselves.
18:39
While there was desperate efforts by various intellectual
18:44
not Sudanese nationalists are saying let's not fall into this
18:48
trap. And again, you see this, this
18:51
personality of people resisting globalisation throughout the
18:53
world, but they have been regularly supplanted and pushed
18:58
aside by not only the violent militias and forces that
19:04
actually have the arms, but by the way we talk about these
19:07
conflicts. So it's not a civil, It was not
19:09
a civil war. It is not a civil war per SE.
19:14
At least its origins was not one conflict between Sudanese
19:19
entirely, even though they're the ones who are dying for the
19:23
last 30 years. Yeah, if if we if we look at a a
19:29
sort of standard narrative of what's going on there with the
19:33
the civil war supposed to involve Sudanese armed forces on
19:37
one side and with the Rapid Support Forces, which is
19:42
supposed to be a paramilitary force.
19:46
And and the Janjaweed Coalition has mentioned as well.
19:49
I mean, I have no real understanding of of who is whom
19:54
here and who's supported by which foreign influence.
20:00
So could you just say a little bit about who the main players
20:03
are in in in the conflict in Sudan and and who is supporting
20:07
them? Right.
20:09
So this process of of seeing Sudan break apart and outsiders
20:16
encouraging the separation of South Sudan, which supposedly
20:19
culturally were either animists or Christian, and that led to it
20:27
was already in the Cold War. There was kind of factions being
20:31
armed at that stage. Again, it's connected to what's
20:34
happening in Rwanda and Uganda and DRC.
20:39
But the struggle by the Sudanese government in Khartoum to try to
20:43
preserve the borders of Sudan before and throughout the 2000s
20:49
was in in many ways steered by a coalition including this to Rabi
20:56
figure that I mentioned before Muslim Brotherhood fiercely anti
20:59
communist. So if you put that into the
21:02
context of the late Cold War Hudico Islam is a mobilising
21:06
force. It was also seen as one is to
21:09
explaining why the central government in Sudan in Khartoum
21:13
was so violent against Southern Sudanese.
21:17
And that's why Southern Sudanese separation was necessary.
21:23
And one of the ways that the Sudanese government over the
21:25
throughout the 1990s and 2000s in their attempt to try to keep
21:30
Southern Sudan, where 80% of the oil of Sudan is based and
21:34
probably a lots of its gold as well.
21:38
That they would have to resort to mobilising forces that were
21:42
outside of the military itself in order to protect the the
21:47
formal government from accusations of war crimes or or
21:51
seeing maybe what kind of formal efforts to shut down their
21:56
operations in what was clearly in some circles in the West
22:02
trying to mobilise evangelical Christianity as a kind of cause
22:07
celebrity sport. That South Sudan needed
22:10
separation. So what happened is that we
22:11
started to see militias emerging and the Janjaweeds were by
22:18
design fanatical Islamic takfiri types who were to pursue the
22:27
ethnic purification and the removal of problematic non Arab,
22:34
non Muslim populations along the borders of South Sudan and Chad.
22:41
And so the Janjaweeds emerged in this context.
22:44
And one of the key actors and partners of this process we just
22:47
solved, by the way, in The Hague the the the charging of war
22:51
crimes by one of the leaders of the Janjaweed.
22:54
It was just yesterday, I believe, or two days ago.
22:57
What was his name? I can't remember now his name?
23:00
Who's Rahman? Abdul Rahman, who was just now
23:04
charged for war crimes. But his primary partner on the
23:07
ground was this Muhammad Davallo or Emmetti, who had now
23:13
inherited this old operations at Khartoum government and the
23:18
official military had harvested to conduct military actions in
23:25
Brave unprofessional ways. Let's just say just a very
23:28
brutal regime of violence against targeted populations
23:34
that led to the what we call we can call a genocide in Darfur in
23:37
the early 2000s. They were able to secure,
23:41
however, that part of Sudan from being separated to being to
23:46
create a separate ethnic state as was on call often in Western
23:51
circles at the time. But it also helped create kind
23:55
of structural dynamic that allows his Hemeti to become now
24:01
a kingmaker in larger Sudan. Omar Boshif who's was notorious
24:06
and became the kind of again poster child for how the West
24:09
will intervene and try to halt Islamic fundamentalism as it's
24:17
as it's manifested in the Khartoum government.
24:21
Sudan will be become part of the larger problem.
24:25
There will be collective efforts in international community to
24:29
isolate Omar Bashir's government but again they they will be able
24:34
to avoid and circumvent some of the restrictions on their
24:39
military capacity by maintaining these militias that seem to
24:44
operate independent of the state.
24:46
And accordingly there will be money funnelled and and supply
24:50
chains will be opened up to provide his Hemeti with the
24:54
capacity to be a major player in Sudanese politics.
24:57
To the extent today actually leads to along with his
25:02
sometimes partner Bohan, who is now currently the general
25:07
leading the so called Sudanese official Sudanese army and they
25:12
recognised the Sudanese government.
25:14
They worked together to assured that the popular revolution that
25:19
was happening on the streets throughout Sudan.
25:21
After a great deal of fatigue and a very well organised, as I
25:25
mentioned, there were these neighbourhood committees being
25:28
established throughout Sudan kind of doing what was happening
25:31
elsewhere in the Arab Spring in 2010 two 1011.
25:35
So this was manifesting in 2018, two, 1019 and much like
25:40
elsewhere, Muslim Brotherhood, Takshiri type groups mobilising
25:48
if necessary, ethnic politics, language, politics, a suppress,
25:54
a popular uprising against Omar Bashir, He will be replaced by a
25:59
now recognised coalition that would bring this Burhan and
26:03
Himmati together. And that's where we were at
26:08
2020, 2019-2020. And over the next couple of
26:13
years, these two groups start to separate.
26:17
They start to take conflicting claims over who actually has
26:22
authority and who has the right to claim to be representative of
26:26
the official Sudanese government.
26:28
And they're all the privileges that come with that, negotiating
26:32
for loans, getting access to the key infrastructure assets that
26:38
still remained. There would still be the open
26:41
question about the pipelines that would connect South Sudan's
26:45
oil with the Red Sea and international markets.
26:49
So that was all up for grabs. And that's when you start to see
26:53
new opportunities for taking sides, supporting both now
26:59
clearly delineated factions inside this coalition, which
27:04
again functioned to suppress real popular revolution in Sudan
27:10
to actually see let Sudan, Sudanese taking control of their
27:14
destiny again. Again, very articulate.
27:18
We can even say with sometimes a Marxist critique of Sudan's
27:22
relations with the larger world informing how these popular
27:26
communities were demanding for a representative government, but
27:30
that was not going to be allowed by the international community.
27:34
And So what it becomes is then who is going to represent the
27:38
international compete community's interests in Sudan.
27:42
And it's these two basically warlords and their loyal or
27:48
relatively loyal armies around them.
27:51
And that leads to what we call the RSF.
27:54
This is the Hemeti, the old Janjaweeds kind of militias that
27:58
worked in partnership with Khartoum throughout the 2000s.
28:01
It is now virtually taking over the Western Sudan where all the
28:07
gold mines are. It has received a great deal of
28:11
part of support from let's say spin offs of the Wagner Group
28:16
that has established itself as a kind of protection agency for
28:20
mining operations in Central African Republic and elsewhere
28:24
throughout Africa. And more importantly, the main,
28:28
let's say market, if you will, for this blood gold that's being
28:33
plundered from Western Sudan and that's the gold market in Dubai.
28:39
And it's become now an editorious connection between
28:42
RSF or Hemeti and the UAE is becoming kind of the the useful
28:51
target, if you will, for explaining how this war works,
28:55
how this horrible situation Sudan works, that it's the UA ES
29:00
role in sustaining the RSF. While in the meantime, Turkey,
29:07
Qatar, perhaps Israel, which I by the way, had signed an
29:10
agreement first with Omar Bashir and then with this Burhan in
29:17
2020 to normalise relations akin to what happened with Bahrain
29:23
and and the UAE around the same time under the late Trump.
29:28
First, the Trump administration. So that that element is comes
29:33
into play here as well. But today we're supposedly
29:37
seeing an enduring war that burst out in Khartoum itself in
29:43
2023 with the RSF this Hemeti militia for a while at least
29:49
occupying Khartoum, forcing the recognised government to move
29:54
operations to Port Sudan and continuing with this war of of
30:01
plunder in western Sudan with the so called government of of
30:09
Sudan now in Port Sudan. The city of Port Sudan on the
30:13
Red Sea just in May, I think it was March, April, May of what
30:20
are able to re secure Khartoum of 2025 and the city is
30:25
destroyed. And much of the possibility of
30:31
let's say making Sudan, whatever remains of Sudan a functional
30:36
country is virtually impossible as long as this rivalry
30:42
continues and it continues to be fed with weapons coming from
30:46
China, from UAE. The Chinese drones are usually
30:50
and other kind of sophisticated anti aircraft weapons are coming
30:53
through the UAE which are then shipped to Chad or to Central
30:57
African Republic and then transported by land.
31:00
Even though there is de facto central international
31:04
communities oversight condemning these operations, pricing
31:11
embargoes on the companies that are involved often directly
31:15
connected by family to Amethi based in the UAE or based in
31:21
Uganda or Rwanda, which is also one of those destabilising
31:26
forces in in Africa, which requires another requires
31:32
another episode. I think.
31:36
I'm sorry for your audience. It's very complicated.
31:38
It sounds like I'm just running off in all kinds of directions,
31:41
but that's it. It's it would not be fair to
31:44
just say it's a simple proxy war, But it that's what how it's
31:48
become, at least at the this phase now where it's impossible
31:54
to talk about Sudan in in many circles because of the
31:58
conflicted interest of those who are supposedly intervening to
32:01
try to stop this war. And if we actually again push
32:04
ourselves to see who's actually at the very end responsible for
32:09
all this, it's those who are claim claim to now having the
32:12
exclusive right to determine how this war ends.
32:17
And there's the very simple fact that they don't want to see this
32:19
war end. There's just so much wealth
32:21
being plundered from Sudan at the moment, much like what we
32:26
see elsewhere in the in, in Africa and and parts of the
32:29
Middle East. There's not going to be a
32:31
resolution because the United States, Egypt, Saudi Arabia,
32:37
Qatar, the UAE, Russia, China, they all have their very
32:43
specific interests at play here that have nothing to do with
32:48
strategically, you know, defying, if you will, and, and
32:53
challenging arrivals. It's more seeing access to the
33:00
assets that are being plundered and having maybe a greater,
33:05
let's say, piece of the, of this Sudanese pie that's rapidly
33:09
being torn away and eaten up by global capitalism.
33:14
So that's, that's how I don't know if I if that's a
33:18
satisfactory way of explaining what's happening between the so
33:21
called Sudanese forces and the RSF.
33:26
But just now in the last couple of weeks, it's gotten more
33:31
worse, even more so because when it's the rainy season, there's,
33:37
it's very hard to actually have ground battles in Sudan at the
33:40
moment. At least in the western Darfur
33:42
area. There's the city of Al Fasha,
33:45
which is the main city of Darfur, which is under siege now
33:49
for I think 500 plus days, 300, four, 100,000 people are stuck
33:55
there dying, starving. The 14,000,000 Sudanese are now
34:02
categorically under the radar of of possible starvation,
34:07
suffering from hunger. And now the drones, the warfare
34:12
that is becoming more and more a, a, a quality of life in many,
34:18
many parts of the world, whether it be in Eurasia or in Africa
34:23
has now become a feature of the war in Sudan where drones are
34:29
being flown into cities and destroying infrastructure.
34:33
In Port Sudan, the so called capital of of the RSF, this
34:38
Hemeti, UAE backed Hemeti was syphoning off much of the gold.
34:46
His capital Naila is also been attacked by drones that have
34:50
been provided by Erdogan's son in law by Rakhtar's company.
34:56
So the same kind of weaponry that is being marketed as a new
35:01
kind of warfare in Gaza or in the eastern Ukraine is now being
35:08
used to great effect, great destructive effect in places
35:13
like Sudan. So that's where we're at.
35:16
And yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, look, I was just
35:21
going to comment on on, you know, how hard it is for people
35:24
to to understand all the all the names that are being given out
35:29
here. I mean, I, I grew up.
35:30
He's in, in Northern Ireland and even that relatively simple
35:35
conflict was, was very difficult for people that are outside the
35:39
country to, to really get to grips with.
35:41
So, so I'm, you know, I'm also struggling somewhat with all the
35:45
players now what I'd what I'd like to get an idea of, because
35:49
the British government insists that no British arms or weaponry
35:54
goes to Sudan, that that's banned.
35:56
The question is, are British or European or United States or how
36:01
much weaponry from from our military industrial complex is
36:06
going through these Middle Eastern countries to contribute
36:10
to to that side of the conflict? Again, I think there's there's
36:15
many layers of separation now. I think that what the UK and US
36:21
are doing are providing the kind of the infrastructure of
36:26
diplomacy of, of maintaining and securing the narrative about
36:31
what's going on in Sudan as opposed to the actual mechanics
36:34
of the war itself. You know, the, the technical
36:40
side. And the ones who are actually
36:41
fighting these wars are from the region itself or from Turkey,
36:47
UAE, Russia. So those whose those populations
36:51
who are have been scattered by events after the Cold War ended
36:56
have found no new niches, new roles to play with manpower
37:00
being come coming from countries that have historically trained
37:06
their civilians in in some shape or form in military.
37:11
UAE doesn't really have a functioning army per SE, but it
37:13
does have the means to actually recruit actively from overseas.
37:18
We know the RSF, for instance, Amethi sent thousands of his
37:22
fighters several years ago to Yemen, for instance.
37:26
They also helped shore up the government in east Libya on
37:32
behalf of the UAE and their allies in that war that that
37:38
happened since the fall of Gaddafi.
37:41
So the manpower is provided to the large extent in from Chad,
37:47
Sudan itself, from Colombia, from other countries that seem
37:53
to have become as a, as a kind of development model providing,
37:58
availing their men to fight in wars around the world.
38:01
Then unfortunately it includes Russians and Ukrainians.
38:04
They're part of the story. The technicians who are perhaps
38:11
flying the drones are actually coming from the UAE and from
38:14
Turkey. The the last rate series of air
38:19
battles taking place with drones saw the death of technicians who
38:24
were Turkish and Emirati members of Emirati and Turkish military
38:28
services. So that makes it an interesting
38:32
way of answering your question that it's it's not arms coming
38:37
from Lockheed Martin or the equivalent BASF.
38:42
These are not, I mean, those are too expensive.
38:44
I think for this kind of war. This is a war of machine guns,
38:52
some grenades, rocket propelled grenades and relatively cheap
38:56
drones that are made in in Turkey in maybe there's some now
39:05
factories in the Gulf, we don't know, made in China.
39:10
And they make their way into these theatres just like the old
39:13
AK47 used to do that. But the CIAMI MI6 there again,
39:19
their allies in the region are more than happy to pay for those
39:22
weapons. But the ones who are going to be
39:25
dying are the ones who are hired as guns for hire or even not
39:29
even guns for hire, but just to survive, to eat.
39:33
We saw that throughout the wars in 1990s in West Africa that
39:37
kids would be armed and they would be more than willing to
39:41
kill because they that's the only way they could eat because
39:43
they were orphaned. And Sudanese has produced the
39:47
wars, the violence in East Africa and the Horn of Africa
39:49
has produced millions of such kinds of people who have no
39:55
other means but to kill in order to or you know.
40:00
Be avail themselves to kill in order for them to survive.
40:05
That's their now. It's a very rational,
40:10
unfortunately it's a very rational decision that people
40:13
are making who have again no families anymore or they have
40:18
families and they have to feed. So how are you going to do that
40:20
when your country is in complete turned upside down so you don't
40:27
need boots on the ground. There may be again some
40:29
technical there are certain CIA and MI 6 assets are on the
40:33
ground observing all of this as well as are.
40:36
They just observing or are they well?
40:38
Maybe they are. They're also helping,
40:40
facilitating the and directing the way the conflict is being
40:43
fought. That's it's.
40:46
But I think they're, again, they have been able to separate
40:48
themselves a little bit by way of having these other regional
40:51
actors take the lion's share of the responsibility from media,
40:56
academic focus to the actual practical dying in these fields.
41:02
So Turkish technicians, Emirati technicians are the ones now
41:07
being killed alongside those that they are supporting these
41:12
local regional fighters. So, but the, the, the
41:19
responsibility still lies in Washington, in London for sure.
41:23
If but that's how these wars unfortunately are so
41:27
successfully Blair and those types that separate themselves
41:32
so neatly, right? The war in Gaza is a war of
41:36
empire, but we are going to focus on personalities like
41:41
Netanyahu is almost exclusively responsible for Hamas, where in
41:46
fact this, as we can see with Trump's marketing, the the
41:53
future development of a destroyed refugee compound.
42:00
I mean this this if you really push it, This is the kind of
42:05
nature of disaster capitalism. I, I don't like to use this this
42:10
woman's phrase, but this is very much the working model since the
42:16
end of the Cold War. And unfortunately Sudan has been
42:19
sucked into this logic. And even though the Sudanese by
42:23
the vast majority had a response to this, but they were never
42:27
allowed to pursue democratically their their demands for
42:32
autonomy, for independence. And just so that we're
42:36
absolutely clear about this, I mean, you've, you've talked
42:38
about Russia and China's contribution to this.
42:42
But is it the case that in fact the, the Belt and Rd initiative
42:49
hasn't contributed to, to solving this problem in any way
42:53
up to this point? Or is is it the case that that
42:55
that actually that is the the the potential way out of this at
43:00
the end of the day? Well, the pipelines that for
43:03
instance, Kenya, which funded by Chinese finance that will
43:09
eventually spirit South Sudan's oil, not through Sudan, but
43:14
through Kenya, that one could look at it in a positive way.
43:19
But it's also kind of functioning in, in very much the
43:24
same ways that I was just in very great detail explaining
43:29
what was happening to these countries.
43:31
I mean, I mean building infrastructure to access Dr CS
43:36
minerals, whether it be done by way of Chinese financing and
43:42
Chinese expertise or development agencies that were in the back
43:48
pocket in historically with the United States or Britain results
43:55
in the same thing. The plunder of these countries
43:58
with very little positive coming to nothing positive for the
44:06
populations who are suffering from the environmental
44:08
destruction from often the, the, the lion's share of the wealth
44:13
just being exported out to international markets.
44:17
So the, the, in the end, the, the end result is the same.
44:20
They, there's there are these new demands on raw materials
44:25
that find their way out in the international markets,
44:28
regardless if it's done through a Beltway that's funded by
44:32
Chinese working class savings or by Wall Street.
44:37
And there are people who are going to die on on on either end
44:40
of that. There's nothing has been
44:42
resolved with DRC. No one's intervened to stop the
44:46
war in Yemen or in Sudan or in or in Ethiopia, even though they
44:54
supposedly BRICS countries are invested in in at least that as
45:02
a way. It's as it's marketed as an
45:05
alternative to what has been long recognised as a fundamental
45:11
problem with Western capital trying to secure the very same
45:15
assets that are now availed. Because the heavy lifting has
45:20
been taken over by the savings of Chinese middle class who have
45:27
been built up since the 1980s, Nineteen 90s thanks to Europe's
45:31
and America's infrastructure moving to China.
45:35
So all of our Apple phones and all this technology that we're
45:37
using to talk to each other now, which is now made by brilliant
45:41
hard working people, has resulted in a huge pool of money
45:47
that does the work of empire in. It's just in different terms and
45:53
sadly weapons from China are killing people from Sudan, just
45:58
like weapons from Israel or Turkey or BASF, and no one's put
46:06
a stop to that. And So what do you think it's
46:09
going to take to get a stop to, I mean, is this, is this a
46:11
matter of of general populations understanding even that this is
46:17
happening and being willing to to provide some kind of
46:22
opposition or how do you see this ending?
46:25
Well, vast majority of Sudanese understood this from the very
46:28
beginning and again, their efforts to organise and
46:32
peacefully or maybe not even peacefully, but to secure
46:37
independence from this juggernaut of globalisation was
46:43
suppressed by the very violent factor factions who are now at
46:48
war with each other. How this is going to stop?
46:51
It's not going to stop because the Donald Trump's
46:54
administration or Tony Blair's think tank comes and saves the
46:58
day. That's not going to happen
46:59
because they're not interested in seeing the end of this war or
47:02
any other war. What's going to stop it
47:05
unfortunately is going to be the exhaustion of the people
47:07
themselves or that one of the factions actually is able to
47:10
secure ultimately a military victory.
47:13
But the very fact that if you again, supposed rivals in the
47:19
region, Turkey and Qatar versus Saudi Arabia and UAE, the very
47:23
fact that all these countries have American military bases
47:26
means that they all and they all help supply Israel during their
47:32
their very particular war against indigenous peoples to
47:37
secure resources to change the dynamics of, of Palestine.
47:44
They're all serving in the end, a larger enterprise that has
47:49
unfortunately, since the Cold War, become quite very clear
47:53
that it's, it's, it's a, it's a race to the end in which a very
47:57
small percentage of the people in the world have absolute
48:00
authority over our lives through their technology, through their
48:04
laws, and more importantly, have absolute control over the
48:08
natural resources and the wealth that these resources produce for
48:12
them. And again, wealth equals power.
48:16
They have more money than they can ever need.
48:18
But the, the, the way that this wealth is accumulated actually
48:23
destroys societies who have until today been able to at
48:28
least put some kind of brake on this process that we've been
48:32
monitoring for the last two hundred, 250 years.
48:36
So societies like Yemen, like Sudan, in parts of Eastern
48:41
Africa, Horn of Africa who have and have incredibly
48:47
sophisticated understanding of how their with their place in
48:50
the world and they've been articulating resistance to this.
48:53
They have been destroyed by these various tactics and
48:58
unfortunate that implicates everyone who benefits from the
49:02
plunder of Africa, not just the usual suspects that we like to
49:07
highlight in our own neighbourhood.
49:09
But this is a global phenomenon. And everyone who's seeing gold
49:15
or oil, buying that oil and gold or the cobalt, they're all
49:22
responsible for this. Not unfortunately.
49:27
And who's going to take the blame?
49:29
UAE, Turkey, you know that that's Israel.
49:33
Those are, again, I think a misdirection of our our, our
49:36
focus of, of critique and we ultimately need to stop our own
49:43
City of London, Wall Street, Shanghai people who are
49:48
profiting from this. I think that's a good place to
49:50
leave it for today, he said. Lumi, thank you very much for
49:52
joining me today. I would really love to, to, to
49:55
follow up with this and, and look at other areas in, in Sahel
50:01
and that are experiencing not perhaps not the same scale, but
50:05
certainly insurgencies of their own and, and understand this,
50:08
this region a lot better. Because obviously all the focus
50:12
is on Eastern Europe and, and the Middle East at the moment,
50:16
but it's not the only problem. So thank you very much for
50:19
joining me today. Thank you, Mike.
50:20
Thank you very much.