https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/17/sudan_1_year_khalid_mustafa_medani
One Year into War, Sudan Wracked by World’s Largest Displacement and Hunger Crises Democracy Now!/April 17, 2024 [Excerpt Below] ***** Welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you here in studio in New York, Professor. If you can start off by telling us where Sudan stands, one year after the war erupted? KHALID MUSTAFA MEDANI: Well, first of all, thank you, Amy, for having me on the show. It’s a real honor. Thank you for your coverage of Sudan. I think that where we stand is an unbelievable kind of, what the Doctors Without Borders have called, a failure of humanity. I think that there are very few crises in the world historically, including in Africa, where there’s been such an acceleration, in just one year, of the kind of devastation that you just itemized — 9 million displaced internally, over a million across the borders, the seven borders of Sudan, mostly in Chad, Egypt and South Sudan, and the complete destruction of the infrastructure. In addition to that, in December of last year, something occurred that has accelerated the famine, basically — not just food insecurity, but the expansion of the famine. And that is the attack on the Gezira state in central Sudan, which really produces over 60% of the agricultural products of the country. In addition to that, of course, there are 70% of the hospitals that are destroyed. The educational system has completely collapsed. And so, the acceleration of this kind of devastation, I don’t think we’ve seen since perhaps maybe the genocide in Rwanda. And I think that compounding that, for those of us, of course, concerned about the situation, is the lack of attention to the conflict. Of course, eyes are elsewhere, but that has been a really problematic aspect of this conflict so far. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Professor, you remarked that this is a war that doesn’t have support for either side among the Sudanese people. Could you talk about that and also the roots of this conflict, going back to the revolution of 2017 and 2018, how that informed these current warring parties? KHALID MUSTAFA MEDANI: Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the very kind of unique aspects of this particular war, and local Sudanese have insisted, including in Darfur, one of the most ravaged regions, that this is not a civil war, that this is essentially a war between two generals: on the one side, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who’s the head of the Sudan Armed Forces, on the other side, the militia leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti. And whereas, in general, civil wars are characterized by, you know, two groups with some kind of significant constituency and civil society supporting one side or the other, in this particular case, the war has absolutely no legitimacy in civil society and no real constituency for either side. And that, I think, is unique in the history of conflicts in Africa and, I would argue, elsewhere. The reason for that has very much to do with what you said, and that is the genesis and the root of the war really is the revolution of 2018, 2019, that many people followed throughout the world. And what was unique about that particular pro-democracy revolution is that it encompassed the entire country. It wasn’t just in the urban areas. It wasn’t just in the rural areas. It wasn’t just middle-class Sudanese. But Sudanese across social classes, Sudanese across regions, across ethnicities, rose up in late 2018 as a result of implementation of economic policies that raised the price of consumer goods, and it expanded over a six-month period, leading, as you probably know, to the downfall and the ouster of an authoritarian regime led by Omar al-Bashir that lasted for 30 years and had conducted or executed three different wars in the country. That is really the genesis, for viewers and listeners to understand, because this war is essentially a war against that revolution. It’s a war against the Sudanese people. Both of these generals, while they have a great deal of competition over resources, over political power, have one thing in common, and that is their fear of this kind of revolutionary potential, and their, essentially, fear of Sudanese civil society. That’s why, in addition to all of the kind of devastation that we’ve been talking about, a key aspect of the targeting has been civilians. Civilians, of course, have been the greatest victims, and not just randomly. I’m talking about not only doctors and journalists, but also activists and those members of what we call in Sudan and are well known to be the grassroots resistance committees that led the revolution. Those people are either being targeted and killed or expelled from the country or forced to leave the country. And so, that becomes a really important aspect of the root of this particular kind of conflict in Sudan. ***** -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#29959): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/29959 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/105590673/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
