#north darfur

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jess Craig at Vox:

After more than a year of neglect from global leaders and massive funding gaps for humanitarian assistance, the war in Sudan has reached a critical tipping point. Warring parties are waging a deadly battle for control of El Fasher — the capital of the state of North Darfur and, until recently, one of the last safe havens for civilians. If the city falls, experts warn there will be dire human rights consequences, ranging from ethnic cleansing to outright genocide for millions of people.

What’s happening in El Fasher is just the latest in the year-long conflict between two rivaling military groups struggling for power after working together to oust Sudan’s former president and his successor. General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the general of the country’s military, known as the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), became the de facto ruler of Sudan in 2021 — but tensions with his temporary ally, the paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), soon boiled over as the leaders attempted to integrate the RSF into the SAF. This tension grew into a civil war last year, one that has created the world’s largest displacement crisis: On Monday, the United Nations told the AP that more than 10 million people — about a quarter of the population — have already been internally displaced since the war began. The SAF and RSF have clashed sporadically in El Fasher, which is the government military’s last foothold in all of western Sudan, but the town has largely been spared the worst of the war until recent weeks. That changed on the morning of May 10, when heavy fighting between the two groups broke out. Near daily bombings, indiscriminate shelling, and airstrikes have rocked the city since. More than 1,000 civilians have been injured and 206 people have died, according to Claire Nicolet, the emergency program manager at Médecins Sans Frontières. Hospitals and camps for internally displaced people have been damaged by gunfire and explosions. Very few aid convoys carrying food and health supplies have reached the estimated 2 million civilians in the city. 

As RSF has expanded its control of other towns in Darfur over the course of the war, they have resorted to ethnic targeting and brutal violence against civilians, including raping, torturing, and killing non-Arab civilians and using racial slurs against them, as Human Rights Watch has documented. Human rights experts are concerned that if El Fasher falls to the RSF, it might trigger a new wave of ethnic cleansing, reminiscent of the genocide that occurred in Darfur in the early 2000s when some 200,000 non-Arab civilians were killed by Janjaweed militias and government forces. The RSF evolved from the Janjaweed militia, an Arab-majority fighting force created by the former president to fight Darfuris in the mid-1980s. 

Although the current war between RSF and SAF is more of a power struggle than a sectarian one, ethnic tensions have long simmered in Darfur since the genocide, Akshaya Kumar, the director of crisis advocacy at Human Rights Watch, explained. If RSF gains the upper hand, they will control the entire Darfur region where most non-Arab communities reside.  The situation is all too familiar. As it was in 2003, the crisis teeters on the brink of famine and genocide. And as was the case then, the world’s worst humanitarian crisis remains unconscionably neglected by the foreign governments and international bodies that have the power to intervene to push for a peaceful resolution or to urge the warring parties to respect international humanitarian law. In the coming months, the humanitarian and human rights situation in Darfur and across Sudan may be finally too harrowing to ignore, but by that point, it may be too late to do anything about it.

Vox takes a look at the vastly under-covered story of the Darfur Genocide and the battle for control of El Fasher in Sudan.

[hongtonie]

[dailyworldecho]

[nuroful]

[notyourtoday]

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Caption on post -

The Gaza health ministry said Israeli forces are stealing organs from the bodies of people killed in field executions.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Dr. Ashraf A-Qudra, the spokesperson for the Gaza Health Ministry, said up to 100 bodies at a time are often returned to Gaza from lsrael and buried without being identified, which he said is devastating for families who do not know the fate of their missing relatives.

A-Qudra said bodies are taken from Gaza to an unknown location in Israel, where their organs are stolen or their bodies are used for medical research. The bodies are then returned to Gaza either decomposed or missing organs.

By @middleeasteye on Instagram

[weepingfireflies]

People & countries mentioned in the thread:

DR Congo - M23, Cobalt

Darfur, Sudan - International Criminal Court, CNN, BBC (Overview); Twitter Explanation on Sudan

Tigray - Human Rights Watch (Ethnic Cleansing Report)

the Sámi people - IWGIA, Euronews

Hawai'i - IWGIA

Syria - Amnesty International

Kashmir- Amnesty Summary (PDF), Wikipedia (Jammu and Kashmir), Human Rights Watch (2022)

Iran - Human Rights Watch, Morality Police (Mahsa/Jina Amini - Al Jazeera, Wikipedia)

Uyghurs - Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) Q&A, Wikipedia, Al Jazeera, UN Report

Tibetans - SaveTibet.org, United Nations

Yazidi people - Wikipedia, United Nations

West Papua - Free West Papua, Genocide Watch

Yemen - Human Rights Watch (Saudi border guards kill migrants), Carrd

Sri Lanka (Tamils) - Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch

Afghans in Pakistan - Al Jazeera, NPR

Ongoing Edits: more from the notes / me

Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh/Azerbaijan (Artsakh) - Global Conflict Tracker ("Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict"), Council on Foreign Relations, Human Rights Watch (Azerbaijan overview), Armenian Food Bank

Baháʼís in Iran - Bahá'í International Community, Amnesty, Wikipedia, Minority Rights Group International

Kafala System in the Middle East - Council on Foreign Relations, Migrant Rights

Rohingya - Human Rights Watch, UNHCR, Al Jazeera, UNICEF

Montagnards (Vietnam Highlands) - World Without Genocide, Montagnard Human Rights Organization (MHRO), VOA News

Ukraine - Human Rights Watch (April 2022), Support Ukraine Now (SUN), Ukraine Website, Schools & Education (HRW), Dnieper River advancement (Nov. 15, 2023 - Ap News)

Reblogs with Links / From Others

Indigenous Ppl of Canada, Cambodia, Mexico, Colombia

Libya

Armenia Reblog 1, Armenia Reblog 2

Armenia, Ukraine, Central African Republic, Indigenous Americans, Black ppl (US)

Rohingya (Myanmar)

More Hawai'i Links from @sageisnazty - Ka Lahui Hawaii, Nation of Hawai'i on Soverignty, Rejected Apology Resolution

From @rodeodeparis: Assyrian Policy Institute, Free Yezidi

From @is-this-a-cool-url: North American Manipur Tribal Association (NAMTA)

From @dougielombax & compiled by @azhdakha: Assyrians & Yazidis

West Sahara conflict

Last Updated: Feb. 19th, 2024 (If I missed smth before this, feel free to @ me to add it)

[rememberthelaughtermp3]

Nearly 230,000 women and children are projected to die from hunger in Sudan in the coming months.

Now more than ever it is incredibly important to support community aid kitchens doing vital work on the ground.

[khizuo]

Here's an article about this from Medicine Sans Frontiers (MSF)

(February 6, 2024)

[soon-palestine]

[hongtonie]

[fairuzfan]

Hey I am a Sudanese and I want to provide context to why what Motaz said is racist ... (I have to no ill feelings towards him or anything similar ... this is just for education purposes).

1. Attaching being black/dark skinned to being Sudanese. Yes it true Sudanese are "black", but people with dark skin exsist across all the Arab nations ... and Sudanese people have different sade and tone of blackness, you won't find two people with the same "color" in the same household (i.e siblings...etc).

We use different specific terms to describe different skin tone of blackness ... • wheat قمحي • Asmer اسمر• green اخضر •blue ازرق •black اسود.

Attach blackness to Sudanese lead to multiple racist remarks like some can reserve a question "how can you be Sudanese and be light skinned? You are probably mixed right?" .... and multiple portrayal of Sudanese by non-Sudanese actors in media lead to them doing "black face". (For example: ادوار ناصر القصبي في مختلف اجزاء "طاش ما طاش") and (there is a scene in the Egyptian movie "عيال حبيبة" where they meet a light skinned Sudanese person and they end up painting his skin black because light skinned Sudanese do not exist).

I am not talking about South Sudan or the west part of (north) Sudan "Darfur", I am talking about Sudan as whole. Sudanese are East African of course we are "black" (I am not gonna touch the subject of Colorism and tribalism that we suffer as a society).

2. The way he pronounced "Ana Asmar" it sounded like he is trying to imitate the Sudanese dialect by changing the "s" sound to sound like a "z" sound. (It ended up being more like "أنا أزمر" and not "أنا أسمر") ...

First of all: we don't talk like this ... sure some people sometimes change the "س" to "ز" like in the word "nine تسعة تزعة"، but never the word "Asmar اسمر" we say it as it is.

Second: it maybe a reach ... but sounded like a broken Arabic. We are Arabs we speak a normal arabic dialect like any other Arab nation ... (to tell how many times I met Arab for different nations and be surprised that I can speak and understand Arabic... like they expect us to speak in a different language).

This is why what he said in the video is racist and problematic.

Side Note: something related to racism towards Sudanese that unrelated to the video, I am saying this to educate people ... for the love of God عليكم الله when you meet a Sudanese person and know they are a Sudanese for the first time don't say "يعني انت زول؟" ... it is condescending. "زول" means: person/شخص/human it is not a specific term that mean Sudanese it is just a normal word that just means a person. Of course I am a "زول" and you are a "زول", everyone on this earth no matter their nationality/ethnicity/race is a "زول" ... so stop being racist.

I apologise for the long rant.

With love

thank you so much for sharing, i think this is really important for people to read. i really appreciate you taking the time to write this out.

i remember seeing other reasons why people were angry at what he said including how he was laughing instead of asking why the aid was in gaza and not sudan also, making it seem like hes taking the situation in sudan lightly.

[nuroful]

IMMINENT ATTACK ON LAST DARFUR HOLDOUT- SUDAN

[northgazaupdates]

From the statement by Darfur Women Action Group:

Darfur Women Action Group is extremely alarmed by the disturbing news coming out from El Fasher, North Darfur. We are reaching out to you with an urgent appeal to seek your support to call on the US government and the United Nations Security Council to take serious action to protect civilians and avert the unfolding and deadly mass atrocities that are currently underway in El Fasher, North Darfur.

From the latest information on the ground, we just got the news that there is a huge mobilization among Arab tribes affiliated to the RSF to circle El Fasher and also mobilization from those rebel groups sided with SAF and interborder tribes from Chad and other parts of Darfur. There is already a blockade of fuel coming into the city and there are no water tankers operating to supply water for the large numbers of the Internal Displaced Person(IDP). The limited commercial food supply that used to come from Libya or Chad is now blocked from reaching those in need, isolating civilians from all survival means. People are already dying and all indicators point out the fact that the RSF is preparing for a new decisive attack on El Fasher and try to wipe out not only the SAF forces and the existence of African tribes who sought refuge there. The situation in El Fasher, if allowed, will be beyond any one can imagine.

DWAG Homepage and opportunities for support and action

[nimrochan]

No disrespect, and I want to say that jewish people should absolutely be safe and feel welcome and happy everywhere in the world. But how can you talk positively about moving to Israel, paying taxes to a government, that has been confirmed to have killed 13.000 children? Do you not see an issue with moving to a state that has been determined by the ICJ to be committing a genocide right now?

Thank you for your question. I’ll do my best to answer this as an Israeli-American with a more inside perspective than most people who haven’t been in the area.

Incoming novel.

First off, I encourage you to read my pinned post.

Second, I believe Israel is a tiny country that as being held to an impossible standard. The situation there is very unique and I ask you to not compare it to others.

(I promise I’m going somewhere with this) in the past ten years, half a million Syrians and half a million Yemenis died in civil war in what I think are actual genocides. Millions more are refugees. China forcibly puts its Muslim citizens in “re-education” camps, another form of cruelty and cultural genocide. There are other genocides actually happening in Congo and Darfur and other places. There are humanitarian crises in Arab countries regarding the horrific treatments of women. And in North Korea, the situation has always been dire - it contains a concentration camp the size of Rhodes island.

This leads me to ask- why is the hate for Israel so widespread and deep? I’ve never seen protests addressing these aforementioned issues so passionately. I almost NEVER see them addressed on social media. I have never seen Russian, Chinese, Afghani people etc in places OUTSIDE of their countries being harassed to the extent that Jews and Israelites are. Jews outside of Israel have been harassed and attacked, some have even been murdered. Our synagogues and graveyards have been vandalized. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people openly march for our deaths rather than to condemn terrorism or condemn far more horrible governments. I can only come to the conclusion that it’s antisemitism. It’s not a coincidence that the only Jewish country in the world a) has such a microscope over it, b) is one of the most terrorized countries in the world, and c) has so much widely-accepted misinformation regarding it. Including the whole “white colonizer” narrative - most Israelis are brown.

The UN has a history of not accepting Israel as a country and disregarding the years of constant terrorism against it. It has not acknowledged 10/07. The voters of the ICJ include Bashar Al Assad who is the president of Syria. Yes that same Syria that kills its own people. Another voter is from China. Same China with countless human rights violations. Another voter whose name escapes me now made motions to deny humanitarian crises in other Arab countries. So between the UN and the ICJ voters, the parties are extremely biased and ignore far worse issues. So I am not going to take them seriously. I hope you ask yourself what else may have skewed your perspective on the war, if such big international organizations are demonstrably biased.

Genocide is done with intent. In the last 50 years, the Palestinian population has grown FASTER than the world’s Jewish population. I can tell you first hand, as someone with many family members who have served in the IDF, and who knows how strong the Israeli military is - genocide is not, has never been, and will never be the intention of Israel. If it WANTED to commit genocide, I guarantee you that absolutely far more Palestinians would have been slaughtered and I would tear up my passport in that case.

When the LEADERS of a county cross a border into ANOTHER country, unprovoked, and personally slaughter and rape thousands of civilians, that is genocide and that is declaring war. It’s a very small scale genocide, but technically it is. If you read the charter of Gaza, it actually states the goal of killing all Jews. Hamas killed the maximum number of Israelis that was in their power at the time. Including people that my own family were close to.

Growing up in Israel, among some Arabs, I can tell you that no one EVER taught me to hate Arabs. In fact they taught us Arabic in school along with English. All street signs are in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. Meanwhile across the border, their government put guns in kids’ hands and teach them that Jews are pigs. And I don’t think they’re considerate enough to put any of their public signs in Hebrew.

You can see pictures online of Hamas dressing up their kids as child soldiers.

I don’t know if you ever saw the footage of Hamas driving around Gaza with dead bodies after the 10/07 attack and many Gazan civilians celebrating and dancing with their kids and handing out candies, mutilating the bodies further. Look up Shani Louk.

While a handful of Israelis are openly racist (just like there are racists everywhere else on the planet), you will NEVER see something this horrific on Israeli streets. NEVER.

Obviously, not all Gazan civilians are this heinous and nobody should be punished for where they were born (and anti-Israelis are lost on the irony of calling all Israelis kid-murdering genocide-lovers who deserved what happened to them including rape and infantacide). But I want you to ask yourself, If this was My country, how would they respond? I don’t think Israel is responding WORSE than America or other strong countries would. Again that leads me to ask why the hate is out of proportion even for their strong response.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza reports that about 30-40K casualties by Israel. Now that organization is run by… Hamas. But okay, I’m willing to believe that number. I’m willing to believe that that number is double. And I’m extremely saddened by innocent Gazans suffering because of the carelessness and evil of their leaders. But let’s look at the number for now.

Israel reports that about 17,000 of the people killed in Gaza are Hamas militants. That leaves a civilian-combatant ratio of 1:1.2 - 1:2. That’s… average for war. For a dense urban area like Gaza? That is LOW. That does not fit the definition of genocide. It is war, and it sucks, but it’s not genocide.

As for children dying - We do not yet know exactly the number of children who are militants. A baby is counted as a child, but so are the 15-17 year old child soldiers that Hamas recruits. So now the line is blurring.

Not to mention, Hamas has been caught altering birth dates on records of dead Gazans to bring their ages down. Some 18-year-olds are falsely reported as being 17 at death to falsely increase the numbers of killed children on paper.

To go a little off topic, Al Jazeera has also been caught numerous times censoring Gazans criticizing Hamas and reporting biased news. Heck they even reported the rape and murder of my people as “a necessary step.” Look up Howidy Hamza, a Palestinian reporter who talks about Hamas. Hamas is unbelievably cruel to their own people. Yet protests in the US and around the world praise them.

Let’s go back to Israel being the most terrorized country in the world behind Somalia. Do you know what’s going on in Somalia? Of course probably not - another crisis largely ignored by the world because it’s not as exciting or interesting.

Again I grew up in Israel. In the 90’s there was a rash of suicide bombings on buses by the PLO, so I remember avoiding buses as a child out of fear. I also remember waiting in line with my family to get free gas masks because Saddam Hussein once threatened biological warfare on us. Fun times.

I went back to visit in 2015 - this time, a trend of Palestinian civilians in Israel randomly stabbing Jews or running over them or throwing rocks at them. Some Palestinian teens threw rocks into traffic and killed a 2-year old.

And in the past 20 years at least, Hamas and OTHER parties have been sending rockets into Israel. Into civilian areas. Do you think that’s normal? Do you think it’s normal to have apps to alert you to rockets and to have so many bomb shelters? Have you ever spoken to a relative overseas and heard rockets in the background while on the phone with them?

Do you know how many hundreds of thousands of us would be dead if it weren’t for the iron dome?

EDITED TO ADD: Israel responds to rocket fire to destroy the source, because the iron dome is not perfect and CONTINUED firing eventually harms Israeli civilians. Yes, Hamas makes sure to fire rockets from Gazan civilian areas. Another note I want to bring up - I don’t know how many Gazans are displaced currently, I have a hard time finding a nonbiased source, but I would guess around 750K - 1.2 million. If they are displaced RATHER then killed, that’s another contradiction to calling this war a genocide.

Do you know why Gaza has received billions of dollars in aid over the years - enough to turn it into a living paradise - only for Hamas to use it to build underground tunnels and rockets for the purpose of attacking a country that has NEVER in its history attacked first or started any wars? (Yes, believe it or not, Israel has never STARTED a war since its inception).

The other problem with Gaza is Hamas intentionally having military targets under densely populated areas. When Israel warns civilians to leave, via leaflets or alerts, many times Hamas threatens them to stay and become martyrs. On top of it, they dress as civilians and recruit children, and fire rockets from refugee camps and apartment buildings and schools and hospitals. This is neither legal nor ethical warfare.

Israel does not, has never put military targets near civilian, nor does the IDF recruit children or dress as civilians. That’s a bare minimum.

I won’t deny that members of the IDF have done shitty things, just like the American army and other armies around the world have probably done, but if I had to choose between the country with the military that wants me dead and Israel… yeah. At least rape and other torture are ILLEGAL for the IDF. Meanwhile Hamas continues to freely rape hostages as I type this. Because they make the laws there.

Yes Israel cares more about its own citizens than foreign citizens like Gaza, but again, that’s no more evil than other normal countries.

To address another stereotype about Israel being a racist and apartheid state - there are two million Arab Israelis living peacefully there. There are Arab countries who hold peace treaties with Israel.

So you tell me in your ask, Jews should be safe and welcomed around the world. The sentiment is appreciated, but this is not the case with reality, sadly. There is NO population of 2 million Jews in any other middle eastern country. Many of us left for Israel due to severe oppression. There are no more Jews in Yemen for example. My grandfather left for Israel from his home in Lebanon because some officials wanted him dead. Why? For committing the crime of smuggling Jews through Lebanon to escape the Holocaust.

My grandparents on my mother’s side escaped post-war Poland because of violent lingering antisemitism.

They would have had NOWHERE to go without Israel.

And we are NOT safe outside of Israel or even in Israel because of the intense hatred. We have been scapegoats for society’s problems for thousands of years and I don’t see it improving any time soon.

How can I talk positively about Israel? It’s the most liberal and progressive country in the Middle East. It’s the only country where it’s legal and safe to be openly gay for example, and it’s the only country there that holds annual pride.

It’s a middle eastern country where I, as a secular woman, can dress how I want, marry who I want, get abortions if I needed, own property, own money, have a prestigious job, and *checks notes* drive.

It’s also the only Jewish country in the world. It’s the place I’ve felt the safest and happiest, surrounded by my own people and family and sometimes I wish my parents and I never left, because I am personally feeling the antisemitism when I march peacefully and get nasty comments, or when I lose long time close friends left and right for being a “genocidal Zionist”, or when I see antisemitic graffiti and signs everywhere I walk.

My taxes in Israel would pay for hospitals that treat people from all around the world including Palestinian children for free. It would pay for the iron dome that keeps my family safe.

My taxes in America have been used to oppress women, and for horrific military actions, etc. and America itself is LITERALLY built on colonial genocide and the backs of slaves. Slightly related, most of North Africa was colonized by Arabs who ran a larger slave trade than the US. I’ve never learned that in school! I’ve never seen anyone talk about that! I’ve never seen Americans or Arabs in other countries get attacked for these things (to be fair, I’m very aware of the racism Arabs and Muslims did feel in the US after 9/11 and I absolutely condemn it).

This same America also lifted sanctions on Iran, allowing it to spare money to give to Hamas to buy weapons and slaughter my people to start this fucking war.

So you ask why I’m saving money to eventually move to Israel from America? I hope I’ve answered as thoroughly as I can. You can go ahead and fact check me through non- biased media. And go ahead and look up “list of terrorist attacks on Israel” while you’re at it too. I’d rather face rockets than continue to live in a country that lets antisemitism (and mass shootings for that matter) run rampant.

[dailyworldcinema]

[mariacallous]

Sudan’s rival generals have ignored warnings of mass starvation. In more than a year of brutal war, the two military factions have weaponized humanitarian aid.

Sudan’s de facto leader, military chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has blocked aid into at least half of the country under the control of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) headed by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti. Meanwhile, the RSF is obstructing trucks into places held by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). Local volunteers running soup kitchens have been targeted and killed by the RSF, particularly in Khartoum, Sudanese aid workers told FP.

The conflict has created the world’s largest hunger and internal displacement crises. The fighting has pushed 25 million people, more than half the nation’s population, into acute hunger and forced about 11 million people to flee their homes, including 2.3 million who fled abroad. More than two million Sudanese could die by the end of this year, aid agencies warn.

In areas where there is food available, extortion and attacks on traders at checkpoints have raised prices. Women have recounted having sex with SAF soldiers in exchange for food. Reports of torture, rape, the use of children under 15 in the fighting, and ethnic-based massacres by the RSF and armed militias have surged over the past year.

“People are dying of hunger in the capital,” said Mathilde Vu, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s advocacy advisor in Sudan. “We are looking at the risk of starvation being used as a weapon of war. … This needs to be monitored. The policymakers already have a tool for that. The U.N. Security Council resolution about conflict and hunger, and what they need to put in place is a monitoring of that.”

Both sides in Sudan’s nearly 17-month civil war have committed “harrowing” abuses that may amount to war crimes, a U.N.-mandated mission reported on Friday, calling for a countrywide arms embargo. Sudan’s military government rejected a proposal by U.N. experts to deploy a peacekeeping force to protect civilians.

Compounding the situation, the humanitarian response is critically underfunded. A $2.7 billion U.N. appeal has been just 32 percent funded. Much of that funding has come from the United States. However, aid agencies say local volunteers on the ground need to be better supported since a cease-fire is highly unlikely in the immediate future.

Famine was declared in Zamzam camp housing about 500,000 displaced people near the besieged city of El Fasher, the state capital of North Darfur—areas where the RSF is blocking aid trucks. There’s a realistic chance of famine in 16 other areas, Vu said, but precise figures are hard to confirm. Last month, the SAF agreed to open the Adré border crossing from landlocked Chad into Sudan, for a period of three months. But international aid agencies told FP that the SAF has made things difficult through lengthy authorizations ensuring only a trickle of shipments gets in.

U.S. envoy for Sudan Tom Perriello visited Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey this week in the latest attempt by the Biden administration to expand humanitarian access in Sudan, following failed peace talks in Geneva. The conflict risks turning into a forever war, in which various external actors seize the opportunity to extend their influence. Turkey, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Russia have been accused of arming warring parties.

While such negotiations are essential, U.S. attention and pressure should also focus on other regional powers with a vested interest in the conflict such as Eritrea and Ethiopia. Foreign mercenaries from Chad, Mali, Niger, the Central African Republic, and Libya are believed to be fighting in Sudan.

Pressuring regional powers could engage local armed militias allied to the warring parties in ultimately ensuring access to places like El Fasher. “It will create more of a buffer than two guys signing an agreement in Jeddah” and then breaking it, Vu said. “You cannot bypass the regional powers. … They really are the ones who have the leverage. It’s very important that Western powers engage them so that they have a constructive role in this crisis rather than a harmful one,” she added. Even if Burhan and Hemeti signed a peace deal, many of the local armed groups involved would likely not abide by it.

Both generals have held meetings with several African leaders, while the African Union has been largely absent in peace negotiations. More recently, Burhan held meetings with Eritrea’s president, Isaias Afwerki, and Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, at the China-Africa summit.