Sudan Crisis – The northeastern African nation is on the brink of collapsing as high fighting continues between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). 

The ongoing collision has affected more than 1 billion people, killed hundreds, and turned Khartoum’s capital into a war zone. The civilians are migrating to the neighboring countries of Chad, Libya, Ethiopia, and Egypt to shelter and protect their lives. 

Under solidarity, the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces agreed to allow civilians to leave the war zone. Moreover, they also agreed to allow humanitarian aid to enter and process the relief operations for the injured.  

But what led Sudan to the catastrophic war today? Here’s an explainer:

What made Sudan’s Capitol a War Zone? 

Sudanese people have struggled to establish a democracy after decades under the one-person rule.

Omar al Bashir came into power in the late 1980s after a brutal military coup. He became the country’s president, ruled for 30 years before the populace erupted, and sought his resignation.

Omar al Bashir resigned after the former military coup, and the Sudanese Army took over Sudan. But people didn’t want them to rule or be in charge of Sudan either. So after immense pressure from the protestors, activists, and demonstrators, the Army agreed to share powers. 

The Army led by Abdel Fattah AL-Burhan agreed to share powers with different political groups in the transitional government. It was intended to oversee the shift to a democratic system. However, the people of Sudan’s’ fortune have some time else in their destiny. After two years, the Army removed the new prime minister and seized power again. 

With the Army in power, the people of Sudan seemed trapped and in limbo. With no clear path or trajectory to rule the country, the armed force and political group representatives have been in ongoing talks to make the transition happen again. However, the transition process held up due to underlying revelry between the Army and the Rapid Support Force that became the Second Army. 

Also Read: Threat To Famine In South Sudan

The Friends that Become Enemies 

The effective leader of the country AL-Burhan, and the leader of RSF, General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, aka Hemedti, were friends initially. For years both were on the same stage and joined hands after the war in Darfur (2003 civil war). Hemedti led a militia at the time known as Janjaweed; they were used by Al-bushir’s (the former president of Sudan) Army. 

The Janjaweed help the Al-bushier army fight rebels in the Darfur region and protect the upper echelon of the Army and senior commanders. However, they were accused of war crimes in Darfur, and AL-Bashir was charged with committing genocide in 2013. Hence, in 2013 Hemedti led the militia to rebrand themselves as the Rapid Support Forces and worked with the Army on different missions.  

Moreover, al-Burhan and Hemedti joined hands and planned to overthrow Omar al-Bashir, the country’s longtime leader, in 2019. 

Besides, they planned a revolution in October 2021, upending the tenuous transition to civilian administration that had been initiated.

Gen Dagalo has said, in a series of tweets, that Gen Burhan’s government were “radical Islamists” and that he and the RSF were “fighting for the people of Sudan to ensure the democratic progress for which they have so long yearned.”

Though the friendship does not last for long, and Gen Dagalo, aka Hemedti, force becomes more powerful. During the pro-democracy protest against Al-Bashir, the RSF force and Army were accused of killing hundreds of people. 

In the tweets, Hemedti stated: “The international community must take action now and intervene against the crimes of Sudanese General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, a radical Islamist who is bombing civilians from the air. His Army is waging a brutal campaign against innocent people, bombing them with MiGs.”

Also Read: The Egyptian Army in Sudan… What are the Reasons?

The War of Power in the Sudan Crisis

Since the killing during the pro-democracy protest, the Hemedti force has acted more independently and grown powerfully. Hemedti forces were able to establish vast investments in the resources within the country and outside, too, especially in gold trading. 

So that brings us to the current Sudan crisis with the realization of the rapid growth of Hemedti force supremacies over Sudan. And expressive political ambition of Hemedti, Gen Al-Burhan led the Army and proposed integrating the Hemedti force into Sudan’s Army. 

However, both heads were unable to agree on the timeline. The Army initially proposed two years of integration, while RSF wanted ten years. 

It is unclear who started the fight, but on April 15, both sides began swapping accusations that they had attacked each other’s bases in Khartoum. 

Slowly, they control the presidential palace, the airport, and the state TV channel. The RSF has no aircraft but a heavy army force with 10,000 men and anti-aircraft weapons. The Army has air power. They have been hitting the RSF residential areas bases in the capitol. 

Both forces are fighting brutally and keep damaging the country’s resources alongside the life of millions of people. There have been plenty of calls to stop the war and take the talk to the table from Sudan’s neighbors. Additionally, despite the efforts of the African Union, the UN, the US, the UK, and the EU, there is no sign of backing up from either side. 

The South Sudanese foreign minister was forced to mediate the war and reach a ceasefire agreement, but violations continued unabated. The two sides say they agreed to hold the talk, but they have repeatedly heard from the Army that conditions are set for these talks. 

However, mass migration is escalating in Sudan with the acceleration in the humanitarian situation. The situation is already out of control; it’s now for big cats to intervene. The UN should take strict action and protect the rights of the people of Sudan. 

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The world is holding trilateral talks aimed at rehabilitating Bashar Assad who is believed to have been responsible for crimes against humanity.

Bashar Assad is undoubtedly an indelible badge of dishonour and shame, not only for Arabs but for the entire humanity.  Indeed, the fact that this contemptible beast is still alive, free and even accorded respect in some quarters,  constitutes a clarion indictment of our world, especially ourselves as human beings.

Russia,  Iran and Turkey, yes Turkey, are holding trilateral talks aimed at rehabilitating Bashar Assad, who is believed to have been responsible for crimes against humanity comparable to genocidal atrocities carried out by notorious mass killers like Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler prior to and during the Second World War.

Indeed, ever since 2011, when some Syrians took to the streets rather peacefully, demanding free elections, Assad promptly ordered his security forces to strafe them with machine-gun fire, killing and maiming hundreds of mostly school children.

This is how the mass murder of more than a million Syrians, including hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians started.

Rehabilitating Bashar Assad: A badge of dishonour

 Assad, army, tightly controlled by his esoteric Shiite sect known as Alawis,  employed the regime’s entire death machine including poisonous chemical gases, to exterminate entire neighbourhoods and population centres.

The regime also inflicted incalculable deaths and widespread mass destruction by dropping explosives barrels from high altitudes, flattening largely populated areas, and causing thousands of casualties.

Aside from denunciations by western powers, especially the United States, Assad’s Russian-supplied arsenal continued to spread death and destruction throughout Syria. In 2014-15, when Syrian rebel forces were marching to Damascus, Russia formally decided to intervene by dispatching dozens of military personnel and military equipment including advanced warplanes.

For its part,  Iran, in coordination with the Russians,  deployed dozens of Shiite militias to protect the only nominally Shiite regime from his mostly “Sunni opponents.” The powerful Lebanese Shiite militia known as Hezbullah also deployed several thousand fighters to protect the terrorist regime from falling. In the meantime, the West refused to supply the rebels with purely defensive weapons to defend themselves from deadly Russian airstrikes. Numerous massacres were perpetrated and hundreds of thousands of civilian homes were destroyed. In short, a majority of Syrian towns and villages came to resemble German towns at the end of the Second World. War.

The scorched-land policy which Russia employed in Syria forced as many as 15 million Syrians to leave their homes  or what had remained of them.

Assad warmly welcomed the expulsion of the bulk of Syrians, saying rather gleefully and shamelessly that Syria didn’t need disloyal citizens. In other words, the Stalinist Butcher considered as treacherous and disloyal to every Syrian demanding democratic rights, human rights, free elections and basic civil liberties such as freedom of speech.

The criminal Iranian role

Iran’s determined support for Assad’s sectarian regime is believed to be motivated by Iranian Mullacracy’s religious hatred of Sunni Islam, to which a majority of Syrians adhere to. Iran’s ultimate goal in Syria is to proselyte considerable numbers of Syria’s Sunni majority into the Twelver Shiite sect, the official religion of Iran. It is really sad and lamentable that a regime that prides itself on fighting and toppling the defunct repressive regime of Shah Muammed Reza Pahlavi has been embracing an even more murderous and evil regime, namely the thuggish Assad regime. 

Read Also : Iran’s embrace of Bashar Assad: An indelible shame

Rehabilitating Bashar Assad: a message of Betrayal

There is no doubt that Rehabilitating Bashar Assad represents a message of Betrayal to the forces of democracy, liberty and human rights in the Middle East and beyond.

The message states in a clarion manner that it is futile to try to depose criminal tyrants and evil dictators no matter what they do and how many millions of people take to the streets demanding their departure.

I am not going to elaborate much on the Russian role in Syria. Russia under the Putin dictatorship accords no value to liberty and wouldn’t really care how many Syrian children are exterminated by Bashar Assad.

Russia is Russia and Putin is Putin,  and expecting the evil tyrant to morph into something more humane or more civilized would be a futile exercise in naivety, wishful thinking and gullibility.

Just look at what he is doing in Ukraine. He has simply destroyed Ukraine just as he had destroyed Syria.

Hence, there is no point in rebuking Putin for his gargantuan evil crimes.

Nor will I expect any positive change on the part of the Iranian regime. A regime that claims to carry a sublime divine message while showering demonstrators with bullets is a murderous regime par excellance, very much like Israel and the Syrian regime itself. It is a hopeless regime.

Enter Turkey

I don’t wish to lump Turkey with Iran and Russia. At the very least Turkey doesn’t indiscriminately spray demonstrators with machinegun bullets as the Syrian and Iranian regimes do. Moreover, Turkey has hosted more than five million Syrian refugees who fled the Russian-backed and-Iranian-funded Assad’s holocaust against his own people, so that he would remain President forever against his people’s desire.

Turkey gave these Syrians accommodation, education and in many instances employment. This is why, it would be unfair to lump someone who gives refugees shelter, food, protection and accommodations with someone who gave Bashar Assad the weapons and financial means to brutally oppress them, slaughter their families and rain bombs and explosive powder barrels on their homes and neighbourhoods. The difference is very vast, indeed.

Turkey: Vital Strategic Asset for Muslims

Moreover, Turkey remains an important strategic asset for the Muslim world, a fact ignored and dismissed by Iran and Assad.

None the less, the Turkish involvement in efforts aimed at reanimating the Hitler of Damascus is making Turkey’s friends and supporters anxious and gravely worried. This is because Assad must under all circumstances be given the chance to commit a greater holocaust than the one he has already carried out. 

Undoubtedly, Assad and his murderous regime will remain a badge of dishonour for the entire humanity. This is what the Turkish leadership must realize.

True, restoring relations with Assad, might bring some tactical benefits for Turkey, especially with regard to Kurdish rebels in northeastern Syria.

However, initiating any measure of strategic cooperation with Bashar Assad would immensely harm Turkey’s image.  Assad and his Iranian masters should belong to the past, not to the future.

Moreover, Turkey which was on the verge of war with Russia in order to protect Syrian refugees in the Idlib region from the devastating Russian airstrikes and savagery of Assad’s sectarian army must make sure that these refugees will not be the target of Assad’s revenge attacks. (end)

Farha is a Jordanian movie directed by Darin Sallam depicting the Israeli-Palestinian ethnic cleansing setting at al-Nakba 1948 or the catastrophe. It is the most brutal coming-of-age movie about a 14-year-old Palestinian girl called Farha living in a Palestinian village. She dreams of attending school and pursuing an education with her best friend Farida in the city while other girls are excited about their friends’ marriages. Nevertheless, things went as unexpectedly; the Israeli gangs barbarically attacked the village, committing massacres against the Palestinian villagers. While waiting for her father to return, she watches through a small hole in the wall as Israeli soldiers execute a family including two young children and a baby. This brutal scene makes Israel backlashes against Netflix over the Jordanian Film Farha.

Sallam has said that the movie is based on the true story of a friend of her mother, who lived years later as a refugee in the Al Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria and recalled her experience as a young girl during the Nakba. Sallam describes the film as a means of helping process a painful memory of that time. The 15-minute scene has angered Israeli officials and the pro-Israelis as well.

Israel is Furious

The film has caused Israel deep chagrin regarding the 15-minute scene. Several Israeli officials blasted the portrayal of the 1948 Nakba in the movie. “It is crazy for Netflix to release a movie that aims to incite hatred and make false excuses against Israeli soldiers,” Avigdor Lieberman said. He stated that the Israeli soldiers would not allow anyone to damage their reputation. Lieberman said that the film is provocative and full of lies against Israeli soldiers. Furthermore, Lieberman revoked state funding to a theatre in Tel Aviv’s suburb of Jaffa that screened the film, with the “goal of preventing the screening of this shocking film or other similar ones in the future.

The campaign also included downvoting of the film’s ratings online and a social media campaign. It calls on people to cancel their Netflix subscriptions. “After more than two years of subscription, I have decided to cancel it due to Netflix’s support for the anti-Israeli film.” one streamer said. “Netflix supports such a shocking and unrealistic scene that is not in line with Israeli and Jewish morality at all. I cannot subscribe to a site that has endorsed such a shocking scene in which [Israeli] soldiers are portrayed as vile as murderers without heart and without any humanity,” another subscriber added.

What is actually “Crazy” is their reaction toward the Film. They do not want people to see it, through all means, and under any circumstances. Consequently, Palestinians’ right to process their suffering through art is being denied unfairly by shutting down screenings of this film.

Palestinian Right to Process Pain through Art

Israel has tightly orchestrated and controlled its own narrative of its birth. Before the military opened its archives of the 1948 war, it issued a policy forbidding the release of any documents. These documents include detailing the forced deportation of Palestinians; any human rights violations, including war crimes, committed by Israeli forces. They also included anything that might “harm the [Israeli Defense Forces]’s image” or expose it as “devoid of moral standards.”

This is neither the first nor the last time that movies depict Palestinians’ suffering through art. Many masterpiece works were made previously including Al-Taghriba Al-Filistinia, The Tower, Inch’Allah, and most notably “Tantura”. Yet, this is almost the first time to air a Palestinian movie on a global platform like Netflix to go trending. We cannot deny that the more the situation complicates, the more the film spreads, affecting prevailing the truth and exposing the heinous crimes of the Israeli thoughtless soldiers.

The movie represents a quantum leap in the artistic field regarding the Palestinian cause. Ironically, from a tiny hole in the wall, the movie exposed Israel to its heinous massacres in 1948, causing chagrin and anger in Israel. The massacre in the movie is nothing compared to what happens nowadays, especially in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. On the same day Israel denied and condemned streaming the film by Netflix, they brutally shot dead the Palestinian youth Ammar Mufleh at point blank. How sarcastic!
see more on this/Israel is hiding crucial demographic facts about Palestinian

Truth is Unsilenced

It is also a story that Palestinians have never stopped telling. Yet, there is something unique about hearing it from the perpetrators themselves. “The Palestinians know the story. They’ve been talking about it, and the world has heard from them, but the world believes the Israeli side a lot of the time, and Israelis do not admit to this story,” said Schwarz. “This is a story of Israel looking the other way.” “We robbed them of their history,” he said. “We not only ethnically cleansed them, took them out, denied their return, but we also robbed them of the true story. Schwars added, “We robbed them of the right to remember, and that is terrible.”

Most importantly, In “Tantura,” a movie named after a Palestinian prosperous fishing village near Haifa that was wiped off the map during the Nakba, Schwarz sets out to investigate the massacre of an unknown number of villagers that was carried out just a week after the establishment of the Israeli state. Releasing Tantura, especially these days while the Palestinian cause is taking over the scene in Qatar World Cup 2022 as well as the Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received an official mandate to form a new Israeli government, is precarious for Israel’s image, consequently.
See more/ Israel Has No Right to Exist if Palestine Has No Right to Exist

Schwarz says that people were killed in different ways and different places in the village. It took about two weeks to bury them. There are testimonies of bodies that have not been buried for 8 to 10 days. In a dehumanizing language, over 90-year-old Israeli soldiers confess to committing heinous massacres in Tantura. Actions cannot be reversed but the evidence is present. For more on this click here.

Farha is currently streaming on Netflix

Despite Israel’s backlashes on Netflix over Farha, it is now available to millions of people to watch on Netflix with a rate of 8.6. Despite attempts to shut down its production, there is a solid case to deepen hatred over terrible events that happened. The film should stand as an acknowledgement of the other side of a historic story about the creation of Israel. A brutal story that people have ignored or denied for too long. You can support the truth by watching the movie, rating it, and sharing the truth even with a trembling voice. Eventually, the truth will prevail.