Starvation in Sudan

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

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

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

Dr. Omar Selik, El Fasher, Sudan 

 

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

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

UN Women 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

 

Destroying Sudan in the Name of Total Islamist Conquest

"Thousands of people have been killed since fighting erupted just over a year ago between the Sudanese Army and the Rapid Support Forces, a powerful paramilitary group that is the latest iteration of the janjaweed [devils on horseback], which was central to the ethnic cleansing in Darfur in the 2000s. The R.S.F. helped to crack down on pro-democracy demonstrations in 2019 and, with its general Mohamed Hamdan ... was part of a power-sharing regime that fell apart in April."

"Now it is at war with its former partners in government, and the Sudanese people have become collateral damage. A report from Human Rights Watch in May detailed the R.S.F.'s ethnic-cleansing campaign against the Masalit and other non-Arab people in West Darfur."

"There have been other reports of summary executions, torture and rape. Across the country more than 11 million people have been displaced. Homes have been occupied and looted. Museums have been targeted and their contents probably sold, destroyed or just taken."

"And yet the international community still stands by. Attention is rarely paid to Sudan, and much of what I read reduces the conflict to a power struggle between two generals or a migration problem for Europe. Perhaps this is why R.S.F. fighters feel so free to broadcast their crimes on social media."

Dena Ibrahim, Sudanese national in self-exile abroad

Objects are scattered in the yard of house in Omdurman, central Sudan, May 30, 2024, that was damaged amid fighting in the civil war that has raged for more than a year between the regular military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. AFP/Getty

 

In this barbaric version of a civil war in Sudan, civilian deaths and the aura of terrorism are not  unfamiliar to those who had previously suffered both at the hands of the military and its accomplice in violent persecution now known as the Rapid Support Forces. Back when the black farming community of Darfur was targeted by the Arab-led government of Omar al-Bashir and his horsed henchmen the conflict arose from tensions between agriculturalists and herders competing for scarce land resources.

Now the new war that is tearing the country apart is one of dominance by a fundamentalist Islamism that spurns any government direction toward democracy for its people. Across the country people have been dispossessed of their land holdings, of their homes, of their ability to earn a living, while scarce basic necessities of life including famine sit heavily on the land. Homes are being pillaged, their owners moving on hoping to survive the marauders who loot anything of value.

 

Hospitals have been destroyed, millions of people are facing the threat of dislocation and death. In the year-old war between the Sudanese military and the transformed janjaweed, an estimated 2.5 million people are said to be in danger of starvation. Half the population of fifty million people are in dire need of humanitarian assistance. Non-Arab communities are the targets of the dominant Arab half of the population, finding common cause with the Rapid Support Forces.

 

Residents displaced from a surge of violent attacks squat on blankets and in hastily made tents in the village of Masteri in west Darfur. Paramilitary forces and their allied militias fighting to take power in Sudan carried out widespread ethnic killings and rapes while taking control of much of western Darfur that may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. (Mustafa Younes via AP, File)

 

A country that was finally on its way to achieving a measure of democracy for its people, has been set back on its heels, its ancient heritage in tatters as R.S.F. fighters loot the country's museums, opening ancient caskets with their 3,000-year-old corpses, The Sudanese National Museum rebuilt with aid by UNESCO and the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums, home to artifacts such as steles of ancient warrior queens and 13th-century Christian frescoes has been looted of its historic treasure. 

 

University libraries and archives have been ransacked and torched. Summary executions complete a picture of violent chaos. Over 14,000 Sudanese have died in this year of civil war. Its brutality has some similarities to the still-ongoing conflict in Syria where the regime of Bashar al-Assad continues to target his Sunni Syrian population, some 400,000 of whom have been killed. An ongoing civil war that Russian warplanes aid the Alawite regime with in exchange for a Russian deep sea port. Russia awaits the same opportunity with Sudan.

 

Over ten million Sudanese have been internally displaced. Another two million have fled to neighbouring countries for haven. Charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity are once again being seen in Darfur. Crimes of sexual violence have become an integral part of the conflict, victimizing women and children. A main hospital in Darfur was looted, its closure forced, according to an international humanitarian group. 

 

According to Doctors Without Borders, South Hospital in al-Fasher, the capital city of North Darfur province was attacked by the Rapid Support Forces on Sunday, which opened fire on medical staff and patients. Local media published images showing abandoned wards and corridors, patient beds and medical equipment damaged, blood staining the floors. The Military fought the RSF and forced their withdrawal from the hospital.

Tragedy in Sudan

"Why is the world community turning a blind eye to this conflict? At the government level, there's geopolitics: there are few strategic considerations or resources at stake in the region for major players such as the United States, Russia or China. There is also the memory of the 2003 genocide in Sudan and the protracted UN peacekeeping operation; last week, Sudan's military government asked that the remaining humanitarian mission be withdrawn, though it claims to remain 'committed to constructive engagement with the UN'."

"But at the 'civil society' level, the reason is simple: the conflict doesn't fit the left's anti-colonial narrative. The oppressors are not white or white-adjacent. This crisis cannot be blamed on capitalism, the U.S. or Jews. There is nothing for the left to gain politically, by calling out a community that is part of its own coalition. So just like feminists stay silent when Jewish women are raped, progressives fail to stand up for Black Africans when they are massacred."

"The crisis in Sudan exposes 'intersectionality' for what it is: a big, fat antisemitic lie. the hypocrisy is beyond belief. And the Masalit are the ones to pay the price."

Tasha Kheiriddin, journalist, National Post

A Sudanese woman carrying her daughter on the outskirts of Adre, Chad, July 2023

Zohra Bensemra / Reuters

From Democratic Republic of Congo, to Gaza, just about anywhere in the 'underdeveloped', tribal, sectarian, uncivilized reaches of the world community, where war is prosecuted, women's lives are consumed by rape and slaughter. Terrorists don't much mind killing babies, either. Women are subject o mass rapes, the victimization of the most vulnerable in any society. Perhaps it has always been that way, from ancient history forward, but we like to believe we've progressed as humans since primal times.

 

Yet, terrorists are free in some places where we are thankfully not, to shoot babies in the head, and "punish and terrorize" people, burning communities to the ground. Women and girls taken hostage, held in "slave-like conditions". Ah, a familiar story by now, but one when repeated injudiciously risks the careless of being identified as Islamophobic. Arab terrorists determined to drive an ethnic group away from their ancestral geography. 

In the Darfur conflict when the government of Sudan and its military employed Arab Janjaweed (horsemen) to attack and slaughter and disperse Black Sudanese farmers in a regional conflict that pitted agrarians against herders, when land was valued not for its wealth of grain-growing conditions but for pasturage, the powerful swept down on the vulnerable to drive them off their land, raze their villages, rape their women, and commit mass slaughter; helicopter gunships came in handy for all of that as well.

The scene? Sudan, once again targeting Black Africans, the Masalit. It has been seven months and world leaders, human-rights groups and the progressive left don't seem to have noticed. In Europe and North America there have been no university protests, no rampaging mobs in public arenas. Arab businesses  haven't been targeted, no one has been calling for the isolation of Muslim colonizers. They haven't been condemned as genocidal killrs of babies. Black Lives Matter are nowhere to be seen.

That Islamists have targeted people of colour in yet another attempt at extermination is of little interest, it seems. If the United Nations has been wringing its hands, has anyone noticed? In Sudan 5.6 million people have been displaced as a result of fighting between the Arab paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (which renamed itself from simply 'Janjaweed') and the Sudanese army. Both got along very well for a while after the government coup of 2021.

The RSF killed over a thousand Masalit in 72 hours in the Ardamata refugee camp. 9,000 people were killed since the summer when the conflict broke out. In the five years 2003 to 2008, 300,000 Masalit were killed, 2.5 million displaced by the Arab militia force, Janjaweed when former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir used the terrorists to crush Darfur's rebel groups revolting against the neglect suffered by the Black African population.

Researchers at the Centre for Information Resilience verified videos of militiamen rounding up and whipping Masalit men in Ardamata. The  uniformed men wearing RSF insignia speak of their victims as "sons of dogs", targeting men and boys, an indigenous Darfuri group. "They killed every man they met in my neighbourhood. I was praying when I heard the sound of an explosion. A shell killed my friends and nearly cut off my feet", one Ardamata resident testified.

Lip service to a distaste for the situation did come from the European Union decrying the "ethnic cleansing campaign with the aim to eradicate the non-Arab Masalit community from West Darfur". Human rights obligation done, and done with. Oh, and in case anyone wonders, the Black African Masalit are faithful Muslims. Just not the right kind. 

Refugees fleeing the deadly violence in Darfur are arriving to sites like this one in Adré, in Chad, in dire need.  UNHCR/Ariadne Kypriadi

Another Blighted Rescue of Quasi-Canadians

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

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

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

Unidentified insider source asking for anonymity 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

Khartoum Imploding

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

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

Lakshmi Parthasarathy, 32, U.S. Citizen

 

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

"All the streets are captured by the militias."

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

Musa Osman El Sayeed, 55, Sudanese citizen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Egyptian actor and rapper Mohamed Ramadan

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

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

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

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

Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesperson Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

The Tsar of the Chessboard

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

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

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

Kiril Semenov, Al-Monitor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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