← History As It Happens
History As It Happens
Kleptocracy and Genocide in Sudan
00:46:30
Sudan's civil war, genocide, and famine continue to go mostly unnoticed in the United States. This is even though millions of people are being brutalized, murdered, raped, or displaced in a conflict where there are no good sides, and where democracy...
Loading summary
Transcript78 lines
- [00:01]
Podcast Host/Announcer
From unsolved mysteries to unexplained phenomena, from comedy gold to relationship fails. Amazon Music's got the most ad free top podcasts included with prime because the only thing that should interrupt your listening is, well, nothing. Download the Amazon Music app today.
- [00:24]
Experian Advertiser
It's okay not to be perfect with finances. Experian is your big financial friend and here to help. Did you know you can get matched with credit cards on the app? Some cards are labeled no Ding decline, which means if you're not approved, they won't hurt your credit scores. Download the Experian app for free today. Applying for no Ding decline cards won't hurt your credit scores. If you aren't initially approved, initial approval will result in a hard inquiry which may impact your credit scores.
- [00:54]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
To skip ads, get bonus content and access to the entire catalog of 500 episodes, subscribe at history as it happens.supercast.com history as it happens September 30, 2025 Kleptocracy and Genocide in Sudan General Abdul.
- [01:15]
Narrator/Reporter
Fattah Burhan presides over devastation.
- [01:18]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
There will never be peace in Sudan until there's accountability for the atrocities committed by the twin butchers of Darfur. Right now it is near collaps on all levels. Political security, economic, social, humanitarian, health.
- [01:30]
Narrator/Reporter
Once allies, the two generals ousted Sudan's long term oppressive military leader, General Omar Al Bashir in 2019.
- [01:38]
Podcast Host/Announcer
Everybody knows about Ukraine, everybody knows about Gaza. Everybody knows about these other areas that are in conflict. This place is unknown. It's a very quiet famine.
- [01:45]
Narrator/Reporter
At least 150,000 people have now died. 25 million people are short of food.
- [01:52]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
Sudan's civil war, genocide and famine continue to go mostly unnoticed in the United States, although millions of people are being brutalized, murdered, raped and displaced in a conflict where there are no good sides, where democracy is not on the line in cities and villages most Americans have never heard of a ceasefire is possible, but true peace and emoticum of justice are distant. That's next as we report History as it happens. I'm Martin DeCaro.
- [02:21]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
If you try and understand the politics of Sudan, or of the Middle east, or indeed of Russia and the world through either classic geostrategy or democracy versus authoritarianism doesn't take you very far. There is another logic at work here, and we see it in very, very clear form in Sudan. Geocleptocracy, the political marketplace. What's at stake is the deals, the deals that can provide more, especially that political money.
- [02:57]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
Civil war began to engulf Sudan even before its formal independence achieved in 1956.
- [03:05]
Historical Narrator
The world has gained a new nation. The Sudan, for 58 years under the joint rule of Britain and Egypt, becomes an independent republic. The proclamation of independence is read from the balcony of the House of Representatives in Khartoum and the new flag is hoisted. Blue for the Nile, yellow for the desert, green for agriculture.
- [03:27]
People came into Khartoum from miles around to listen to the premier, Saeed Ismail El Azari, addressing them on Sudan Independence Day. Yes, the country's independence had just been officially recognized by Britain and Egypt, and the Sudanese flag now replaced the flags of those two nations. Letters conveying formal recognition were read to a joint sitting of the Sudanese parliament. It was certainly a great occasion in Khartoum, and the crowds of rejoicing Sudanese swarmed round as the premier left.
- [03:56]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
The country had been a joint protectorate of Egypt and the United Kingdom, the Anglo Egyptian condominium. Once this ended, internal fissures between the country's wealthier northern region, which was mostly Arab and Muslim, and its less developed southern region, majority Christian or animist, produced bloodshed. The First Civil War lasted 17 years. The Second Civil War began in 1983 after the the central government annulled southern autonomy and imposed sharia law. Nationwide, 2 million people died over two decades, leading ultimately to the independence of south Sudan in 2011. And during this second civil war there was Darfur.
- [04:36]
Former US Official or Historical Narrator
Khartoum reacted aggressively, intensifying support for Arab militias to take on these rebels and support for what are known as the Jenjaweed. The government of Sudan supported the Jinjawid directly and indirectly as they carried out a scorched earth policy toward the rebels and the African civilian population in Darfur. Mr. Chairman, the United States exerted strong leadership to focus international attention on this unfolding tragedy. We first took the issue of Sudan to the United Nations Security Council last fall. President Bush was the first head of state to condemn publicly the government of Sudan as and to urge the international community to intensify efforts to end the violence.
- [05:17]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
You'll remember George Clooney leading the Save Darfur campaign. UN peacekeepers arrived and Sudan was on the front pages of the world's newspapers. That was 20 years ago. Today, a third civil war immiserates millions of Sudanese. There are no Hollywood celebrities testifying before Congress. Most people cannot find Al Fashr on a map.
- [05:39]
Narrator/Reporter
It's been described as a kill zone. Since April, the Sudanese city of Al Fashr has been under a more brutal siege as the paramilitary rapid support forces pushed to seize control.
- [05:50]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
Al Fashr is a city in the Darfur region, where a quarter of a million civilians are trapped by the Rapid Support Forces, a powerful militia army that has committed genocide, according to the Biden administration's determination in its final days, January.
- [06:05]
Narrator/Reporter
2025, 20 months on since the conflict began. And the US called the actions of one half of the conflict genocidal and slacked sanctions on its leader, Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, known as Hemeti.
- [06:19]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
Today, the Trump administration is trying to broker a ceasefire through the outside powers that are backing the combatants. Egypt and Saudi Arabia backed the Sudan Armed Forces under General Abdel Fattah al Burhan, and the United Arab Emirates backed the Rapid Support forces led by General Mohammad Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemetti. From 1956 to today. We can see the through lines, the connections, beginning with the arbitrary territorial boundaries imposed by British and Egyptian rulers that disregarded ethnic and cultural fault lines, creating a fractured natural identity from the start. From this flowed economic instability and poverty, competition for resources, dictatorship, political unrest and religious disputes. In an article in the Journal of Genocide Research, Alex Duval writes, the Sudanese catastrophe fits the category of genocide, but this classification does not capture the entirety of what is happening to Sudanese society. Neither does the term famine encompass the extent of deprivation. The picture is bigger and darker, he goes on to say the explosive cargo carried by the Sudanese ship of stated independence was the unresolved legacy of imperial conquest, exploitation of people and land, racism, and a political habitus of use of violence. That cargo's been burning for 70 years and the ship has finally sunk. The moral issue of the day, he says, and the political challenge of the future is how to assist the surviving civilian passengers. The final element added to this mix today is international indifference. The words of Alex it is true, Sudan does not fit neatly into any democracy versus autocracy framework. From the outside, it might even seem the civil war is about nothing at all. But that is also mistaken. Alex Duval is a scholar at Tufts University and the executive director of the World Peace Foundation. He's considered one of the world's foremost experts on Sudan. Our conversation next Alex Duvall, welcome back to the show.
- [08:24]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
It's good to be with you.
- [08:26]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
We were here one year ago and in one respect nothing has changed since we last spoke. This war is still being fought between the Sudan armed forces headed by General Abdel Fattah al Burhan versus the Rapid Support Forces, also known as rsf. They are led by General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemetti. There are assorted militias involved, but those are the main combatants. However, within or alongside this military logic, a genocide is playing out primarily in the long troubled Darfur region. We'll begin with the RSF. Which people are the RSF killing and why?
- [09:07]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
20 years ago, oddly enough, Sudan was front and center. It was on the front pages. It did have a lot of celebrities like George Clooney making a lot of noise about genocide in Darfur and how terrible the government of then President Omar.
- [09:24]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
Al Bashi was save Darfur was the big.
- [09:27]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
Precisely. Exactly.
- [09:29]
Podcast Host/Announcer
But what we cannot do is turn our heads and look away and hope that this will somehow disappear. Because if we do, they will. They will disappear and an entire generation of people will be gone. And then only history will be left to judge us.
- [09:47]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
And as a result of that, President Bush was pressed to send troops. He didn't send American troops, but he did insist that the United nations go and send a huge mission jointly with the African Union that was there to protect the civilians of Darfur from the depredations of the then government of Sudan and a group called the Janjaweed. The situation in Darfur is on our minds.
- [10:12]
Narrator/Reader of Historical Quotes
The people who suffer there need to.
- [10:14]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
Know that the United States will work.
- [10:15]
Narrator/Reader of Historical Quotes
With others to help solve the problem.
- [10:18]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
So let me explain the Janjaweed. Actually, let me go back to my very first time I did research in Darfur, which was back in 1985.
- [10:27]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
This is what happened. Happens when you talk to a historian. You can never pick a starting point. You go back and back. No, go ahead. Yes, 1984.
- [10:34]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
So. So 1985, I went to. To Darfur, a time when actually nobody knew about Darfur. And my first host, there was an. An old, elderly Arab sheikh ahead of a nomadic tribe that had been impoverished by years of neglect, drought and desertification. And they were losing their camels and being forced to become farmers and beggars, basically. And his name was Hilal Muhammad Abdullah. And he told me that because of the loss of the way of life that they were facing, the world was really coming to an end. And he really didn't know what the future of his people portended. So 20 years on, his son, same age as me, a man called Musa emerged as the head of the Janjaweed, the head of this notorious militia that ravaged Darfur on behalf of the government of Sudan, on behal of President Omar Al Bashir, partly to repress a rebellion, a rebellion by a large proportion of the people in Darfur who really didn't like the Islamist repressive government in Khartoum, and partly because there were a lot of local land disputes the fabric of that society where people used to live together, where nomads who were mainly Arabs and farmers who were mainly from groups like the foreign Masali used to live together. That fabric had been torn apart by famine and drought and economic collapse in the 1980s. Twenty years on, that reproduced itself in civil war and genocide with this group, the Janjaweed, at the head. And 20 years on after that, one of Musa Hilal's lieutenants, this fellow called Hemetti, is now head of this group called the rsf, which is, as it were, the next generation of Janjaweed. And it's a really fascinating. It's a terrible but fascinating kind of political military formation because although it has its roots in this Arab militia with this sort of genocidal agenda of driving some of the many of the local people off their land, seizing their land, committing terrible atrocities, a very age old type of agenda, there's also something incredibly modern and contemporary about it, which is that Hemetti, this leader, is also a very skilled businessman. He is very close to the President of the United Arab Emirates, who is of course, very close to Donald Trump. He was very close to the head of the Wagner group, had a partnership with Yevgeny Prigozhin until Prigozhin's untimely death. They too had a very similar sort of business model. So Hametti is head of this transnational mercenary business corporation with interests in sending mercenaries to Yemen, to Libya, the international gold trade, supplying Russia and the UAE with gold, but then also having its roots in this sort of local genocidal agenda. I say this so we see really over three generations, three short generations, 40 odd years, we see the emergence from a social crisis in Sudan with something that looks very ancient into something that is thoroughly modern and speaks to the way in which politics is being conducted in a very ruthless, mercenary way across the entire Middle east and Africa.
- [14:00]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
Well, we'll get back to my question about who the RSF is targeting right now and why. But yeah, I think you're making a really good point there. When we think of a civil war, maybe we think of formal armies meeting on battlefields, men in uniform within a military logic, one side wanting to militarily defeat the other to gain control of the country, right within that there are genocidal logics and the targeting of ethnic groups, not just in Darfur, but we'll start there because there are atrocities that have been committed all over the country. I'll just point out that between 2003 and 2008, that was the worst part of the Darfur killing that you alluded to earlier, 300,000 civilian deaths, 2.7 million civilians were displaced. The Janjaweed were the key perpetrators. They were going after ethnic groups, the fur or the fur F U r Zagawa and the massalite communities. Now, this has nothing to do with winning a war. These are genocidal atrocities. But at the same time, Alex, doesn't mean the killing was about nothing, right?
- [15:02]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
That's true. I mean, the particular tragedy of Darfur that I've seen over my lifetime is that these people used to live together. These people used to have equitable relationships, sort of complementarity of ways of life. And it sparked into violence through both the degradation of the social and economic base, so that people were desperately poor and were competing for basic resources alongside the politicization of a level of political leadership. So with ideologies of Arab supremacism that came into Darfur, actually across the Sahara from Libya, it was Colonel Gaddafi and people that he sponsored in Libya that actually brought that in Arab and Islamic extremism that came in with the Muslim brothers from Khartoum. And then a counter ideology of which you could call Africanism, the resistance to this. And that exploded into that genocide and those atrocities that you just mentioned of 20 years ago. The force of that conflagration led to another disintegration. So we saw that the coalitions that were put together on either side of that divide disintegrating, the resources were not there for each side to maintain any sort of coherence. And Darfur sort of descended into a kind of Hobbesian anarchy with everyone killing everybody else. And this fellow Hemetti, actually, he led an important mutiny. He led his group, his brigade of the Janjaweed, in mutiny against Bashir. He promised that he would ally with the four rebels against the government. And then the government of Bashir came with a financial offer. Bashir bought him back, literally buying with cash him back into the fold. And so we have these simultaneous overlapping sort of logics, one of which is the ethnic logic, ethnic antagonisms, which in my mind actually don't have deep roots. The roots grew while the conflict grew. And then you have the logic of who can be best positioned, best advantaged, make the most money in this conflict of all against all.
- [17:14]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
So earlier this year, before the Trump administration came to power, the Biden. Biden administration did make a finding of genocide against the rsf. Rapid support forces also said the government of Sudan was committing atrocities as well. It's mostly. I mentioned them before the Masalit people, a non Arab ethnic group, are being murdered by the rsf. Why is this happening? What's the connection there?
- [17:39]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
The particular issue there is quite interesting and complex because Hemetti, the head of the rsf, has national ambitions. This war actually began in an in Khartoum he tried a coup. He was part of a sort of two man junta with the man he's fighting against now, General Abdel Fattah Al Burhan. And the two fell out in April of 2023. And the RSF has its core of fairly professionalized, they're paramilitary, but they were well trained professional forces. And they staged a coup in Khartoum. Didn't work. It turned into a civil war. Now some of the forces within the RSF coalition were groups that had this agend local ethnic domination, ethnic cleansing. And they turned on the Masalit and they completely annihilated Masali communities in the far west of Sudan. Some of them turned on other communities too, and they are unashamed about it. There are terrible trophy videos that they circulate on their WhatsApp groups where they film themselves committing these atrocities. You really do not want to watch these things. And if ever they are brought to court, the evidence is there. They are not only filming themselves doing it, but just as horrible, they are celebrating literally slaughtering people in front of your eyes or before they do that, humiliating them, forcing them to bray like donkeys or bark like dogs, so literally dehumanizing them. And one of the fears at the moment, the particular fear as we speak today, is that the RSF forces are besieging a city called El Fasha in North Tar Fort. And the majority population there is from another group that you mentioned, the Zarawa, which is a much more militarily capable group. They are fighting literally for their lives. But if that town were to fall and the RSF were to overrun it, there's a very, very real fear of large scale ethnic massacre of the Zahawa in that city.
- [19:41]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
But why? What is the purpose of killing these people? I mean, we always think our first reference point for genocide is the Holocaust in World War II. Nazi anti Semitism. What is behind this?
- [19:54]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
There's a mixture of motives here. I mean, one is many of the units that are part of this RSF coalition literally have an ethnic agenda of we want to control this land, we do not want these people to live there and we don't regard them fully as human beings. So deep racism. But there's also an ethos of exemplary violence. The idea that might is Right. That actually we, by demonstrating your prowess, your readiness to kill at scale, that is what proves you as the winner, the commander, the top dog in this situation.
- [20:32]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
In a way, this is a continuation of the violence that broke out in the early part of this century. The violence in Darfur never really ended. There was no peace treaty or anything.
- [20:42]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
There were various attempts to get peace agreements. None of them actually were comprehensive. None of them really worked. Each of them just became security pact between the government and certain factions of the rebel groups who are ready to collaborate with them in return for some.
- [20:59]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
Sort of reward, kind of a civil war within a civil war. The history of Sudan. We cannot tackle this entire subject of enormous complexity in a single podcast. So everyone listening, you may want to read a little bit about the history here, the relevant history here, starting with Sudan's independence in 1956 to help you fully understand what we're getting at. Sudan has had three civil wars. The first starting in 1955, the year before independence that ended in 1972. The second civil war, 1983 to 2005. And it was in the early 2000s when the violence in Darfur broke out. And now this ongoing civil war that began in 2023. Declan Walsh, who's been doing amazing work for the New York Times covering the civil war in Sudan, filed a story about El Fashir, the city in Darfur that you just mentioned. The worst battleground in the civil war. He says it has been under siege, under siege 18 months. Children are being forced to eat animal feed to survive, and the fighters have erected a berm or an earthen wall 20 miles long. It surrounds the city to prevent people from trying to escape, to get food to bring back to eat and survive. You don't hear a lot about Al Fashir in the news in the United States, although, of course, I am reading this article in the biggest newspaper in the country. Anne Applebaum just did a deeply reported piece for the Atlantic about Sudan, where she said, this is a civil war about nothing. And I know you took exception to that.
- [22:33]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
This is a civil war, which we can really look at in a couple of different ways. One is, as you indicate, within the deep history of Sudan, a fight for the identity of the country. And one can see all sorts of political currents at work here as to whether this is to be a state founded around the values of the Nile Valley, particular historic civilizations there and the history of states founded in Khartoum on the Nile. The River Nile did not treat people from away from the Nile either in South Sudan. Or in western Sudan, like in Darfur, as equals, or is it going to be reconfigured in some way? But there's another element which I think we need to look at, which is really, to me, the key, which is the logic of a sort of kleptocratic war. In my writings, I've called it the political marketplace. I was a member of the African Union mediation team for Darfur in the peace talks 2005, 2006, those talks didn't succeed. But it was very fascinating to be actually just listening in on how the negotiations were conducted outside the negotiating chamber, in the chamber itself. It was extremely dull and tedious. We had papers that were being exchanged and no progress was being made. But actually in the corridors and the hotel rooms outside, all sorts of negotiation was going on. And the chief of the Khartoum negotiators, a man called Majub Al Khalifa, he saw his job as basically corrupting the rebels, basically going with money, which he called his political budget, to buy them all off one by one. And it is that logic of what he called the political market that we see at work, which is that corruption is the operating principle of politics. It's not an exception, it is the rule. It is exactly that same system, political vernacular, the terms that are used by the political operators, the security men, whether they're government or rebel, and indeed the merchants too. In Sudan, in the Arab world is exactly this. And we see it at work in Yemen, in Syria, in Iraq. The Iranians are using it. We see it in Libya, in Somalia, and indeed in Russia. It is a mafia style of politics. And I think if we understand Sudan as a very brutal, naked version of mafia politics, not only do we understand Sudan, but we get an insight into some of the things that are going on more widely.
- [25:16]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
No one's fighting for freedom and democracy here. Any kind of high standing principles. In 2019, Al Bashir was sent packing. There were popular protests and moves toward what we might call democracy because there were some elections or there were promises of elections. General Abdel Fattah Al Burhan is not a democrat. He has also been accused, his forces, Sudan armed Forces, of committing atrocities, of denying aid, not letting food into the country. What's going on with them? Who are they killing and why?
- [25:50]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
So let me make two points.
- [25:51]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
Sure.
- [25:51]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
The first is there was this beautiful non violent popular uprising, a classic sort of Arab Spring type uprising in 2019. It brought down the country government of Bashir. And we then had a sort of cohabitation between democratic forces and these Two generals, Al Burhan and Hemetti. And the difficulty then was, the challenge then was in order for the transition to democracy to work. It needed money and it needed heavyweight civilian politicians who could play that hardball political game. There were some great leaders of that democratic movement, but they didn't have the resources and they didn't have those hard political elbow. And it failed. And so we then got this duopoly of Al Burhan and Amity. They launched a coup together and then they fell out. Now Al Burhan sort of represents the old political military establishment. His representatives are in New York at the General assembly saying, we represent the government of Sudan, but it's not really a government. It is really also another form of kleptocratic cartel that is really just trying to loot the. Maybe not as viciously as the rsf, but not far short.
- [27:10]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
Are they doing ethnic killings or.
- [27:13]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
They have been doing ethnic killings. So they have been not on the same scale as the rsf, but in the places where they control, they do behave absolutely terribly. And both sides are using hunger as a weapon, although slightly different. So the rsf, wherever they go, it's like a swarm of human locusts. They will just consume and loot. And what they can't loot, they will vandalize. And they looted essentially the entire capital city and several other cities too. And that brought on a major economic crisis and a food crisis. The so called government is recognized by the un. I think that was a mistake of the UN to recognize it as the government. The other side, the Sudan Armed Forces of Al Burhan, because they are recognized by the un, they have a card to play which is when the United nations wants to provide humanitarian aid, it needs to get a go ahead from Burhan's people. So if we look at what's happening in Darfur, there is a border between Darfur and Chad. There is not a single soldier from Burhan's army within several hundred miles of that border. Smugglers, arms traders, ordinary people, they cross it every day. The UN cannot cross it. So you have these trucks from the World Food Program that can go up to this line on the sand, no one guarding it. It they can go up to that line. They can't cross it because 2,000 miles away, General Burhan's people have said, you don't have permission. And he doesn't want aid to go into the RSF area for two reasons. Number one is he fears the RSF will steal it and supply themselves. And number two, he worries that aid workers who go in will end up sympathizing with the rsf. The RSF will then have international sort of spokespeople people. This was their experience as they see it for South Sudan. What happened in south sudan in the 80s and 1990s was there was a rebellion there by the Sudan People's Liberation army among the non Arab, largely Christian people of the South. The government in his early years in power, Omral Bashir 1989 wanted to starve out. The south, didn't want any aid let in. He was arm twisted to allow aid in, to allow the un. And with the UN came a lot of aid workers, including a lot of Christian aid workers who said, we'll stand up for the people of South Sudan. End of the day, years later, South Sudan wins its independence with strong backing of the United States, especially Christian groups. And they say, we don't want to repeat that experience. That was our mistake. I think they're wrong. I think it was morally and politically wrong. But that's the way they see it. And so they want to starve out the rsl.
- [29:58]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
There are calls for secession coming from the southern part of the country going back to 1950s. That is why a civil war broke out even before independence in 1956. There is now a state called South Sudan. They had wanted to break away from the country for quite some time and there was a horrible war fought over that. Matter of fact, when that war was, that was a second civil war and that was winding down in 2005. That is when the violence in Darfur broke out. The government didn't have enough forces to put down the rebellion in Darfur. So enter the Janjaweed. Sudan has a population of 48 million people. 12 million have been driven from their homes. When we spoke a year ago, Alex, you told me that there are 15 million people in the country, 15 million out of 48 million, one out of three who are experiencing crisis level food insecurity. You also said that a million children, children could starve to death. Are those numbers that they still obtain today?
- [30:55]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
The fact is we don't really know. It's very, very hard to get data. What is clear is that the humanitarian situation has gone from bad to worse. There have been famine conditions in and around the city of El Fascia that we were talking about. This besieged city. This is where the RSF is besieging an enclave of, of troops and civilians who are aligned with the other side, with the government and in some other parts of Sudan as well. The best guess is that There are something like 800 or 900,000 people in Sudan in famine conditions, possibly as many as 8 million in emergency conditions. And it is quite possible that half a million or more people, mainly children, will have died from hunger and disease over the last year and a half.
- [31:46]
Narrator/Reader of Historical Quotes
Half.
- [31:47]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
This is the biggest famine and the worst famine in the world by the numbers today.
- [31:52]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
Is either side in the war on the verge of winning? Or will Sudan simply de facto be split up into small fiefdoms, each one controlled by one side or the other?
- [32:04]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
So there is a distinct possibility that it will divide de facto as Yemen divided, as Libya divided, with one government, Al Burhan, about six months ago, his forces recaptured Khartoum so he can re establish his capital in Khartoum. Hemetti is forming an alternative administration which is based in the Darfurian city of Nyala. Neither side really wants that outcome and neither does the international community. And here there actually is some possible progress as we speak on the diplomatic front. So let me go back a little bit to say what happened on that. So after the war broke out In April of 2023, the Biden administration, with Saudi Arabia, which was more or less neutral in the war, although leaning more towards Burhan, but not actively taking sides, they convened some talks for a ceasefire and humanitarian access. It didn't work. If it had worked, we would have congratulated them. But the Biden administration then got stuck. The way it got stuck was that everybody recognized that the route to peace in Sudan ran through Cairo, Saudi Arabia, which I mentioned, and the United Arab Emirates. And the UAE is backing the RSF to the hilt. It denies it, but that's the fact.
- [33:24]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
It denies it, but they're giving the weapons. It's not deniable.
- [33:28]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
And Egypt and some other countries, including Turkey and Qatar, are backing the other side, side. And the road to peace starts with getting those three capitals around the table, making them come to an agreement. The Biden administration just was not ready to do that. And it was not ready to do that, I think, because that required effort at the level of the Secretary of State, Tony Blinken or the President, Joe Biden. And the Biden administration said to its Africa staff, this is an African problem. Don't bother. Bother us. So nothing happened. Now, the one thing that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has done, which is an improvement, is he has put this directly under the special envoy for Africa, Bolos. And they have managed to get together, the foreign ministers of those three countries, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE in what they call the quad. And they are getting close to some sort of agreement that is possible. Probably the first step, which as I say, the Biden administration could have done, didn't do. This administration is hopefully going to be able to do that.
- [34:35]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
Well, a couple of points to make about that. President Trump's been boasting about the seven wars he stopped. His list is nonsense. But if he could accomplish something here, we will praise it. This does not fit the Biden administration's. Everything is either autocracy or democracy. Right. The rules based order we always hear about. Well, where's the rules based order in Sudan? When we spoke last year, you had mentioned to me that at one point during the height of the Save Darfur awareness, one third of all global peacekeeping troops were in Sudan. We don't see anything like that today. There are none. Right. So this diplomacy referenced Saudi Arabia and Egypt supporting the Sudan government, UAE supporting the rsf. I mean, what's in it for these outside countries? Countries? I think this gets to your point about geocleptocracy.
- [35:26]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
If you try and understand the politics of Sudan or of the Middle east or indeed of Russia and the world through either classic geostrategy or democracy versus authoritarianism doesn't take you very far. There is another logic at work here, and we see it in very, very clear form in Sudan. Geocleptocracy, the political marketplace. What's at stake is the deals, the deals that can money, especially that political money. So gold contracts over long term access to land, land banking, other sorts of profitable ventures.
- [36:06]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
So Sudan has valuable natural resources that a country like Egypt is interested in. So they're backing the government forces so they have access to those resources, is that what you're saying?
- [36:17]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
And even more so the uae. So the UAE is like the world's number one gold emporium. It is interested in acquiring land because it believes in climate change. And it knows that it's going to be very vulnerable in the future as the climate heats up. It's going to need places for its own food security. Sudan is an excellent one. Also, Sudan is on the Red Sea, which is a very strategic waterway for both commercial and military maritime activities. In that context, where we see global commerce, global corruption, global payments of political money as being the animating logic of politics, the conflict in Sudan makes eminent sense in that context. What does peace look like? So the classic idea in a sort of an institutionalized system, a rule based system is between states who have peace treaties and the end to a civil war is a comprehensive peace agreement that gets translated into a Constitutional arrangement whereby power is shared and among different entities, different groups, et cetera. In this type of dynamic, peace takes on a different flavor. It is a combination of a commercial deal, a security pact, and a populist performance, a piece of theater. So the new form of peacemaking that we see, and we see the Trump administration doing this is when it gets involved in any sort of negotiations. The first question, question is, what's in it for us? Is there a commercial deal? Is there a profit to be made? In the case of Congo or Ukraine, there may be profit for the US in the case of Sudan, not so. But there could be profit for US Allies like these countries in the Middle East. Second question, is there a security pact? We can make a security deal that will help us in our positioning vis a vis other rivals, et cetera, etc. And in Sudan, yes, there can be security pacts made, not least because the RSF is a very capable international mercenary actor whose forces can be deployed somewhere else. And the third question, can we do a piece of theatre around this? Can we do a performance for the social media, for the world stage, which will show that actually the mediator and the peacemaker deserves an. And the formula that the Arab states have is we will do the hard work, we will do the real negotiation, but then we will take our outcome to the White House. And we are quite happy for President Trump to take the credit to say, I'm the one who did this.
- [38:58]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
So would this look like the Sudan government forces in the RSF agreeing to a truce, putting down their weapons and allowing peacekeepers into the country?
- [39:07]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
I think it's very unlikely that we would go down the peacekeeping route.
- [39:11]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
Well, then what would protect people from being killed?
- [39:14]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
Again, this type of peace process is not a peace process that is intended to lead to democracy. None of those Arab states are interested in democracy. It will need to have some form of humanitarian action given, you know, relief, food to people, because that is what the world demands, that is what popular opinion demands, and an end to the most visible atrocities. But I think it's very unlikely that there will be anything like the type of United nations or African Union peacekeepers, anything like the same sort of internationally supervised transition to democracy. This would be a series of short term commercial and security deals in order to secure the interests of the military, political, commercial elite in Sudan and in the neighboring Arab countries.
- [40:06]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
It's truly horrendous. We're talking about millions of people suffering, terribly starving. On that note, famine. No one disagrees that there's a famine in Sudan. But when you say there's a famine in Gaza being orchestrated by the Israeli government, well, then that becomes a political controversy. You gave a powerful interview recently where you said, yes, Israel is perpetrating a famine in Gaza. Gaza. How did you come to that conclusion?
- [40:31]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
Gaza, before the latest round of war, before the Hamas attacks and atrocities of almost two years ago, and before the Israeli response was a situation in which people were maybe living precarious lives, but actually they were well nourished and pretty healthy. And within weeks of the Israeli attacks and the siege in October, November, December of 2020, 2023, most of the population was in acute food insecurity. And then what we have seen over the subsequent nearly two years is that for most of the time, the population was just below the threshold where the UN and which has the system called the ipc, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification System, the sort of the UN body that determines how bad things are in humanitarian crises. And there's a US counterpart as well, Famine Early Warning System Network. These two had judged that Gaza was just below famine levels. So the situation was really terrible, hadn't quite crossed that. And whenever it came close to crossing that, Israel would allow in a bit more assistance. The Biden administration would say, you can't allow this to happen. More food aid would go in, more assistance would go in. Now, finally, what happened completely foreseeably and tragically in July and August of this year is that those indicators did cross those thresholds.
- [42:05]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
Well, Israel cut off aid, right? They were trying to crush Hamas, but it hurts the average people there, Right? I mean, I've seen statements by Israeli government ministers saying this is what they're doing, they're preventing food and aid from getting in.
- [42:16]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
The reality about siege warfare and the use of starvation as a weapon is that it is, as it were, reverse targeted. So if you are an army, let's say, besieging a city and there's a military unit there, you can target your artillery or your airstrikes on that military unit and you may miss, you may kill, you know, you may hit a hospital by accident, you may have some collateral damage of civilians, but you can target starvation cannot be targeted. If you besiege and starve the entire population, you know for sure that the armed men will starve last. And the most vulnerable, the sickest, the weakest, will starve first. Think of famine as like some wool wolves chasing a flock of sheep. And you know that it's the weak lambs, those who can't run fast, that will be caught by the wolves first. And those rams, those tough rams with their horns, they're not going to be caught. And that is the way that starvation works. And that's why it's prohibited under international humanitarian law. And sadly, you know, that is exactly how it has played out. And Israel says that Hamas has been stealing the food. There have been been investigations by the United States that do not support that. And Israeli senior officers told the New York Times, yes, that's true. Hamas is not stealing this food aid en masse. This is actually on Israel.
- [43:36]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
So, final question. Alex, you've been doing work on this subject about famine. Your research says that famines were becoming less common thanks in part to or largely to liberal humanitarianism. Today, famines are man made, government orchestrated.
- [43:53]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
So during the 19th and most of the 20th century, there were many things that could cause a famine. It could be a natural disaster, such as a drought, could be deep poverty and economic shock, could also be war or communism was actually the number one cause of famine in the 20th century. The last 30, 40 years, famines virtually disappeared because all those causes disappeared, with one exception, which was that in failed states like Somalia or rogue states like Sudan or Syria, starvation was being used as a weapon. And there was a concerted effort by governments around the world, including the United States, including the first Trump administration, to ban starvation as a weapon. There was a UN Security Council resolution unanimously adopted in 2018. Nikki Haley was then the permanent representative. She voted for it, saying starvation as a method of war will not be allowed and saying the UN and its member states must stop it. Now, that points to the key fact which was driving the return of famines, which is deliberate starvation in wartime. And it is actually not difficult to stop that. It is just a matter of using public opinion, political pressure, demands for accountability to stop governments like in Sudan, like in Syria, like in Ethiopia, and indeed Israel from using it.
- [45:19]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
Eighty years ago, at the signing of the UN charter in San Francisco, 1945, Harry Truman said, we just finished a war. Millions of people died. If this charter had existed then, as well as the will to enforce it, millions of people who are alive now will not be killed in the same way. All those victims of World War II were killed. I mean, more than half of the victims in World War II were civilians. Many of them are just murdered or starved.
- [45:50]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
And the death toll from hunger during World War II was as great as the death toll from violence.
- [45:56]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
Yeah, think about that. World War II, as many people starving as killed in violence.
- [46:02]
Alex Duval (Scholar and Expert on Sudan)
And the first United Nations Conference was not actually the San Francisco big UN Conference. It was the Food and Agriculture Organization was set up in Hot springs because the U.S. administration of the day said, if we cannot prevent hunger around the world, we will not be able to live in peace.
- [46:22]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
The key words in Truman's remarks, the will.
- [46:25]
Narrator/Reader of Historical Quotes
If we had had this charter a few years ago, and above all, the will to use it, millions now dead would be alive. If we should falter in the future in our will to use it, millions now living will surely die. Now there's a time for making plans, and there's a time for action. The time for action is here. Now.
- [46:58]
Martin DeCaro (Host of History As It Happens)
On the next episode of History As It Happens, is the Trump administration trying to start a war with Venice, Venezuela, or intervene in that country's affairs, maybe depose its leader? If so, that fits a very long history, which we will explore next as we report History As It Happens. Make sure to sign up for my free newsletter at substack. Just search for History As It Happens.