The abandoned war: Why no one is stopping the genocide in Sudan

https://respublica.media/en/en-sudan-abandoned-war-genocide-no-one-stopping/

79•ResPublica•1h ago

Comments

anovikov•1h ago

Because there is no money to make by doing so.

JumpCrisscross•1h ago

What made the Israel-Palestine conflict profitable for influencers (initially on both sides, I’d guess mostly on the pro-Palestinian side now) before the Iran War that doesn’t apply to Sudan?

thaumasiotes•59m ago

Audience interest? Same thing that makes any other videos profitable.

testdelacc1•57m ago

There are large groups of people have very strongly negative opinions about one side or the other in Israel-Palestine.

Only a tiny fraction of people in Europe or North America could point to Sudan on the map. And even fewer could explain the differences between the factions involved. There’s no simple good-guys-vs-bad-guys rhetoric that’s easy to join.

tovej•49m ago

I mean, the RSF is very clearly the bad guys in this conflict. The reason there is no coverage is that there is widespread agreement on this point, and western govts aren't directly funding the bad guys as is the case with Israel.

Mainan_Tagonist•46m ago

western governments funding Israel?

What western governments exactly? Isn't Israel capable of funding itself through its own economy?

testdelacc1•43m ago

America hands out military aid to Israel. Coupons that can be redeemed for weapons with American manufacturers. It’s a subsidy to Israel and to American military primes. This comes to billions each year.

That’s one government though. I can’t think of any other western government funding Israel in a similar way.

Mainan_Tagonist•31m ago

"That’s one government though. I can’t think of any other western government funding Israel in a similar way."

My point, exactly!

tovej•17m ago

Germany, Great Britain, Finland, many other European partners.

They are purchasing military equipment from Israel, funding their development. Many European institutions also have investments in Israel. And arms used in the Palestinian genocide are being produced in European countries.

anovikov•39m ago

I don't get it, why? RSF fights on Ukrainian side, SAF on Russian since 2024. It's the SAF that's the bad guy now. They flipped.

throwaway27448•33m ago

How did you manage to make a civil war in sudan about a european conflict? Neither plays much role at all compared to the gulf states and eritrea/ethiopia.

harvey9•39m ago

Another reason there's no coverage is nobody in Sudan has the social media expertise and budget that Iran has.

boxed•26m ago

There are videos of Hamas fighters literally picking up a random Palestinian Arab kid and running with him/her to get a human shield. Because the IDF doesn't want to kill children. But if an IDF soldier picked up an Israeli kid and tried to use them as a human shield, Hamas would just be happy that they're getting 2 for 1.

This alone should convince you of who is the bad guy.

tovej•19m ago

"The IDF doesn't want to kill children", he says.

sosomoxie•10m ago

There are thousands of videos of Israel murdering children.

4gotunameagain•54m ago

Europe and the "West" is directly responsible for the existence of the colony of Israel, and the horrors it is inflicting. That is a small difference.

Sure, the west is responsible for instability in northern africa as well, but much less overtly.

MisterTea•45m ago

This reads like a bad parody of the Soviet "west = bad" trope. Big wide brush strokes, painting ALL Europeans as somehow enabling this when it was only a few players and likely no real European peoples made decisions beyond a few powerful people. Buffoonish thinking.

4gotunameagain•37m ago

Oh I am European, and I (or my country) certainly had zero involvement in the events that are playing out now.

But they are not critical of them, not aloud at least. As much as I love Europe, we are complicit to this genocide, and we are hypocrites.

We laud European values, but only their theory.

throwhhjs•36m ago

You never talk about all those places muslims colonised.

DFHippie•10m ago

After a few hundred years historical injustices move down the priority list. France isn't seeking reparations from Italy for the conquest of Gaul, for example.

boxed•25m ago

In the Spanish colonies they speak Spanish.

In the Portuguese colonies they speak Portuguese.

In the __BLANK__ colonies they speak Hewbrew.

Fill in the blank.

MisterTea•49m ago

The Sudanese population and diaspora hold no great financial or political influence globally so they have no visibility hence, no audience.

AndrewKemendo•38m ago

The most accurate way to say it indeed

the_arun•33m ago

We need to say Sudan has natural resources. Eg Oil. The world turns around

Symmetry•26m ago

It does have oil. And the reason the UAE is backing the RSF is that they have gold interests there.

KumaBear•47m ago

Well from a moral perspective our tax dollars are funding the weapons used in the conflict.

dralley•33m ago

From moral perspective, the same entities (UAE, Qatar) who have done the most to raise the profile of the I/P conflict with funds and media campaigns are directly funding and sending weapons to the parties responsible for the genocide in Sudan.

Which has much clearer properties of "genocide" than the I/P war, and killed 3 times as many people in the same timeframe despite having far more primitive and less powerful weaponry involved.

>> In the first three days of the capture, at least 6,000 killings were documented. 4,400 inside the city. 1,600 more along escape routes. The UN writes explicitly that the actual death toll from the week-long offensive was “undoubtedly significantly higher”. The governor of Darfur spoke of 27,000 killed in the first three days alone. The Khartoum-based think tank Confluence Advisory estimated 100,000. The Yale Humanitarian Research Lab assessed that of the 250,000 civilians remaining in the city, nearly all had been killed, died, been displaced, or were in hiding.

>> RSF fighters, according to survivor testimony, said things like “Is there anyone Zaghawa here? If we find Zaghawa, we will kill them all” and “We want to eliminate anything black from Darfur”. Men and boys under 50 were specifically targeted, killed or abducted. Women and girls of the Zaghawa and Fur communities were systematically raped, often in groups, sometimes for hours or days. Those perceived as Arab were often spared.”

sosomoxie•14m ago

> the same entities (UAE, Qatar) who have done the most to raise the profile of the I/P conflict with funds and media campaigns

Israel and its MSM media outlets in the west are the only people “raising the profile” of the colonization of Palestine. Every US politician promotes Israel to the point where they can hardly be said to represent American citizens. That is why people in the west stand against Zionism. It has nothing to do with Qatari boogeymen.

hollywood_court•38m ago

Our (the US) current leadership is beholden to Israel.

pmontra•36m ago

It does not apply. Many vocal Westerners don't find an enemy of their enemy (the USA way to capitalism or to imperialism or pick your -ism) in Sudan so there are no votes to gain, careers to foster, people to gather in protests. "The enemy of my enemy is not my friend but at least is the enemy of my enemy" effect is totally lacking. Who do you protest against? Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran? As a public figure said in my country about the protests for Gaza, "we protest against our government."

throwaway27448•34m ago

Where did influencers come from? They didn't perpetrate the indiscriminate slaughter of an entire people. They certainly didn't cause this war. And when has reporting on a genocide ever brought about its conclusion? maybe you could argue this about the bosnian genocide....?

boxed•29m ago

But they did convince you there's a genocide in Palestine at all, which is just not true.

ahhhhnoooo•25m ago

Right, it's not constrained to Gaza. The genocide against Palestinian people is occurring across the nation of Israel.

boxed•19m ago

Palestinian muslim arabs are 20% of Israels population. Remind me how many percent of Palestine, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, are Jewish?

This is the worst genocide ever. They even have representation in Knesset. They serve in the IDF.

newspaper1•2m ago

Palestinians,Lebanese and Iranians (of all religions) represent 100% of the victims of Israel’s genocide.

netsharc•24m ago

On the flip side you've either been propagandized to find the slaughter of civilians acceptable ("they were warned!", "they sympathize anyway", etc, etc) or you're doing the propagandizing yourself. Maybe towards yourself, so that you can continue to believe that your defense of said genocide is the right thing.

atwrk•19m ago

I mean the share of civilians killed in the war (by Israel) is over 80 percent of the total casualties. That is worse than the rate in WW2. In Ukraine it's under 5%.

hollerith•16m ago

I deplore current Israeli policies, but Ukraine isn't disguising its war fighters as civilians like Hamas is, which is an important qualifier to your numbers.

atwrk•14m ago

But Russia is doing exactly that systematically for years now, disguising as civilians. I'm also pretty sure Hamas isn't disguising themselves as children, who make up the largest share of the civilian victims.

sosomoxie•12m ago

School children aren’t “disguised Hamas”.

sosomoxie•13m ago

Actually the IDF did that.

thrance•26m ago

What are you even talking about. There was and still is much more money to be made on the pro-Israel side. Which media magnates have ever sided with Palestinians again? Virtually all the propaganda money goes to defending the actions of Israel in the Middle East.

And the thing that motivated so much grassroot support for Palestinians was the West's total material and moral support to the Zionist project, while the genocide in Sudan is much more indirectly related to the West.

unpopularopp•14m ago

Arabs and blacks killing each other is not fitting the current US metaculture of racial war

newspaper1•4m ago

Israel’s genocide has nothing to do with “influencers” and everything to do with stealing land. The “profit” is Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and the whole of Palestine post-Balfour Agreement. Some blue check on Twitter does not register.

WarmWash•52m ago

And you will be held as responsible for exploiting the country if you do actually manage to end the conflict and bring about positive economic change.

People don't understand that it takes generations to train a populace to work in a functioning economy. Sudan would probably need 25 years of colonization before you had competent Sudanese to run all parts of a modern economy. You can't just go in, stop the fighting, and then walk away. People just revert to the same conditions that led to war in the first place. So you end up with 25 years of being held responsible (by the world and by the local population), for every single bump in the totally mangled war-torn road to recovery. No thanks.

throwaway27448•35m ago

You can develop a country without extracting its wealth.

Drakim•25m ago

Can you? When our economic system's only driver is "extracting wealth", can we actually develop a country without it? The extraction of wealth isn't some unfortunate byproduct, it's a central cog in the machine of what makes it operate. Money is invested for returns.

cucumber3732842•20m ago

So work for free?

Who would invest in facilities, develop workforces, etc, without a payoff?

cess11•14m ago

How does China approach this?

achierius•12m ago

Clearly they don't. They don't tend to occupy other countries, not outside of immediate territorial claims like Tibet (if you think that constitutes an "other" country)

cucumber3732842•3m ago

They finance projects with terms that drive business to Chinese companies. The Congo gets a highway. A Chinese construction company makes a buck. The financiers make a buck.

That's how it's supposed to work, when it works.

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/486/992/0f8...

kmeisthax•35m ago

"25 years of colonization" is doing some pretty heavy lifting.

The reason why there are no competent Sudanese to run the country is specifically because colonizers went in and destroyed all of the home-grown institutions Sudan had and replaced them with ones locals didn't trust, but were more legible to the colonizers. This is why decolonization has been a failure in some countries: removing the boot doesn't help after you've smashed someone's face in.

The countries that did benefit from decolonization had a unique pattern to them: they all had lacking or inadequate institutions before they were colonized. But colonizers don't build infrastructure for free, and the people being colonized know that. Colonial infrastructure tends to only be good for the needs of the colonizers' resource extraction industries. That's what puts distrust into the heart of the people in those countries in the first place, and why the success stories are rare.

You are correct that some sort of political force needs to be put in place to serve as a functioning institution in Sudan. However, colonial powers are very bad at doing that, because it's easier and cheaper to just smash and grab.

therobots927•24m ago

I’m surprised you’re being so polite. The parent just called for colonization of a region that has been colonized by proxy for some time now. In fact current events are a direct result of said colonization.

dntrshnthngjxct•10m ago

This is just a lazy argument: polities build their infrastructure also based on resource extraction, but from that economic opportunities follow, so people and communities gather around them making infrastructure also useful for them. It's like saying roman roads were bad because built by the empire, when even after centuries it fell, they were used by the locals. The problem is that there was no know-how passage, not that said infrastructures exist, and if anything they are still useful to them.

sosomoxie•23m ago

Colonizing only helps the colonizers, not the indigenous population.

> So you end up with 25 years of being held responsible (by the world and by the local population)

As they should.

tovej•21m ago

Are you under the impression that Sudan was not under British colonial rule for ~50-60 years? This completely wrecked their economy and political structures, with the British intentionally causing divides between ethnic groups in Sudan and Egypt.

And are you seriously claiming that this was a good thing? Is this some crazy new neo-conservative take about the West being the only block that can be "civilized"?

jimberlage•11m ago

I don't think this was the British. (Not to apologize for them - they certainly made things worse, not better.) Sudan sits on a historical chattel slavery route that stretches back to Roman times. It's hallmarked by the Northern population raiding the south, along racial lines.

Scholarly article for reference if you want to learn more: https://www.jstor.org/stable/827888

cameldrv•6m ago

A typical British colonial strategy was to ally with a minority ethnic group. The formerly downtrodden minority group now got to be the leaders, but, being the minority, they would stay dependent on the British, else the majority would rise up and kill them. In the post colonial world unfortunately that is what happened in a number of cases.

nradov•2m ago

Let's say that all of the problems in Sudan are the fault of British colonialism. (I don't think that's completely correct but just for the sake of argument.) The British are gone and not coming back in any significant numbers. Now what? What is the solution?

bell-cot•31m ago

I'd phrase it as 99% of Westerners feeling that they have no interests at stake. Whether that's literal money, or physical resources (say, rare earth mines), or transportation routes (say, a route out of the Persian Gulf), or meaningful ties to a side in the war (either "I know them" or "they look like somebody I care about" feelings). Plus - talking about Sudan on social media looks like an opportunity to score zero cred, while slowly burning your own relevance.

Vasbarlog•30m ago

Or because our governments didn’t bankroll the side of the conflict committing the genocide.

morkalork•28m ago

UAE seems to think it's a good investment

nielsbot•17m ago

I think it’s the other way around. Colonial powers ARE making money (minerals) so they don’t want it to stop.

Synaesthesia•41m ago

Africa sadly just gets ignored. But one day it will unite and develop itself, so I hope anyway.

Joel_Mckay•7m ago

Unfortunately, many peoples quality of life still has lower value than the treasure in the ground. =3

"The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics" (Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

dwa3592•39m ago

This is heartbreaking. Is there a place where I can donate? Will it help in anyway?

voodooEntity•35m ago

Dont wanne be the devils advocate here, but reality is that even if you find something "looking legit" in terms of donation, especially in such regions the most money will be "lost" halfway, and even if some will reach the destination it is more than rare that it will even help to benefit those suffering, and not land in the pockets of a few "in power" or just used to buy more weapons to kill more people.....

Yes helping is a good thing, tho reality is its not as "easy" as transfer some money. Tho respecting your good intentions

jvanderbot•15m ago

That's overly cynical. Donating to local warlords / psuedogovernment actors can be sketchy. Donating to e.g., UNICEF is much more likely to produce good results for refugees, especially children and mothers.

I'm not aware of where to send money to stop wars - it's likely to have the opposite effect, sadly.

voodooEntity•4m ago

Even donations to organisations such as UNICEF often end up in the wrong hands.

Lets go for the optimistic scenario in which UNICEF will only take a very small portion for the "processing" and really deliver lets say food and medical supplies to the region. Those warloard will simply come and take it away from those citizens and provide to their armies. Theres nothing those citizens can do against it.

Do i wish it would be different? Absolutely. But sadly the world doesn't work as i would wish it to.

nhatcher•32m ago

Try Share The Meal[1]. It's quite easy to use and I think it has an impact. Sadly also a way to keep in touch with devastating news like this one

[1]: https://sharethemeal.org/en-us

therobots927•25m ago

Boycott gulf state products and investment $$$

lostlogin•19m ago

Can any downvoters explain the downvotes?

therobots927•18m ago

My comments always get downvoted. HN has more duplicate accounts / bot activity than you would think and they’re primarily used for sentiment suppression. Specifically anti imperialist / anti capitalist sentiment.

dartharva•10m ago

like what? Gasolene in general?

therobots927•5m ago

We take their money. Saudi Arabia built an openAI datacenter. LIV golf. The Saudi’s financed musk’s twitter takeover. Do you live under a rock?

nradov•8m ago

How exactly would one go about doing that? Their major exports are fossil fuels, and chemicals derived from fossil fuels such as fertilizers. Few of those exports go to the USA.

lostlogin•20m ago

My neighbour who is a nurse did stints there while working for the International Red Cross, it was either 3 or 6 months.

https://www.icrc.org/en/where-we-work/sudan

goodcanadian•29m ago

I feel like I have seen better analysis of this elsewhere. In a nutshell, it is not simply a civil war. Regional actors are involved as a proxy war: Saudi Arabia against the UAE, for example (who are also having a proxy war in Yemen). And Egypt against Ethiopia. The wikipedia article covers some of the complexity:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudanese_civil_war_(2023%E2%80...

EDIT: This is what I am thinking of: https://youtu.be/bpH37vGoRJc

csense•24m ago

Let's be honest. If someone did send in the troops to restore order, people would be screaming "How dare you invade a sovereign country" or "You're only doing this because you want oil" or "The President wants to make Sudan the 51st state" or "You're wasting money and soldiers' lives messing around in a place most of us can't even put on a map" or "You're just doing whatever the Jews tell you to do."

LightBug1•23m ago

Absolute horseshit. With respect.

Send international peacekeepers. Or use the pressure of power on players like the UAE. Or ...

Your helplessness is self-inflicted.

nradov•6m ago

Which international peacekeepers? They have to come from somewhere. How would they be armed? Would they have artillery and air support or small arms only? What would the rules of engagement be?

RIMR•22m ago

That's probably because:

A. Our tactics would constitute an invasion B. We would try to seize oil or other natural resources while we were there. C. The president would literally say something like this on national television.

papa0101•20m ago

then bloody stop sending troops to all other countries under whatever pretexts.

cucumber3732842•18m ago

I believe you mean "and" instead of "or".

Calavar•5m ago

It's really hard to cry victim about others misrepresenting Trump's motives for the Iran war as oil, oil, oil when the US did in fact launch a military attack on a country - within the last six months - where the subsequent negotiated agreement on oil rights was quite literally described by the White House press secretary as "the president’s control of Venezuela’s oil" [1] and just a few weeks later the president held a public, televised conference with Chevron and ExxonMobil executives in the White House where he pitched them on investing in the Venezuelan oil industry [2]

[1] https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/trump-venezuela-oil-...

[2] https://youtu.be/sD4x6T-u4XY

fwipsy•4m ago

If the article called for direct military intervention, I missed it.

cess11•12m ago

One factor this article skips over is that UAE and the Abraham Accords makes the US reluctant to rein in their buddies.

This might change due to the UAE not being very happy about the US dragging them into a regional war.

dmix•9m ago

For context: SAF is backed by Saudis/Qatar/Egypt/Iran/Russia and RSF is backed by UAE/Libya/Ethiopia/Chad/previously Wagner but Russia switched sides.

The US and others have pushed for negotiations but the competing interests by the gulf states, russia, and other african countries have complicated things.

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