The civil war continues. Hundreds massacred in Darfur recently by the Janjaweed - or RSF as they prefer to be called these days.
I don't know a huge amount about the civil war in Sudan, but the fact that a rebranded Janjaweed - they were the main architects of the atrocities in Darfur in the 2000s - appear to be at least holding their own and likely winning disturbs me.
Sudan
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EACLucifer
- Stummy Beige
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Re: Sudan
A few years ago, I read Darfur: A short history of a long war, by Alex de Waal and Julie Flint. It sets out much better than most people would know the actual history, which is much more complicated than you would gather from the news, and the underlying reasons for what happens there. Its still a relevant history, because the Darfur War has not progressed very much since he wrote that, and there was an extended period of not much happening during that time. I knew de Waal at university, when he was doing his DPhil on Darfur, spending a lot of time out there. And he has continued to take a lot of interest in Sudan throughout his career, and of course becoming generally very eminent in international organisations related to famine and conflict in the horn of Africa. He has written or contributed to several further books on other aspects of conflict in the Horn of Africa.
Quite a lot of the issues are about inter-communal conflicts and access to land. The distinctions between communal groups tend to be a lot more complicated than the relatively simple distinction between Arabs and non-Arabs that is usually painted on the news, it's more complicated than that.
It was interesting, but terrible, to read in that book how so many villages had been erased from the map by genocidal militias. From the info in that book, I was able to go on Google Earth and locate and confirm that there were indeed extensive areas where you could see where you could see nearly every villages had been erased.
But sadly I have to come to just the same opinion as you. It certainly bodes badly, and a serious risk of restarting unfinished genocidal attempts.
Quite a lot of the issues are about inter-communal conflicts and access to land. The distinctions between communal groups tend to be a lot more complicated than the relatively simple distinction between Arabs and non-Arabs that is usually painted on the news, it's more complicated than that.
It was interesting, but terrible, to read in that book how so many villages had been erased from the map by genocidal militias. From the info in that book, I was able to go on Google Earth and locate and confirm that there were indeed extensive areas where you could see where you could see nearly every villages had been erased.
But sadly I have to come to just the same opinion as you. It certainly bodes badly, and a serious risk of restarting unfinished genocidal attempts.