alt Hacker NewsVisible from space, Sudan's bloodied sands expose a massacre of thousands
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Just wanna plug the most thorough and useful video I've seen on the history of this conflict. The US, Russia, and many other players are more heavily involved in this conflict than is often discussed in media. It breaks down the specific ways many international players are profiting from the conflict and helps makes sense of the motives driving it
Sudan is the 3rd largest producer of gold in Africa but it remains the poorest country in Africa because the companies that exploit those resources are never Sudanese.
The RSF got their weapons by acting as mercenaries for the UAE to fight against the Houthis in Yemen. Fighting as a mercenary is pretty much the only reliable source of income for many people in the country.
If Netanyahu wants to truly be a hero he will drop a couple of bombs here.
Once Israel gets involved then all the world’s attention will shift to this actual genocide that has been long, brutal, and has been killing hundreds of thousands and displacing millions but in almost complete radio silence.
I'm constantly impressed that we are a civilisation that can look down from space and see this kind of barbarism.
Just enough funding to view suffering. No funding to end it.
Sudan has multiple forces at play right now. There’s the Islamic Arabs committing genocide on the non-Arabs. The RSF, largely composed of Arab nomadic groups (evolving from the Janjaweed militias), has been accused of systematic ethnic cleansing and genocide against non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur, such as the Fur, Zaghawa, and Masalit. These attacks involve mass killings, rape, and village burnings.
There’s also the Islamic Arab monarchies (RSF) vs the Muslim Brotherhood (SAF).
The common denominator is the Islamic Arab presence from Islamic conquests. Sudan’s ethnic tensions trace back to the 7th-century Arab-Islamic conquests, which Arabized the northern Nile Valley, creating a dominant Arab-Muslim elite that marginalized non-Arab, indigenous groups in the periphery (e.g., Darfur’s Fur, Masalit, and Nuba).
Western governments prefer to earn a day's income than sacrifice a whole African tribe since the last centuries up until now. So, no wonders Sudan felt in a hell hole where intertwined interests take place. Only the public outcry through mass media can stop a genocide which in this case does not sell. After a few years the balance of power will settle and may be a movie will be produced, like Hotel Rwanda.
I presume there will be protests at Columbia University?
This is horrible but I feel like the "visible" from space headline is becoming increasingly less impressive as satellite imagery becomes more impressive.
You could say, I drink so much coffee it's visible from space and it's literally just a coffee mug sitting on a park bench.
ideology plays little role in these conflicts, they are partially religio-ethnic but mostly about pure power, where religion and ethnicity are levers pulled to leverage power.
the people seeking power would sell out their own mothers if that's what it took.
the ideologies here are the ideologies of the HN commenters who try to fit the facts into their predetermined narratives.
and "visible from space" means absolutely nothing meaningful. can we read license plates from space or not yet? I don't know, but in this context, who cares
(way back in the 1980s a china-zealot was telling me that the Great Wall of China was "the only manmade thing visible from space." I had the presence of mind to say back, "isn't it more significant to be able to get to space to see what's visible?")
Sadly, yet another bloody chapter of the Abu Dhabi (al Nahyan) - Doha (al Thani) feud that has been going on since the 2011 coup attempt [0], which itself is part of a longer multi-generational blood feud going on between the royal families [4]. The Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, and Balkans are all burning because of this saga [1].
The UAE backs the RSF [2] (formerly known as the Janjaweed of the Darfur Genocide), and Qatar supports the Sudanese Army [3]
[0] - https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/united-arab-emirates-pala...
[1] - https://lobelog.com/doha-and-abu-dhabis-incompatible-visions...
[2] - https://www.wsj.com/world/how-u-a-e-arms-bolstered-a-sudanes...
[3] - https://www.africaintelligence.com/eastern-africa-and-the-ho...
[4] - https://gulfif.org/changing-alignments-in-the-lower-gulf/
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> When we go to see the Emirates, what number on our to-do list do you think Sudan is? It is not on our to-do list. What we have to do is keep the Emirates onside with Israel and onside against Iran.
As always, conflicts are much easier to understand when viewed through the lens of materialism.
Factors such as ethnicity or religion are never the reason for these conflicts. Those are simply the excuse. It’s what’s used to fuel the fire.
The heart of this conflict is Sudan’s gold that’s laundered via Dubai then Switzerland.
The culpability of Western powers including the US cannot be ignored either. The RSF is supplied with diverted arms shipments from the West to the UAE.
Just like in Gaza the US could stop this at any time with a phone call.
This is truly horrible and I don't want to detract from the original aim of the article, but can we just establish that 'visible' from space doesn't really mean much anymore given the resolution of satellites? My garage is also visible from space, doesn't make it worthy of a headline.
'Visible from space' loses its bite when you see they're using cameras that can practically read your mail from space.
Yes, this is terrible, but atrocities like this happen all over Africa on a daily basis for innumerable reasons, and Sudan specifically has been in civil wars longer than I have been alive. The piece's structure: 'look at how terrible this is, don't you just feel soooo bad?' + 'by the way the UAE has been accused of facilitating this' signals to me that the writer is primarily motivated by a desire to make the UAE and all muslims by comparison look bad. Notice how they focus on the atrocities by the RSF, ignoring the fact that all sides in this war are complicit in slaughter.
America, Europe, Russia, China, and their satellite countries have been starting and fueling wars in Africa since before these countries became independent.
They deliberately draw borders that cut ethnic populations and religious groups in half.
They flood these regions with weapons and mercenaries.
They replace incentives to develop stable societies, robust agricultural industries, and infrastructure with 'just good enough to survive' aid.
They bribe local warlords with collective billions of dollars.
Global power blocs have effectively enforced a continent of lawlessness where you're only safe from war in the immediate vicinity of resource extraction sites, and lucky for you those sites are the kinds of places small children handle mercury without PPE and die of exhaustion and chemical burns. All of this to give you fiber optic cables.
Yes, the UAE is complicit, but so are you if you're reading this. This is not a 'muslim' problem. This is not a 'UAE' problem. This is a structural problem driven primarily by increasing population, materialist consumer habits, and the geopolitical reality that if any bloc stopped doing all of this horrible stuff the only outcome would be that the other blocs get a bigger share.
This article is not written with the intention of solving these problems, it is written with the intention of keeping you just angry enough to do what they tell you, without making you so angry that you replace the ones making these decisions.
> ...the United Arab Emirates (UAE) accused of backing the RSF with supplies and mercenaries...
And also helping to launder Hemedti's gold via Dubai. https://globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/conflict-resources/ex...