Content warning for discussion of genocide, torture, mutilation, rape, and slavery

Hey, Hi, Hello, this is the History Wizard and welcome back for Day 11 of Have a Day w/ The History Wizard. Thank you to everyone who tuned in for Day 10 last week, and especially thank you to everyone who rated and/or reviewed the podcast. I hope you all learned something last week and I hope the same for this week. This week marks the 3rd part of our mini series of currently ongoing genocides and humanitarian crises. Episode 2 was on Palestine, Episode 11 was on Congo, today’s episode will be on Sudan. The nation of Sudan is currently dealing with, among other things we’ll cover in detail later in this episode, the largest deplacement campaign of anywhere on the planet with over 9 million people being displaced from their homes by war and genocide.

It always feels a little weird transitioning into this part of the episode, but it’s now time for the Alchemist’s Table. I’ve invented nearly 90 cocktails over the past 2 years and this one remains my very favorite. It’s called the No True Scotsman. Take 2 oz of your scotch whiskey of choice, though I’d recommend a light Islay scotch, something like a Bowmore, or maybe a Campbeltown like Glen Scotia. Then add .75 oz of Frangelico, 1 oz of Maple syrup. Shake this like your life depends on it and pour over ice. Top the drink with ginger beer and enjoy.

Now, fortified as we are by uisce beatha, the waters of life, let’s get into it. So, what is happening in Sudan, right now? A civil war officially started between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the the Rapid Support Forces that grew out of the Janjaweed militias that were so prevalent in the Darfur Genocide. The war officially began on 15 April 2023 and is still ongoing. But, in order to understand what is happening right now, we need to understand what was happening in the 19th century under British and Egyptian colonialism in the region.

So, let’s starts at as much of the beginning as we can. Let’s start at the Mahdist War. Following Muhammad Ali's invasion (no, a different Muhammad Ali)  in 1819, Sudan was governed by an Egyptian administration. Throughout the period of Egyptian rule, many segments of the Sudanese population suffered extreme hardship because of the system of taxation imposed by the central government. Under this system, a flat tax was imposed on farmers and small traders and collected by government-appointed tax collectors from the Sha'iqiyya tribe of northern Sudan. Throughout the century, and especially after Egypt was floundering to pay the costs of the Suez Canal, Britain got more and more involved. In the late 19th century a war broke out between the Mahdist Sudanese, led by Muhammad Ahmad bin Abdullah, who had proclaimed himself the "Mahdi" of Islam (the "Guided One"), and the forces of the Khedivate of Egypt, initially, and later the forces of Britain. Eighteen years of war resulted in the creation of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (1899–1956), a de jure condominium of the British Empire, and the Kingdom of Egypt, in which Britain had de facto control over Sudan.

Sudan officially voted for independence in 1956 and became its own independent republic. Although it achieved independence without conflict, Sudan inherited many problems from the condominium. Chief among these was the status of the civil service. The government placed Sudanese in the administration and provided compensation and pensions for British officers of Sudan Political Service who left the country; it retained those who could not be replaced, mostly technicians and teachers. Khartoum achieved this transformation quickly and with a minimum of turbulence, although southerners resented the replacement of British administrators in the south with northern Sudanese. To advance their interests, many southern leaders concentrated their efforts in Khartoum, where they hoped to win constitutional concessions. Although determined to resist what they perceived to be Arab imperialism, they were opposed to violence. Most southern representatives supported provincial autonomy and warned that failure to win legal concessions would drive the south to rebellion.

To understand the issues in Sudan we need to understand that, ultimately, this is a religious and ethnic conflict between the mostly Islamic North and the largely Christian and animist South regions in the nation of Sudan. On November 17, 1958, the day parliament was to convene, a military coup occurred. Khalil, himself a retired army general, planned the preemptive coup in conjunction with leading Umma members and the army's two senior generals, Ibrahim Abboud and Ahmad Abd al Wahab, who became leaders of the military regime. Abboud immediately pledged to resolve all disputes with Egypt, including the long-standing problem of the status of the Nile River. Abboud abandoned the previous government's unrealistic policies regarding the sale of cotton. He also appointed a constitutional commission, headed by the chief justice, to draft a permanent constitution. Abboud maintained, however, that political parties only served as vehicles for personal ambitions and that they would not be reestablished when civilian rule was restored.

Despite the Abboud regime's early successes, opposition elements remained powerful. In 1959 dissident military officers made three attempts to displace Abboud with a "popular government." Although the courts sentenced the leaders of these attempted coups to life imprisonment, discontent in the military continued to hamper the government's performance. In particular, the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) gained a reputation as an effective anti-government organization. To compound its problems, the Abboud regime lacked dynamism and the ability to stabilize the country. Its failure to place capable civilian advisers in positions of authority, or to launch a credible economic and social development program, and gain the army's support, created an atmosphere that encouraged political turbulence.

A revolution in 1964 returned the nation to civilian rule, but did little to remove the preceding issues that plagued Sudan. This all brings us within the context of the First Sudanese Civil War. This war was a conflict from 1955 to 1972 between the northern part of Sudan and the southern Sudan region that demanded representation and more regional autonomy. The war was divided into four major stages: initial guerrilla warfare, the creation of the Anyanya insurgency, political strife within the government and establishment of the South Sudan Liberation Movement. Around a million people died over the course of the nearly 17-year long war.

The war would end with the signing of the Addis Ababa Accord, which created two main things. A South Sudanese Autonomous Region, and relative peace, if only for about a decade. The Second Sudanese Civil War would break out in 1983. Some sources describe the conflict as an ethnoreligious one where the Arab-Muslim central government's pursuits to impose Sharia law on non-Muslim southerners led to violence, and eventually to the civil war. Historian Douglas Johnson has pointed to exploitative governance as the root cause.

This war lasted for some 22 years, making it one of the longest civil wars in recorded Human History. Roughly two million people died as a result of war, famine and disease caused by the conflict. Four million people in southern Sudan were displaced at least once, normally repeatedly during the war. The civilian death toll is one of the highest of any war since World War II and was marked by numerous human rights violations, including slavery and mass killings.

Perhaps one of the greatest horrors and tragedies of the Second Sudanese Civil War was the use of child soldiers. Armies from all sides enlisted children in their ranks. The 2005 agreement required that child soldiers be demobilized and sent home. The Sudan People’s Liberation Army (the SPLA, by the way, was founded in 1983 as a rebel group to reestablish the South as an autonomous region after president Nimeiry declared the South to officially be part of a fully reunited Sudan.) claimed to have let go 16,000 of its child soldiers between 2001 and 2004. However, international observers (UN and Global Report 2004) have found demobilized children have often been re-recruited by the SPLA. As of 2004, there were between 2,500 and 5,000 children serving in the SPLA. 

There was also a revival of slavery during the Second Civil War, it was largely directed at southern Christians, on the grounds that Islamic law allegedly allowed it, and also at women, many of whom were kept as sex slaves and repeatedly raped.

The Second Civil War ended officially in 2002 with the signing of the Naivasha Agreement. This guaranteed autonomy for the South for 6 years after which a referendum would be help to vote for official independence. This war ended with roughly 2 million people, mostly civilians, dead of drought and famine caused in large parts by the fighting. Still, while the Second Civil War ended in 2005, it overlapped with a crisis that my generation is very familiar with and that is still, technically, ongoing to this day.

I am speaking, of course, of the Darfur Genocide that began in 2003 and has not ended to this day.

The War in Darfur, which is also sometimes called the Land Cruiser War, because there were a LOT of Toyota Land Cruiser pick up trucks on both sides of the war, began in February 2003 when the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebel groups began fighting against the government of Sudan, which they accused of oppressing Darfur's non-Arab population. 

So first let’s talk real quick about the SLM and the JEM.

When General Omar al-Bashir and the National Islamic Front headed by Dr. Hassan al-Turabi overthrew the Sudanese government led by Ahmed al-Mirghani in 1989. A large section of the population in Darfur, particularly the non-Arab ethnicities in the region, became increasingly marginalized. These feelings were solidified in 2000 by the publication of The Black Book, which detailed the structural inequity in the Sudan that denies non-Arabs equal justice and power sharing. In 2002 Abdul Wahid al-Nur, a lawyer, Ahmad Abdel Shafi Bassey, an education student, and a third man founded the Darfur Liberation Front, which subsequently evolved into the Sudan Liberation Movement and claimed to represent all of the oppressed in the Sudan.

The Black Book, also known as The Black Book: Imbalance of Power and Wealth in the Sudan detailed how, despite the Arabic people of North Sudan making up 5.4% of the population they still held 79.5% of the wealth in the nation. So in this context, beyond being a war and genocide based on ethnicity and religion we can see economic reasons for the war. There was a massive disparity between the haves and the have nots, and Karl Marx would tell us that this is the foundation and origin of all of history’s great wars. 

Now, the Justice and Equality Movement trace their origin to the writers of The Black Book: Imbalance of Power and Wealth in the Sudan, a manuscript published in 2000 that details what it views as the structural inequality in the country; the JEM's founder, Khalil Ibrahim, was one of the authors.

The JEM claims to number around 35,000 with an ethnically diverse membership. According to critics it is not the "rainbow of tribes" it claims to be, as most JEM members, including its leader, are from the Zaghawa tribe. The JEM is part of the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF), an alliance of groups opposed to the Government of Sudan.

The Darfur Genocide has it’s roots in the same places as all geocides. One group, who feels themselves superior to all others, decided that the best way to deal with these divisive elements in their society is to try and kill them. We saw the same type of conflict in the Armenian genocide of the early 20th century. The Northern Sudanese government saw the non Arabic elements of South Sudan as threats to their power in the region and so decided to kill them.

The use of rape as a tool of genocide has been noted as well. This crime has been carried out by Sudanese government forces and the Janjaweed ("evil men on horseback") paramilitary groups. The actions of the Janjaweed have been described as genocidal rape, with not just women, but children as well. There were also reports of infants being bludgeoned to death, and the sexual mutilation of victims being commonplace.

One thing I want to make sure we mention is that the President of Sudan during the Darfur genocide has had arrest warrants issued against him by the ICC.

He has been charged with five counts of crimes against humanity: murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture, and rape; two counts of war crimes: intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking part in hostilities, and pillaging; three counts of genocide: by killing, by causing serious bodily or mental harm, and by deliberately inflicting on each target group conditions of life calculated to bring about the group's physical destruction, allegedly committed at least between 2003 and 2008 in Darfur, Sudan. To this day he remains at large and is not in custody.

I say remains at large. We, more or less, know where he is. As of 2019 al-Bashir was ousted from his political role by the RSF in a military coup and jailed in Khartoum. Tensions rose between the RSF and the SLM and in 2023 they erupted, once again, into a civil war in Sudan.

This brings us, more or less, up to modern day Sudan and the current conflict. To put it as simply as possible, ethnic and religious tensions between the Arabic north and the Christian south have exploded into a full scale war in a period of drought and famine. Roughly 9 million people have been displaced and pretty much everyone who lives in Sudan is without adequate food and water. The United Arab Emirates, among other nations are actively supporting the RSF in their continued subjugation of South Sudan and are actively contributing to the ongoing Darfur genocide.

Roughly 80% of Sudanese hospitals no longer exist, and the World Food Programe has indicated that some 95% of Sudanese people are in a state of massive food insecurity.

On 3 August 2023, Amnesty International released its report on the conflict. Titled Death Came To Our Home: War Crimes and Civilian Suffering In Sudan, it documented "mass civilian casualties in both deliberate and indiscriminate attacks" by both the SAF and the RSF, particularly in Khartoum and West Darfur. It also detailed sexual violence against women and girls as young as 12, targeted attacks on civilian facilities such as hospitals and churches, and looting.

Early March 2024, the UN Panel of Experts on Sudan, mandated by Resolution 2620 (2022) of the UN Security Council, published their latest report. It described the wide-ranging devastation and violence in the country, caused in many cases by the RSF and associated militias. With regard to war crimes in West Darfur, the report estimated the death rate through ethnic cleansing of the Masalit community in El Geneina between 10,000 and 15,000. In her speech before the Security Council Committee, Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US Representative to the United Nations, commented: "It is my hope that the sobering report will at long last shake the world from its indifference to the horrors playing out before our eyes."

In April 2024, the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights released a report into breaches of the Genocide Convention in Darfur. The independent report found that there is "clear and convincing evidence" that the RSF and its allied militias "have committed and are committing genocide against the Masalit," a non-Arab ethnic group, and that all 153 states that have signed the Genocide Convention are "obligated to end complicity in and employ all means reasonably available to prevent and halt the genocide." It goes on to say that there is "clear and convincing evidence" that Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Libya, Chad, the Central African Republic (CAR) and Russia via the actions of the Wagner Group are "complicit in the genocide."

The ongoing genocide and refugee crisis in Sudan can, absolutely trace its roots to British imperialism, but beyond that it is part of an ongoing religious conflict between Islam and Christianity dating back all the way to the Crusades.

The conflict between the SAF and the RSF is ongoing and shows no signs of slowing down or stopping. While these two groups fight for control over Sudan millions of innocent civilians are dying due to lack of access to food and water.

Civil war and genocide is ongoing against the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups and against the general non-Arabic Muslim peoples of Sudan. This conflict has been going on for so long that we have all but forgotten about it. I was in high school and engaging in political activism to end the Darfur genocide. This was nearly 20 years ago. I’m old as hell. There are so many horrible crimes and genocides that exist in the world today. Please don’t forget about these suffering people. Genocide relies on existing for long enough that it becomes part of the background. None of this is normal. Never again is right now.

That’s it for this week folks. No new reviews, so let’s get right into the outro.

Have a Day! w/ The History Wizard is brought to you by me, The History Wizard. If you want to see/hear more of me you can find me on Tiktok @thehistorywizard or on Instagram @the_history_wizard. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe to Have a Day! On your pod catcher of choice. The more you do, the more people will be able to listen and learn along with you. Thank you  for sticking around until the end and, as always, Have a Day, and Free Sudan