Janoub Podcast

This episode wasn't in my plan for the season.

Ali Latifi reached out and said, why don't we talk about Afghanistan? The more I researched, the more I realized how little I knew. So I used it to learn.

Our first live interview. From Kabul.

Ali is an Afghan-American journalist, born in Kabul, raised in Little Kabul, California, who moved home to report in 2013. He is Asia Editor at The New Humanitarian.

We talk about who makes people "voiceless," and why it's never an accident. A US podcast about protests in Paris without a single French voice. Millions of Afghans pushed back from Iran and Pakistan. What engagement can look like for Afghan women. Twenty years of an economy built for an occupation. And the people who refuse to surrender.

"Occupation of the land is one thing. Occupation of the mind, that's even worse."

We scheduled this conversation before Egypt announced it would send troops to help Saudi Arabia in its war on Yemen.

As an Egyptian, I couldn't have asked for a more urgent week to talk to Afrah Nasser.

Afrah is a Yemeni journalist from Sana'a with roots in Ethiopia, a non-resident fellow at Arab Center Washington DC, and a former member of the UN Special Envoy for Yemen's office. In 2017, CPJ honored her, and the US almost kept her out.

We talk about why Yemen is only news when something explodes. Why the warring parties agree on one thing: keeping women out of the room. Why bombing has never solved anything in Yemen. And what Egypt's role could mean.

I end with an apology. As an Egyptian, I owe Yemenis one too.

My Ethiopian guest pulled out last week. He was afraid of what an Egyptian and an Ethiopian talking publicly might cost him.

That tells you everything about where Egypt and Ethiopia are right now.

So I asked publicly. Dr. Asnake Chanie answered, under his own name.

Asnake is an Ethiopian political scientist, an Associate Fellow at CARPO in Bonn, and a former journalist. We talk about how ordinary Ethiopians actually see Egyptians, and how Egyptians see Ethiopia. We talk about media in both countries that sensationalizes instead of informing, Sudan's war as a proxy battlefield, the trade and electricity we refuse to share, and why nobody is building a road from Cairo to Addis.

And I end with an apology. As an Egyptian, I owe one.

War is not inevitable. It is a choice. And a bad one.

Egypt and Ethiopia Dialogue

Janoub Group will partner with Addis Insights and others to build a Track III diplomacy initiative. This project aims to bring together grassroots and civil society organizers across the Egyptian-Ethiopian border, developing a series of regional workshops that will build platforms for citizens, experts, and activists to share data, strategies, and narratives on peace-building between Egypt and Ethiopia. 

Partners are in Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan, in addition to experts from Sudan and Yemen. 

Read more: https://www.janoubgroup.com/projects

Maha Tambal is a Sudanese researcher, development professional and foreign policy expert. At DT Institute she runs women-led and youth-led initiatives, including the Sudanese Peace Network. She has worked on Sudan from inside the country, in Washington, at the UN and in the EU.

In this episode she argues that in the absence of a durable political solution, Sudanese communities are building their own localized peace — in shelters, in refugee camps across the borders, in the diaspora, and online — and that these initiatives inherit a legacy, not an emergency. Sudanese have toppled dictatorship three times since independence.

She describes what the funding cuts since 2025 have taken away, and what resilience actually requires: small, flexible, direct support to local actors rather than large intermediaries.

She explains why Sudan sits fourth on the world's agenda, and what it would take to change that — not a moral appeal but a comprehensive package built on interests policymakers already recognize, from Bab al-Mandab to the price of oil.

And she makes the case on accountability. External actors are profiting from resource smuggling, illicit financial flows and money laundering while facilitating weapons trades and covering up violations — and they are shielded by great powers. The evidentiary link between financial crime and human rights violations, she says, is admissible before international mechanisms. The question is whether anyone will use it, or whether accountability becomes a bargaining chip traded for a safe exit.

"Sudan 1.5: GBV, Shared Healing, and Women-Led Accountability Across Sudan, Libya, and Yemen"

Janoub Group & the Sudan and Uganda-based SORD (Sudanese Organization for Research and Development) launched this initiative to bring Sudanese women human rights defenders (WHRDs) into dialogue with women peace leaders from Libya and Yemen — contexts where similar patterns of weaponized sexual violence, institutional collapse, and women's exclusion have played out — to build shared insight, collective healing, and a regionally-grounded accountability track.

Partners come from Sudan, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Egypt, in addition to experts from Yemen, Libya, and Syria. 

More info at: https://www.janoubgroup.com/projects

I started this podcast because I wanted to introduce you to people who inspire me personally and have chosen to partner with the Janoub Group consultancy firm.  

Ilham Ibrahim is one of them.

She is the executive director of the Sudanese Organization for Research and Development — SORD — a feminist civil society organization founded in Khartoum in 2007 and now operating from eastern Sudan and outside the country, after its Khartoum office was looted on the first day of the war.

She told me at the end "I have one message: we are still steadfast, and we refuse to die. Maybe we won't see it in our time. But A people that survived three dictatorships and removed them peacefully — is capable of building a democratic civil Sudan."

"Sudan 1.5: GBV, Shared Healing, and Women-Led Accountability Across Sudan, Libya, and Yemen"

Janoub Group & the Sudan and Uganda-based SORD (Sudanese Organization for Research and Development) launched this initiative to bring Sudanese women human rights defenders (WHRDs) into dialogue with women peace leaders from Libya and Yemen — contexts where similar patterns of weaponized sexual violence, institutional collapse, and women's exclusion have played out — to build shared insight, collective healing, and a regionally-grounded accountability track.

Partners come from Sudan, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Egypt, in addition to experts from Yemen, Libya, and Syria. 

More info at: https://www.janoubgroup.com/projects

For the English summary, check the podcast page: https://www.janoubgroup.com/podcast

This is my story, in my own words, and I'm telling it for the people now calling for accountability from mainstream newsroom leaders who played a complicit role in the erasure of Palestinian journalists.