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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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Interesting post. To me the interesting angle is, as you suggest, that Egypt doesn't want to intervene too much in favor of the SAF because the Gulf Arabs essentially keep Egypt afloat via an eternal line of credit, and they're backing the RSF.

I'd lean towards that the initial seizures of personnel froze any immediate response ability, and while that was resolving the impetus to support / enable foreign diplomatic evacuations and the imminent refugee crisis took priority. At this point, the capital seems undecided, and so the way the conflict will shift within a month is unclear, and so focusing on the refugees streaming towards the border is an easier effort than an unclear intervention.

As with the west as a whole, Egypt is less invested in the man than in what the man-in-charge is willing to do. The RSF is liable to be as willing to keep supporting Egypt vis-a-vis Ethiopia as the SAF.

I'm less convinced about the Gulf Arab argument. There is various reporting that the UAE in particular is connected, but the quality varies, Egypt is funded more by Saudi Arabia, and the Saudi's aren't as clearly involved/interested. That's not saying you can't find connections, but in this part of the world you will always find connections, especially when the RSF was the literal gold dealer.

I have to say that, knowing comparatively little about the situation there, I was surprised that Burhan held against Hemedti as well as he seems to so far, because everyone I knew who worked out there expected that when this blew up the latter would come to power pretty easily and moderately bloodlessly (by regional standards).

Military juntas don't dominate the state for 30+ years by lacking internal espionage services. While the RSF is a rich bunch of militia groups it's still a bunch of militia groups, with poor discipline already on show, and while the SAF may be a poor army it's still an army with heavy equipment and the resources of the state. The RSF seems to be focusing extremely heavily on the capital, and the movement of RSF forces from their usual areas to the capital would have been pretty noticeable.

Once the Hemedti actually failed to take out Burhan in the first 24 hours, most of what we're seeing was predictable.