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Soriek  6mo ago (text post)   970 thread views

Transnational Thursdays 24

This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum lives in or might be interested in. Feel free to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Sudan

Eyes have been trained on the human rights situation in Israel, but it’s worth noting things have never recovered in Sudan either, where the conflict still rages on (ironically with a similar death toll over a longer time span).

Fighting between the national army, led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, has been raging for almost seven months, claiming the lives of more than 9,000 people and forcing almost 5.8 million from their homes.

The economy has taken a massive hit, with the International Monetary Fund expecting it to contract more than 18% this year.

Peace talks are resuming in Sudan, though not for the first time so it remains to be seen if they actually go anywhere. Notably, the actual factions at war…do not seem to be in attendance? What is everyone even going to talk about?

The latest round of peace talks in Jeddah this week are being attended by officials from Saudi Arabia, the US and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, an East African bloc whose members include Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda. Notably absent are representatives from Sudanese political parties and former rebel groups — although they had met in Addis Ababa to lay out plans for a return to democracy.

An added hitch is that Iran and Sudan have normalized relations after seven years apart, which has caused some onlookers to worry about Iran becoming a new source of weapons and influence in the conflict, at a time when Iranian proxies are already flashpoints in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen.

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