Bulletins and News Discussion from February 26th to March 3rd, 2024 - Breaking The Siege Of Omdurman - COTW: Sudan
The war in Sudan has so far been marked by a lot of incompetency and mismanagement by government forces (the SAF). After months of bitter fighting, in late 2023, the opposing Rapid Support Forces suddenly expanded their control towards the southeast of Khartoum after not a lot of resistance, most notably taking the city of Wad Madani. This led the SAF supporters and officials to panic and point fingers at each other about what the hell the army is even doing, while RSF soldiers looted the city.
These victories led to a short period in late December and early January where diplomacy and peace talks were considered, but such attempts fell apart. The leader of the RSF visited various African countries, including meeting Paul Kagame in Rwanda, to boost his legitimacy. Then, the RSF attacked into South Kordofan and consolidated their hold on other areas.
The Sudanese capital of Khartoum sits on a river which divides it from the city to its west, Omdurman (see the post image). The SAF and RSF have been fighting over this grand urban area for the whole war, with the RSF holding most of Khartoum (with an entirely cut-off SAF force holding on in the center), with a similarly cut-off SAF force also in eastern Omdurman, up against the river. For 10 months, this force has been under siege - but no longer. In perhaps the first actual W of the war for the SAF, they finally managed to break the siege a week ago, pouring supplies in. This leaves a section of the RSF now cut off, though Omdurman is still not under full SAF control (and, who knows, the whole situation could once again go badly for the SAF).
Meanwhile, the Sudanese socioeconomic situation has completely collapsed, with potentially a 20% fall in GDP and 8 million people displaced, with 2 million from Khartoum alone. 18 million Sudanese, or about a third of the population, is in acute hunger, and 20 million children are out in school. The refugees streaming out of the country are causing knock-on effects in neighorboring countries like Chad. Nobody is even really counting the dead anymore.
Red is the government forces, the SAF. Blue is the RSF opposition. Other colours are various factions.
The Country of the Week is Sudan! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section. Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war. Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language. https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one. https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts. https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel. https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator. https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps. https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language. https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language. https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses. https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
frustrating seeing people still call the invasion of ukraine "stupid" two years on. to say nothing of its morality one way or the other, whether or not it was a mistake is not the sort of thing that anybody can reasonably call at this point but it seems pretty far from stupid. russia's economy has grown as they have been able to pivot towards the east, and they have all but destroyed the second-biggest army in europe (after their own), and they have drained the coffers and supplies of the NATO countries. sure, some more countries have joined nato, but it's not like there was any chance of them ever joining the antiimperialist bloc anyways. maybe some years down the line it will be a mistake in hindsight, very possible with the demographic challenges in russia and the whole unstable state on their doorstep thing, but for now from an outsider's perspective it looks like it was a risky gamble that has at least broken even if not paid off a little bit.
I dont think that the SMO was any good. It would have been if the ua government fled and it all together lasted not more than a month. UA will need decades to recover, if it is even possible with so many man dead and disabled and a big part of young people lost to the EU. It all gave much publicity to some of the most insane fascist in eastern europe, fascist military influencer, Nafo dogs (just think about the unimaginable cringe we all felt when the PM of estonia gave a talk at one of their summits, I would do literally everything to avoid this happening again), psychopathic drone operators...
All of that sounds pretty small in comparison to the obvious good that has come from the SMO imho. Like the entire empire is weaker today than it was before February 2022, it’s extremely obvious.
the rise in fascism and nafo maniacs is precisely a consequence of that weakening, the imperial core and its "peripheral" thugs should get worse and worse as time goes by
They are doing that because America is losing power and influence, but that’s an inevitability regardless of Russias decision to engage in the SMO or not. Basically those people were going to be fascists one way or another.
i think it's a matter of degree, russia's smo definitely did accelerate things in europe for instance (which, in turn, makes things worse for america)
it definitely feels like america is stretched thin right now (at least politically, if not yet economically), and that is weird because they've been involved in more concurrent conflicts in the past and it didn't feel that way then