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.
The New York Post is reporting that, the day before his death, Aaron Bushnell told one of his friends that his job invovled processing top secret intelligence data, and that info of US soldiers on the ground in Gaza fighting Palestinians has crossed his desk.
Regarding a recent New York Post article claiming Aaron Bushnell had inside knowledge about U.S. forces in Gaza, I reached out to actual friends of his (not just an anon “pal” talking to a conservative rag) who stated Bushnell had not been working for the USAF for four months:
“Aaron has not been doing his military job for like four months so there's no way he has had access to any intelligence.
Also I don't think there being American troops on the ground in Gaza would be the thing to push him to do this. He had a strong enough analysis to recognize the US role regardless of whether or not there were literal Americans soldiers on the ground.”
holy shit. i used to dismiss reports of US troops on the ground in Gaza as wishful thinking by those seeking more reasons to blame the US for the genocide they’re running interference on. conspiracy-brained stuff. but Bushnell claiming it was true before his sacrifice lends that claim a level of credibility its never had before.
There are literally pictures of Biden greeting troops deployed in Israel that the White House forgot to censor. It's never been conspiracy brained stuff.
The Biden admin has admitted we have special ops troops in Israel, but they claimed it was only in a consultative capacity. I hope that Bushnell leaked intel to a reputable journalist before he died.
The Intercept's Ken Klippenstein is the guy who usually gets military leaks from people who have become disillusioned. He said they are similar to Bushnell most of the time iirc.
I would just send it out to every media outlet if I knew I was going to kill myself, anyways. Someone is going to run it when they know everyone else has it, too. If I was sending it out to one journalist, I don't know, maybe Ken Klippenstein or WikiLeaks. I'm sure there are foreign press that would publish it, like Al Jazeera.
It was never wishful thinking, it was out in the open and reported on by people in Gaza. The question was how many and how involved were they in directing and participating in the genocide. Now we know that the answer is more than a couple, and probably very very involved.