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.
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
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.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Is the first section after the foreword accurate? It seems that assigning so much significance to two drones is almost a bizarro version of liberals and Ukros claiming that Russia was totally done for after the submarine got hit, or whenever the magical regenerating AWAC gets shot down again. My interpretation of “World War 3” so far has been the impacts that will echo the longest are financial, industrial, and diplomatic, most especially in regards to the dollar, oil prices, and global currency reserves. While the West isn’t automatically getting everything it wants right now, it’s still causing millions of casualties in service of its aims. Ansarallah’s efforts so far have been incredible. From a macro perspective, I think the US has been stalemating counterinsurgency operations at tremendous civilian cost for longer than I have been alive without losing hegemon status.
I think the reason why liberals get so stoked about singular Russian Ls like various ships getting hit is because they tend to let their imagination run away with it - like, “Oh, now we’ve demonstrated that it’s possible to almost/actually sink a ship with just a few drones and missiles! Extrapolate that to the rest of the Russian fleet and by this time next year, they’ll have no ships left at all!”
the problem is, of course, that it makes at least two key assumptions: a) that this thing you just destroyed/damaged is actually important/critical to the Russian strategy, and b) that the Russians are totally incapable of learning lessons from it and improving; essentially an End Of History brainworm.
likewise, when we saw not that long ago that Ansarallah was mere seconds away from hitting a US warship before the last line of defence stopped it, we weren’t like “Ah, dang. Well, that sucks, that means that Ansarallah can’t actually hit US ships,” we actually drew the opposite conclusion, that it was only a matter of time before Ansarallah hits a US warship. Were we wrong for drawing that conclusion? I think we would all agree that US naval power is indeed a genuinely important, even critical, part of American global military strategy, especially when including the aircraft carriers, but are we right to suggest that the US is totally incapable of improving? I think we have this discussion at least once a week on this site, about whether the US is in terminal and steep decline with no possible way out or if it can gently glide and manage a gradually falling empire without facing any enormous Ls, and even make temporary rebounds before China once again pressures them. so the answer to that question will determine the answer to the question of “Is the first section after the foreword accurate?”
Pepe escobar is a bombastic cloutchaser, he’s not known for factual accuracy or analytical rigor. I’ve had a deep distrust of him since thesaker was a thing and he published insane antisemitic conspiracy shit about Jewish globalists controlling the American media.
Escobar, to me, represents the most optimistic possible position for somebody on the pro-Russia, pro-Palestine side of geopolitics. You have the doomers on one side and Escobar on the other, and… it’s too cliche (and really just not even correct) to say that the truth is somewhere in the middle, and you do actually have to do the work of reading and analyzing shit to know which pole ongoing events are closer to, but you can at least be damn sure that things aren’t going any better than he depicts them.
For the reason you’ve given now (and in the past) he’s not somebody I actively follow and I don’t put much actual value in his opinions beyond what I stated above. He’s a slightly better and more learned version of Scott Ritter.
Yea that’s fair. I don’t think he’s virulently antisemitic as much as he is heterodox without understanding Marxism. I think his antisemitism is rooted in dislike of financial capital, not actually Jews. That doesn’t really excuse it but I wish he would read some books.
I will say that he was an entertaining guest on the Michael Hudson radhika desai show the other day. He came across like he was talking about politics in a bar while Michael and radhika were verbally eyerolling.
Escobar, together with the likes of Michael Hudson and several other anti-imperialist/geopolitical commentators, have the penchant of ascribing more significance to the current events than they should be.
To be clear, the analyses from a broad perspective are still correct. Russia, China and BRICS as a whole are in a good position to challenge US imperialist dominance - however, that position assumes they all play their cards correctly and are fully exploiting the opportunities opened up by the current crisis to press for their advantages.
Unfortunately, if you have been following the whole situation play-by-play over the past two years, the fact is that there are still many liberals among the Russian, Chinese (and BRICS) leaderships who are not ready to commit to such radical changes that could dramatically transform the global geopolitical landscape. Many of the de-dollarization initiatives so heatedly propped up in 2022 have already faltered, and given way to more moderate positions that are mildly challenging to the US political and financial dominance at best.
I really don’t know what’s going to happen in the next few years. With so many African countries already strained to their limits and poised to default over the short term, it does not look like China or BRICS+ are even remotely prepared to set up an alternative economic and financial structures that could accommodate these countries seeking for a dollar alternative. At this pace, it does look like the dollar is going to win again, given that its challengers had failed to jump on to the opportunity and rapidly exploit it as they should be doing.
Michael Hudson is right in that many of these countries like Russia and China are reacting to the current events on an ad hoc basis, which they are doing very well. But over the longer term, they do not have an ideological foundation that can serve as an alternative that truly challenges the core of the Washington-led neoliberal consensus.
When people discuss all of the BRICS+ and other multipolar things they act like there’s a larger plan and effort than there really is. Most of these things are loose organizations or bilateral diplomacy. Fundamentally, no one is in charge of the multipolar world and that’s the point. None of the BRICS leaders are grand visionaries who want to lead a bloc of countries to resist the imperialist powers and none of them could do that anyway.
So it just becomes a frustrating waiting game, in my opinion. Waiting for imperialism to slowly wane as countries on the edge maintain, expand, or fully gain their sovereignty. Waiting for financial capital to cannibalize its own power base and be toppled. At a certain point it has to accelerate but we won’t know when that will happen.
