Is a British arms deal helping to fuel the Sudan genocide?

0:01Lewis Goodall:This is a Global Player original podcast.

0:12Daisy Cooper:Those are shots being fired by the camel riding paramilitary militia, the RSF, in Sudan. They're entering the city of El Fasha in Darfur, where a bloodbath is unfolding.

0:26Lewis Goodall:Unspeakable atrocities are taking place. But perhaps equally worrying, British military equipment has been found on the battlefield. Is it possible that we're inadvertently helping a genocide? Welcome to the News Agents.

0:47Lewis Goodall:The News Agents. It's John. It's Emily. It's Lewis. and obviously there have been two really big international conflicts which have shaped our news and international news over the past couple of years, Ukraine and Gaza. But Sudan has been a sort of subterranean conflict which hasn't got nearly as much attention but it is bloody. In case you haven't been following it this is basically the background. So this is a war which or the latest stage of this war started in April 2023 when the army in Sudan turned on the RSF as Emily mentioned the rapid support forces this is a basically a paramilitary force which was born from the Janjaweed militias that brutalized Darfur which is part of Sudan in the 2000s this group the RSF has been supported by foreign governments especially the UAE who have been accused of supplying them with money and weapons there has been a conflict between the Sudanese government and the rsf which has been catastrophic for the people of sudan around 150 000 people have been killed millions have been displaced famine has spread throughout the country and the un is talking about a possible genocide the rsf now controls much of western sudan parts of the capital khartoum and basically now are almost a state within a state and into this this week The Guardian has revealed that British-made military equipment, including engines and training systems, has been found in the RSF's hands.

2:21Lewis Goodall:These parts were exported to the UAE under UK licences, and this has raised serious questions, as John was saying, about whether Britain's arms controls are helping fuel a conflict which is now being widely characterised by ethnic cleansing and war crimes. And of course, the UAE is a very close ally of the UK. Relations are very close. We want to maintain very close relations with one of the richest Gulf states that there is. And so, yes, of course, our defence systems are a big export for Britain to be able to sell to the UAE. Normally, though, with export controls, it's stipulated that you can't move this stuff on to other third parties because otherwise there'd be no restraint on the sale of weapons anywhere around the world.

3:13Lewis Goodall:And the question is whether there has been some kind of breakdown in terms of what weapons we have sold in good faith to the UAE may have been passed on to these militia forces.

3:26Daisy Cooper:Yeah, I mean, we've got a total arms embargo on Darfur, which is interesting. That has been in place for years and that was passed through the UN Security Council. But when it comes to the rest of Sudan, the arms embargo was blocked by Russia and China. In other words, it is possible to get weapons into the rest of Sudan, just not technically to go straight into itself, straight into Darfur. I was talking to Andrew Mitchell, who was the former Shadow Foreign Secretary and also the International Development Secretary. And he spent a lot of time in Darfur and in Sudan more widely. Just to give you a sense of scale here.

4:08Daisy Cooper:I mean, Sudan, I think, is about the size of Eastern Europe. It is massive off the charts massive. And that is after the division between North and South, which happened in 2011. and Darfur itself, you know, it's called a region, but it's probably almost the size of France. And this is why the numbers coming out are almost unimaginable. You know, you are talking about the displacement of 12 million people. You're talking about the potential starvation now of 20 million people. And you're talking about more than 100 ,000 dead, even in the last few months. And when I spoke to Andrew Mitchell, he said, look, he used this very curious phrase I hadn't heard before.

4:51Daisy Cooper:He said, we hold the pen. We're a lead country. We are part of the Permanent Five. And both Sudan and Darfur is a British issue. You know, Sudan is a former colony, right? In a sense, we have not taken any kind of lead on this. We haven't taken enough of a humanitarian lead. We haven't taken enough of a protection of civilians lead, even though it sort of befits us, it falls on us to do that. And he reminded me of just what a focus Darfur used to be for the governments of Blair and Cameron. They were very, very focused on this. You know, some of you will remember before the Beijing Olympics, there was this boycott by, you know, the Hollywood superstars, the Spielbergs and the Cloonies.

5:34Daisy Cooper:And even I think Barack Obama got quite involved in this, which was like, we don't want to have anything to do with the Beijing Olympics because China's role in Darfur sending money in, And, you know, the whole belts and roads projects and the amount of money that was coming from China meant that they didn't want to touch the Beijing Olympics because of the implications for Darfur. And then, as you say, Lewis, it's sort of weirdly it fell out of fashion. In other words, it was dwarfed by Gaza. It was dwarfed by Ukraine. And people are suddenly coming round to this horrendous war that has been going on in its latest incarnation for two years, but really for years and decades earlier.

6:13Daisy Cooper:and the way that Andrew Mitchell described it, I thought was, I found it quite shocking actually. He said, this is a war where Arabs are killing Africans. He said, I'm surprised there isn't more being made by the African Union, the African Union force, you know, and he recognised that you wouldn't ever put UN troops, I don't think there is any appetite for the UN to put troops on the ground, but you do have to start looking at the role that the UN is playing or should be playing in just kind of bringing people's attention to this and recognising, I mean, he calls it a Srebrenica waiting to happen, a massive massacre on an unprecedented scale that is unfolding there now.

6:52Daisy Cooper:And into that as a background, you've suddenly got this really complicated question of the role that we are playing. Now, it's not that we are selling arms to the UAE and those arms are being found in Darfur, but we have very strong trade links, arms links with UAE. and some of our military equipment is then turning up, as you say, on these battlefields. And it's going in via Chad. It's going in via the president of Chad's private airport. And this is something that I think the former government took up with Chad. And they said, what are you doing? You know, you have to stop this. You have to stop this going in.

7:30Daisy Cooper:It's all coming through from the UAE to Chad to Darfur. And what's the UAE getting? They get gold. they get access to the Darfur gold reserves, the mines there.

7:40Lewis Goodall:And we should say, I mean, this is the fact that British military hardware has been found has been reported to the UN. I mean, this is what The Guardian were talking about in terms of a dossier which shows pictures of this stuff. So it's going right up to the UN. And indeed, the Foreign Office Minister Stephen Doughty was asked about it this morning. This is what he said in the comments. Thank you, Mr Speaker. I'd like to give the Minister an opportunity to be as robust on this issue of arms exports as possible. does the government consider the reports that the UK military equipment exported to UAE and found on the battlefield are credible?

8:10Lewis Goodall:Have the UAE been challenged on this? Are the relevant export licences under review? And if needed, will we cancel them? Well, I can absolutely assure him of how seriously we take these issues and we take very seriously allegations that any UK-made equipment may have been transferred to Sudan in breach of the UK arms embargo, which reflects on the point raised by the spokesman from the Liberal Democrats. The UK has one of the most robust transport and export control regimes in the world. We constantly assess our licences for the risk of diversion and we regularly prevent exports, which might be diverted to an undesirable end-user or end-use.

8:50Lewis Goodall:We are aware of reports of a small number of UK-made items having been found in Sudan, but there is no evidence in the recent reporting of UK weapons or ammunition being used in Sudan. But I'll keep these matters under close review. I think the point that you raise, Emily, about why it is that this war is so absent, sort of geopolitically, but also in terms of the media. And I think there are some really interesting reasons as to why, right? I think one of the reasons is that in terms of us now, there's no obvious, unlike Gaza or Ukraine, there's no obvious geopolitical stake for the UK or the US.

9:25Lewis Goodall:There's no obvious interest. So not only is there no obvious geopolitical state in terms of the media story, it's complicated because there is no, for one of the better, it's a really crude thing to say, but a goody and a baddie, right? There is no obvious narrative to impose on it. The truth is both the RSF and the Sudanese government have blood on their hands. Both are accused of war crimes. Both are accused of atrocities. They're fighting over things which to the Western media and Western politics seem pretty incohate and indecipherable.

9:51Daisy Cooper:They're just hard to explain. And it's hard to explain, right?

9:54Lewis Goodall:And as a result, and partly I suspect, as you are right, because there was this big sort of peak of interest in the region, particularly in the late 2000s, it feels like it's been going on forever in one form or another. But that's not necessarily satisfactory when we consider how many people are dying.

10:09Daisy Cooper:But there's also been, unlike Ukraine and unlike Gaza, there has been no in point. Again, it's a crude journalistic term, but you can't date it to an October the 7th. You can't date it to a February 2022. to you you have to kind of keep going back to the step before which is why it feels incremental even though the scale of it is off the charts you know what's so interesting is when you're

10:31Lewis Goodall:saying why hasn't this reached the attention bandwidth as well so i was a thing recently with someone very senior in british i love your things a thing it sounds quite posh you know

10:43Daisy Cooper:possibly black tie no what what it was a thing it was a thing it was a thing with a with someone

10:51Lewis Goodall:involved in national security in this country who said look our hands were absolutely full with ukraine this person was asked about what's the you know about the situation in africa and what you think is happening there and this person said you know we haven't been able to focus that much on it we've got our hands absolutely full with yes some counter-terrorism in africa but But broadly speaking, the focus is on China, is on Gaza, it's on Ukraine. And we just do not have the bandwidth to deal with this in the same way as well.

11:22Daisy Cooper:We do not have the bandwidth until it turns into a massive immigration problem. And, you know, this goes back to us speaking to Tobias Elwood, who is a former minister of the conservative government, who said, you know, whenever you guys discuss immigration, you only talk about or you predominantly talk about the pull factors. You know, why Britain's so attractive and, you know, how sort of rubbish the system is and all the rest of it. You don't talk enough about the push factors. And here you have a case in point. You know, we know that that as the UK media in totality, we under report Africa.

11:54Daisy Cooper:We know that. And yet at the same time, how much time do we spend talking about immigration being this massive problem without saying, well, here you go. You know, this is another hundred thousand people leaving the country. 12 million. However many. 12 million people on the march. They're not all coming to the UK, we should just say before that comes to headlines. But this is the point, right? And whether it's climate change and we sort of start dropping our net zero aspirations because we kind of go, well that's not for today. Or whether it's about turning a blind eye to a genocide and not realising how related these two things are.

12:29Daisy Cooper:You know, always how related it is that people leave their country and they come to us and they turn up on the doorstep and we go, what What was going on? We didn't even know.

12:36Lewis Goodall:And of course, our capacity to assist in these matters has been much reduced in any case, because of course our... There's no spending. Yeah, exactly. Our development spending and emergency aid spending has been cut dramatically under SUNAC and now under Starmer. And from the American side, even more. And even more, exactly. So in a way, we're sort of absenting ourselves in that way. I mean, I suppose there's a broader question about arms as well, in the sense that I know there'll be people listening to this who will be saying, well, yes, I mean, this isn't the first time that we've assisted a genocide.

13:01Lewis Goodall:There's been long accusations, of course, about British military hardware and materiel being used in Israel and Gaza. And, you know, Amnesty International and others have taken legal action against the UK government claiming that the export of fighter jets to Israel breaches UK export licensing law. This is a, and it has long been, it's not a new thing. This has been a question for decades around the use of British arms and British exports, which is that as soon as you start to export arms, you can't ultimately be certain. You can never be 100 % certain as to where they might end up and where they might go and what they might be used for.

13:35Lewis Goodall:That is part of the definition of selling arms. And the UK government ministers always say, we've got one of the most robust arms licences systems in the world. Well, yeah, but that's probably not saying very much when you consider what a lot of the other arms export regimes are like. So this is an ongoing world where there is more war. This is going to come up more and more. You just look at the Ukraine example of dual-use technologies, you know, where kind of China is saying, we're not exporting weapons to Russia, but an awful lot of dual use technologies which can then be used in military hardware in rockets and you know whatever else it happens to be can be used for that purpose and so it's a very hard line to be able to say even if you wanted to police it thoroughly you can sell dual use

14:16Daisy Cooper:technologies which then get used i mean a little known fact i think we also still train idf officers not very many we train them here i think it's fewer than 10 but it is you know to the point about well why are we involved in the training of the idf at all now it's not in in a strictly i don't think we teach you know it's not a military thing but it's about management it's about coordination it's about sort of planning and you're sort of thinking well why is the british

14:41Lewis Goodall:government involved in that at all but you see that's where you get into some of the sort of you know if you think about the what there are export licenses for that if it's you know so for example you can have defensive sales of things like i don't know gas masks or whatever it happens to be but no offensive weapons so you you wouldn't supply the rubber bullets or whatever it happens to be to suppress a crowd or the water cannons to suppress them but you might give the shield so that the police can protect themselves and this is where it the arms industry is never pretty is it it's always going to look a little bit murky because broadly speaking you know a lot of the people who want these weapons are militias fighting civil wars who are using you know and as we're seeing in Sudan right now the most hideous kind of slaughter is taking place without any respect to the rules of war or civilian casualties whatsoever the arms industry kind of suddenly got popular after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and we were sending weaponry to Ukraine and then

15:42Daisy Cooper:we hear about it has been a dirty business but it's always always always been a dirty business and actually you know I mean to go back to Mitchell for a second when I got close to saying well, would you like to see this government raise the question of breaking off, you know, arms sales to UAE? Actually, I don't think there is that appetite. I don't think realistically there is going to be anything that upsets our relationship with the UAE. You know, they talk about a sort of a lower octane of weaponry, to your point. But they are huge investors in Britain. They are powerful allies in a part of the world where we're kind of constantly looking for sort of stable friends.

16:20Daisy Cooper:and I'd be really surprised if this was even being raised. I mean, it's interesting that the conversations they had, it sounds like in the last government, were with Chad, not with UAE, because they don't mind upsetting Chad a bit, but they don't really want to upset the UAE.

16:34Lewis Goodall:We're the sixth biggest arms exporter in the world. It's worth about 60 or 70 billion over the past decade. As you say, John, Starmer wants that big industry to be bigger. You know, he's saying and has said that his re-industrialisation efforts are closely twinned to rearmament, which is not just rearmament for us, but for Europe and everywhere else as well. It will be inevitable that the more of British industry that we convert to arms sales, the more we will try and export. And as I say, the government always, always says that we have one of the toughest regimes in the world. A lot of independent experts would say that it's tough on paper, but in practice, we waved through a lot of this stuff.

17:11Lewis Goodall:So we're going to see more of this stuff. Go back to the Al-Yamama arms deal. The what? Al-Yamama arms deal with Saudi Arabia. back in the when Blair was prime minister there was a serious fraud office investigation into whether bribes had been paid was that the BAE systems yeah BAE systems in Saudi Arabia and there was an intervention to stop the legal action from taking place because dealing with Saudi Arabia was deemed far far more important than whether backhanders had been paid and whether there was corruption or whatever else well you know 60 percent of our arms exports go to the Middle East.

17:45Lewis Goodall:Yeah. And we go to the Middle East and we know that they end up elsewhere from there. And that is what this story is really about. It is the sort of, it's not just where these things go, it's stage three and four of where they go.

17:56Daisy Cooper:Do you know, I tell you what I also think though, when you're dealing with a sort of story, a tragedy on this scale, everything, every little offering seems almost insignificant, you know. And I think years ago, the British government was putting money into open source reporting In other words, they were putting stuff in Darfur, satellites, to say, we can see what's going on here. We can see what's going on. We're watching you. Almost like a sort of, you know, a war zone CCTV. If you look at what's happening now with the RSF, the videos like the one we played at the beginning, they are promoting this stuff.

18:31Daisy Cooper:They are doing what, you know, the Houthi sailors did a summer ago. They are putting these videos out. They are making themselves known. It's this idea that we even, you know, we spent money saying, oh, we've got some security surveillance cameras up now. We've got monitors. We've got, you know, we'll have open source intelligence. We'll have people watching, see what goes on. It feels pitifully tiny in the scale of what's actually.

18:55Lewis Goodall:After the break, the Dutch election results and extremism may be out of fashion.

19:06Lewis Goodall:news you can trust and the conversations that matter with award-winning journalists at the