Sudan's war: Is it a genocide?

0:00Mark Austin:How does a banana trigger a CIA-backed coup? Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order? What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway, and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open, and reveal the world-shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow. Coming up on The Daily with me, Mark Austin. Images show tens of thousands of people may have been killed in Al-Fasha. What does this mean for the war in Sudan? And more specifically, are we witnessing another genocide?

0:45Mark Austin:How does a banana trigger a CIA-backed coup? Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order? What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway and in each episode of my new podcast Stuff Matters I take an object, crack it open and reveal the world-shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow.

1:19Mark Austin:That's the sound of the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group at war with Sudan's army, celebrating after capturing the regional capital of Darfur. They've defeated the Sudanese military after intense ground battles. Now, satellite images appear to show the RSF carried out mass killings over two days. Our Africa correspondent, Yusra El-Baghir, who is Sudanese, joins me now.

1:45Yousra Elbagir:We can't really talk about Sudan's war without speaking about the revolution in 2019. a popular uprising led by youth, doctors, women, ousted 30-year military dictator Omar al-Bashir. But what happened after that was a power vacuum and the scramble for authoritarian rule by his two favorite henchmen, his inspector general and his favorite militia leader. And then in April 2023, it exploded on the streets of the capital Khartoum and has been spreading rapidly ever since.

2:15Mark Austin:Right. And the RSF are, of course, central to what is happening now.

2:18Yousra Elbagir:In September, when we went to North Darfur, we were meeting rebels who were fighting the army with the RSF, now fighting with the army against the RSF. So it's just this insanely fluid picture of alliances, shifting alliances. But what it all comes down to is the fact that civilians in Sudan are caught in the middle.

2:38Mark Austin:Talk to me about the impact of this 18 months or so siege.

2:42Yousra Elbagir:The siege was a starvation campaign. It was daily shelling by the RSF. Satellite images showed that in the last few months, the RSF built a berm around the city to trap civilians inside. When we went to North Darfur weeks before the fall of El Fashir, we met civilians who'd managed to escape and they spoke about torture, detention. They said people were executed. A lot of them were women and children and that their men were still trapped in El Fashir because they couldn't risk trying to get out without facing execution by the RSF. We also met volunteers who were risking their lives to try and smuggle food into Arfashir.

3:18Yousra Elbagir:And the way that they would do that is by foot, by cart, insulin, life-saving medicine, food dropped off to safe locations around the city, buried in the ground. And then they would send GPS coordinates to volunteers in Arfashir to go and collect it. A completely secret operation where 30 volunteers went missing in one week after being caught by the RSF. All of this has been happening over the last 18 months and only worsened in the last five or six months since the RSF lost the capital Khartoum to the army and then started to strangle Al-Fashir even more.

3:52Mark Austin:Since this RSF breakthrough in Al-Fashir, butchery on an unbelievable scale, bloodletting on an unbelievable scale, the world is only able to see this through satellite images and other video. What have they been showing?

4:07Yousra Elbagir:Satellite images have been showing really disturbing clues towards massacres happening, even in the hospital compound, the last functioning hospital in Al-Fashir, a Saudi hospital. Analysts from Yale Humanitarian Labs, their executive director in particular, told us that he has never seen red discoloration in satellite images before. Red discoloration that alludes to bloodstains on the ground. He also said that bodies were in certain shapes, a C shape that shows that they could have been running when they were shot. And he also mentioned that the length of these objects that they're seeing from space indicate that they could be bodies.

4:48Mark Austin:And you've been working with a team here at Sky to verify other video that has emerged. What does that footage show? What have you found about that video?

5:00Yousra Elbagir:So we're currently looking at execution videos and trying to assess whether civilians are being executed or, as the RSF will allege, it is, you know, soldiers or combatants. We've also been looking at detention centers, detention sites. And we're currently working with Lighthouse Reports and Sudan War Monitor to further confirm what sources on the ground have been telling us, that the army made a deal for their safe passage and left behind civilians and other forces that refused to leave the city. We've been told by several people that there are still some battles. I would find that very difficult to believe.

5:37Yousra Elbagir:I think the scale of capture and the fact that we've seen so many people trapped and captured and go missing. I'd be very shocked if battles were still happening in the fifth day. But what I will say is that people are still trapped in Al-Fashir in the thousands. We're not seeing enough figures of displaced people to give us any indication of whether they've been given safe passage. In the first two days, only 1 ,500 people reached a safe zone of Al-Tawila, which is the closest displacement shelter with INGOs that can help people. So we would not be surprised if over 150 ,000 people were still trapped in Al-Fashid as we speak.

6:17Mark Austin:The murder of civilians could well be still going on.

6:21Yousra Elbagir:Absolutely. Absolutely. This pattern marks RSF takeovers of other key cities, especially in Darfur. There is a complete telecommunications blackout. Army has withdrawn from several cities very abruptly. We actually investigated an army withdrawal in one of the first towns to fall in North Darfur. A whistleblower told us that the army cut a deal with the RSF and abandoned the garrison. So this isn't something new. What ends up happening is that there is this incredibly murky picture of backroom deals of insane corruption, essentially, on the ground and people being murdered in the darkness of a Khoms blackout.

7:02Yousra Elbagir:And the last thing I will just say is that the RSF has a very particular strategy or pattern of doing door-to-door hunts for people of certain tribes. We've seen these patterns of ethnic cleansing happen in different cities. We saw it in Jinnena, which is the capital of West Darfur. We saw it in Kutum in North Darfur. All of this indicates what people have been warning about, that there could be mass ethnic cleansing, if not genocide happening as we speak.

7:28Mark Austin:How much support is there internationally for the conclusion that this is or could well turn out to be genocide?

7:38Yousra Elbagir:I think the huge concern for people on the ground, for observers, for journalists like myself, is that there has been such a show of impotence by the international community. They haven't been able to step in and do anything. A large part of that, we think, is because of the UAE's economic hold on countries in the West at the moment. and also its leverage with Israel. And I think that's been felt not just at the highest levels of governments and at the highest levels of think tanks and media organizations, but also people on the ground have told us we have been forsaken by the world.

8:11Mark Austin:In 1994, I was in Rwanda and journalists were in Kigali and the UN was in Kigali. There was some sort of UN force there, but unable to do anything. It was too small a force and in the end they were told not to intervene. But there were eyewitnesses there. This seems to be different.

8:33Yousra Elbagir:It's even different from Darfur 20 years ago. There were entities that were relatively neutral that could give an indication of what was going on. But what's happened in the last 20 years is that the RSF has trained and fought with the UAE and Saudi and Yemen, has had access to incredibly sophisticated weapons, has been trained by Wagner around gold mines in Darfur and has been able to funnel those resources out and create a multi-billion dollar empire. And so what people are dealing with in Darfur is a monster that has grown over the last two decades to such a scale that now they are completely unstoppable.

9:11Yousra Elbagir:A lot of the videos we're seeing have been shared by RSF officers themselves on their channels. We're seeing war crimes and atrocities that they're proud to show evidence of. That's what's so harrowing. And we haven't even seen what civilians have been through. But I also, I always feel that after the comms blackout ends in all the other cities, that then we really, we were shocked by the scale, that even what we imagined was far less than what they actually did. But I'm just concerned at the moment that there won't even be people who've survived it to even tell us what's going on, that the survivors are actually being attacked as we speak.

9:50Mark Austin:The international community watches on, really. No suggestion at all of any kind of intervention at this stage? No, no.

10:02Yousra Elbagir:Everyone I've spoken to has said that the UN has felt completely paralysed, that senior UN veterans are at a loss about what to do. I think also I have a very, you know, everyone calls Sudan the forgotten war. I have a very unpopular opinion. I think that there has been a real effort by journalists to cover the war in Sudan. I get messages probably twice a week about journalists wanting to cover Sudan from countries all over the world. I've been at the military media office and they've said you were the first international media organization to come in. And now we have had 75 media organizations in the capital in Sudan.

10:38Yousra Elbagir:I think what happens is that we put these reports out, we're met with complete silence. There's no effective action. The people who watch our reports and feel outraged and upset realize they really can't do anything because their policymakers aren't giving them any options and it's not a priority. And then it just dies down again. People from El Fashir that I've been working with over the last few days to verify things are concerned that this is going to be a moment. People are going to be concerned. Everyone's going to try and get in. There's going to be a scramble to cover it. and that it's just going to die out like every other moment.

11:11Mark Austin:I'm not saying that the media can't cover everything or most things. Of course it can. But is there the fact that there is a war right in the heart of Europe at the moment is part of this or is that a bit of an excuse?

11:25Yousra Elbagir:I think it's an excuse. I think there's a capacity to deal with several things at a time. I genuinely believe that the instability in Sudan and how vast it is and how it's connected to all the countries, surrounding countries, and how arms are being smuggled in and all of these armed groups are kind of moving through the borders is going to have a huge impact on global security in a way that will end up on Europe's doorstep.

11:51Mark Austin:After Rwanda, Clinton and other world leaders lined up to say never again. From what is becoming evident out of Sudan again is that it is happening again.

12:03Yousra Elbagir:It's happening again and never again was said in particular to Darfur 20 years ago.

12:08Mark Austin:This is personal for you in many ways. I've seen your reports that indicate that. What has it been like watching this and what has it been like covering it and what do you think is going to happen?

12:20Yousra Elbagir:I think what's been the saving grace for me is the fact that there is an incredible community of people that have come out of this war where we are all leaning on each other to not only get through a difficult period for our country, but also to really know what is going on, to be able to get the facts when the facts are being intentionally blurred and denied. And that's been, I think it kind of does carry on from that unity that we were aiming for in the revolution. The mutual aid groups, the community kitchens, the emergency response rooms, people have been saving their own neighborhoods. And that's what kind of, as much as this has been horrible for my family and my friends and we've all really struggled.

13:04Yousra Elbagir:We're all leaning on each other and I think that's been a really important lesson and I'm privileged to honestly be able to cover it and sit down here with you and tell you what's going on.

13:14Mark Austin:Thanks very much, Yusra. This isn't the first time we've covered the war in Sudan on the daily. In April, Yusra returned to her childhood home in the capital Khartoum after it was ransacked during the conflict. You can find that episode in your podcast feed. For more on today's story, visit the Sky News app or TV channel. From me, bye-bye.

13:49Mark Austin:How does a banana trigger a CIA-backed coup? Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order? What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway, and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open, and reveal the world-shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow.