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☆ Analysis: Qatar takes diplomatic back seat as Saudi flexes political muscle
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-18 | by ( Andrew Mills | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

Qatar has been steadily mending ties with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Qatar cast the Syrian National Coalition as a government-in-exile, handing them Syria's Arab League seat and opening the Doha mission in a villa nearby other embassies. Several Gulf states including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates began backing rebel groups fighting to oust Assad from power. As Syria's anti-Assad movement lost ground, "Saudi Arabia and the UAE shifted their policy most dramatically but Qatar has not," Kamrava said. Qatar initially opposed efforts this spring by Saudi Arabia to galvanise support to readmit Syria to the Arab League following its 2011 suspension.

☆ Battered by War, Sudan Faces Many Possible Paths — None Good
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-18 | by ( Declan Walsh | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

NAIROBI, Kenya — The fighting that erupted in Sudan’s capital one month ago surprised few, the culmination of soaring tensions between rival military leaders. But what has shocked many is the scale and ferocity of the war engulfing Africa’s third-largest country, a conflict that has killed about 1,000 people and prompted one million more to flee their homes. In interviews, they agreed on one thing: The immediate outlook is bleak. “We thought through several scenarios,” said one senior European diplomat who, like others working to broker a peaceful solution, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. “None of them ends well.”The immediate challenge is that the warring factions — Sudan’s military, led by Gen. Abdul Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, led by Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan — still believe that a military victory is possible, regardless of the cost.

☆ Sudan one month on: Why cease-fires are failing, and what global leaders are missing
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-17 | by ( Elliot Smith | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

KHARTOUM, Sudan - May 6, 2023: Sudanese Army sodliers walk near armoured vehicles stationed on a street in southern Khartoum, amid ongoing fighting against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. AFP via Getty ImagesOne month after fighting between Sudan's two military factions broke out in the capital, Khartoum, internationally-brokered peace talks in Saudi Arabia have yielded no solution. Almost a million people have fled their homes, both to locations within Sudan and across the border to neighboring countries. The World Bank and several global powers froze aid to the country after the military takeover, honoring calls from civilians not to legitimize its leadership. Targeted and collaborative efforts by the international community to exert pressure on the countries supporting Sudan's military factions were needed, Abdel-Magied said.

☆ Syria's Assad to steal spotlight at Arab summit after years in the cold
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-17 | by ( Aziz El Yaakoubi | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others for years supported anti-Assad rebels. While Arab countries appear to have brought Assad in from the cold, they are still demanding that he curbs Syria's flourishing drugs trade and that war refugees can return. His return to the Arab League is likely to revive questions over his human rights record. Government forces have used chemical weapons more than two dozen times during Syria’s civil war, U.N. war crimes investigators said. The Syrian crisis and other regional conflicts including Yemen and Libya, pose further challenges for the Arab League, which is often undermined by internal divisions.

☆ Air strikes, artillery fire escalate as factions battle in Sudan capital
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Khalid Abdelaziz | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

DUBAI, May 16 (Reuters) - Air strikes and artillery fire intensified sharply across Sudan's capital early on Tuesday, residents said, as the army sought to defend key bases from paramilitary rivals it has been fighting for more than a month. The air strikes, explosions and clashes could be heard in the south of Khartoum, and there was heavy shelling across the River Nile in parts of the adjoining cities of Bahri and Omdurman, witnesses said. The fighting between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has triggered unrest in other areas of Sudan, especially in the western region of Darfur, but is concentrated in Khartoum. "We don't know what the citizens did to deserve a war in the middle of the houses." Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Andrew HeavensOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Inside the scramble to evacuate a US embassy surrounded by the chaos of street fighting, gunfire, and explosions
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Jake Epstein | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

US forces evacuated the American embassy in Sudan days after violence erupted in its capital. As the situation deteriorated, the Pentagon dispatched Special Operations Forces to evacuate US diplomatic staff in a dramatic helicopter operation. Foreign governments began efforts to pull out their diplomatic staff and, in some cases, also moved to evacuate their civilians. People walk by a house hit in recent fighting in Khartoum, Sudan, Tuesday, April 25, 2023. US Marine Corps courtesy photoWith the embassy staff gone, questions remained over whether Washington would move to evacuate US citizens, as some other Western nations had been doing.

"I am moving freely around my forces, I am present in Bahri, I am present in Omdurman, I am present in Khartoum, I am present in Sharq al-Nil," Hemedti said. "They are spreading rumours that Mohamed Hamdan has been killed, and these are all lies that show that they are being defeated ... 'FALLING APART'Residents report a rise in looting and lawlessness after police vanished from the streets at the outset of the conflict. On Monday an employee of Sharq el-Nil hospital said the southern part of the facility had been hit by an air strike. On Sunday Burhan froze the bank accounts of the RSF and affiliated firms, and replaced the central bank governor.

☆ Sudan talks to resume in Saudi Arabia amid heavy fighting
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-13 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

You could clearly hear the tanks and the RSF were patrolling the streets more than usual," said Hani Ahmed, 28. "We only see the army in the sky but in terms of face-to-face contact we only see the RSF. ARAB LEAGUEFighting is unabated since the two sides agreed the declaration of principles to protect civilians and allow humanitarian access. Some of the worst fighting has taken place in Darfur, where a war has simmered since 2003, killing 300,000 people and displacing 2.5 million. The Darfur Bar Association, a local rights group, said at least 77 people were killed in Geneina, where fighting flared on Friday after a two-week lull.

☆ How Sudan's paramilitary forces took parts of Khartoum, stormed army chief's quarters
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Khalid Abdelaziz | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

[1/2] Satellite image shows burned and damaged General Command of the Sudanese Armed Forces headquarters building in Khartoum, Sudan April 16, 2023, in this handout image. More than 30 of his guards died in the ensuing battle, before the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fighters retreated from the residence in the capital, said the bodyguard, who asked not to be named. "Why did the army let Hemedti become a parallel army and threatening the normal people. RSF fighters open mobile phones to look for army contacts, residents say. Reuters could not establish where Hemedti is currently operating from, or whether Burhan was still using army headquarters as his base of operations.

They have limited themselves to one meal a day, hoping their dwindling food supplies will last a month longer. "After that, we don't know what we'll do except survive off water and dates," he said by phone from Sudan's embattled capital. They face dwindling food supplies, power cuts, water shortages and patchy telecoms. He would have left Sudan but couldn't because he lost his passport before the fighting began. Life had come to a complete standstill, said Ahmed Khalid, 22, a college student still in Khartoum.

☆ ‘We Don’t Want This War’: Trapped in Khartoum as Combat Rages
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Abdi Latif Dahir | Cora Engelbrecht | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Nurses maneuver through gunfire and shelling to make house calls, delivering babies and providing care to those who can’t reach hospitals. Families barely eat in order to conserve dwindling food and water supplies, as temperatures rise. And the few good Samaritans who venture out to help the elderly or put out a blazing fire face intimidation and arrest by the fighters in the streets. The Sudanese capital, Khartoum, has endured the most intense fighting, prompting embassies and the United Nations to evacuate their nationals and staff members — leaving behind millions who now face shortages of water, food, medicine and electricity. The clashes — between the Sudanese Army and the paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces — have continued despite repeated cease-fires purportedly agreed to by both sides.

☆ Battles shake Sudan's capital as power struggle escalates
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Army and RSF delegations have been meeting since the end of last week in talks sponsored by the United States and Saudi Arabia in the Saudi Red Sea port city of Jeddah. It has also sparked unrest in Sudan's western Darfur region. Conflicts are not new to Sudan, a country that sits at a strategic crossroads between Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and the volatile Sahel region. This time intense fighting in Khartoum, one of Africa's biggest cities, has made the conflict far more alarming for Sudanese. Reuters Graphics Reuters GraphicsReporting by Khalid Abdelaziz in Dubai and Mohamed Noureldin in Khartoum; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Edmund BlairOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Now, according to an internal U.N. estimate obtained by Reuters, 5 million additional people in Sudan will require emergency assistance, half of them children. Even before the latest crisis, U.N. humanitarian appeals for Africa faced a $17-billion funding gap this year, risking leaving millions without lifesaving assistance. Last year, it spent a third of its overseas aid budget housing refugees inside the UK, a British aid watchdog said in March. Sudan was hosting over 1 million refugees, mainly from South Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Syria, before the outbreak of fighting last month. Aid workers have been killed, food aid looted, and WFP says it's running out of stocks.

☆ Factbox: How big is the aid crisis caused by the Sudan fighting?
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Emma Farge | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

SUDAN* More than 330,000 people have been displaced in Sudan since April 15, according to the International Organization for Migration. An internal U.N. estimate obtained by Reuters shows this figure is expected to increase by 5 million, including 2.5 million children. * A $1.75 billion U.N. aid programme for Sudan in 2023 is 15% funded. SOUTH SUDAN* Some 240,000 people are expected to flee from Sudan to South Sudan, UNHCR says. * The country's $1.7 billion U.N. aid programme for the year is 26% funded.

☆ Unhappy return: Sudan crisis forces South Sudanese refugees back to troubled home
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-08 | by ( Denis Elamu | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

"I would not have come back to South Sudan. Up to last month, more than 800,000 South Sudanese refugees lived in Sudan, refugees from decades of conflict. Since the fighting erupted in Khartoum, the UNHCR has registered more than 30,000 people crossing into South Sudan, more than 90% of them South Sudanese. South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011 after two decades of north-south conflict. "People say there is no stability in South Sudan, so we decided to build houses in Sudan.

Drone footage shows clouds of black smoke over Bahri, also known as Khartoum North, Sudan, in this May 1, 2023 video obtained by REUTERSThe International Rescue Committee anticipates "a secondary humanitarian crisis" as refugees pour into neighboring countries escaping the escalating conflict in Sudan. Around 45 million people remain in Sudan, facing acute shortages of fuel, food, water and medical access. Multiple ceasefires have quickly dissolved into further violence, making it difficult for international bodies and NGOs to get humanitarian aid into the vast, sprawling country. According to the IRC, 30,000 refugees have crossed the border from the Darfur region in western Sudan into Chad since April 15. A further 15,000 have fled to South Sudan, many of whom are returnees that had previously fled their own country's conflict south of the border, while several thousand have also crossed into Ethiopia.

☆ Sudan's well-off stuck in limbo at border town en route to Egypt
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-08 | by ( Maggie Michael | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +7 min

While women, children and the elderly can enter Egypt freely, though often after waiting days in testing conditions at a packed border, Sudanese men aged 16-50 must apply for visas. When she got to Wadi Halfa the bus driver, who had promised to take her to Egypt, dropped her off with her family and demanded more money. He returned to Wadi Halfa to apply for his visa but was told to wait, so he sent his elderly parents to Egypt alone. Half the group continued on to Egypt while the rest settled in a school in Wadi Halfa, sleeping in a classroom with three other families. The school gave him and others a warning that they needed the classrooms back this week for end of year exams.

CNN —The leaders of Sudan’s warring military factions have agreed to start preliminary talks in Jeddah aimed at ending the conflict, according to Saudi Arabia and the United States. Clashes between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary RSF erupted in mid-April, since when hundreds have been killed and thousands more injured. The RSF has already fully taken over Omdurman Maternity Hospital, a senior medical employee at a hospital in the state of Khartoum told CNN. However, it has obtained a widely circulated statement reportedly issued by the Omdurman Maternity Hospital administration that says the hospital was “attacked” at dawn on Thursday by RSF forces. CNN has not independently verified these claims, nor has CNN been able to reach the paramilitary RSF for their comments.

[1/3] A man walks while smoke rises above buildings after aerial bombardment, during clashes between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and the army in Khartoum North, Sudan, May 1, 2023. Riyadh and Washington earlier welcomed the "pre-negotiation talks" between the army and the RSF, and urged them to actively engage following numerous violated ceasefires. But both sides have made it clear they would only discuss a humanitarian truce, not negotiate an end to the war. Turkey's foreign minister said Turkey would move its embassy from Khartoum to Port Sudan following the attack. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan was travelling to Saudi Arabia at the weekend for talks with Saudi leaders.

☆ Sudan's warring parties to hold talks in Saudi Arabia
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-06 | by ( Aziz El Yaakoubi | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Saudi Arabia and the United States welcomed the start of the "pre-negotiation talks" between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and urged both to actively engage and come to a ceasefire, a joint statement said. The U.S-Saudi initiative in Jeddah is the first serious attempt to end fighting that has endangered Sudan's fragile transition following years of unrest and uprisings. Prior to the fighting, Hemedti had been taking steps like moving closer to a civilian party that suggest he has big political plans. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said he is travelling to Saudi Arabia on Saturday for talks with Saudi leaders. Saudi Arabia has had close ties to Burhan and Hemedti, both of whom sent troops to help the Saudi-led coalition in its war against the Houthi group in Yemen.

☆ Opinion: My family and I barely escaped from Khartoum. Here’s what we owe those left behind.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-06 | by ( Opinion Mohamed Eisa | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +9 min

At my mother’s house in Khartoum, friends and family kept us company, mourning with us and exchanging stories late into the night. After all, my family lived on one of the busiest streets in a packed city. Only then did I realize that my family and I were trapped in the middle of a war zone in the heart of Khartoum. In 2019, an uprising by the Sudanese people spurred the SAF and RSF to remove longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir from power. The silence was haunting, a scene out of a horror movie: abandoned cars ablaze; scores of dead bodies rotting in the streets; RSF soldiers glaring and pointing their guns directly at us.

☆ Sudan Power Battle Reignites Violence in Restive Darfur
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Nicholas Bariyo | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Brick houses in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, where clashes have been most intense. Photo: -/Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesThe battle for power between Sudan’s top two generals has reignited intercommunal violence in the country’s Darfur region, a gold-rich area still scarred by what is widely considered the first genocide of the 21st century. The World Health Organization says at least 221 people have been killed in West Darfur, near Sudan’s border with Chad, since fighting erupted on April 15 between the military, led by Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s de facto head of state, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, commanded by Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo , Gen. Burhan’s deputy.

☆ Biden Signs Executive Order to Levy Sanctions Related to Sudan Crisis
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Mengqi Sun | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Smoke rose above buildings in Khartoum, Sudan, after aerial bombardment on Monday. Photo: MOHAMED NURELDIN ABDALLAH/REUTERSPresident Biden signed an executive order enabling the U.S. to impose new sanctions on individuals and entities related to the conflict in Sudan. The order, published Thursday, expanded the scope of the U.S. sanctions regime against the East African nation to allow the U.S. Treasury Department and the State Department to blacklist people and entities involved in activities that threaten the peace, security and stability of Sudan.

[1/3] Smoke rises above buildings after an aerial bombardment, during clashes between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and the army in Khartoum North, Sudan, May 1, 2023. "It's been four days without electricity and our situation is difficult," said 48-year-old Othman Hassan from the southern outskirts of the city. Despite multiple ceasefire declarations, the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) appeared to be fighting for territory ahead of proposed talks. The army and RSF, which had shared power after a coup in 2021, have accused each other of breaching a string of truces. The U.N. has pressed the warring sides to guarantee safe passage of aid after six of its trucks were looted.

☆ Warring Parties in Sudan to Hold Talks in Saudi Arabia
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Edward Wong | Abdi Latif Dahir | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

WASHINGTON — Representatives of two warring Sudanese generals are expected to meet in Saudi Arabia on Saturday to discuss terms of a cease-fire and mechanisms for allowing humanitarian aid into the country, U.S., Saudi and Sudanese officials said on Friday. The U.S. State Department and the Saudi foreign ministry have helped organize the meeting, which would take place in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on the Red Sea across from Sudan. The Saudi government has been running evacuation ships between Jeddah and Port Sudan. The two generals have agreed to cease-fires in recent days, but their troops have violated those. The Sudanese army confirmed in a post on Facebook that its delegation left for Jeddah on Friday evening to discuss “specific details of the armistice,” which is aimed at “securing and creating appropriate conditions for dealing with the humanitarian situation of our citizens.”A senior State Department official said the discussions in Jeddah would not include negotiations over the volatile issues around integration of the armed forces and chain of command that led to the start of fighting on April 15 between Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who controls the Sudanese military, and Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, who leads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

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