Left ignores the horrors in Sudan
There’s a place on this Earth where terrorists are shooting babies in the head, mass-raping women to “punish and terrorize” populations and burning entire communities to the ground. Where women and girls have been taken hostage and are being held in “slave-like conditions.” Where an ethnic group is being targeted for its race by Arab terrorists bent on driving them out of their homeland.
Is that place Israel? Are the targets Jews?
Nope. Not this week.
The place is Sudan and the targets are Black Africans, the Masalit. And this horror show has been happening for seven months, without much more than a peep from world leaders, human-rights activists and the “progressive” left.
No marches, no rampages at universities, no vandalizing Arab businesses. No calling Muslims colonizers, baby killers or any other number of epithets being thrown around these days. No protests by Black Lives Matter or other allied groups decrying the killing of people for the colour of their skin, everyday, by a religious-based group bent on their extermination.
Since July, more than 9,000 people have been killed in Sudan and 5.6 million displaced due to fighting between the Arab paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese army. The RSF had helped oust the previous government in a coup in 2021 and does not want a return to electoral democracy or to be integrated into the Sudanese armed forces. Just two weeks ago, RSF forces killed more than 1,000 Masalit in 72 hours in the Ardamata refugee camp. And it promises to only get worse: the UN’S expert on genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, warns of “a cycle of violence that finds no end.”
The world has seen this movie before. Between 2003 and 2008, 300,000 Masalit were killed and 2.5 million displaced by the Janjaweed, an Arab militia force. Former Sudanese president Omar al-bashir unleashed these terrorists to crush Darfuri rebel groups who were revolting against the neglect of the region’s Black African population. Today’s RSF and its leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, are reportedly drawn from this group of Janjaweed fighters.
And their tactics are brutal. Researchers at the Centre for Information Resilience verified videos of militiamen rounding up and whipping Masalit men in Ardamata. One video shows men being struck with rifles by uniformed men, some wearing the RSF insignia, who called their victims “sons of dogs.” The RSF reportedly targets men and boys, to take their land and wipe them out as an Indigenous Darfuri group.
“They killed every man they met in my neighbourhood,” said one Ardamata resident. “I was praying when I heard the sound of an explosion. A shell killed my friends and nearly cut off my feet.” Survivors were ordered to bury the dead. When it comes to depravity, the RSF seems determined to give Hamas a run for their money.
So far, however, no major world leaders have condemned the violence, called for a ceasefire or attempted to broker an end the conflict. The European Union did decry the “ethnic cleansing campaign with the aim to eradicate the non-arab Masalit community from West Darfur,” but that’s about it.
Why is the world community turning a blind eye to this conflict? At the government level, there’s geopolitics: there are few strategic considerations or resources at stake in the region for major players such as the United States, Russia or China. There is also the memory of the 2003 genocide in Sudan and the protracted UN peacekeeping operation; last week, Sudan’s military government asked that the remaining humanitarian mission be withdrawn, though it claims to remain “committed to constructive engagement with the UN.”
But at the “civil society” level, the reason is simple: the conflict doesn’t fit the left’s anti-colonial narrative. The oppressors are not white or white-adjacent. This crisis cannot be blamed on capitalism, the U.S. or Jews. There is nothing for the left to gain, politically, by calling out a community that is part of its own coalition. So just like feminists stay silent when Jewish women are raped, progressives fail to stand up for Black Africans when they are massacred.
The crisis in Sudan exposes “intersectionality” for what it is: a big, fat antisemitic lie. The hypocrisy is beyond belief. And the Masalit are the ones to pay the price.
WHEN IT COMES TO DEPRAVITY, THE RSF SEEMS DETERMINED TO GIVE HAMAS A RUN FOR THEIR MONEY. THE CRISIS IN SUDAN EXPOSES ‘INTERSECTIONALITY’ FOR WHAT IT IS: A BIG, FAT ANTISEMITIC LIE. — TASHA KHEIRIDDIN