Bulletins and News Discussion from February 26th to March 3rd, 2024 - Breaking The Siege Of Omdurman - COTW: Sudan

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.

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Happening today: https://skwawkbox.org/2024/03/01/starmer-challenger-calls-for-new-left-mass-movement-outside-labour-party/
Starmer challenger calls for new left mass movement outside Labour Party
Former ANC MP and arms trade campaigner will address activists from around UK tomorrow at Collective launch – and poses real threat to friend-of-genocide ‘Labour’ leader
- Peter Oborne also wrote a glowing profile of Feinstein a couple of weeks ago, which was interesting. It seems they know each other.
  
  Mmm I'm not saying I trust this one. Just a developing effort that we should keep an eye on.
  I have my suspicions that this is a liberal effort to create a whole new bourgeoise party as a rescue project, competing with any socialist projects that aim to destroy labour. The goal would be to essential create a new labour party altogether under a different name but with exactly the same outcomes.
  We'll see though. I know nothing about it at the moment. Judgement reserved.
  
  I wasn't suggesting that seemingly having Peter Oborne's admiration was necessarily sinister, since despite being a small-C-conservative one-nation Tory type he is undeniably good (for the UK and the press) on the issues of Islamophobia, Israel, foreign policy, and the escalating fascism in British politics.
  I can't vouch for Feinstein. I've not met him and don't know enough about his personal politics beyond anti-aparthied efforts. And you're almost certainly right about a new bourgeois Labour party likely being far from revolutionary, if one can even come into any significance. But I do find it interesting that there's some cross-traditional party support there, at least from some of the (now) outsiders of the increasingly narrow and dangeroud establishment consensus. It makes me more optimistic that there is room for th Tories/Labour to be flanked from multiple angles in order to try and break that establishment consensus.
  Perhaps it's a dark sign of how bad it's gotten that the former political editor of the Telegraph is now supporting an attempt to unseat the leader of the Labour Party from the left(?) and that I'd be willing to do a little electoralism even if just to probe for weaknesses in the system and out of hatred for the Labour Party.
  
  Perhaps it's a dark sign of how bad it's gotten that the former political editor of the Telegraph is now supporting an attempt to unseat the leader of the Labour Party from the left(?) and that I'd be willing to do a little electoralism even if just to probe for weaknesses in the system and out of hatred for the Labour Party.
  I think the a certain faction of the right is well aware of how dangerous the situation is for capitalism if the left successfully makes a breakaway under the current conditions. They're scared because the conditions are unstable and unpredictable.
  This "steer the ship" faction are likely trying to recreate stable and controlled conditions. The left looks weak electorally right now but on the ground we have enormous clout due to Palestine and cost of living. They will be very concerned that this could turn into something.

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