Transcription
The United Nations says it's gravely alarmed at the recent killing of more than a hundred civilians, including nine humanitarian workers, in Sudan's Darur region. Dozens of people arrived in the town of Towila in north Darur on Saturday after the deadly attacks. The UN says the militia Rapid Support Forces attacked Zamzam and Abu Shurak refugee camps and the nearby city of Alfasia. However, the paramilitary group has denied responsibility. Both the military and the RSF have been accused of grave atrocities in the two-year civil war.
I've been speaking to Mukesh Kapila, the former head of the United Nations in Sudan, who explained who is responsible for these killings. "I think there is a lot of information available. There are reports from aid workers on the ground, the few who are working there. There are statements from uh, the actual people affected, the Daruris themselves. And this is part of a pattern of violence and sexualized violence committed by the RSF that has been going on for some time. So I think there is absolutely no doubt that it's the RSF, the descendants of the original Janjaweed, who started these atrocities 20 years ago, that they're back in full form in the same places, in their food. In the past, humanitarian workers would have ordinarily been afforded some sort of protection. What's happened to that? Why aren't civilians and humanitarians being protected in some way?"
"Well, a lot has changed in the last decade or so. As we look at conflicts around the world, whether it is in Gaza or in Afghanistan or in Ukraine or in DRC or in Sudan, which we are talking about here, the old protections and the old civilities of how to fight wars have long since disappeared, because the fighting groups uh, uh, misbehave on all sides, and there is complete impunity. Therefore, civilians nowadays and aid workers in particular nowadays, they're at the front line. So what's happened in this Zafuri camps in Zamzam and so on is simply a normal methodology for spreading fear and uh, and horror amongst affected people and discouraging humanitarians from coming in to help them."
As we've said, both the military and the RSF have been accused of carrying out atrocities. What can the international community do in this part of Sudan to protect civilians and humanitarian workers?
"Well, if you were living in a different time, even in the same region, the UN would have been more effective in terms of Security Council functionality, in terms of strong competence from the African Union and leverage from neighboring countries, and this would have resulted in some form of intervention to quell the violence and bring the perpetrators into uh, to account uh, with the criminal code, International Criminal Court, as has already happened in the past there. But today we live in a very different political world, and unfortunately, Sudan is not strategically important. This is not Gaza, this is not Ukraine. Sure, there are important elements and oil and gold in in in Darur, but that's not sufficient. So I think what we have is not that the international community is unaware of what's going on, not that the international community does not care, but simply there is no no reason to intervene because there is a lot going on of greater importance around the world, and the poor people of Sudan and Darur in particular are bearing the cost of the geopolitical stage that we're currently sitting in."