The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Has the War in Sudan been Overlooked?

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

Almost two years since the Sudanese war f Irwin Cotler: Founder and International Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, and Former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, and Nisrin Elamin, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African Studies at the University of Toronto. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Matt Nethersole. And I'm Tiff Lam. From TVO Podcasts, this is Queries. This season, we're asking, when it comes to defending your beliefs, how far is too far? We follow one story from the boardroom to the courtroom. And seek to understand what happens when beliefs collide. Where does freedom of religion end and freedom from discrimination begin? That's this season on Queries in Good Faith,

a TVO original podcast. Follow and listen wherever you get your podcasts. Almost two years since the Sudanese war first started, anarchy, famine, violence, and mass displacement have engulfed the African state. And while there is no shortage of global headlines that make for grim reading, the ambivalence from the rest of the world, including Canada, has been felt acutely in that continent's

third largest country. For more on the current state of the war and what a path to peace might look like, we are joined by, in Kampala, Uganda, by Mutasim Ali, legal advisor at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. In Montreal, Quebec, Irwin Kotler, founder and international chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights. In Montreal, Quebec, Erwin Kotler, founder and international chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights. He, of course, a former minister of justice

and attorney general for Canada. And here in our studio, Nisreen El-Amin, assistant professor of anthropology and African studies at the University of Toronto on their downtown campus. Nisreen, it's good to have you back here at TVO. And Mutasim and Irwin, it's great. Thank you for joining us from points beyond. I don't want to assume that our viewers and listeners know everything they need to know

about Sudan, so we're going to bring up a map first just to show everybody where this country is located. In Northeast Africa, it shares a border with Chad to the west, Egypt to the north, Ethiopia to the east, and of course the new country of South Sudan to the south. It has a population of about 50 million people, and the capital city is Khartoum. And here's a quick fact file on some background we'll need to know for this conversation.

Sudan's civil war, which is waged between the Sudanese armed forces, the SAF, and the Rapid Support Forces, that's the RSF, it erupted almost two years ago, April 2023, and it has plunged the country into chaos ever since. Now according to the International Rescue Committee, more than 11 million people are now displaced within the country and more than 3 million people, mostly women and children, have fled Sudan to neighboring countries such as Chad and South Sudan. About 30 million

people, that's more than half the population, are in need of humanitarian support. Last year alone more than 750,000 people faced catastrophic food insecurity meaning that death by starvation was a daily occurrence. Sudan now represents the largest and fastest displacement crisis in the world. Okay, Nisreen, let me start with you. You are Sudanese. How are your friends and family doing over there? Have you been in touch? What do you know? Well, first of all, thank you for having me.

Yeah, my family and friends are obviously dealing with what you just described, the world's largest humanitarian crisis. Life has been very difficult since the war began. They're dealing with food shortages, the collapse of the health care system. The schools are not running, right, so there's 19 million children, for example, that are out of school, and there's also food insecurity. So, and again, you know, this is food insecurity within the context of

a country that could easily feed itself, because again, the economy has collapsed. A lot of my family members work in our farmers, right? And they haven't been able to farm because of the security situation in the region that's right below Khartoum, the kind of agricultural heartland of the country. A lot of my relatives have chronic illnesses, and so it's very difficult for them to access medication.

They have to travel far, and it's often dangerous for them to get medication. Electricity is often out. There's often no running water. So it's been quite challenging. How often are you in contact with them? It depends. Sometimes it's a whole month that we don't hear from them, and other times we are able to get in touch with them

once a week. But it's always quite difficult. And for example, I have my aunts and uncles are in a village that was until recently under siege by the RSF. And some RSF soldiers were occupying their homes. So it was quite difficult to even talk to them because they were essentially under siege, right? Do you know, I mean, are they desperately in fear of losing

their lives right now? I mean, that's, I mean, are they desperately in fear of losing their lives right now? I mean, that's, I think, always something that people have in the back of their mind. Lots of people have lost their relatives or have watched, you know, their relatives be subjected to sexual violence, for example. So, absolutely. I want to share something here. This was from a couple of weeks ago. The outgoing U.S. Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, who of course is no longer

the Secretary of State. But when he was, he shared this on X. He said, after reviewing the horrifying information of suffering inside Sudan, I have concluded that members of the Rapid Support Forces and Allied militias have committed genocide in Sudan. The United States is committed to pursuing accountability for these atrocities.

Erwin Kotler, let me bring you in at this point, because genocide is, of course, a very heavy word. How much weight in your judgment does this carry, given that this declaration by the former Secretary of State really came at the 11th hour of an outgoing administration, and the fact that Donald Trump has been quite clear in saying he intends to pursue an American First Policy which leads me to believe this is not really going to be on his radar

screen right now. What does all of that mean to you? Well you know the determination of genocide by former Secretary of State Blinken was as we said in our Raoul Wallenberg Center release statement on the occasion, that it was welcome, but it had been unusually delayed. As you mentioned at the outset, we're close to two years into genocidal atrocities in Sudan. And the worst thing has been that it's been almost absent from the international radar screen. Even though this is, as you put it, a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions, the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today, you would not know it.

If you looked at the daily international radar screen, politically, media-wise and the like, it's overtaken by the international drumbeat of evil, the Israel-Khmer war in Gaza, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the intensifying axis of evil between the Iran-Russian. I can go on. And at the same time, the general backsliding of democracies who become preoccupied with domestic issues and elections that have been taking place. So it's not on the radar screen, and it'll be less on the radar screen if at all, with Trump's ascension to the presidency, given his own America First approach, preoccupation with domestic policy.

You look at his executive orders of two days ago, no reference with regard to Africa or Sudan. I'm not even sure he knows about this humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. Let me bring it home in following up with you. What have you heard from the government of Canada on this? Well, I met with the government in Canada. I had a meeting in my home, actually, with Melanie Jolie.

This was about three months ago, and I told her to put Sudan as a priority on the agenda. There was a statement issued afterwards, but as I said when I met as well with government leaders, including Prime Minister Trudeau two months ago, that we can't have policy by tweet. We need sustained engagement. And now we have a situation where parliament is prorogued. We had scheduled hearings before the Foreign Affairs Committee to look into the issue of the emergency in Sudan.

I had been in touch with the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Ali Asassi. That will no longer take place. After the prorogation, it will probably be in an election. If you look at the statements made by those contending for the liberal leadership, you don't even see almost foreign policy on the agenda. So I'm quite concerned, because the prorogation, the forthcoming election, means that the erasure of Sudan on the Canadian agenda will continue.

Nisreen, what, if anything, have you heard out of the government of Canada and are you satisfied with what you've heard? Well, I mean, I think there's been a virtual media blackout and I think that impacts policy ultimately, right? For me I think I've been particularly disappointed in Canada's response on the immigration front. As we know after the war in Ukraine started about 300,000 Ukrainians

were admitted to Canada. By contrast less than 3,000 Sudanese have been admitted. And you know... Where do you think that is? admitted to Canada. By contrast, less than 3,000 Sudanese have been admitted. And you know. Why do you think that is? I mean, I think it's a combination of anti-black racism, but also because of who's involved and who's benefiting from this war. There are various external actors,

including the UAE, for example, that is supporting the RSF, Egypt that is supporting the army. And you know, these are allies of Canada. So I think that's part of it. And also just generally the public isn't as aware of the fact that Sudan constitutes the world's largest displacement crisis. Butasimha Lea, I want to get you into this conversation now. I guess we should say you're coming to us from Kampala, Uganda,

which is obviously a long way away and the internet is a tricky thing. So we're glad that we've got you back here. Let's just start by having you tell us what do you know about the state of your family and friends in Sudan right now? Absolutely. Thanks a lot again for the opportunity. And I think being in Kamp compiled is part of the story.

I'm here to visit my family, but also to visit some of the extended communities. And I think my family is lucky enough to make it to compile a compiler. Yes, as we said, the internet is a tricky thing. All right. Let's just continue our conversation here. Nasreen, I want you to help us follow the puck here, so to speak, because this does

get complicated when you consider all the different factions involved. In addition to sanctioning the commander of the RSF, that's the rebel forces, Mohammed Hamdan Daglo Musa and Sudan's army, chief and de facto leader, Abdel Fattah al-Burham. The Biden administration also sanctioned seven RSF-owned companies based in the United Arab Emirates. What does the UAE have to do with Sudan in all of this? Yeah, that's an excellent question. The UAE has made its interests in Sudan very clear.

Over the last two decades, they've invested billions in Sudanese land, real estate, and infrastructure. They're one of Sudan's main trading partners and its largest importer of gold, which plays a very large role in this war. They've been essentially smuggling out Sudanese gold in exchange for weapons that has allowed the RSF

to sustain its war effort. In my own research, I trace kind of Gulf land investments in Sudan and the community organizing that has emerged in response to that. And as I've mentioned, the UAE in particular have invested billions in Sudanese land. Most of that land is used to produce animal fodder to boost their own local dairy and meat industry. They then also export these dairy products. They appear on Sudanese markets and so they've

undermined kind of the local dairy industry and I mentioned all this because it's part of the context that is necessary for understanding the famine that is currently happening, right? And it's also part of a larger sort of process through which the former regime, the al-Bashir regime that was overthrown in 2019, was really attempting to privatize the agricultural sector in order to attract foreign and domestic investments in agribusiness. And that really decimated the rural sector. You know, these are lands that of course small farmers and herders have been using for generations.

And it's part of the larger context of food insecurity. And a lot of the herders who have sort of lost their livelihoods in this manner have now become some of the RSF and even the army's biggest and most willing recruits, right? And so the other thing I should mention about the UAE is that they've also invested right before the war, they signed a multi-billion dollar port deal

along the Red Sea. So they're very interested in, for military and economic reasons, in access to the Red Sea. And that port had an international airport as part of the plan, a private toll road that would connect it to its agribusiness farms. And while it was upended through this war, it definitely to me reflects their desire to, you know, expand their regional power and to kind of control circuits and networks of production and distribution across the region. Understood.

I will say, obviously, for the record here, we're trying to get Mutasim back on the line from Uganda. Let's continue our conversation with Erwin Kotler here. And I want to circle back to something you said a little while ago, Mr. Kotler, which is the fact of the matter is the war in Ukraine, the war in the Middle East have captured a great deal of media attention over the last many years. And Sudan has captured almost no attention at all. And I'd like your view on why you think that is.

Well, I think, you know, what Nassrin said about the fact of the racist dimension, I mean, I think we've marginalized Africa and the humanitarian concerns, generally speaking, in our overall approach with regard to foreign policy. But as I say, the international radar screen, the oxygen has been taken up by the situation. I had a couple of students and I asked them questions the other day, I said, what's the worst humanitarian crisis

in the world? And almost all of them answered Gaza. And then some brought up afterwards Russia and Ukraine but nobody mentioned as Sudan and as Nasrin has described it on a very human level this is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. When I met with Balani Jalil and then with the Prime Minister that Canada will be assuming and now have already assumed, the chair of the G7.

And I said, put Sudan as a priority on the agenda, and let's use our chair of the G7 to begin to mobilize the G7 with respect to not only accountability, but we desperately need the humanitarian assistance that would have been authorized, $1.7 accountability, but we desperately need the humanitarian assistance would have been authorized, $1.7 billion, but some only 10% of that has actually been allocated or distributed. Let me ask both of you the difficult Realpolitik question here, which is to say, I take your point, Nisreen, about anti-black racism and why that may be part of the reason why there isn't as much attention being paid to this crisis as there is to others. Is it also unfortunately fair to say, however, that

Canada has more direct foreign policy interests in both the Russia-Ukraine war and the Middle East war than it does in Sudan? And we have to take that into account when we consider why Canada hasn't had much to say about this so far. Is that fair to say? I mean, sure. I think that is fair to say. But I also think that there are ways

that the Canadian government could, for example, leverage its relationship to the UAE by you know stopping its arms sales in this context right and as I mentioned again on the immigration front you know why is there a one to one hundred relationship in terms of Ukrainians versus Sudanese there are people who applied for their for their relatives to come to Sudan I I mean to come to Canada, sorry, Sudanese Canadians, who have been waiting for over a year to get a response from the Canadian government.

And there are people whose relatives have died in this process of waiting. And so that needs to be rectified. These are Canadian citizens as well. I hear you, but I mean, I think one of the realities is the former deputy prime minister and finance minister of the country has the former deputy prime minister and finance minister of the country has a Ukrainian background, which may explain why Canada has been much more invested in the Ukraine story than it has been in the Sudan story, right?

Krista Freeland. Is that part of the story here? Sure, that's possibly definitely part of the story. But again, I think here's an opportunity to do the right thing and to change that policy. And I think, again, part of it is this media blackout. And I would actually say that it's not only that there's been a media blackout,

there's also been a way of not framing the war correctly. This, to me, is not a civil war. It's an internationalized counter-revolutionary war. There was a popular revolution that ousted a 30-year dictatorship in 2019. And really, this war is being fought by military elites who have, for a very long time, sort of controlled the economy and many economic assets.

So they're vying for political and economic control of the country, while civilians are kind of caught in the middle. It's a devastating war that countries like the UAE, but also Egypt, are profiting from, right? And so I think it's important to frame it as a counter-revolutionary proxy war, as an internationalized counter-revolutionary war, in order to also draw out some of these external interests.

And Canada actually has a role to play as well, because there was a Montreal-based company called Dickinson Madsen, a PR company, that was representing the RSF during the time in which it was starting its counter-revolutionary repressive tactics. It caused a massacre during a sit-in during the revolution. And so that, too, needs to be highlighted. Well, let me pick up on that with Erwin Kotler.

Because I think when people who are watching or listening to this who do not have a Sudanese background and who really don't know any of the players, as they themselves consider, who do we want to win this thing? Because people, when they look at international conflict, they think, well, I'm on their side or I'm on their side. Who should we be cheering for here, if that's not too absurd a question? Well, the problem is, and as Sreen said, these are counter-revolutionary elites.

The tragedy is that Sudan was on the road to democratization. And in fact, the women's movement in Sudan was playing a leading role in that regard before the overtaking by the two generals. So really, this is a horrific tragedy, because it's the only place that I know that now is visiting the second genocide in the 21st century, and yet this one is being totally ignored and almost erased from the international agenda. Now, with regard to Canada, yes, we, our interests may appear to be more with regard to the Middle

East and Ukraine, though I think that's misplaced for all the reasons that have been said. But at the same time, we have international responsibilities. We now are the chair of the G7. And when there was an issue that arose with regard to ICC arrest warrants regarding Israeli leadership, the rest of the international criminal court, the prime minister said, well, you know, we are a founder of the international criminal court, and we have to abide by it, et cetera.

Well, if we care about the International Criminal Court, what about initiating investigations and prosecutions with respect to the Sudanese leadership before the ICC? What about initiating emergency meetings, whether it be with regard to UN Security Council, UN Human Rights Council, UN Human Rights Council, and the like? In other words, we have international involvement, international responsibilities, treaty ones

and the like, and now a political leadership responsibility because we're chairing the G7 and we're going to be hosting it in Alberta in June. And Canada's going to be in abeyance because of both the proroguing of parliament and then a domestic election. I'm afraid that the whole foreign policy agenda is going to be marginalized, let alone this epic humanitarian tragedy unfolding in Sudan as we speak. So all right Nisrim, with just a few minutes to go here, offer some advice to the Government of Canada right now. Irwin Kotler has laid out what the year looks like in the next few months in terms of our ability to command some attention on the world stage.

Point one, point two, what should Canada do? Well, I think as far as the peace processes that have occurred, right, I think there needs to be a more concerted effort to place some of the, for example, sanctions, and I'm referring not only to Canada here, but also the United States, within a context of a peace process that is based in the region, right, where civilian actors are included

and not only civilian elites, but those who are experiencing the catastrophe of this war, right? And I should say that, you know, if we understand this war as a counterrevolutionary war, right? And I should say that if we understand this war as a counterrevolutionary war, then we need to realize that this war is being waged in order to prevent popular democracy, civilian rule in Sudan, right? And to protect the interests of Sudanese elites

and their international partners. And in order to break that, we have to place civilian actors in the center, take them seriously as political actors. partners. And in order to break that, we have to place civilian actors in the center, take them seriously as political actors. Is one side the good side and one side the bad side? I mean, in Russia and Ukraine, most Canadians think Russians are bad and the Ukrainians are the victims here. And we're cheering for Ukraine. Who are you cheering for here?

We're cheering for the civilians, right? And I'll say from my perspective, as someone who's been supporting mutual aid networks on the ground, these are emergency response rooms, right? Civilian volunteers who are leading at the forefront of relief efforts, right? They're driving ambulances. They're setting up ad hoc emergency clinics, shelters, right, communal kitchens.

They're essentially running a country in the absence of a civilian state and in response to a quite dismal international aid response, right? While humanitarian aid is being obstructed. These are the people that we have to put our faith in, right? And they have emerged out of a network called the resistance committees. There's about eight thousands of them across the country who are sort of a backbone of the revolution. And you know, these are the people that me, should be taken seriously as political actors. They should be centered in any kind of peace process

that is to follow. Military elites in Sudan have become experts at negotiating peace without ever implementing it. And the high-level negotiation processes we have seen so far have continued to legitimize them without ever holding them accountable. And that cycle needs to stop. Let me give the last minute here to Wurman Kotler.

I don't know if Melanie Jolie is still taking your calls, but if she did, what would you tell her she needs to do? Stat. One, desperate humanitarian assistance that we can take a leadership role, as I said, through the G7. Two, we are one of the architects of the responsibility to protect doctrine in all its configurations,

and we should be involved in the responsibility to protect it in Sudan. Three, accountability, as Nassreen mentioned, with respect to the proper sanctioning, not only regarding Sudan, but in other places like the UAE, where we have an influence. And finally, with regard to supporting and engaging with the democracy and movements in the grassroots movement in Sudan as Nasreen mentioned. Terrific. Okay I want to thank Irwin Kotler for being there for us on the line from Montreal. I want to thank Nasreen El-Amin from the University of Toronto for being here in our studio and we are grateful that Mutasim Ali tried

so hard to be with us. But unfortunately, the line to Kampala, Uganda, just basically broke down in the middle of our discussion. But we thank him for his contribution and are wishing all of you well as this story moves on. Thank you so much, you two. Thank you. Thank you for having us.