The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Where Is The World's Worst Atrocity And Why Is Nothing Being Done About It? - Encore

Episode Date: January 1, 2025

An encore of Dr Samantha Nutt from War Child on her overseas travels to some of the planet's most difficult spots.

A new year, but some of the same problems. Hi there, it's Peter Mansbridge here with your holiday edition encore episode of The Bridge. And for this one, we go to October 22nd, when Samantha Nutt, Dr. Samantha Nutt from War Child Canada joined us to talk about a part of the world where we just can't do enough to help. And hello there. Welcome to Tuesday. Peter Mansbridge here with The Bridge, our special guest today, Samantha Nutt from War Child Canada. Sam Nutt has been a guest on our program a number of times in the past few years.

And what she has to tell us is always start to the point. And that will be the case again today. Let's get right to it and have our discussion with Dr. Sam Nutt for this week. Here we go. So Sam, you sent me this opinion piece from The Guardian the other day, and it basically raises the question, after making this statement that Sudan's quite likely the worst atrocity that's happening in the world right now, but it raises the question of basically who cares? Does anybody care? What's the answer to that? Well, the answer is that this conflict has not gotten nearly the

level of media attention, diplomatic attention, global attention that it deserves. I mean, it is, as the journalist rightly points out, it is the worst humanitarian disaster in the world right now. There are 10 million people who've been displaced. We're not even sure how many people have been killed because there isn't a robust presence of humanitarian actors or journalists on the ground able to provide support in documenting the level of atrocity. But based on the reports from community groups, we do know that it's in the tens of thousands. Some estimates have it at over 150,000. There are 13 million people at risk of acute starvation because

both sides to this conflict have destroyed Sudan's food reserves and limited the capacity for farming. There are massive restrictions on humanitarian access to broad segments of the population. And we know that there are genocidal atrocities taking place, including mass extermination of young boys and men in the Darfur region in particular. And yet none of this seems to be enough. And it certainly hasn't galvanized the level of rhetoric or attention or protest or even financial support that other crises have been able to summon, particularly the last couple of years, whether it's Ukraine or Gaza and the crisis between Gaza and Israel. Okay. I want to dig away at that a little bit.

But first of all, we should say that, you know, there are a number of aid organizations, and War Child is one of them, that is spending time and concerns in Sudan. You've been there just a couple of times in the last year or so. But before we go deeper, give me Sudan 101. Why is what's going on there going on? Actually, Peter, it started about a year and a half ago. It started in April of 2023, when the RSF forces, the Rapid Security Forces, which is essentially the newest iteration of the Janjaweed forces out of Darfur, backed in large part by Omar al-Bashir, also backed militarily.

And there are examples of this by the United Arab Emirates. We can talk about why that is afterwards. A tenuous deal between the RSF forces and the Sudanese military, it fell apart. And the military government that was in place is the same government that had ousted Omar al-Bashir, the former dictator who is an indicted war criminal, with respect to activities, genocidal atrocities that had taken place about 20 years ago in the Darfur region. So that dictator, Omar al-Bashir, was unseated by this military in this military coup. There were these two groups, the RSF and then the Sudanese military, that were effectively cooperating for a period of time. That all fell apart. And in April of last year, the two sides went to war right across the country. And it has

been extremely bloody, extremely violent. And then on top of that, because there are so many external players, in the case of the military actors, the military government, they've enjoyed support from Iran, for example, in the form of hundreds of millions of dollars in Chinese weapons, drone technology, and others. They've also enjoyed the support historically of Russia, which had gold concessions, oil as well, interest in Sudan, and had exported billions of dollars in the last couple of years

as a workaround for Western sanctions in Ukraine. So the fact that you've got the RSF, which has been backed by some of the Gulf states, which is the Darfurian militia groups, you've got the Sudanese military groups, and control along that Red Sea corridor of Port Sudan, which has spiked the interest of Russia, and also of Iran, because especially with what's going on in the Middle East right now, you've got these two players that are pretty well armed with nefarious intentions who are trying to take control of Sudan, which is a country of 50

million people, which also has tremendous resources, but in particular, oil, gold, and others. So that's kind of a snapshot. I don't know if I made that too technical, but hopefully you're able to follow that. No, I got it, I think. It helps actually to have a map sitting beside you when you talk here. Are those external influences like Russia and Iran, are they balanced at all by external issues from the West? Not at the moment. I mean, this has been part of, for Russia, their expansion into Sudan, and Wagner previously had a robust presence in Sudan.

They have had effectively a move to various countries across Africa, targeting about 22 of them, but especially those that have become disillusioned with former colonial powers, Western powers, because they have seized power in a coup and they don't want Western interference in their human rights records, in pro-democracy efforts. And so they have developed, many countries in Africa are developing a cozier relationship with Russia, which has really strengthened its diplomatic presence across the continent. But also Iran. I mean, the conflict with Israel has resulted in Iran making some pretty muscular moves in order to effectively take control of that Red Sea corridor they've got. And this is where you said a map is pretty helpful. You pull up a map and you see exactly

why there are so many strategic interests at play here, because you've got the Red Sea leading into the Suez Canal and into the Mediterranean Sea. And they've got, Iran has support from the Houthis on the eastern side and the port of Hodeidah, which is where they have their military base.

And the Houthis have been very busy launching rockets towards Israel and into the Red Sea and disrupting trade routes. And then on the exact opposite side, roughly, you've got Port Sudan, and that's along the Sudanese border. That's where the military government, which was formerly in Khartoum, is now installed. And so they have been really trying to cozy up with this the Sudanese military in order to gain control of that port have a more robust military presence and then you effectively have the Red Sea book ended which can really strengthen their position militarily and then they can also continue to disrupt Saudi Arabia and other actors that are trying to operate through the Red Sea, moving arms and other

goods through the Red Sea. So it's very strategic. It's very geopolitical. And unfortunately, in the middle of that, you have the worst humanitarian disaster in the world and very little attention is being paid to it. And that only serves Russia and Iran's interests in the region. The less we care about what's happening in that part of the world, from a geopolitical perspective, from a humanitarian perspective, the greater their influence, the stronger their hand, and the more likely they are to be successful. I think I can guess the answer to this question, but do the Russians or the Iranians care about the atrocities that are going on there? The fact that tens of thousands,

if not hundreds of thousands of civilians are trapped in the middle of all this? Sadly, I think the evidence shows that very few leaders in the world, countries in the world, care full stop, whether it's Russia, Iran, whether it's Western countries, our allies. The evidence right now is that Sudan is a conflict that people are not paying attention to anywhere. And that is a massive, massive problem. And it has significant regional implications as well. Because if you've got arms flowing into that region, you've got South Sudan, which is heading to an election later this year, which is always very unstable, again, one of the highest rates of famine risk in the world. You've got Uganda and refugees flowing across that border. There are some reports of Iranian forces even training some of those Janjaweed, the Sudanese military forces in Uganda itself in different encampments. continuous tricky situation that that unfortunately the level of response does not it has been wholly inadequate and and and in the process you've got all of these players that are

moving arms around doing things targeting civilians in a climate of absolute impunity and a total lack of accountability. More recently, for example, there was a big conference on humanitarian commitments to Sudan. The total amount of money that was pledged was about $2 billion from international actors. Less than a quarter of that has been received. If you look at Canada, for example, we've pledged in humanitarian spending in 2024 about $3 billion when you count military and other economic packages. Gaza, which is a population of 2 million, just over 2 million, it's been just about 170 million for 2024. So the scale of inequality is obvious, it's stark, and if we continue down this path, the impact on civilians is going to be, I believe, on an unprecedented scale. And this is what humanitarian agencies are calling out everywhere.

When you say Canada has put forward, what was it, $120 million? $135 million. $135 million. Where does that go? Where does the money go? And how carefully is it monitored, I guess? I mean, you have a country in crisis, situation of chaos existing, and sometimes in those kind of situations, the money just disappears.

It doesn't end up where it's supposed to end up. Well, in my experience, it usually gets to where it needs to go if the security situation allows. So sometimes it's these other factors that determine how effective that money can be. So the commitment, the pledges that have been made, a lot of that is directed towards the refugee response. A lot of those refugees, and that's where I was. I was at the Sudanese border, particularly within South Sudan,

and some of the Darfurian refugees who were streaming across those borders. And so you need to have humanitarian support for those arrivals because you can get access to them. Same in the Central African Republic. A lot of them are going that way and into Chad. So much of Canada's allocation has been towards the refugee response because within Sudan itself,

there are very few organizations that can actually maneuver. We had a team in Darfur for over 20 years, several dozen employees. They, unfortunately, when this crisis first hit, because they were Darfurian, they were among some of the minority groups that were being targeted.

They were in hiding for a couple of months. All of them, thankfully, have either been displaced or have moved out of the country. So they're displaced internally or become refugees and are safe for the time being. But that network for us was severely undermined. We do still have some folks in Port Sudan, but many organizations experienced exactly the same thing. The UN does not have access to roughly 90% of the population

because you can't fly planes in, you can't get food in through cargo planes, you can't get your staff on the ground. Doctors Without Borders consistently is reporting that their aid trucks are being looted, that they're being constrained, that their hospitals are being targeted. And again, when there are no eyes on Sudan, it is very easy for these things to happen. And then at the level of the Security Council, you've also got, because of the international nature of this, you've had various resolutions that have not come to pass or have been blocked because of the nature of these different relationships, such as movements to try to pressure the UAE to stop supplying arms and other training and resources to the Janjaweed forces, which are now the RSF forces, those have largely just evaporated and nothing concrete has come out of it, which is where, again, this lack of attention is probably the biggest barrier to reaching a ceasefire deal or reaching a peace agreement and allowing for full humanitarian access across Sudan. What happens, and I don't want to put you in an awkward situation here, but what happens

when you try to lobby those in Ottawa that you deal with for, you know, more aid for the Sudan situation and you compare it with, you know, whether it's Ukraine or Gaza or wherever it may be? You know, what happens? What are you up against when you try to make that argument? A degree of cynicism. Public interest and public pressure drives political responses. And unfortunately, we have not seen the same level of engagement, protest, demands for action around this particular crisis.

And we can certainly discuss or theorize as to why that is. I think that there's this sense that, oh, well, Darfur happened 20 years ago, and now here we are again. And so there's this sense that this is a conflict that has been raging forever, and that nothing is ever going to change, whereas newer conflicts, people are much more engaged in them. And it's a lot easier to, I think, for different groups to figure out who they think is right and who they think is wrong and get out and mobilize around that. In the case of Sudan, you've got two warring factions that are equally brutal, equally despotic, equally horrific. There are no good guys. There are only bad guys. There are only civilians that are trapped in the middle. And so because you've got this level of complication and nuance, I think that there's a sense of fatalism around it, that it's going to be what it's going to be. No amount of

foreign pressure or interference is going to make a difference. So it's a bit of a hands-off approach and it's a cynical calculation, which is again, why without that media interest and why I'm so grateful to even be able to talk about this today with you, without a level of media interest and engagement, there won't ever be any kind of significant humanitarian action or even political pressure that's brought to bear. The U.S. have been trying. They've been trying to broker a peace deal. But it's there. Obviously, their attentions are split in many different directions right now, and it has certainly not got the level of international collaboration and cooperation that it needs. And it should be possible to reach a deal on Sudan, but it has remained elusive so far. Who does War Child depend on to support its efforts in Sudan? So most of our efforts right now have been in South

Sudan because we have our teams that's still there and they're able to respond to the refugees coming across. Again, maneuvering is very tricky in Sudan. We are able to operate in a couple of different locations, but the lack of funding, the lack of real sort of security dimensions that we require to ensure that our staff are not going to be targeted, those are just not in place. So there are some things that we can do, but we're a long-term organization. So we really focus on rehabilitation, recovery, child protection, protection of women and girls, helping them through that phase in conflict and immediately post-conflict to rebuild their lives, to pursue education, to provide for themselves, to earn an income, to recover. And unless we have a degree of access

and the security conditions will allow for it, it's very difficult for us to maneuver. On the other hand, with refugees, many hundreds of thousands of them coming across into those border areas, we have a wonderful team, a large team in South Sudan, and we are able to reach out to those refugee communities and ensure that they are properly supported. And they are arriving incredibly traumatized, mostly women and girls and children with absolutely nothing. And their lives are very, very difficult and they need a huge amount of support. Just to tie a knot on that question, is most of the funding for War Child coming from government or from private donations? Both. We get money from all different sources. So,

we get money from various governments, Canadian, American, European. We get money from fantastic foundations, not just in Canada, but around the world. And a lot of private philanthropy too, which is, you know, people have been extremely generous and we're very grateful for that support. You mentioned a few moments ago the lack of, I don't know, you know, protest movements in different parts of the world. I mean, we've witnessed in the last year around the world and certainly in Canada, protest movements popping up around, you know, universities, a lot of young people involved, in terms of the Middle East situation. Don't see anything about the Sudan situation.

Does that surprise you, or is it a combination of things, a lack of media attention to the problem, raising it, you know, as an issue? Or just that the young people, especially university-led protests, just don't see it as their thing. Their thing is, you know, is Israel Gaza. Who knows? I think, look, part of it is people like very tidy narratives. And a lot of the narrative around the crisis with Gaza and Israel has involved the language of colonization, decolonization. It's a lot of this kind of stuff. And yet you look at the continent of Africa and you find no greater example of colonization and the impact of colonization

in the same way that you have had massive protests through the Black Lives Matter movement. So why, when you're talking about Sudan, why do you not have that same instinctive kind of need to get out there and say, yeah, Sudanese lives do matter, African lives do matter, genocidal atrocities do matter, even in a part of the world that a lot of people wouldn't necessarily think about. So I don't know why, why do some crises get attention and others don't? I've been doing this work for almost 30 years. I still cannot fully explain that. I think that the social media influence has been far more significant and far more divisive around Gaza and Israel. And so people are more deeply invested in being right than necessarily even doing the right thing. And that maybe is a bit of a cynical statement on my part. But yeah, if people wanted to really do some good in the world right now, drawing attention to the crisis in Sudan is one of the most important things that they could do. And raising money for

humanitarian action and a full diplomatic engagement around Sudan would be a bit of a game changer for this particular crisis. And yet, here we are, right? I don't know. I get a little bit cynical around some of the virtue signaling that you see, knowing full well that there are so many hundreds of thousands of people who are still wrestling with war in other corners who don't get a fraction of our time and effort and energy, and they deserve it. And it's, I don't know, is it willful ignorance? I don't think so. Is it the deliberate neglect of African crises? Probably. Okay. On that note, we're going to take a quick break. We're going to change focus when we come back,

which will be right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Tuesday episode. Today, our guest, Dr. Samantha Nutt from Warchild, Canada. We spent the first half talking about the situation in Sudan. and that's Afghanistan. And Samnutt has been there, I guess, many times over the years, but especially so in the last few months spent part of the summer in Afghanistan, which is not an easy place to get in and out of these days. The quick snapshot of the history for us as Canadians in Afghanistan, we went in there in 2002.

We were there for a dozen years before we, as some would say, cut and run on the Afghan people. The Americans were still there after we left in 2014, 10 years ago. But then Trump, as president, made a deal with the Taliban that the Americans would leave, and then Biden as president fulfilled that deal and so for the last few years the Taliban have been back in control I mean there

were a lot of achievements made by Canadians and others from the International Coalition of Countries when they were there in terms of women's rights, ordinary people's rights, restoring schools and a variety of things. There were things you could be proud of. But it didn't turn out that way, and we lost 158 Canadians in Afghanistan. And as I said, we left in 2014. So one of the reasons you went back this summer, Sam, was to try and determine just what the situation is there now. And so how would you describe it?

Yeah, as you mentioned, Peter, I've been to Afghanistan many, many times going back to early 2002. So I've seen the country and our focus has always been with women and children. So I've seen the political situation evolve over time and also the humanitarian, particularly with respect to women and children, how that has changed as well. We've had extensive operations in Afghanistan, and we still do. We have more than 150 staff. And like in every other country where Warchild Canada operates, all of our staff are national staff. So they all are coming from the countries in which we're operating and designing our programs and running our programs and leading the charge there, which is incredibly inspiring to see. Half of our staff there are female, which these days is tricky in the context of Afghanistan because they do have a ban on women

working, but they allow for certain exemptions, especially if you're working in the healthcare space, because you need to have female staff who are then able to work with women and girls around issues of health care and psychological well-being and these sorts of things. dire. Refugees who fled a couple of years ago during the Taliban takeover into Pakistan, and some of them who have been there historically for decades, are now being forced back by the Pakistani government. And so they're arriving, many of them are quite destitute. And there isn't a robust response for these returnees because since the Taliban takeover, when military forces withdrew, the aid dollars to Afghanistan also heavily contracted. And some of that's understandable because the Taliban are considered a terrorist group by many Western countries in particular. And so providing humanitarian assistance that then has to go through the

government or be negotiated with the government on some level presents a real conundrum for many of those Western powers, because how do you deliver humanitarian aid in Afghanistan and get around the Taliban? The answer is you can't. You have to negotiate with the Taliban. You have to not necessarily collaborate with them, but you exist at their pleasure. Right. And so it's a very, very tricky dance. And I was there precisely because we still have operations there in health and education and some economic development work. And we're still persisting. But it is it is an ongoing it's it's probably one of the harder places that we have to work in. Having said that, I have seen some progress. You know, the reality is the security situation in Afghanistan is the best that I've seen it in, well, more than a decade.

But the reasons for that are incredibly unfortunate. And the reason is that it was the Taliban who were the ones that were creating all of the violence and insecurity. And now that they're the government, there's no incentive for them to do that. In fact, there's only an incentive for them to shut that down because the kinds of violence that you're seeing is mostly directed at them by ISIS. So the security situation is better, but the humanitarian situation remains pretty dire. That's an interesting dilemma, choosing between the Taliban and ISIS and seeing Taliban as someone you can work with. Honestly, Peter, I've seen that in so many contexts, and it's a really hard thing to wrestle with.

I remember being in Iraq when ISIS was running around in the Kurdish areas, in Iraqi Kurdistan. And remember that Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds. And because of the lawlessness and instability and the fear that was created by ISIS at that point in time. I mean, they were abducting women and girls and chaining them up and selling them in markets and gifting them to ISIS commanders and horrific human rights abuses. And the fear was tremendous. And I would sit in rooms and have Yazidis and Kurds say to me, we miss Saddam Hussein, because, daily lives, while it's difficult to navigate, and we, you know, you feel a degree of cynicism about these regimes, at least when you go to market to buy your vegetables, you're not being blown up. And that sounds like a horrible kind of calculation. But this is the kind of calculation that civilians make all around the world. And it's,

and it's heartbreaking. We, we accept, um, massive, massive oppression in the name of, of, of personal security. And, um, and, and, and that's also, that also becomes part of the reason why these regimes are not overthrown, because they have such an iron fist that you can't get out and protest, and you can't mobilize, and you can't mount an effective opposition, because you'll end up dead or in prison. Can you give us a sense of what it's like negotiating with the Taliban? What is that process like? It's tricky. It's really tricky. You have to be very mindful of every word that you use, of every intention, you have to go into these negotiations. And it's not just

the Taliban. I've had to negotiate with all kinds of armed groups over the course of my career. And more than anything, I find what is helpful is you have to make yourself small, non-threatening. You can't go in there pretending to have some overarching agenda. You have to sit and listen. Sometimes you have to recognize that they are trying to influence you and lecture you on their position because they believe that you'll then go back and promote that position. For the Taliban, one of their big sticking points is that whether it's UN agencies or Western governments, they keep calling them the de facto government of Afghanistan. And the word de facto is something that really, really is a source of ongoing irritation for

them, right? And so whenever they say, and you keep calling us the de facto government, I mean, it wasn't me calling them the de facto government. I didn't call them anything at all. that groups like this, they hold on to words and ideas, and they want to advance a particular point of view. They want to be seen differently. The Taliban want to be seen differently. They want to be recognized.

They also want to demonstrate that they had influence. And the thing that kept coming up all the time was, we were able to defeat the world's greatest military in seven days, right? So this is the kind, it is a bit like sitting in a room with any other kind of dictator where they're going to just soapbox for a couple of hours. But if you stay focused on why you're actually there, which for us is to be able to continue to employ our female staff and do our work,

and if you don't irritate or upset them, you have to stay focused on the humanitarian side. If you lose focus around that and start soapboxing or grandstanding yourself, then you'll just be frogmarched to the airport, and then that's it. You're shut down. I've just got a couple of minutes left. Let me try this question on you. The last time I was in Afghanistan was 2006, and I spent some time with a young Canadian woman who was there working for the Canadian government, but basically independently. She was operating on her own. She was spending time with

various groups of Afghan women, trying to give them a sense of what was possible under what was at that time a new constitution in afghanistan um that kind of spelled out the rights of women as being basically equal to men um and not telling them what to do with these new rights but trying to explain to them what the rights were what the constitution said what was available to them uh i've often wondered, because I've lost track of her over time, not what happened to her, but what happened to those women who learned those things and those possibilities and those opportunities for their life and their kids' lives? What's happened to them?

Well, some of them are working for groups like ours. They're women who grew up in a different kind of environment and who believe in the importance of the rights of women and girls. situation is, and they do feel threatened, and they do feel targeted, they also recognize that if they give up and stop trying to continue to make those investments in women and girls and provide avenues and outlets for their advancement, their educational advancement, their economic advancement, then all hope is lost. And when we think about Afghanistan, or have thought about Afghanistan in recent years, that the main thrust of our focus has been around getting people out of Afghanistan. But that is totally impractical. There are millions upon millions of women and girls who will never have that as an option, who will never get out of Afghanistan. And they have to navigate

it the way that it is. And the only way that they will see progress is through persistence, and some of these kinds of incremental opportunities. And it's not, it's far from perfect. It is not for me as a Canadian woman, as a feminist, what I would want to see on any level. You know, would I want to see their full realization of their rights and their advocacy for their rights? Absolutely. But that is not the hand that we have currently been dealt. And so the only thing you can do is to continue to invest in those local civil society organizations, those organizations, whether it's Warchild or others that are on the ground, that have female employees that are doing this kind of frontline work, because we're the safeguard in this

environment. And it's not easy, and it involves a lot of compromises on a bunch of different fronts. But it's still remarkably effective. I was in, well, I was sort of all over the place, but I went to Jalalabad and a few other locations. And you would see women, because they can't access education after grade six, they can't access the usual kind of economic development programming that was available before. And so we run these health centers that offer a whole array of services, including some work in around education and catch up learning and literacy and numeracy and this sort of thing. And they're run by women. And you see hundreds of women standing in line who then come into these centers. And the first thing they do is take off their burqas and pile them in the middle of the room.

And, you know, that is their moment of solidarity. And, you know, probably a little bit of protest too. And they hear from each other and they're supported by one another and they're not getting that elsewhere and so when we think about afghanistan and we think well there's not nothing more that can be done there all we're doing in those situations is um just solidifying their fate and then the taliban get everything that they want and um And the situation is only guaranteed to continue to evolve

as it was prior to 2001, where you've got women who are being stoned to death in public squares or strung up from cranes for moral crimes and other abuses. The Taliban are not, the one thing that I did take away from this, from being there again, is the Taliban are not the one thing that I did take away from this from being there again is the Taliban are not a homogeneous group. They're kind of like the Republican Party in the United States. You've got your extreme right wing elements. Right. That's maybe it's a bad comparison. But all this to say, you know, you've got the hardliners and then you've got the ones that have daughters. And, you know, and think about the education piece a little bit differently. you've got the hardliners and then you've got the ones that have daughters and, you know, and, and think about the education piece a little bit differently. And so you can find ways to navigate through that.

It's not impossible. And, and that, that was one of the wonderful things that I got to bear witness to is seeing women and girls who have figured out how to persist, despite it all. I will figure out a way to respond to the Republicans who write in. That wasn't the best example. What I mean to say is. No, but I think, you know, you could say that about any party, really. You could. there are extremes um okay uh dr samantha nutt it's always you know it's always

a learning experience talking with you and it has been again today and we'll have to do it uh more frequently that way you know it's been a while since the last time we chatted, but we will do it again early in the new year, I'm sure. Thanks for doing this. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. I know it's a hard conversation every time I'm on, but I appreciate it. So do we. Well, there you go.

Dr. Samantha Nutt from War Child. You know, so much food for thought through that conversation. I hope you enjoyed it, although enjoyable is a hard word to use to describe some of the things we had to deal with. You may choose to want to contribute

in some fashion to the ongoing work that organizations like War Child do. In War Child's particular example, you can find them easily on the internet. War Child Canada is where to look. And there are any number of ways of contributing. It's not just donations of cash. So have a look at what they have to say. Our encore episode of The Bridge with Dr. Sam Nutt from October 22nd.