French writer and intellectual Bernard-Henri L\u00e9vy has published a compelling report in La Stampa, Italy\u2019s most prominent newspaper, under the title: \u201cSudan of the Forgotten Dead\u2026 A Journey into the Deadliest War of the Decade, with 150,000 Casualties\u201d. In Khartoum, people have one plea: \u201cStop Dagalo\u2019s atrocities.\u201d<\/p>\n
“Among all the wars I\u2019ve written about over the past fifty years,” writes L\u00e9vy, “this is one of the most savage\u2014and unquestionably one of the most forgotten.”
\n“Did you know that this war has displaced twelve million people and claimed 150,000 civilian lives?” asks Suleiman, a former attach\u00e9 at the Sudanese Embassy in France, who joined the army after the conflict broke out in April 2023, and who accompanied L\u00e9vy through much of this report.<\/p>\n
Port Sudan: A Bombarded, Isolated City<\/strong><\/p>\n Inside the arrival hall of Port Sudan\u2019s international airport\u2014connected, in theory, to only Istanbul, Doha, and Addis Ababa\u2014there is a complete sense of isolation. Men in pristine white robes, skinny youths in torn shirts like fishing nets, and stray cats wandering beneath luggage belts in oppressive heat create a haunting tableau. One might wonder if these are ghosts, as legend says.<\/p>\n Scars of Drone Strikes<\/strong><\/p>\n It’s almost miraculous that anything here functions at all. The airport has suffered repeated drone attacks by the army of Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo\u2014known as Hemedti\u2014a former camel trader turned general who rose up against President Burhan. Bombs exploded on the cracked walls of the departure hall; the control tower looked like a decapitated blast furnace. Massive craters, scorched black from a ten-day blaze, mark the fuel tanks. \u201c150,000 dead,\u201d repeats Suleiman coldly, in a sharp British accent. \u201cThat\u2019s three times Gaza\u2019s toll, I believe. And yet no one\u2014no one in American universities, among Greta Thunberg\u2019s friends, or the so-called progressives\u2014seems to care.\u201d<\/p>\n A Night with Burhan<\/strong><\/p>\n In the dead of night, L\u00e9vy meets President Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in a modest house engulfed in darkness, lit only by a few dim lights due to the threat of drone attacks. Tall, in full camouflage, with a chest covered in medals, Burhan has the aura of a Nile general. He speaks of President Macron\u2014one of the few Western leaders he\u2019s met in recent years\u2014yet says he\u2019s heard nothing new from him. He discusses the impossibility of fighting alone against an enemy that commits every imaginable war crime and targets civilians indiscriminately.<\/p>\n Burhan expresses frustration with the ambiguous stance of the UAE\u2014once an ally, now allegedly supplying arms to the enemy via Chad.<\/p>\n Denials, Diplomacy, and Delayed Democracy<\/strong><\/p>\n When challenged about supposed ties to Iran, Burhan is firm: \u201cIran opened an embassy, nothing more. No military experts, no weapons\u2014contrary to the attackers\u2019 disinformation.\u201d On the Abraham Accords: \u201cCivil war delayed ratification. But I am ready to cooperate with the Jewish state against terrorism\u2014our mutual threat that extends beyond Sudan to Chad, Libya, and the region at large.\u201d<\/p>\n When questioned about the long-promised democratic transition since 2019, Burhan falls silent, then leads L\u00e9vy into a dry, dark garden and out to the corniche. A crowd gathers. Cheers erupt: \u201cLong live Sudan!\u201d Selfies abound. Burhan raises his fist and declares, \u201cHere is democracy.\u201d Then, turning to L\u00e9vy, he adds: \u201cTell the propagandists that Kamal Idris, a renowned legal scholar, has been appointed Prime Minister\u2014and he will form a 100% civilian government.\u201d<\/p>\n A City of Ghosts<\/strong><\/p>\n Sudan\u2014once the largest African country before South Sudan\u2019s secession\u2014unfolds before L\u00e9vy\u2019s eyes from a helicopter flying dangerously low to avoid Hemedti\u2019s missiles. Khartoum lies in ruins, a ghost city reminiscent of Bakhmut, but once home to seven million people. Women\u2014skin and bone from hunger\u2014stand in endless lines for humanitarian aid that never comes.<\/p>\n In Nubawi, entire neighborhoods have been flattened by fire. In the silence of the uninhabited zones, lean dogs wander the streets with terrifying hunger in their eyes. At the national museum, ancient murals and Nubian artifacts\u2014surviving for centuries\u2014have been deliberately destroyed. At the national library, historic documents were burned as fuel.<\/p>\n The devastation of Khartoum resembles every historical example of urban genocide\u2014a systematic annihilation of a city. Perhaps, L\u00e9vy writes, this is its most extreme manifestation yet.<\/p>\n The Mass Grave of Omdurman<\/strong><\/p>\n In the Omdurman district of Amboada, L\u00e9vy encounters a burial mound\u2014one of many mass graves. \u201cThere are 244 bodies down there,\u201d says a man. During the war, people were arrested at home or while searching for food. They were told, \u201cDon\u2019t worry\u2014Hemedti will help you relocate.\u201d Then Rapid Support Forces opened fire, screaming \u201cAllahu Akbar\u201d. Bodies lay in the sun for months before neighbors dared bury them.<\/p>\n Mourners lift their robes to show wounds: lash marks, burns, dog bites. Then they gather in a circle, raise their hands, and offer a funeral prayer to the forgotten dead.<\/p>\n Rape as a Weapon of War<\/strong><\/p>\n In Badr Street, Nana Taher, director of a family planning clinic, introduces L\u00e9vy to women who had been raped by Hemedti\u2019s fighters. Mothers raped in front of daughters. Daughters in front of mothers. Rape cycles conducted in public or in torture centers. Some women went mad. Some were told to pay ransom; when they couldn’t, they were taken anyway. One woman screamed so loud her mouth was filled with sand, then dirt. Another only remembers the slimy hand of a man holding her down.<\/p>\n Then come the children of rape. Dr. Taher asks: \u201cWhat will you do?\u201d Some want abortions to hide from their husbands. Others fear they\u2019ll never find one. Some accept their fate\u2014but plan to give up the child to another family far away. A couple arrives with a 15-day-old baby. \u201cWe are all victims,\u201d they say. \u201cTogether, we will build a peaceful Sudan.\u201d<\/p>\n The Damned of the Earth<\/strong><\/p>\n The most haunting testimony comes west of Khartoum, on the road to El Obeid. A group of 12 men\u2014some victims, some former perpetrators\u2014gather during a thunderstorm. One, a teenage boy of 17, recounts his horror. He was drugged and forced to rape 24 women over three days. Alone, in a room, supplied with food and performance-enhancing drugs. A monster created by other monsters.<\/p>\n This is Sartre\u2019s “The Wretched of the Earth”\u2014but inverted: 24 women destroyed. One boy, damned forever.<\/p>\n A General in the Dark<\/strong><\/p>\n Back in Khartoum, in a pitch-black safe house, L\u00e9vy is visited by a general he\u2019d seen earlier in Port Sudan. A close aide of Burhan, he offers L\u00e9vy a secret visit to a special forces base near El Fasher.<\/p>\n At Dawn with the Commandos<\/strong><\/p>\n At dawn, in the sands beneath a bare hill, L\u00e9vy witnesses a squad of elite anti-terrorist commandos. Twelve men\u2014snipers, medics, technicians\u2014fully camouflaged. Their leader: Commander Hafez al-Taj, suave and steely, vows: \u201cWe will defeat Hemedti\u2019s legions.\u201d<\/p>\n But there’s more: when insurgents stormed Khartoum, they freed jihadists from prison. Now, with ISIS and al-Qaeda regrouping in the Sahel, Sudan risks becoming a powder keg. \u201cIt is us who fight them,\u201d al-Taj declares.<\/p>\n The Joint Force<\/strong><\/p>\n Near a village whose name remains undisclosed, L\u00e9vy witnesses the \u201cJoint Force\u201d\u2014former rebel fighters from the Zaghawa, Masalit, and Fur tribes, now allied with the army. One of them is General Ali Mokhtar, a former guerrilla commander from the Darfur war. Once enemies, these groups now fight side by side against Hemedti\u2019s Janjaweed heirs.<\/p>\n At dusk, they sit around lamb skewers, recalling past battles. Two Sudans\u2014once divided\u2014now reconciled in the face of a common enemy who knows only scorched earth.<\/p>\n L\u00e9vy concludes:<\/strong> French writer and intellectual Bernard-Henri L\u00e9vy has published a compelling report in La Stampa, Italy\u2019s most prominent newspaper, under the title: \u201cSudan of the Forgotten Dead\u2026 A Journey into the Deadliest War of the Decade, with 150,000 Casualties\u201d. In Khartoum, people have one plea: \u201cStop Dagalo\u2019s atrocities.\u201d “Among all the wars I\u2019ve written about over …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52449"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52451,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52449\/revisions\/52451"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u201cThis land\u2014soaked in blood and history older than Egypt\u2019s\u2014deserves better than silence. To refuse to understand is a disgrace. To open our eyes is a duty.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"