The Rapid Support Forces launched drone strikes on El-Obeid in North Kordofan, killing at least seven civilians. Fletcher and Octavio dig into how Sudan got here: the history of the conflict, the legacy of the Janjaweed, and what is at stake for the entire region.
Las Fuerzas de Apoyo Rápido lanzaron ataques con drones sobre El-Óbeid, en Kordofán del Norte, matando al menos a siete civiles. Fletcher y Octavio analizan cómo llegó Sudán a este punto: la historia del conflicto, el legado de los yanyawis y lo que está en juego para toda la región.
5 essential B2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| desplazamiento | displacement (of people) | El desplazamiento forzado de millones de personas es una de las consecuencias más graves del conflicto. |
| disputarse | to compete for / to fight over (mutually) | Las dos facciones se disputan el control del territorio desde hace más de dos años. |
| estrangulamiento | strangulation / stranglehold | La estrategia del ejército es un estrangulamiento económico de las regiones rebeldes. |
| rendición de cuentas | accountability | Sin rendición de cuentas internacional, los crímenes de guerra seguirán sin castigo. |
| partición | partition | Algunos analistas hablan de una partición de facto del país entre las dos fuerzas enfrentadas. |
I want to talk about a war that has been running for three years now and gets maybe a tenth of the coverage it deserves.
Drones, this week, killing civilians in a city called El-Obeid in Sudan.
And I'd wager most of our listeners couldn't place Sudan on a map right now, which is part of the problem.
Es un conflicto que produce cifras absolutamente devastadoras y, al mismo tiempo, casi ninguna atención internacional.
It's a conflict that produces absolutely devastating numbers and, at the same time, almost no international attention.
Las Fuerzas de Apoyo Rápido, las FAR, lanzaron drones contra El-Óbeid, que es la capital de Kordofán del Norte.
The Rapid Support Forces, the RSF, launched drones against El-Obeid, which is the capital of North Kordofan.
Al menos siete personas muertas.
At least seven people killed.
Son civiles, Fletcher.
They are civilians, Fletcher.
No son objetivos militares.
They are not military targets.
Right, and the RSF is the key to understanding all of this.
Because to most people outside Africa, they're just an acronym in a wire dispatch.
But who they actually are, where they came from, that's the whole story.
Las FAR nacieron de los yanyawis.
The RSF grew out of the Janjaweed.
Si recuerdas Darfur, recuerdas a los yanyawis: milicias árabes que el gobierno de Omar al-Bashir utilizó para masacrar a poblaciones africanas en la región de Darfur a principios de los años dos mil.
If you remember Darfur, you remember the Janjaweed: Arab militias that Omar al-Bashir's government used to massacre African populations in the Darfur region in the early 2000s.
El mundo los condenó.
The world condemned them.
El Tribunal Penal Internacional acusó a Al-Bashir de genocidio.
The International Criminal Court charged al-Bashir with genocide.
I covered some of that period.
The sheer scale of what happened in Darfur, the camps, the displaced populations, and the way the international community debated and debated and mostly did nothing.
Al-Bashir stayed in power for another fifteen years after those charges.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y durante ese tiempo, los yanyawis no desaparecieron.
And during that time, the Janjaweed did not disappear.
Se transformaron.
They transformed.
En 2013, Al-Bashir los formalizó como las Fuerzas de Apoyo Rápido bajo el mando de un hombre llamado Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, conocido como Hemedti.
In 2013, al-Bashir formalized them as the Rapid Support Forces under a man named Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti.
Era una forma de tener un ejército paralelo, leal directamente a él, fuera del control del ejército oficial.
It was a way of having a parallel army, loyal directly to him, outside the control of the official military.
And then Al-Bashir falls.
2019, the revolution.
I remember watching those images from Khartoum, the crowds outside the military headquarters, this extraordinary thing happening, and thinking, maybe Sudan actually gets a clean break.
Todos lo pensamos.
We all thought so.
Hubo un gobierno de transición, un acuerdo entre los civiles y los militares.
There was a transitional government, an agreement between civilians and the military.
Pero el problema era que el ejército y las FAR seguían siendo dos instituciones separadas con intereses distintos y una desconfianza profunda entre ellas.
But the problem was that the army and the RSF were still two separate institutions with different interests and deep mutual mistrust.
Era como construir una casa sobre dos cimientos que se mueven en direcciones opuestas.
It was like building a house on two foundations moving in opposite directions.
And then the coup.
October 2021.
The generals, including Hemedti, pushed the civilians out entirely.
Sí, pero incluso después del golpe, la tensión entre el ejército regular y las FAR no desapareció.
Yes, but even after the coup, the tension between the regular army and the RSF did not disappear.
Al contrario, se intensificó.
On the contrary, it intensified.
El punto de ruptura fue en abril de 2023, cuando el gobierno intentó integrar las FAR dentro del ejército nacional.
The breaking point came in April 2023, when the government tried to integrate the RSF into the national army.
Hemedti se negó.
Hemedti refused.
Y eso es cuando empezó la guerra.
And that is when the war began.
April 15, 2023.
Fighting breaks out in Khartoum.
And what strikes me looking back is how fast it went from a political standoff to full-scale urban warfare.
Neighborhoods I'd walked through.
Markets, hospitals, just consumed.
Las FAR tienen una ventaja táctica importante: son más móviles, están presentes en todo el territorio, y tienen mucho dinero.
The RSF has an important tactical advantage: they are more mobile, they are present throughout the territory, and they have a lot of money.
Hemedti construyó una fortuna con el oro de Darfur.
Hemedti built a fortune from Darfur's gold.
Se estima que las FAR controlan gran parte de la producción minera en esa región, lo cual les da recursos que el ejército oficial no tiene.
The RSF is estimated to control much of the mining production in that region, which gives them resources the official army does not have.
Gold financing a civil war.
That's a pattern that shows up everywhere, doesn't it.
Diamonds in Sierra Leone, coltan in Congo.
The resource that was supposed to lift people out of poverty becomes the fuel for the fire.
Completamente.
Completely.
Y no es solo el oro sudanés.
And it is not just Sudanese gold.
Hay apoyo externo también.
There is external support too.
Los Emiratos Árabes Unidos han sido acusados de suministrar armas a las FAR.
The United Arab Emirates have been accused of supplying weapons to the RSF.
Rusia tiene intereses en la región desde hace años, y Wagner operó en Sudán antes de la guerra.
Russia has had interests in the region for years, and Wagner operated in Sudan before the war.
Es un conflicto local con muchas manos extranjeras dentro.
It is a local conflict with many foreign hands inside it.
The UAE angle is something I find genuinely difficult to square.
They're partners with the West on counterterrorism, they're normalizing with Israel, they present this image of a modern Gulf state.
And then here's this accusation that they're arming a force that came out of the Janjaweed.
La geopolítica del Golfo es muy compleja en el Cuerno de África y el Sahel.
Gulf geopolitics is very complex in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel.
Los Emiratos quieren influencia en el Mar Rojo, quieren estabilidad que les convenga, no necesariamente democracia.
The UAE wants influence over the Red Sea, they want stability that suits them, not necessarily democracy.
Y Hemedti les ha prometido lo que quieren oír.
And Hemedti has promised them what they want to hear.
Es una lógica transaccional que no tiene nada que ver con los valores que proclaman.
It is a transactional logic that has nothing to do with the values they proclaim.
Back to El-Obeid for a second, because I want to understand the military logic here.
North Kordofan, that's not a front line in the traditional sense.
Why are they hitting El-Obeid with drones?
Porque las FAR están expandiendo su control geográfico.
Because the RSF is expanding its geographic control.
El-Óbeid es una ciudad importante, un nodo de comunicaciones y comercio en el centro del país.
El-Obeid is an important city, a communications and trade hub in the center of the country.
Si las FAR pueden controlar Kordofán, se acercan a aislar la zona oriental del país, donde el ejército tiene más presencia.
If the RSF can control Kordofan, they get closer to isolating the eastern part of the country, where the army has more presence.
Es una estrategia de estrangulamiento territorial.
It is a strategy of territorial strangulation.
And civilian casualties are, what, acceptable to them?
Or is it deliberate, to drive populations out?
Las dos cosas, probablemente.
Both things, probably.
El desplazamiento forzado es una herramienta de guerra que las FAR conocen bien desde Darfur.
Forced displacement is a war tool the RSF knows well from Darfur.
Si una población huye, el territorio queda vacío y es más fácil de controlar.
If a population flees, the territory is left empty and easier to control.
Y además, el terror tiene un efecto multiplicador: la gente que no muere en el ataque también se va.
And terror has a multiplier effect: the people who do not die in the attack also leave.
The numbers are staggering when you actually look them up.
Over twelve million people displaced.
More than a hundred fifty thousand dead.
The UN calling it one of the worst humanitarian crises on the planet, and the news cycle has basically moved on.
Es que Sudan no tiene petróleo en grandes cantidades, no tiene una posición estratégica que los grandes poderes consideren urgente, y no hay una narrativa simple.
The thing is, Sudan does not have oil in large quantities, it does not have a strategic position that the great powers consider urgent, and there is no simple narrative.
No es una guerra entre buenos y malos, es una guerra entre dos facciones militares corruptas que se disputan el poder, y eso no vende titulares fáciles.
It is not a war between good and evil, it is a war between two corrupt military factions fighting over power, and that does not sell easy headlines.
That's the uncomfortable truth that I keep bumping up against in twenty-five years of this work.
The stories that are hardest to tell are the ones where there's no clean hero.
Ukraine has a story.
Sudan has a mess.
And messes don't get the same resources, the same cameras, the same fundraising.
Aunque eso tampoco es completamente justo, porque hay civiles sudaneses que no han elegido ninguna facción y que están atrapados entre las dos.
Although that is not completely fair either, because there are Sudanese civilians who have not chosen any faction and are trapped between both.
En Darfur, las FAR han cometido masacres documentadas contra comunidades no árabes.
In Darfur, the RSF has committed documented massacres against non-Arab communities.
La violencia sexual ha sido utilizada sistemáticamente.
Sexual violence has been used systematically.
Investigadores de la ONU han usado la palabra genocidio otra vez.
UN investigators have used the word genocide again.
Again.
That's the word.
Again.
Darfur in the 2000s, the ICC charges, and here we are twenty years later describing the same geography, the same actors, the same word.
Something broke very badly somewhere.
Lo que salió mal es que la justicia internacional no tuvo consecuencias reales.
What broke is that international justice had no real consequences.
Al-Bashir fue acusado por el TPI en 2009, pero siguió gobernando, viajando, recibiendo a otros líderes.
Al-Bashir was charged by the ICC in 2009, but he kept governing, traveling, receiving other leaders.
Eso manda un mensaje muy claro: si tienes suficiente poder político, las acusaciones internacionales son papel mojado.
That sends a very clear message: if you have enough political power, international charges are just paper.
Paper with wet ink, as it were.
And Hemedti himself, does the ICC have him in its sights at all?
Hay investigaciones abiertas sobre crímenes cometidos en Darfur desde 2023.
There are open investigations into crimes committed in Darfur since 2023.
Pero una investigación no es una acusación, y una acusación no es una detención.
But an investigation is not a charge, and a charge is not an arrest.
Hemedti sigue libre, sigue comandando, sigue recibiendo apoyo externo.
Hemedti remains free, still commanding, still receiving external support.
El proceso legal internacional es muy lento cuando el sujeto tiene armas y aliados.
International legal process is very slow when the subject has weapons and allies.
What does a realistic path forward even look like?
Because I'm trying to construct one and I'm struggling.
Both sides have military capacity.
There's no peace process with real momentum.
The country is fracturing geographically.
Hay negociaciones intermitentes, mediadas principalmente por Arabia Saudí y Estados Unidos.
There are intermittent negotiations, mediated mainly by Saudi Arabia and the United States.
Pero el problema es que ninguna de las partes cree que pueda perder definitivamente, así que ninguna tiene incentivos reales para ceder.
But the problem is that neither side believes it can definitively lose, so neither has real incentives to yield.
El ejército controla el este y el norte, las FAR dominan gran parte del oeste y el centro.
The army controls the east and north, the RSF dominates much of the west and center.
Es casi una partición de facto.
It is almost a de facto partition.
De facto partition.
Which is a phrase that gets used a lot and sounds almost clinical, but what it means for actual people is that you could be living on the wrong side of an invisible line and have no access to medical care, food distribution, any of it.
Y el sistema sanitario está prácticamente destruido.
And the health system is practically destroyed.
Hospitales bombardeados, médicos desplazados, medicamentos que no llegan.
Hospitals bombed, doctors displaced, medicines that do not arrive.
Hay brotes de cólera.
There are cholera outbreaks.
La malnutrición infantil en algunas zonas ha alcanzado niveles que los expertos comparan con la hambruna.
Child malnutrition in some areas has reached levels that experts compare to famine.
Es una crisis dentro de una crisis.
It is a crisis within a crisis.
And the neighbors.
Egypt, Ethiopia, Chad, all of them absorbing refugees, all of them with their own instabilities.
The potential for this to spread in some form is real.
Chad, en particular, está muy vulnerable.
Chad, in particular, is very vulnerable.
Ya tiene millones de refugiados sudaneses de conflictos anteriores, y ahora están llegando más.
It already has millions of Sudanese refugees from previous conflicts, and more are arriving now.
El presidente Mahamat Idriss Déby tiene vínculos históricos con las FAR, lo cual complica su neutralidad.
President Mahamat Idriss Déby has historical ties to the RSF, which complicates his neutrality.
Y si Chad se desestabiliza, el efecto en el Sahel entero puede ser enorme.
And if Chad destabilizes, the effect on the entire Sahel can be enormous.
The Sahel is this extraordinary belt of instability.
Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, all with coups in the last five years, and now Sudan on the eastern end.
You start connecting those dots and it's a picture that should worry people a lot more than it seems to.
Y en todos esos países hay una narrativa antioccidental que se ha ido fortaleciendo, y presencias rusas que han ido creciendo.
And in all those countries there is an anti-Western narrative that has been growing stronger, and Russian presences that have been growing.
No es una conspiración coordinada, pero sí es una tendencia que los analistas serios están siguiendo con mucha atención.
It is not a coordinated conspiracy, but it is a trend that serious analysts are watching very closely.
El vacío que dejó Francia, por ejemplo, no se llenó con democracia.
The vacuum that France left, for example, was not filled with democracy.
What I keep coming back to, though, is the ordinary Sudanese person in El-Obeid this week, who heard drones and didn't know if they were going to make it through the night.
All of this geopolitical architecture, and at the center of it there are just people trying to live.
Por eso me parece importante que lo discutamos, aunque no sea la noticia del día.
That is why I think it is important that we talk about it, even if it is not the news of the day.
Hay que nombrar estas cosas.
These things have to be named.
Un conflicto que no se nombra es un conflicto que no existe para la mayoría del mundo, y eso le conviene a quienes lo están perpetrando.
A conflict that is not named is a conflict that does not exist for most of the world, and that suits those who are perpetuating it.
That's right.
Naming it matters.
Alright, before we go, I want to ask you about something you said a little while back, because you used a construction that caught my ear.
You said "es una guerra entre dos facciones que se disputan el poder." What's happening grammatically with "se disputan"?
Ah, bueno, es el verbo reflexivo recíproco.
Ah, right, it is the reciprocal reflexive verb.
"Disputarse algo" significa que dos o más actores compiten entre sí por la misma cosa.
'Disputarse algo' means that two or more actors compete with each other for the same thing.
"Se disputan el poder" quiere decir que cada uno quiere arrebatarle el poder al otro.
'Se disputan el poder' means each one wants to take power from the other.
Es una acción mutua.
It is a mutual action.
Funciona igual con "se pelean", "se odian", "se necesitan".
It works the same way with 'se pelean', 'se odian', 'se necesitan'.
So the "se" is doing real work there.
It's not just a reflexive particle, it's carrying the whole idea that the action goes both ways.
In English we'd say "they fight each other for power" and have to spell it out.
Spanish just folds that into the verb.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y puedes usarlo con casi cualquier verbo.
And you can use it with almost any verb.
"Se miran", "se escriben", "se contradicen".
'Se miran', 'se escriben', 'se contradicen'.
En cuanto hay dos sujetos y una acción mutua, el "se" lo resuelve todo.
As soon as there are two subjects and a mutual action, the 'se' resolves everything.
Es una de esas cosas que hacen el español muy eficiente cuando describes relaciones o conflictos.
It is one of those things that makes Spanish very efficient when you describe relationships or conflicts.
"Se contradicen." That's us in every episode, Octavio.
Though I notice Spanish has one verb for something that takes us an entire clause.
Fletcher, llevas ocho años aprendiendo español y todavía te sorprende que sea un idioma superior al inglés.
Fletcher, you have been learning Spanish for eight years and it still surprises you that it is a superior language to English.
[chuckle] Nos vemos la semana que viene.
See you next week.