Opinion
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(LifeSiteNews) — As President Joe Biden orders U.S. troops to the region, it is timely to ask precisely what has led to the unfolding civil war in Sudan. 

Creating a failed state

Sudan was divided into Sudan – and South Sudan – following a U.S.-backed referendum in 2011, which led to a five year civil war in the region (pictured below). As The New York Times reported in February 2023:

The new country was cheered on in 2011 by the American diplomats who had midwifed its delivery and the Hollywood celebrities who championed its cause.

Map showing Sudan and South Sudan – which fought a US backed separatist war in 2013

A 2015 report for The Guardian on the “creation of a kleptocracy” in South Sudan noted:

Wikileaks cables confirm that U.S. administrations were deeply involved in funding all sides of the brutal war that led to the 2011 independence.

Two years later, civil war broke out, with the U.S.-backed rebels fighting until 2018. Following an uncertain power sharing agreement, the region remains fraught with political violence. The youngest nation in the world, South Sudan is predominantly Christian, in contrast to Sudan –  which is 90 percent Moslem. 

South Sudan is the world’s third most corrupt country according to the 2022 index of Transparency International.  Oil rich, yet dirt poor – even the Minister for Petroleum cannot say where the oil money is going. Presumably, he does not belong to the elite clique which, according to reports going back to 2021, simply plunders the wealth of the nation for themselves. As the New York Times report continued:

‘I don’t see the money,’ Puot Kang Chol, South Sudan’s minister for petroleum, said in an interview, ‘I only see figures on paper.’

The attempt to secure U.S. influence  – through regime change – in breaking off South Sudan resulted in a permanent chaos. It has been followed by another series of coincidences leading to the outbreak of civil war in Sudan. 

The current conflict explained 

On April 15, the rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF) launched a series of attacks on Sudanese government military bases. With heavy fighting breaking out, including over the capital Khartoum, the violence is ongoing despite a shaky ceasefire being announced.

The RSF is a paramilitary force created in 2013 in order to “coup proof” the regime of then President Bashir, who was himself ousted in a military coup in 2019. The RSF, composed of former Janjaweed militia responsible for civilian massacres, was intended to be a counterbalance to the government military. Explained in an April 20 New Yorker piece here, the process backfired, with the RSF failing to guarantee state stability. 

In fact, they combined with the army in 2019 to oust President Bashir, killing many pro-democracy protesters in Khartoum. 

The war with Russia 

The situation in Sudan is almost certainly linked to the neoconservative war with Russia. With the return of an ambassador in August 2022, the U.S. broke its 25 year diplomatic absence from Sudan. 

The following month, the U.S. ambassador warns the interim government of Sudan against agreeing a deal to allow a Russian naval base to be constructed. The Hamdok civilian government, which came to power after the 2019 coup, was in talks to allow the Russians a permanent naval presence in the strategically important Red Sea. 

Enter Antony Blinken 

Antony “Al” Blinken, an amateur guitarist moonlighting as the U.S. Secretary of State, urged Sudan to form a new civilian-led government in November 2022. 

With a UN-brokered power sharing agreement following in December, Blinken then threatened a travel ban for any Sudanese official endangering the deal. 

Blinken’s intervention appears to have worked its magic. The Sudanese announced the following February that the Russian base deal would go ahead. 

Second round – Blinken out, enter Nuland 

The Biden Administration responded with a series of familiar regime change moves. First, it announced $288 million dollars in “aid” on February 16. Then on March 9, regime change specialist and arch neoconservative Victoria Nuland arrives to “discuss democracy.”

A month later, a new coup is launched, with violence breaking out in a nationally coordinated campaign. 

A history of chaos 

The neoconservative faction which directs U.S. foreign policy is directly responsible for the destabilization of Sudan. This case was made in an April 20th  piece in Foreign Policy In Sudan, U.S. Policies Paved the Way for Warwhich describes the Secretary of State Antony Blinken as deluded and that “The U.S.-backed transition revealed itself as fundamentally flawed.”

This analysis shows that the neoconservative agenda is detached from reality, and instead of recognizing and correcting their policies based on fantasy, simply continue them despite the mayhem and destruction that they unleash. 

Perhaps the greatest example of U.S. delusions was Washington’s insistence on calling Sudan’s transition ‘civilian-led.’ There was nothing about Sudan’s transition that was civilian-led. The 2019 transitional constitution laid out that the military would lead for the first 21 months of the transition, followed by civilians for the next 18 months.

It’s not clear if Washington is ready. Once fighting began on April 15, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken repeated U.S. delusions on Sudan: “This is a real opportunity to finally carry forward the civilian-led transition.

In addition to a civil war which threatens to escalate to a regional conflict, drawing in neighbors such as Egypt and Ethiopia, the outbreak of war presents a humanitarian disaster. Aid work has been suspended whilst people are displaced from the warring regions of Darfur and Khartoum. 

‘High risk of biological hazard’

In further shocking news, a high level biological research laboratory has been overrun by rebel fighters, leading to the World Health Organisation alerting the world to a “high risk of biological hazard” on April 25.

The lab, containing unsecured and dangerous pathogens, is described on its own website as containing a virus facility housing “reference laboratories related to the control of some diseases such as polio, measles, tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS.”

The WHO, under whose auspices the lab operates, has been unable to secure the hazardous materials it contains. 

Paging Dr. Fauci

According to a report yesterday – April 26 – by The War Room, this biolab was funded by the United States – and set up under an organization headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci. 

Sudan’s National Public Health Laboratory – whose recent seizure by militants has prompted warnings of causing a ‘huge biological risk’ – received financial and personnel support from U.S. government bodies including the Department of Defense, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Health agency, War Room can reveal.

During Dr. Fauci’s tenure as a National Institutes of Health (NIH) agency leader, he also allocated funds to support research involving scientists from the controversial laboratory.

 The mounting cost of the war on Russia

The specific danger presented by the lab was announced by the WHO’s Sudan representative, Nima Saeed Abid, who described the situation as “extremely dangerous” because “we have polio isolates in the lab, we have measles isolates in the lab, we have cholera isolates in the lab.”  

The lab is located in the capital, Khartoum – site of some of the most intense fighting. The launching of violent regime change operations in this city is a reckless and desperate act, which shows that the neoconservative faction is desperate in their attempt to fight Russia wherever they can, and whatever the human cost. 

The War Room report continues, showing the grave danger presented by the potential release of cholera strains amidst yet another neoconservative humanitarian crisis. 

U.S. federal funding has directly supported research conducted by researchers from the high-risk laboratory into cholera.

According to the United Nations, no side appears interested in a negotiated settlement to war which could drag on for years. It is a disaster entirely by design, with the only question remaining whether it is incompetence or malice which led the U.S. neoconservative faction to create it.  

The neoconservative record of ruin 

The peoples of the world continue to pay a high price for the obsessions of a small but powerful group, for whose deluded designs entire populations are made to suffer. The horrifying reality of their actions presents no evidence to them that they should halt these “liberal interventions.”

It is the tragic mistake of the liberal idea that facts, evidence and the superior arguments they provide will win the day for wisdom. 

The facts and evidence are damning to the nation-wrecking racket of neoconservatism, but not one of the many elections undertaken in the last twenty years has halted them. There is no argument with people whose worldview is contrary to reality itself, and whose power is unaffected by voting. 

Frantic to produce a win, somewhere, their unbroken record of military defeat and crimes against humanity looks set to be untroubled by this latest act of national vandalism. 

 

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