Bulletins and News Discussion from February 26th to March 3rd, 2024 - Breaking The Siege Of Omdurman - COTW: Sudan
Bulletins and News Discussion from February 26th to March 3rd, 2024 - Breaking The Siege Of Omdurman - COTW: Sudan
The war in Sudan has so far been marked by a lot of incompetency and mismanagement by government forces (the SAF). After months of bitter fighting, in late 2023, the opposing Rapid Support Forces suddenly expanded their control towards the southeast of Khartoum after not a lot of resistance, most notably taking the city of Wad Madani. This led the SAF supporters and officials to panic and point fingers at each other about what the hell the army is even doing, while RSF soldiers looted the city.
These victories led to a short period in late December and early January where diplomacy and peace talks were considered, but such attempts fell apart. The leader of the RSF visited various African countries, including meeting Paul Kagame in Rwanda, to boost his legitimacy. Then, the RSF attacked into South Kordofan and consolidated their hold on other areas.
The Sudanese capital of Khartoum sits on a river which divides it from the city to its west, Omdurman (see the post image). The SAF and RSF have been fighting over this grand urban area for the whole war, with the RSF holding most of Khartoum (with an entirely cut-off SAF force holding on in the center), with a similarly cut-off SAF force also in eastern Omdurman, up against the river. For 10 months, this force has been under siege - but no longer. In perhaps the first actual W of the war for the SAF, they finally managed to break the siege a week ago, pouring supplies in. This leaves a section of the RSF now cut off, though Omdurman is still not under full SAF control (and, who knows, the whole situation could once again go badly for the SAF).
Meanwhile, the Sudanese socioeconomic situation has completely collapsed, with potentially a 20% fall in GDP and 8 million people displaced, with 2 million from Khartoum alone. 18 million Sudanese, or about a third of the population, is in acute hunger, and 20 million children are out in school. The refugees streaming out of the country are causing knock-on effects in neighorboring countries like Chad. Nobody is even really counting the dead anymore.
Red is the government forces, the SAF. Blue is the RSF opposition. Other colours are various factions.
The Country of the Week is Sudan! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
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FRANKFURT, March 2 (Reuters) - Germany is investigating an audio recording published in Russian media reported to be a conference call of high-ranking German military officials talking about weapons for Ukraine, sparking concerns of espionage in Germany and calls for clarification from Russia. A German defence ministry spokesperson said on Saturday that it couldn't confirm the authenticity of the recording, but the Federal Office for Military Counterintelligence Service was investigating the matter and all necessary steps would be taken.
The recording can be found here on vk.com. I listened to it and think that it's authentic. Around 30:00 one of them says: "Imagine the press gets wind of this"
Edit: The German Ministry of Denfense confirms the authenticity of the recording (Article in germ*n)
It's a real embarrassment for the German Abwehr (or whatever they call it these days) and I can't help thinking it will make German war planners paranoid about being bugged. It might even make other members of the NATO pact cautious about sharing information with them.
Yes, definitively. I bet that the MAD (Militärischer Abschirmdienst, Military Counter-Intelligence Service) has a very bad day. There is some speculation on why russia made this recording public, because now germ*ny knows that at least one internal communication channel is compromised. But (speculation on my part) one of the call/meeting participants was in Singapur during the call, maybe russia was able to wiretap it because of that?
Word is also that the br*ts are not very pleased about it, because the call leaked that br*tish and american personell is on the ground in ukraine, providing help in equipping planes with western weapons
I bet they’re mad
There’s an angle which views this as connected with Scholz openly declaring there will not be a deployment of Germans to Ukraine & outing the French and British as having deployed some forces to Ukraine.
The theory goes there is a deep state struggle going on among the European power brokers on how to respond to the failure of NATO policy in Ukraine. One side wants to escalate and another side wants to cut a deal with Russia.
See how just recently you had Macron unilaterally floating in public the idea of sending in NATO forces, his foreign minister flatly opposing him in a public statement, Scholz outing the French and British for escalating, etc.
This leak could very well be from a German source seeking to politically expose the accelerationists. Someone like Scholz or someone aligned with him.
Why is this damning? Haven't they already sent a bunch of missiles to Ukraine publicly?
It's not really damning that they talk about delivering weapons. The leaked meeting was about prep for briefing the german defense minister about the feasability of supplying Taurus to ukraine. The br*ts and the fr*nch already delivered comparable weapon systems.
The spicy things from the recording are:
- There are nato troops on the ground in Ukraine
- Ukraine's air force is severly depleted (< 10 Su-24 is mentioned)
- Attacking the bridge between Crimea and russia is explicitly discussed
- Russia had the ability to wiretap into a meeting of high ranking militairy officials
- They talk about how Taurus can be used in Ukraine while keeping direct involvement of germany secret (create "flightplan" in germany and send it secretly into Ukraine via car)
And to a lesser extend:
- Scholz lied about reasons why Taurus cannot be send there
Edit: Word
