Steven McWilliam warns of the danger that the city of El Obeid will face a similar fate to El Fasher if it falls to the UAE-backed RSF militia – and the repercussions of the war on the UK

El Obeid will be the next El Fasher. In October last year, the Rapid Support Force (RSF), one of the two current belligerents of the Sudanese war, captured the city of El Fasher in the west of Sudan where they killed an estimated 6,000 people in the first handful of days with some current estimates suggesting as many as 60,000 people have been killed since the city fell. This is in one city. Not in total. Celtic Park, the largest football stadium in Scotland, seats 60,000 people. El Fasher was under siege by the RSF for eighteen months before it fell and yet few people even knew when it finally surrendered and the massacre took place.

Now the RSF have turned their attention to El Obeid with the UN security council issuing a warning that will do nothing to stop the brutality that will be inflicted upon the people in the capital city of the North Kordofan region. This will keep happening for as long as the RSF has weapons.

This comes within a long string of crises within the country. 11 million people are currently displaced which has put incredible strain on an already fragile healthcare system and food security has been undermined with many people relying on emergency rooms set up by communities.

This human suffering needs to be at the core of this discussion because while the rest of this will be highlighting strategic reasons, the left should care because fundamentally no human should have to endure warfare, displacement, rape and death.

1. El Fasher 2. El Obeid or “Al Ubayyid”

Weapons and Gold

When we are speaking about international anti-war efforts, we need to be speaking about how the international weapons trade operates to both supply weapons to Israel but also funds Israel through weapon sales. One of their major trading partners is the UAE following normalisation in 2020 through the Abraham Accords, to which Sudan became a signatory.

Since then the UAE and Israel have created joint arms investment vehicles making the UAE one of the largest buyers of Israeli arms. In effect they are fulfilling Israel’s funding needs by purchasing weapons it then sends to the RSF.

Why is it worth arming the RSF for the UAE? Gold. The UAE is the arms supplier for the RSF who in return, smuggle gold out of Sudan to be sold in the UAE. It exploits the land and people through organised control of different gold mines controlled by General Hemdeti, head of the RSF.

It is worth noting the obvious at this point that the UAE and Britain have an extensive trading relationship. Not only is it an extensive relationship but it is one that the UK and Scottish governments wish to deepen.

Anti-colonial legacy

If the liberation of the working class is a key goal then it is vital to include within that framework an understanding of the world that strongly factors in the resource exploitation of Africa and the labour exploitation of its people, historically and presently. Any objective anti-imperialist understanding must understand the colonial role of exploiting the labour markets of Africa that exist today; from Sudan’s gold, to the rare earth materials in the DRC and the uranium from the Sahel states.

I saw a post on instagram that has not left my thoughts. It asked, why is the US only now trying to pivot towards addressing China? Perhaps it’s because China has started to encroach on the western monopoly of using Africa as a secondary market for exploitation.

When an African nation’s only option for international investment was through the IMF then their autonomy was limited to what the IMF imposed as conditions; austerity, low government spending, cheap export of raw materials and expensive import of completed items. However, China’s industry grew through the 80s and 90s and by the 2000s was in a position to start looking outwards for investment that would enable a larger market for Chinese goods which led to the belt and road initiative as well as large scale investments of Chinese capital into different nations in Africa.

If we are acknowledging our colonial history and we analyse the role of secondary markets that are exploited by world powers, I strongly put the case that we should support anti-colonial, pan-African movements that focus on delivering the same material gains for the working class that we want here; secure housing, free healthcare and no war.

Belfast Pogroms and Scottish Mobs

Lastly, this violence is coming home. Earlier this month a Sudanese asylum seeker Hadi Alodid was charged with attempted murder after stabbing Stephen Ogilvie in Belfast. The response was organised riots and attacks, organised by far-right forces with seemingly pre-meditated plans.

In Scotland, we have seen videos of groups of masked men beating random people of colour as well as marches through my city’s streets. Thankfully, Glasgow responded in force but the discontent is bubbling under the surface. Not to mention the recent attacker in Edinburgh who was arrested while shouting about “protecting the country”.

The paramilitary structures that were built in the past still exist and the far right are being able to sap up the working class in the UK. The discontent is because of austerity which has been implemented to fund a war economy that creates more destruction, war and chaos leading to more migration.

I hope my warning is wrong. I hope we do not witness any more of this violence, domestically or in Sudan, but if we cannot explain it to people when it happens, we will continue to lose the working class to a racist ideology.