The Chalk Bicycle

Mo: People talk about it all the time, how stillness and quietness and silence have such a heavy weight, especially because we were blindfolded, so we didn't know where we're being taken.

Host: This is Mohamed Osman, or Mo.  In the last episode, Mo told us about getting arrested in Khartoum, after a pro-democracy protest. About a year later, Mo got into trouble… again!

Mo: We were doing some work with civil society for like legal support, especially for torture survivors by security forces.  They raided the office and then we got picked up from there by the security services. And then we've been taken, you know, you're blindfolded all the way.  We don't really know what's happening or what's going to happen next.

Host: Mo has this sort of lowkey affect when he speaks.  But the things that Mo has witnessed and done are hardcore.This was 2013. The genocide in Darfur had taken place about a decade earlier. The man mostly responsible for all that killing, Omar al-Bashir, was still in power. And Mo was about to learn a lesson about the nature of that power.  After he'd been questioned, Mo’s interrogator had him and a few other detainees brought to a room…

Mo: … And the room had in one of the side walls, painted by chalk, this big bicycle. And then he asked us - or he asked me first, to ride it.

Ngofeen: So there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a chalk bicycle, a bicycle chalk, like a drawing of a bicycle on a wall.

Mo: Exactly. Yeah.  So there was this moment when he asked me to do this. And one of the detainees who were clearly was quite roughened and beaten started actually giggling. Because like, so what do you mean, we can't, it doesn't, it's not a real bike, we cannot do it.   And in a very calm way, the interrogator said again, ‘go and ride that bike’.  And after back and forth, he just laughed he's like, ‘well, you know, we're going to make you stay enough here to know that if we told you to do something, you will do it.  It's not about the reality of it’.

Host: So that was the power Mo was fighting against in Sudan under Omar al-Bashir. When they told you to ride a bicycle drawn in chalk on the wall, you behaved … and believed …   like it was a real bicycle…

Mo: And that was very clear, you know, the psychological aspect of it, of subjugating people to do things. You know, losing the critical faculty of realizing what's real or what's not.

Host: Several years later, in 2018,  Mo became a researcher for Human Rights Watch, and since then he’s been fighting that power by investigating and documenting what’s real and what’s not in Sudan.

Mo: This is a power conflict. This is a conflict about regional interest, about global interest. This is a conflict, when there is a world that, you know, years and decades ago said, ‘never again’, and it happens again and again and again.

Host: This is Rights and Wrongs, from Human Rights Watch. I’m Ngofeen Mputubwele.

This is the second in our two-part series on Sudan: our attempt to explain what’s going on in that country. Because, as you probably know, the news has been bad. Really bad. Fighting in Khartoum, mass killings in Darfur again, another possible genocide in the works.

Archival/France 24: It began a little over a year ago as an argument between two top generals, it’s now become a full-blown civil war….

Dr. Christopher Tounsel: I think the numbers now are approximately 14,000 people killed, but then 10 million displaced.

Host: In part one, me, Mo, and another member of the African diaspora, historian Dr. Christopher Tounsel…

Tounsel: …right…

Ngofeen: …we brought the story up to about 2019. The backstory of what led up to the current crisis. Which we’ll now do our best to explain. It’s kinda complicated.

External Narrator: Recap: The Dictator is Deposed.

Archival/Vox: On December 19, 2018, a revolution started to spread throughout Sudan.

Host: The democracy movement that started with the Arab Spring and that Mo had been a part of… it hadn’t gone away. But neither had the dictatorship.

Bashir/AP Archive: [Arabic, vowing to safeguard safety and security] [Fade under]

Ngofeen: Omar al-Bashir stayed in power by spending lavishly on security–coup proofing, it’s called. There were two main players. The Sudanese Armed Forces or SAF–they had about three hundred thousand soldiers. And then two, the second group was the RSF or Rapid Support Forces, with about 100,000 soldiers. And for years, it had worked! That bicycle stayed chalked on the wall…

Archival: [more Bashir in Arabic]

Archival: sounds of protest…

Ngofeen: BUT!

Tounsel: But the price of bread had gotten so high [fade down]

Host: The economy was tanking, and by late 2018 Bashir started looking very weak in the face of ongoing pro-democracy protests…

External Narrator: Question number 1: Who Deposed Bashir?

Tounsel: So in 2019,  Hemedti, who was the head of the Rapid Support Forces, and General Burhan, who was the head of the Sudanese Armed Forces…

Host: Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti. Super important names in this story!

Tounsel: They see that the writing is on the wall for Bashir.

Archival/Vox: So on April 11th, 2019, they made a move that surprises civilians and Bashir…

Tounsel: Hemedti and Burhan…

Archival: Sudan’s longest serving leader has been arrested.

Tounsel: …arrest Omar Al Bashir.

Archival: Protestors celebrating

Host: This was celebrated in the streets of Khartoum. But here you have a very uneasy political situation. The pro-democracy movement has succeeded in pushing Bashir out of power, but it was Bashir’s lieutenants, Hemedti and Burhan, who actually had the power to arrest him. Up till now these two men had been working with Bashir to suppress protesters. Even killing scores of them in Khartoum. Within hours of arresting Bashir, these same guys they suddenly to civilian leaders and say, ‘hey we wanna work with you to restore democracy’…

External Narrator: Question number 2: Who are these guys?

Archival/France 24: [Hemedti speaking Arabic] Translator: We want free and fair elections and for the Sudanese people to pick who they want.

Host: Remember our two generals? Well, that’s one of them: Hemedti, the head of RSF, the Rapid Support Forces. From videos I’ve seen, he’s tall, thin, with hair closely cropped like Obama’s and a sometimes-you–see–it–sometimes–you–don’t mustache.  He seems very unassuming… and, for someone with his CV, he looks surprisingly young…

Archival/France 24: Known by the nickname Hemedti, he hails from a camel trading family in Darfur, where he rose up the ranks of widely feared Arab militias. As chief he caught the eye of President al-Bashir, who asked him to lead a campaign against the Darfur insurgency. Part of the notorious Janjaweed, his militias rampaged the region, leaving mass murder and rape in their wake.

Archival: [Burhan speaking Arabic/Al Jazeera interview] [fade down]

Host: And this is the other general, General Burhan of SAF. He’s fleshy, thickly mustached, and in videos he’s often in uniform wearing aviator sunglasses and a beret. So Hemedti: slight and unassuming, General Burhan: big and blustery…

Archival: [Burhan in Arabic, fade under]

Host: General Burhan had fought in Dafur, where he worked closely with Hemedti and the Janjaweed. Here’s another bit of important information. Burhan and Hemedti aren’t just military men. They’re rich military men…

Archival/Vox: To maintain the RSF’s loyalty, Bashir gave Hemedti financial autonomy, and allowed him to take control of some of Darfur’s gold mines… [fade under]

Host: Hemeti controlled gold mines, rented out RSF soldiers as mercenaries, and cultivated a network of foreign leaders and businessmen. General Burhan and the SAF made money in a kind of crony capitalism.

After they depose Bashir in 2019, Burhan is named chair of the governing council and Hemedti vice-chair. The idea was to share power with civilians until a democratic process could be put into place.

Tounsel: And so i n the interim from 2019 until 2021, you had this kind of transitional council where you had a joint civilian, and military unity government, right? It was agreed that there would be a transitional council where the army would be in charge for 18 months, but then they would hand over power to civilians for 18 months.

[Sounds’s of Tounsel’s child in background.]

Um, hold on one moment.

Host: …OK, pause here. Burhan and Hemedti have been in charge for close to 18 months, and they’re about to hand over the reins to a civilian government for the next 18 months… and Professor Tounsel’s kid just entered the zoom room. We’ll be back right after the break.

[ad break]

External Narrator: Question number 3: What Could Go Wrong?

Tounsel:  In 2021, the Sudanese military led by Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces stage a coup.  So the two men responsible for kicking Bashir out stage a coup in 2021 to basically undermine the kind of civilian process, right?

Ngofeen: So they're with the civilians in 19, ‘cause the civilians are protesting, they're with the civilians, everyone's like, alright, let's get Bashir out, Bashir’s out,  but by 2021, they're like, just kidding, we're in charge.

Tounsel: Exactly.

Mo: I think what makes it more unfair that there were years when we were there. Like, we ousted the dictatorship, we were building a democracy that got hijacked. And I think that even make it harder, moving from this place of hope when Sudan was really a beacon of hope in the region of a vibrant civil society and vibrant activism. And then that got snatched by military dictators under, you know, the watch of the world that allowed it to happen in the first place.

Ngofeen: You said, under the world's watch.  Do you feel that people outside of Sudan failed Sudan?

Mo: Yeah, I mean, I think we can even quickly track that to the last few years of al-Bashir dictatorship, right, which is like kind of isolated, you know, he's wanted by the international criminal court, U.S. sanctions.  And then in the last years, we start seeing Al Bashir and his regime more and more coming closer to the U. S. because of intelligence and counterterrorism cooperation. We start seeing the regime at that time getting a bit more concessions because of the support to the EU migration control plans. And this is the moment when people are like, but what about the human rights issues that you stood for and you said, well, we are against this dictatorship because it oppresses people. The moment you see your own benefits, you're like, then you start conceding very quickly.

Host: When the revolution happened, Mo says, the Sudanese people wanted accountability. They wanted justice for victims of the regime. They wanted that chalk bicycle on the wall to be erased…

Mo: Most of the international actors, you know, from the European Union, the United States, did not really prioritize that. They prioritized the question of stability. You know, over and over people told them, stability cannot be sustained if you have people who are not willing to see a transition reach its final, you know, final station around achieving sustainable democracy that just never happens.

Host: It’s still 2021. Burhan and Hemedti have arrested some of the civilian leaders in the government, and the military is now fully in charge. And as Mo just said, the international community just sort of lets it happen without much protest. But Burhan and Hemedti have their own problems. They have to figure out how to share power between them, between the SAF and the RSF. And this is where things really start to go south…

External Narrator: Question Number 4: How did all hell break loose?

Tounsel: Okay, so the issue that basically explodes in April 2023, during the twilight of what should have been the period of when Hemedti and Burhan are in power before they give power to a civilian council, there was disagreement between Hemedti and Burhan about the integration of the rapid support forces into the Sudanese army.

Host: Burhan wants Hemedti’s RSF to merge with the Sudanese Armed Forces in 2 years. 2 years. Hemedti disagrees.

Tounsel: He's thinking, well, now I'm going to lose all of my basically political capital.

Host: …and probably a lot of capital capital, too. Hemedti makes a counteroffer -- a merger in 22 years. The civilian leaders split it down the middle and say, ‘hey, 10 years.’ Room for compromise, right? Nope.

Tounsel: And so it's in the midst of that disagreement that the rapid support forces begin launching coup operations last April 2023.

Archival/ Al Jazeera: We begin with some breaking news coming in from Sudan where we’re getting reports of heavy gunfire across the capital.

Archival/ Al Jazeera: The army and the RSF have been battling it out to have the upper hand in the capital. [gunfire]

Archival/Africa News: Sudan’s Army Chief Abdul Fatah al-Burhan made his first appearance outside the army’s general command since the clashes erupted with the Rapid Support Forces

Archival/Al Jazeera: Talks to find an end to the bloodshed have failed to produce results.

Archival/Africa News: [Burhan/Arabic] VO: Anyone who says there’s an agreement or a deal with the RSF or someone is helping is delusional. We don’t strike deals with traitors or any party that betrays the Sudanese people.

Tounsel: As with all wars there have been massive civilian casualties…

Archival/Al Jazeera: In Khartoum alone, fighting killed at least 30,000 people.

Host: Civilian deaths in Sudan have been hard to count, but that number is almost certainly an underestimate. So this the beginning of the conflict that’s still going today, right now, with massive displacements of civilians and with the UN warning about a potential genocide.

External Narrator: Question number 5: Given all that, why does the media almost always give the impression that this an ethnic conflict?

Host: As Mo said earlier, the roots of this conflict lie in this struggle over power. But he also said something else…

Mo: I think I always believed that this war is war against Sudanese civilians by far and large. And I think this is the starting point of defining it. This is not a tribal conflict of having two tribes who just woke up one day and decided that they need to, you know, exterminate each other.

Host: If it’s NOT a tribal conflict, why is this the way the violence Western media, including in the New York Times often depicts this conflict. Well, here’s one reason…

Archival/Al Jazeera: The RSF also took over much of Darfur…

Host: Darfur! Because a lot of this killing is happening in Darfur. The same as 20 years ago.

Archival/Al Jazeera: The UN has accused the paramilitary group of ethnic cleansing and war crimes in West Darfur when it and ethnic militias targeted ethnic Massalit tribesmen. [Gunshot.] The international agency says in that state alone between 10 to 15 thousand people have been killed and more than half a million displaced by violence…

Host: Quick reminder from the last episode: the RSF emerged in 2013 out of the Janjaweed, the ethnically Arab militias Bashir used in the genocide 20 years ago. The RSF seems to be engaging in ethnic cleansing operations in the Darfur now, in the midst of the nationwide conflict. It’s an aspect of the conflict Mo knows well. He is a principal researcher on a recent Human Rights Watch Report,  Th’e Massalit Will Not Come Home: Ethnic Cleansing and Crimes Against Humanity in al Geneina, West Darfur’. But…

Mo: I mean, look at ethnicity as one factor. It is definitely there in certain parts of Darfur as a driver for the conflict, but it's not the only factor driving this, this violence. This is a power, this is a power conflict.

Host: Mo sees it as a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism…

Mo: I think in a way to look at what's happening now or what's happening since April 15 last year. The Sudanese people at that time were fighting a coup that took place in 2021.  The coup by the military leaders of the Sudanese armed forces and the rapid support forces decided to hijack the democratic transition for different reasons. It was a democratic transition that was very challenged. From the first hour people took to the street very spontaneously said like, no coup anymore. It continued till 2023. There were different negotiations. Sudanese people were like, no return to a military rule. We're not going to share power with human rights abusers and perpetrators. We cannot co-exist. Democracy cannot co-exist with abuses.  And the same military leaders, they decided that they cannot co-exist among themselves. So they, on April 15th, they went into a war with each other, and Sudanese people have paid the price for it.

Sudanese people basically, their fight towards democracy have been again being taken, hijacked, and it's basically a fight for survival. Um, trying to find safe routes to flee. While at the same time trying to provide food, um, other services, health care, uh, education, um, refuge to the people in Sudan. But still people in a way trying to organize and to find their own path outside of this conflict. The thing is the world is not listening to them.  Um, it's again and again we're seeing the world listening to the military leaders, the political elites in different sides. There is really no inclusivity for people who are actually on the ground. Many of them are facing daily risk of being bombed or shelled, or arrested, detained, tortured, who work with very limited resources. Since there is really no humanitarian response to the crisis taking place in Sudan, these voices are sidelined.

**HRW Ad Break**

Archival Song: Save Darfur

External Narrator: Question number 6: Why doesn’t the world care so much this time?

Host: So, I just want to zoom out for a second. Starting in about 2003, the violence in Sudan’s western region of Darfur caught the world’s attention…

Archival: In many ways it's unfair, but it is nevertheless true that this genocide will be on your watch.

Host: And as I’ve been working on this episode, I’ve been wondering. What has changed? Why is this new conflict–in the same part of the world! with some of the same actors!-- not getting near that amount of attention today? History might have something to do with it…

Christopher Tounsel pointed out that twenty years ago the Darfur crisis came right after 9/11, at the beginning of the war on terror and the Iraq War…

Tounsel: And so, within kind of Western media, this was the height of widely circulating polarizations, right, where people were pitting Christianity against Islam, some people were framing Arabs and Muslims threatening to national security interests.

And so when Darfur happens, we know that this was one of those odd moments where you had kind of bipartisan support for oppressed Sudanese people. Because Darfur became a kind of microcosm for some people to say, look, in this country, Arab Muslims are persecuting black people.

Host: That framing is still there. News reports still center on this ethnic aspect of the conflict. But Mo thinks the lack of interest might stem from something else…

Mo: One of the things that I would realize in the way most of the Western media would cover Sudan for years is probably the inability to deal with complexities and nuances. It's maybe fear that the audience may not really comprehend the complexity and not what I really want to engage with it.  And I think our work aims in so many ways to appreciate the complexity and say, yeah, it is complex. And we're not going to give you all the answers, but we're not going to deny it is complex. And we're still going to dig in and try to do our best to bring you some facts about what's happening on the ground.

Host: This is a complicated story.

SFX: paper sounds

Host: I want you to imagine for a second that you’re holding a piece of paper. So I told you guys on this show I’m an etymology nerd. And the word complicated, it just means that’s it’s something that comes with folds. And in order to uncomplicate it we gotta just unpack those folds.

SFX: paper sounds

Host: And that’s what Mo is trying to do. He’s trying to get us to figure out that this isn’t some conflict that’s way beyond our grasp. It’s something that if we just look at it closely, and unpack it, we can understand it.

As for actionable next steps, Human Rights Watch is recommending that the UN and the African Union deploy a civilian protection mission to Sudan, and call on their respective institutions to press the warring parties to ensure trapped civilians can safely flee.

You’ve been listening to Rights and Wrongs, from Human Rights Watch. This episode was produced by me and Curtis Fox. Our associate producer is Sophie Soloway. Thanks also to Ifé Fatunase, Stacy Sullivan, and Anthony Gale. The archival clips in this episode are from Vox, France 24, Africa News, the Associated Press, The National News, The Daily Mail, and Al Jazeera.

I’m Ngofeen Mputubwele. See you next time.