December 7, 2025 • 32 mins
When American author Anne Applebaum travelled to the frontlines of the Sudanese civil war this year, she gave herself a stern remit. Bear witness to, and report on, a lawless world that - since the United States has pulled most of its aid - is now run by warring militias, clans and families. Crucially, she would keep emotion out of it.
But then she met with people who were so thankful for the meagre aid the United States was still providing, that she felt “ashamed”.
Today, Anne Applebaum, a staff writer at The Atlantic, on how Sudan’s civil war shows what the end of the liberal order looks like.
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S1 (00:01):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Salinger Morris. It's Monday,
December 8th. When American author Anne Applebaum traveled to the
front lines of the Sudanese Civil War this year, she
gave herself a stern remit. Bear witness to and report
(00:24):
on a lawless world that since the United States has pulled,
most of its aid is now run by warring militias,
clans and families where 14 million people have been displaced
by years of fighting more than in Ukraine and Gaza combined. Crucially,
she would keep emotion out of it. But then she
(00:45):
met with people who were so thankful for the meager
aid the United States was still providing that she felt ashamed. Today,
Anne Applebaum, a staff writer at the Atlantic on how
Sudan's civil war shows what the end of the liberal
order looks like, and how the same forces that have
destroyed Sudan are coming for other countries too. And welcome
(01:12):
to the Morning Edition.
S2 (01:13):
Thanks for having me. Well, I'm really looking forward to
talking to you, because you traveled to Sudan twice this
year to both sides of the front line, and not
an insignificant personal risk. I mean, you write about warnings
from friends and people you interview don't drive, you know,
after dark, there's no rescue services if anything goes wrong.
So can you just briefly tell me, where did you go?
(01:35):
And can you tell me about some of the people
or events that you witnessed, that you interacted with, that
have really stayed with you and that have left you thinking,
you know, people need to know about this. I have
to make them care somehow.
S3 (01:48):
So I made two trips. I went to both sides
of the of the most important front line. I went, uh,
one time to get to Darfur, which is in western Sudan.
I was able to cross the border because I was
traveling with the RSS. And this is the this is
one of the militia groups that controls not all, but
a lot of the territory in Darfur. And it's one
(02:10):
of the two main militia groups that are, well, one, two,
two main militarized groups that are fighting, that are fighting
the war. Um, the second time I went the other direction,
I went to Khartoum both times, I should say I would.
I went, I went with the one time I was
with the RSS and the other time I was with
the Sudanese government. So my I didn't have private protection
(02:33):
or anything like that. I went I simply went with
the people who were in charge of the areas because
that's the safest. I mean, um, funnily enough, the RSS
didn't try to control particularly what I did. Um, the
Sudanese army was is very much more controlling about where
you can go and what you can see and so on.
(02:56):
I mean, I think a few things stick with me.
One of them is a conversation I had with a
very young doctor in, um, outside in a children's hospital
outside of Khartoum. And he had he was somebody who
had studied in Sudan and trained there. He spoke very
good English. Uh, he was in charge, both of children
(03:16):
who'd been wounded in the fighting. But also he was
he had in his ward children who were malnourished, who
came to the hospital because they were they were dying
of hunger. And I had a long conversation with him
about the US, um, and about the end of US
aid and what was particularly awful for me. I mean,
(03:37):
it was a it was very hard to listen to
was him telling me, don't worry, we don't waste anything.
You know, in other words, this is a man who
has he had, you know, their USAID had been delivering
to Sudan these packets of high energy food that are
given to malnourished babies, basically malnourished children. And he had
(04:00):
a supply of it that he'd been given via one
of the NGOs in Sudan. And he was he had heard,
I guess, that USAID was being shut down because it
was wasteful. And he wanted to explain to me that
he wasn't wasting it. It was it was so awful,
you know, that somebody like that, in doing this unbelievable,
(04:21):
amazing job in such difficult circumstances would be somehow apologizing
to us taxpayers for these little packets of they're made
from peanuts. Actually, this kind of high energy food. And
that was a you know, that was that was that
was a moment that stuck with me. And I think
another moment that was very telling. I met with a
group of fairly young Sudanese who are part of a
(04:46):
Sudanese mutual aid group who were created when the civil
war began, who had been, um, many of them had
been part of a democracy movement that had toppled a
previous dictator in Sudan in 2019. And now there they
do humanitarian work, they collect money, they bring in food,
they try to replace NGOs and so on. And a
(05:07):
long conversation with one of them, and one of them said,
you know, the situation in Sudan is, has always been
that one group or the other seeks to control everything
they take charge of. They want, you know, winner takes all.
They take charge of Khartoum and they run the country
and they make money out of running the country. And
then they're challenged by another group who has that same goal.
(05:28):
And really, in the long term, the only thing that
can really save Sudan or stop this endless cycle of
violence is some form of like a liberal peace agreement.
I mean, maybe democracy is too strong a word, but
you would need to create a system where people have rights,
where there's rule of law, where, um, people can compete
(05:51):
in some kind of, some kind of market to to
produce goods. Um, and where there is, there is, um,
you know, some sense of fairness and justice and that's
the only way you can get the war to start.
And of course, this wasn't someone who was influenced by
the United States or who'd been reading this was, you know,
these were these were several people. They weren't reading the
(06:14):
Declaration of Independence. They were this was the conclusion they
came to living in the society that they that they
were in. Um, and it was a, it was an
argument for um, democratic or liberal democratic solutions, you know,
of a kind that you would have heard, you know,
300 years ago at the time when democracy was first
being invented. Those were those were some of the some
(06:37):
of the, some of the moments that were meant a
lot to me.
S2 (06:41):
And can you just, I guess, give us a picture
of how dire the situation is for people in Sudan
and what sort of aid they are receiving, because you
mentioned there before the doctor who, you know, you were
so moved and sort of it sounds like heartbroken by
him sort of saying to you, oh, don't worry, I'm
not going to waste this, you know, this meager food
that they were getting. And you write at one point
(07:02):
that you felt ashamed because some people there wanted to
make clear just how grateful they were for the tiny
amounts of help that they had received. So just how
dire is it for people?
S3 (07:14):
So it's very hard to measure because, um, journalists can't
really get into Sudan. I mean, the fact that I
got in was almost a miracle. I mean, nobody I
don't know of anybody else who's been into Darfur and
was traveling around there in the last year or so,
the way we were. Um, and this was really through
a connection through a woman, actually, who used to work
for USAID, who was able to organize it. And so
(07:37):
it's very hard to get into Sudan. It's very hard
to travel around, um, the two sides have, you know,
reasons to lie about what's going on in their sector. Um, actually,
the Sudanese government was very, keen to tell us, and
insistent to tell us that there was no starvation in
Sudanese army controlled areas of Sudan. Um, so, uh, and,
(08:01):
you know, it's hard to prove them otherwise it's hard
to collect information. Um, we do know that there has
been an enormous displacement of people, um, that, um, you know,
tens of millions of people have been forced to move, um,
and we know that there's it's the largest death toll
of any war being fought now. And this I think,
(08:22):
you know, Ukraine and Gaza combined, Sudan has has had
more people dying. There is one particular incident, recent incident that, um,
I think if there had been cameras there or witnesses
would now be we would now be talking about it
as a new Rwanda. This was a this was a
siege of a city called Fosha. This was in Darfur.
(08:44):
We couldn't visit it when we were there. Um, because
it was still it was still under siege and there
was active fighting. The city eventually fell. Um, the CSF
came into the city and they conducted what looks like
a mass slaughter. So thousands, maybe tens of thousands of
people were murdered. Um, so much so that you could
see the blood on the ground from satellite pictures. So
(09:07):
this was a you know, this is a there have
been a few incidences of mass murder and ethnic cleansing.
Some some of them involving murder and some just displacing people, uh,
that have been part of the conflict, too. So the two,
the main belligerents, um, have sought to move and displace
and control civilians, um, as a way of establishing their
(09:30):
power in different parts of the country. The two sides
are had been part of a single army. So there
are two parts of what was the Sudanese army, essentially, um,
a couple of years ago. And they took over the
country after there had been a there was a democracy movement.
There was a brief period of civilian government for a
(09:50):
couple of years, and then the army carried out a
coup d'etat, took over the country, and then it was
the army that split. And so the war is between
these two army factions, both of whom have help from
the outside. Each has their different backers. I mean, the
the CSF is largely backed by the Emirates, by the Emiratis.
(10:11):
The Sudanese have friends in Egypt in, um, you know,
in Turkey, in Saudi Arabia. I mean, strangely, the Saudis
and the Emiratis are on different sides. There are other
players in the war as well. There are Russians on
the ground there. They're Iranians. Strangely, there are some Ukrainians
there who are interested in killing Russians. It's a situation
where you have a kind of collapse of the state
(10:33):
and these, um, you know, outsiders fueling what could have
been a local conflict and maybe 200 years ago would
have been, but has been made much more lethal by
this outside involvement. And as I said, the main victims
are civilians.
S2 (10:49):
Okay. And I was wondering if you could just break
it down for us very briefly. You've explained that there's
these two sides. There's the CSF, which is the Rapid
Support Forces. That's the paramilitary group. And then you've got
the Sudanese army. But really, this fully fledged civil war
broke out in 2023. This is after, you know, this
is a region that's had multiple, multiple horrible conflicts, which
(11:10):
we'll get into in a bit. But what happened in
2023 and in the lead up, this is what we're seeing.
S3 (11:14):
So again the lead up was you know, Sudan was
run by a dictator called Bashir for a long time. Um,
in 2019 there was a there had been over the years,
I should say, a growing movement of it was students, lawyers,
but also all kinds of people from different walks of
life who wanted Sudan to be governed in a more
(11:35):
fair way. I mean, as I said, there's a in
very unjust countries, there is a you very often find
this drive for justice. Um, and I think that was
that was the impetus. Um, they were they were backed by, um,
elements in the army who wanted Bashir to go. He'd
been in charge for a long time. He was very corrupt.
(11:55):
You know, there were there were there were competitors. And
then they were allowed to form a civilian government that
ran the country for several years. They wanted to create
a system of, um, you know, fair exploitation of Sudan's resources,
of its gold. Um, it has well, the oil is
mostly in the south, but it has some oil. It
has other assets. And the army, which is used to
(12:19):
which had been used for many years to controlling the
main resources of Sudan, probably objected to that. Um, well,
we know they objected to that, uh, to to those changes.
So the economic changes and the possible political changes were
uncomfortable for an army that wanted to essentially stay in charge.
And they carried out this coup d'état and then but
(12:41):
and that was one tragedy. And then the real tragedy
was when a part of the army, this is the RSS, um, decided,
I mean, again, this is this is contested. Okay. Exactly
how this happened. But the a part of the Army,
which is, um, uh, which had been formed in Darfur
(13:02):
in western Sudan and had been used for many years
by the Bashir government, by the central government to put
down ethnic rebellions in that area? Um, they broke away
from the rest of the army and they attacked Khartoum
and they attacked the leadership. And they they essentially sacked
the city of Khartoum, which is the capital of Sudan. Um,
(13:23):
and they controlled it until until last spring, actually, when
we were there, this was the moment when Khartoum was
falling again to the Sudanese army. And I think at
that point, many people hoped that would be the end
of the war. But sadly, sadly, it's not. Um, so
so the RSF, you have to understand, is a it's
a militia group. It's, um, it's it's very it's an
(13:45):
it's an old group. It's connected to it's sort of
its ethnic origin. Ah. I mean, Arabic speaking, um, nomads
who lived in the western part of Sudan, um, and
who had been used for many years by the central rulers,
as I said, to repress the so-called African population. I mean,
everybody's African and everybody's not everybody even looks all that different.
(14:07):
But there's a there are linguistic differences in Sudan. So
they've been used for that purpose. They staged an uprising
against the Sudanese army. Some people argue the Sudanese army
started it. Never mind. Um, but they did. And that
you've had since then, this, you know, very bitter and
ugly civil war between these factions. Um, and really, what
(14:29):
you have is, is a, um, is a conflict in
which and I think this is probably the real reason why, uh,
it's hard for outsiders to understand is that it's really
not a war about ideology. So it's not like we
can sit back and say, these are the good guys
and these are the bad guys, and these people are
for democracy. It's true that the Army has, um, deeper
(14:50):
and older traditions. Um, it's, you know, it's based on
people from the central part of Sudan who lived along
the Nile. It's the institution that ran the country for
a long time. And it's also true that the origins
of the RSS as a kind of militia that was
used to put down rebellions are pretty ugly. They're both
fighting for full control. I think the RSS is seeking
(15:11):
to create itself either to create a separate state, or
create itself as some kind of separate entity in western Sudan,
and the Sudanese army doesn't want that to happen. So
that's so that's part of what the fight is about.
I mean, I suppose the other important point is that
the one thing that's missing in Sudan that you might
have had in past years is some kind of outside framework.
(15:34):
So some kind of American or European or. Um, When
um international organization backed framework to resolve the war. You know,
some someone with enough political clout who could come in
and make the two sides stop fighting. And, um, one
of the reasons I wrote the article was that I
(15:54):
was looking to understand what does it mean that we
now live in a world in which these international institutions
are breaking down, and the multilateral way of solving things
is become farcical. And the the old system of UN
negotiators who would be sent in to difficult places and
(16:14):
bring sides together, doesn't really function anymore. And I think Sudan,
Sudan's not the only example of where that you know,
how that how the breakdown can feed a conflict. But
it's one of them.
S2 (16:33):
We'll be right back. Well, I really wanted to ask
you about this because, you know, you write in this
Atlantic piece, I think it's about 10,000 words. And you say,
this is what the end of the liberal world order
(16:54):
looks like. And a through line throughout the piece is
just how much America, really, among other institutions and countries
perhaps have abandoned Sudan. So can you just briefly take
us through how much the United States used to support
or help Sudan, and what impact that had, and to
what extent the U.S. really has now abandoned Sudan and why?
S3 (17:14):
So the US had a long involvement in Sudan? Partly.
There were there was a Christian evangelical interest in that
part of the world. There were a lot of big
charities that operated there. There was also because the original
the older version of the RSS, which was called the Janjaweed,
was involved in it. There was a period of ethnic
cleansing in Darfur that interested Americans who were, you know,
(17:39):
felt that the, you know, the fact that the outside
world had missed the Rwandan genocide and had failed to
come to the aid of people who were suffering.
S4 (17:49):
In April 1994, the Rwandan government mobilized the Hutu population
to massacre their Tutsi neighbors. 1 million people were murdered
in just 100 days. The Rwandan society was divided into
three so-called ethnicities Hutu, Tutsi, and TWA.
S3 (18:09):
There was a moment, you know, it seemed such a
long time ago now. But in the Obama even even
George W Bush administrations and Bush one, when there was
an idea of, um, protecting people, you know, that the
function of international institutions and maybe even of the US
military was to protect people from these kinds of mass murders.
(18:29):
And so there was a I'm not saying that it
was always a successful intervention, but there were a number
of moments when the US intervened to stop genocide or
to stop to stop murder. And, you know, the US
was involved in giving aid to Sudan. USAID had a
huge program there for Sudanese refugees, um, and for, you know,
(18:50):
and other other programs of education and so on as well.
It turned out, actually, when USAID was destroyed by Elon
Musk at the beginning of this year, um, it turned
out that a lot of organizations didn't know how dependent
on USAID they were. So a lot of UN organizations
or other international organizations, it turned out, were using USAID
(19:11):
money or or data or vehicles or food or, you know,
that USAID was somehow underpinning a lot of the logistics
of international aid. And the disappearance of it almost overnight
was very disorienting. Stuff in warehouses was was burned or sold. Um,
and it just vanished. And that was, you know, I
(19:33):
was there at the time when people were just beginning
to see this and understand it. You know, when the
Americans are gone and the and and others who used
to play negotiating roles in Sudan are gone, you know,
it's not like you get something better. I mean, instead,
what happens is you have a vacuum. And as I said,
these different, you know, Turkey, Egypt's you know, Emirates and
(19:54):
and Saudis come in.
S2 (19:56):
And it's so interesting because you write in the piece that,
you know, the George W Bush and Barack Obama administrations,
they invested real diplomatic and political effort in Sudan, largely
because Americans wanted them to. And, you know, there was
that pivotal moment in 2004 when Colin Powell, who was
then the US secretary of State, declared that what was
happening then in Sudan was a genocide.
S5 (20:17):
We concluded, I concluded, that genocide has been committed in Darfur,
and that the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility,
and that genocide may still be occurring.
S2 (20:30):
So what's happened? What's happened between then and now that
there's this brutal, you know, removal of aid. And I
don't know if you would call it full neglect or,
you know, obviously there are individuals there that you've spoken
to from American organizations and elsewhere who are very passionate
about doing whatever they can. But you do write about,
you know, this being a post-American world. So what happened?
S3 (20:52):
I think it's a combination of things. I mean, I think, um,
partly a kind of disillusion with aid, you know, and
wondering whether it was working or, you know, and so on,
but also something deeper than that. I think there's been
a real brutalization of American culture, maybe of everybody's culture. Um,
we see so many images on our screens, you know,
(21:14):
that come in front of us every day. You know,
horrible things, good things, kitty cat pictures. Um, and I
think the, the images that used to move people, um,
of hunger or of violence or of the, of the
aftermath of violence. Don't do it anymore. Um. That's my.
(21:36):
You know, that's my feeling. You also have now in
the US, you have, um, an administration that is, you know,
openly scornful, I mean, scornful of Africa and Africans, um,
talking about shithole countries. I mean, there was a statement
made by President Trump just a day or two before
(21:57):
we've made this recording, um, in which he's talking about
Somalis in there's a Somali community that lives in Minneapolis,
and he attacked the Somalis.
S6 (22:06):
I don't want them in our country. Their country is
no good for a reason. Their country stinks, and we
don't want them in our country.
S3 (22:14):
And the animus towards Africa and a kind of aggressive,
it's not just that we're, you know, we're not interested.
We don't care. It's kind of aggression against them is
something there's a strand of that inside the MAGA movement
that I think has, um. That's quite chilling.
S2 (22:33):
And what is that about? I mean, because Trump made that, uh, comment.
He called Somalis garbage that he didn't want in the country.
And he made that comment at the end of a
cabinet meeting. You know, The New York Times has called
it a xenophobic tirade. And obviously, we know that Donald
Trump has for years, for a very long time, had
very negative things to say about people from African countries
in particular. But what's happening now that there is this
(22:56):
such extreme?
S3 (22:58):
There is there's xenophobia, there's racism there, obviously, um, there
is a you know, he is he comes from and
in turn appeals to I don't think it's the majority, actually,
but to a part of American society that, um, is
nostalgic for an era when there were, I don't know,
more white people than, than than than there are now
(23:19):
or that's what they think. Um, and which there was
a different kind of racial hierarchy. And I mean, I
don't I don't have any other way to explain it. Um,
except that that's part of, um, that's part of their
appeal to some people and that's part of who they are.
I mean, even even as we're speaking, there's a negotiation
going on in Ukraine where it's pretty clear that Trump's negotiators,
(23:40):
Steve Witkoff and, um, and Jared Kushner are at least
partly there to negotiate business deals between America and Russia. Um,
and we know this because of the documents they produced
and leaked phone calls and other things. So, um, you know,
if so, they're very transactional about a war that directly
(24:03):
threatens America's closest allies in NATO. So if they're if
they're transactional and, you know, cynical about that war, then
you can imagine how they feel about a war in
Sudan where they don't know who the players are and
they aren't interested in getting involved, and they don't really
have the expertise. So it's you've had a real sea
(24:23):
change in American attitudes to the outside world, you've had
a kind of hardening and coarsening of American political culture. Um,
maybe that's coming from something deeper in the culture, from,
you know, from the way we now all get and
process information. Um, you have an element probably of racism.
(24:44):
You have, um, you have a lot of things working
together to, to, to make, you know, to, to to
push this issue off the off everybody's radar. We live
in a world that is much more, um, immune to, um,
to the idea of helping people who are far away
who don't look like us.
S2 (25:03):
But you write that it's not just the United States
that's abandoned Sudan, and it's left this, you know, horrific vacuum. Really,
it reads like something out of like an apocalyptic, sort
of mad Max sort of landscape. It really is that horrific.
And this is where you write that middle powers, they're
fighting over gold and coveted land, and the civilians are
just getting caught in the crossfire. So who else has
(25:23):
abandoned Sudan? You know who else is, I don't know,
possibly implicated in this suffering.
S3 (25:29):
Well, you can I mean, I have a section in
the piece which is also about the UN. Um, and
I'm not really accusing particular people at the UN of
doing anything, but it's a they're a lot of people
I spoke to had a lot of reflections on the
decline of the UN and even how you could measure it.
It used to be that, as I said, you had
(25:50):
UN negotiators to end the conflict in East Timor. You
used to have, um, outside groups who who had a
mandate to, um, to bring people together and to try
to find solutions to civil wars or to conflicts or
to ethnic cleansing, episodes of ethnic cleansing. I think the
last UN peacekeeping mission was something like 2014. So it
(26:13):
was over a decade ago. And since then the, the,
the breakdown of the UN, which is really more closely
related to the way in which great powers behaved, because
this is to do with the UN Security Council. Uh,
you know, it used to be that, you know, the
Russia would try to get along with the US, and
the Chinese would try to remain neutral. Um, and you
(26:33):
now have active antagonism between the US and Russia, between
the US and China. Um, you have a, you know,
just an inability to get any kind of consensus that
would allow you to put forward a common UN program.
And so as that breaks down, there just isn't it's
not being replaced by anything. Is is what I'm saying.
S2 (26:54):
And so, I mean, I'm just curious, you've been there
on the ground and as you've mentioned, it's so expensive
to get there. Papers aren't sending people there. So it's
very difficult to get information out of there. So do
you have a message? I guess for a middle power
like Australia, like what should countries like ours be doing
to help the situation if they can?
S3 (27:11):
I mean, there are a lot of little countries that
have good NGOs there. You know, there's a you know,
I had some help and I ran into Norwegians and
Czechs and all kinds of people who are working there.
I mean, they're small. They're humanitarian roles that Australians can play.
I mean, it all depends on your ambition. I mean,
remember that Norway was once, um, you know, the Oslo
(27:35):
agreements in the Middle East in the 1990s were conceived
by Norwegian government that wanted to do it, not because
they have any historical interest in the Middle East, but
because they felt it was a good thing to do.
There were just Norwegian diplomats who wanted to be involved,
and I can imagine, um, there being a role for
Australian diplomats. If they wanted to, um, they would certainly
(27:56):
be seen as neutral there. Um, and, and there is
certainly a role for Australian NGOs. I mean, there are
functioning NGOs on the ground and there is, as I said, this,
this er movement, it's called the emergency response rooms. These
are the Sudanese who created this mutual aid organizations, and
they're all over the country. Um, you know, Australia could
(28:17):
help them. Um, they're, they're they're the people who are
in contact with ordinary people. They have very, you know,
I mean, literally like village level and street level operations. Um,
you could, you know, the Australian government could create a
program working with them. Um, and that would probably be
the most efficient and effective way, uh, to help the Sudanese.
(28:38):
So there there are small things that you could do. And, um,
you know, if your diplomats ever had the time, I'm sure,
you know, they would be treated as neutral and interesting outsiders.
S2 (28:49):
And just to wrap up, I'm wondering also whether this peace,
whether I wonder if you wrote it as something of
a warning to to countries, even wealthy countries, countries like ours, because,
you know, you do write that this is, you know,
what the end of the liberal world order looks like.
But you write that the same forces that have destroyed
Sudan are coming for other countries too. So is that
(29:09):
sort of is this something you see for other parts
of the world?
S3 (29:12):
Sudan is a country that fell apart very fast. I
met a young man in his 20s there, another person
who I found who was very moving to speak to.
Who'd been in university studying graphic design. Or he was
about to start university studying graphic design at the time
the Civil War broke out. And literally like from one
(29:32):
day to the next, he lost his future and he
was on his way to university to do this. And
Sudan had universities and had good universities and had hospitals
that had schools. I mean, it's a it's a poor country,
but it wasn't a disintegrated country. You know, there was
a there was a functioning state. Um, and he he
lost it overnight. And it happened very fast. And these
(29:53):
huge displacements of people, you know, enormous refugee camps, you know,
emerged from one day to the next. Um, and so the, the,
the breakdown of civilization can take place quite quickly. I mean,
once people set out to destroy the state, once there's
a determined group of armed people who want to end
the political system as it exists, they can they can
(30:16):
do it very fast. Um, and of course, I mean,
when I, when I wrote that, I mean, I was
thinking of states near Sudan, some of which are affected
by the violence and by the refugee flows and by
the gun running, you know, that go through the I mean,
this is Chad and Ethiopia. Um, you know, Kenya, these
are these are all states that are, you know, where they're,
you know, Egypt, actually where where they where they feel
(30:38):
impact of the war. Um, and it's perfectly plausible that
the Sudanese war could somehow spill over into one of
the neighboring countries. Um, and then you could have a
breakdown in one of those places as well. So, you know,
civilization is a lot more fragile than we like to think.
I mean, it, um, the people who are determined to
(30:58):
wreck your state or wreck your system and who are,
you know, armed and able to do it can, as
I said, it can go. It can go quickly.
S2 (31:10):
Well, and it is an absolute privilege to speak to
you about this. So thank you so much for your time.
S3 (31:15):
Thank you. I'm really delighted to speak about it. Thanks
for for your interest.
S2 (31:33):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by myself
and Josh towers. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Tom
Mackendrick is our head of audio. To listen to our
episodes as soon as they drop, follow the Morning Edition
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(31:55):
visit The Age or Smh.com.au. And to stay up to date,
sign up to our Morning Edition newsletter to receive a
summary of the day's most important news in your inbox
every morning. Links are in the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris,
thanks for listening.
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Salinger Morris. It's Monday,
December 8th. When American author Anne Applebaum traveled to the
front lines of the Sudanese Civil War this year, she
gave herself a stern remit. Bear witness to and report
(00:24):
on a lawless world that since the United States has pulled,
most of its aid is now run by warring militias,
clans and families where 14 million people have been displaced
by years of fighting more than in Ukraine and Gaza combined. Crucially,
she would keep emotion out of it. But then she
(00:45):
met with people who were so thankful for the meager
aid the United States was still providing that she felt ashamed. Today,
Anne Applebaum, a staff writer at the Atlantic on how
Sudan's civil war shows what the end of the liberal
order looks like, and how the same forces that have
destroyed Sudan are coming for other countries too. And welcome
(01:12):
to the Morning Edition.
S2 (01:13):
Thanks for having me. Well, I'm really looking forward to
talking to you, because you traveled to Sudan twice this
year to both sides of the front line, and not
an insignificant personal risk. I mean, you write about warnings
from friends and people you interview don't drive, you know,
after dark, there's no rescue services if anything goes wrong.
So can you just briefly tell me, where did you go?
(01:35):
And can you tell me about some of the people
or events that you witnessed, that you interacted with, that
have really stayed with you and that have left you thinking,
you know, people need to know about this. I have
to make them care somehow.
S3 (01:48):
So I made two trips. I went to both sides
of the of the most important front line. I went, uh,
one time to get to Darfur, which is in western Sudan.
I was able to cross the border because I was
traveling with the RSS. And this is the this is
one of the militia groups that controls not all, but
a lot of the territory in Darfur. And it's one
(02:10):
of the two main militia groups that are, well, one, two,
two main militarized groups that are fighting, that are fighting
the war. Um, the second time I went the other direction,
I went to Khartoum both times, I should say I would.
I went, I went with the one time I was
with the RSS and the other time I was with
the Sudanese government. So my I didn't have private protection
(02:33):
or anything like that. I went I simply went with
the people who were in charge of the areas because
that's the safest. I mean, um, funnily enough, the RSS
didn't try to control particularly what I did. Um, the
Sudanese army was is very much more controlling about where
you can go and what you can see and so on.
(02:56):
I mean, I think a few things stick with me.
One of them is a conversation I had with a
very young doctor in, um, outside in a children's hospital
outside of Khartoum. And he had he was somebody who
had studied in Sudan and trained there. He spoke very
good English. Uh, he was in charge, both of children
(03:16):
who'd been wounded in the fighting. But also he was
he had in his ward children who were malnourished, who
came to the hospital because they were they were dying
of hunger. And I had a long conversation with him
about the US, um, and about the end of US
aid and what was particularly awful for me. I mean,
(03:37):
it was a it was very hard to listen to
was him telling me, don't worry, we don't waste anything.
You know, in other words, this is a man who
has he had, you know, their USAID had been delivering
to Sudan these packets of high energy food that are
given to malnourished babies, basically malnourished children. And he had
(04:00):
a supply of it that he'd been given via one
of the NGOs in Sudan. And he was he had heard,
I guess, that USAID was being shut down because it
was wasteful. And he wanted to explain to me that
he wasn't wasting it. It was it was so awful,
you know, that somebody like that, in doing this unbelievable,
(04:21):
amazing job in such difficult circumstances would be somehow apologizing
to us taxpayers for these little packets of they're made
from peanuts. Actually, this kind of high energy food. And
that was a you know, that was that was that
was a moment that stuck with me. And I think
another moment that was very telling. I met with a
group of fairly young Sudanese who are part of a
(04:46):
Sudanese mutual aid group who were created when the civil
war began, who had been, um, many of them had
been part of a democracy movement that had toppled a
previous dictator in Sudan in 2019. And now there they
do humanitarian work, they collect money, they bring in food,
they try to replace NGOs and so on. And a
(05:07):
long conversation with one of them, and one of them said,
you know, the situation in Sudan is, has always been
that one group or the other seeks to control everything
they take charge of. They want, you know, winner takes all.
They take charge of Khartoum and they run the country
and they make money out of running the country. And
then they're challenged by another group who has that same goal.
(05:28):
And really, in the long term, the only thing that
can really save Sudan or stop this endless cycle of
violence is some form of like a liberal peace agreement.
I mean, maybe democracy is too strong a word, but
you would need to create a system where people have rights,
where there's rule of law, where, um, people can compete
(05:51):
in some kind of, some kind of market to to
produce goods. Um, and where there is, there is, um,
you know, some sense of fairness and justice and that's
the only way you can get the war to start.
And of course, this wasn't someone who was influenced by
the United States or who'd been reading this was, you know,
these were these were several people. They weren't reading the
(06:14):
Declaration of Independence. They were this was the conclusion they
came to living in the society that they that they
were in. Um, and it was a, it was an
argument for um, democratic or liberal democratic solutions, you know,
of a kind that you would have heard, you know,
300 years ago at the time when democracy was first
being invented. Those were those were some of the some
(06:37):
of the, some of the moments that were meant a
lot to me.
S2 (06:41):
And can you just, I guess, give us a picture
of how dire the situation is for people in Sudan
and what sort of aid they are receiving, because you
mentioned there before the doctor who, you know, you were
so moved and sort of it sounds like heartbroken by
him sort of saying to you, oh, don't worry, I'm
not going to waste this, you know, this meager food
that they were getting. And you write at one point
(07:02):
that you felt ashamed because some people there wanted to
make clear just how grateful they were for the tiny
amounts of help that they had received. So just how
dire is it for people?
S3 (07:14):
So it's very hard to measure because, um, journalists can't
really get into Sudan. I mean, the fact that I
got in was almost a miracle. I mean, nobody I
don't know of anybody else who's been into Darfur and
was traveling around there in the last year or so,
the way we were. Um, and this was really through
a connection through a woman, actually, who used to work
for USAID, who was able to organize it. And so
(07:37):
it's very hard to get into Sudan. It's very hard
to travel around, um, the two sides have, you know,
reasons to lie about what's going on in their sector. Um, actually,
the Sudanese government was very, keen to tell us, and
insistent to tell us that there was no starvation in
Sudanese army controlled areas of Sudan. Um, so, uh, and,
(08:01):
you know, it's hard to prove them otherwise it's hard
to collect information. Um, we do know that there has
been an enormous displacement of people, um, that, um, you know,
tens of millions of people have been forced to move, um,
and we know that there's it's the largest death toll
of any war being fought now. And this I think,
(08:22):
you know, Ukraine and Gaza combined, Sudan has has had
more people dying. There is one particular incident, recent incident that, um,
I think if there had been cameras there or witnesses
would now be we would now be talking about it
as a new Rwanda. This was a this was a
siege of a city called Fosha. This was in Darfur.
(08:44):
We couldn't visit it when we were there. Um, because
it was still it was still under siege and there
was active fighting. The city eventually fell. Um, the CSF
came into the city and they conducted what looks like
a mass slaughter. So thousands, maybe tens of thousands of
people were murdered. Um, so much so that you could
see the blood on the ground from satellite pictures. So
(09:07):
this was a you know, this is a there have
been a few incidences of mass murder and ethnic cleansing.
Some some of them involving murder and some just displacing people, uh,
that have been part of the conflict, too. So the two,
the main belligerents, um, have sought to move and displace
and control civilians, um, as a way of establishing their
(09:30):
power in different parts of the country. The two sides
are had been part of a single army. So there
are two parts of what was the Sudanese army, essentially, um,
a couple of years ago. And they took over the
country after there had been a there was a democracy movement.
There was a brief period of civilian government for a
(09:50):
couple of years, and then the army carried out a
coup d'etat, took over the country, and then it was
the army that split. And so the war is between
these two army factions, both of whom have help from
the outside. Each has their different backers. I mean, the
the CSF is largely backed by the Emirates, by the Emiratis.
(10:11):
The Sudanese have friends in Egypt in, um, you know,
in Turkey, in Saudi Arabia. I mean, strangely, the Saudis
and the Emiratis are on different sides. There are other
players in the war as well. There are Russians on
the ground there. They're Iranians. Strangely, there are some Ukrainians
there who are interested in killing Russians. It's a situation
where you have a kind of collapse of the state
(10:33):
and these, um, you know, outsiders fueling what could have
been a local conflict and maybe 200 years ago would
have been, but has been made much more lethal by
this outside involvement. And as I said, the main victims
are civilians.
S2 (10:49):
Okay. And I was wondering if you could just break
it down for us very briefly. You've explained that there's
these two sides. There's the CSF, which is the Rapid
Support Forces. That's the paramilitary group. And then you've got
the Sudanese army. But really, this fully fledged civil war
broke out in 2023. This is after, you know, this
is a region that's had multiple, multiple horrible conflicts, which
(11:10):
we'll get into in a bit. But what happened in
2023 and in the lead up, this is what we're seeing.
S3 (11:14):
So again the lead up was you know, Sudan was
run by a dictator called Bashir for a long time. Um,
in 2019 there was a there had been over the years,
I should say, a growing movement of it was students, lawyers,
but also all kinds of people from different walks of
life who wanted Sudan to be governed in a more
(11:35):
fair way. I mean, as I said, there's a in
very unjust countries, there is a you very often find
this drive for justice. Um, and I think that was
that was the impetus. Um, they were they were backed by, um,
elements in the army who wanted Bashir to go. He'd
been in charge for a long time. He was very corrupt.
(11:55):
You know, there were there were there were competitors. And
then they were allowed to form a civilian government that
ran the country for several years. They wanted to create
a system of, um, you know, fair exploitation of Sudan's resources,
of its gold. Um, it has well, the oil is
mostly in the south, but it has some oil. It
has other assets. And the army, which is used to
(12:19):
which had been used for many years to controlling the
main resources of Sudan, probably objected to that. Um, well,
we know they objected to that, uh, to to those changes.
So the economic changes and the possible political changes were
uncomfortable for an army that wanted to essentially stay in charge.
And they carried out this coup d'état and then but
(12:41):
and that was one tragedy. And then the real tragedy
was when a part of the army, this is the RSS, um, decided,
I mean, again, this is this is contested. Okay. Exactly
how this happened. But the a part of the Army,
which is, um, uh, which had been formed in Darfur
(13:02):
in western Sudan and had been used for many years
by the Bashir government, by the central government to put
down ethnic rebellions in that area? Um, they broke away
from the rest of the army and they attacked Khartoum
and they attacked the leadership. And they they essentially sacked
the city of Khartoum, which is the capital of Sudan. Um,
(13:23):
and they controlled it until until last spring, actually, when
we were there, this was the moment when Khartoum was
falling again to the Sudanese army. And I think at
that point, many people hoped that would be the end
of the war. But sadly, sadly, it's not. Um, so
so the RSF, you have to understand, is a it's
a militia group. It's, um, it's it's very it's an
(13:45):
it's an old group. It's connected to it's sort of
its ethnic origin. Ah. I mean, Arabic speaking, um, nomads
who lived in the western part of Sudan, um, and
who had been used for many years by the central rulers,
as I said, to repress the so-called African population. I mean,
everybody's African and everybody's not everybody even looks all that different.
(14:07):
But there's a there are linguistic differences in Sudan. So
they've been used for that purpose. They staged an uprising
against the Sudanese army. Some people argue the Sudanese army
started it. Never mind. Um, but they did. And that
you've had since then, this, you know, very bitter and
ugly civil war between these factions. Um, and really, what
(14:29):
you have is, is a, um, is a conflict in
which and I think this is probably the real reason why, uh,
it's hard for outsiders to understand is that it's really
not a war about ideology. So it's not like we
can sit back and say, these are the good guys
and these are the bad guys, and these people are
for democracy. It's true that the Army has, um, deeper
(14:50):
and older traditions. Um, it's, you know, it's based on
people from the central part of Sudan who lived along
the Nile. It's the institution that ran the country for
a long time. And it's also true that the origins
of the RSS as a kind of militia that was
used to put down rebellions are pretty ugly. They're both
fighting for full control. I think the RSS is seeking
(15:11):
to create itself either to create a separate state, or
create itself as some kind of separate entity in western Sudan,
and the Sudanese army doesn't want that to happen. So
that's so that's part of what the fight is about.
I mean, I suppose the other important point is that
the one thing that's missing in Sudan that you might
have had in past years is some kind of outside framework.
(15:34):
So some kind of American or European or. Um, When
um international organization backed framework to resolve the war. You know,
some someone with enough political clout who could come in
and make the two sides stop fighting. And, um, one
of the reasons I wrote the article was that I
(15:54):
was looking to understand what does it mean that we
now live in a world in which these international institutions
are breaking down, and the multilateral way of solving things
is become farcical. And the the old system of UN
negotiators who would be sent in to difficult places and
(16:14):
bring sides together, doesn't really function anymore. And I think Sudan,
Sudan's not the only example of where that you know,
how that how the breakdown can feed a conflict. But
it's one of them.
S2 (16:33):
We'll be right back. Well, I really wanted to ask
you about this because, you know, you write in this
Atlantic piece, I think it's about 10,000 words. And you say,
this is what the end of the liberal world order
(16:54):
looks like. And a through line throughout the piece is
just how much America, really, among other institutions and countries
perhaps have abandoned Sudan. So can you just briefly take
us through how much the United States used to support
or help Sudan, and what impact that had, and to
what extent the U.S. really has now abandoned Sudan and why?
S3 (17:14):
So the US had a long involvement in Sudan? Partly.
There were there was a Christian evangelical interest in that
part of the world. There were a lot of big
charities that operated there. There was also because the original
the older version of the RSS, which was called the Janjaweed,
was involved in it. There was a period of ethnic
cleansing in Darfur that interested Americans who were, you know,
(17:39):
felt that the, you know, the fact that the outside
world had missed the Rwandan genocide and had failed to
come to the aid of people who were suffering.
S4 (17:49):
In April 1994, the Rwandan government mobilized the Hutu population
to massacre their Tutsi neighbors. 1 million people were murdered
in just 100 days. The Rwandan society was divided into
three so-called ethnicities Hutu, Tutsi, and TWA.
S3 (18:09):
There was a moment, you know, it seemed such a
long time ago now. But in the Obama even even
George W Bush administrations and Bush one, when there was
an idea of, um, protecting people, you know, that the
function of international institutions and maybe even of the US
military was to protect people from these kinds of mass murders.
(18:29):
And so there was a I'm not saying that it
was always a successful intervention, but there were a number
of moments when the US intervened to stop genocide or
to stop to stop murder. And, you know, the US
was involved in giving aid to Sudan. USAID had a
huge program there for Sudanese refugees, um, and for, you know,
(18:50):
and other other programs of education and so on as well.
It turned out, actually, when USAID was destroyed by Elon
Musk at the beginning of this year, um, it turned
out that a lot of organizations didn't know how dependent
on USAID they were. So a lot of UN organizations
or other international organizations, it turned out, were using USAID
(19:11):
money or or data or vehicles or food or, you know,
that USAID was somehow underpinning a lot of the logistics
of international aid. And the disappearance of it almost overnight
was very disorienting. Stuff in warehouses was was burned or sold. Um,
and it just vanished. And that was, you know, I
(19:33):
was there at the time when people were just beginning
to see this and understand it. You know, when the
Americans are gone and the and and others who used
to play negotiating roles in Sudan are gone, you know,
it's not like you get something better. I mean, instead,
what happens is you have a vacuum. And as I said,
these different, you know, Turkey, Egypt's you know, Emirates and
(19:54):
and Saudis come in.
S2 (19:56):
And it's so interesting because you write in the piece that,
you know, the George W Bush and Barack Obama administrations,
they invested real diplomatic and political effort in Sudan, largely
because Americans wanted them to. And, you know, there was
that pivotal moment in 2004 when Colin Powell, who was
then the US secretary of State, declared that what was
happening then in Sudan was a genocide.
S5 (20:17):
We concluded, I concluded, that genocide has been committed in Darfur,
and that the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility,
and that genocide may still be occurring.
S2 (20:30):
So what's happened? What's happened between then and now that
there's this brutal, you know, removal of aid. And I
don't know if you would call it full neglect or,
you know, obviously there are individuals there that you've spoken
to from American organizations and elsewhere who are very passionate
about doing whatever they can. But you do write about,
you know, this being a post-American world. So what happened?
S3 (20:52):
I think it's a combination of things. I mean, I think, um,
partly a kind of disillusion with aid, you know, and
wondering whether it was working or, you know, and so on,
but also something deeper than that. I think there's been
a real brutalization of American culture, maybe of everybody's culture. Um,
we see so many images on our screens, you know,
(21:14):
that come in front of us every day. You know,
horrible things, good things, kitty cat pictures. Um, and I
think the, the images that used to move people, um,
of hunger or of violence or of the, of the
aftermath of violence. Don't do it anymore. Um. That's my.
(21:36):
You know, that's my feeling. You also have now in
the US, you have, um, an administration that is, you know,
openly scornful, I mean, scornful of Africa and Africans, um,
talking about shithole countries. I mean, there was a statement
made by President Trump just a day or two before
(21:57):
we've made this recording, um, in which he's talking about
Somalis in there's a Somali community that lives in Minneapolis,
and he attacked the Somalis.
S6 (22:06):
I don't want them in our country. Their country is
no good for a reason. Their country stinks, and we
don't want them in our country.
S3 (22:14):
And the animus towards Africa and a kind of aggressive,
it's not just that we're, you know, we're not interested.
We don't care. It's kind of aggression against them is
something there's a strand of that inside the MAGA movement
that I think has, um. That's quite chilling.
S2 (22:33):
And what is that about? I mean, because Trump made that, uh, comment.
He called Somalis garbage that he didn't want in the country.
And he made that comment at the end of a
cabinet meeting. You know, The New York Times has called
it a xenophobic tirade. And obviously, we know that Donald
Trump has for years, for a very long time, had
very negative things to say about people from African countries
in particular. But what's happening now that there is this
(22:56):
such extreme?
S3 (22:58):
There is there's xenophobia, there's racism there, obviously, um, there
is a you know, he is he comes from and
in turn appeals to I don't think it's the majority, actually,
but to a part of American society that, um, is
nostalgic for an era when there were, I don't know,
more white people than, than than than there are now
(23:19):
or that's what they think. Um, and which there was
a different kind of racial hierarchy. And I mean, I
don't I don't have any other way to explain it. Um,
except that that's part of, um, that's part of their
appeal to some people and that's part of who they are.
I mean, even even as we're speaking, there's a negotiation
going on in Ukraine where it's pretty clear that Trump's negotiators,
(23:40):
Steve Witkoff and, um, and Jared Kushner are at least
partly there to negotiate business deals between America and Russia. Um,
and we know this because of the documents they produced
and leaked phone calls and other things. So, um, you know,
if so, they're very transactional about a war that directly
(24:03):
threatens America's closest allies in NATO. So if they're if
they're transactional and, you know, cynical about that war, then
you can imagine how they feel about a war in
Sudan where they don't know who the players are and
they aren't interested in getting involved, and they don't really
have the expertise. So it's you've had a real sea
(24:23):
change in American attitudes to the outside world, you've had
a kind of hardening and coarsening of American political culture. Um,
maybe that's coming from something deeper in the culture, from,
you know, from the way we now all get and
process information. Um, you have an element probably of racism.
(24:44):
You have, um, you have a lot of things working
together to, to, to make, you know, to, to to
push this issue off the off everybody's radar. We live
in a world that is much more, um, immune to, um,
to the idea of helping people who are far away
who don't look like us.
S2 (25:03):
But you write that it's not just the United States
that's abandoned Sudan, and it's left this, you know, horrific vacuum. Really,
it reads like something out of like an apocalyptic, sort
of mad Max sort of landscape. It really is that horrific.
And this is where you write that middle powers, they're
fighting over gold and coveted land, and the civilians are
just getting caught in the crossfire. So who else has
(25:23):
abandoned Sudan? You know who else is, I don't know,
possibly implicated in this suffering.
S3 (25:29):
Well, you can I mean, I have a section in
the piece which is also about the UN. Um, and
I'm not really accusing particular people at the UN of
doing anything, but it's a they're a lot of people
I spoke to had a lot of reflections on the
decline of the UN and even how you could measure it.
It used to be that, as I said, you had
(25:50):
UN negotiators to end the conflict in East Timor. You
used to have, um, outside groups who who had a
mandate to, um, to bring people together and to try
to find solutions to civil wars or to conflicts or
to ethnic cleansing, episodes of ethnic cleansing. I think the
last UN peacekeeping mission was something like 2014. So it
(26:13):
was over a decade ago. And since then the, the,
the breakdown of the UN, which is really more closely
related to the way in which great powers behaved, because
this is to do with the UN Security Council. Uh,
you know, it used to be that, you know, the
Russia would try to get along with the US, and
the Chinese would try to remain neutral. Um, and you
(26:33):
now have active antagonism between the US and Russia, between
the US and China. Um, you have a, you know,
just an inability to get any kind of consensus that
would allow you to put forward a common UN program.
And so as that breaks down, there just isn't it's
not being replaced by anything. Is is what I'm saying.
S2 (26:54):
And so, I mean, I'm just curious, you've been there
on the ground and as you've mentioned, it's so expensive
to get there. Papers aren't sending people there. So it's
very difficult to get information out of there. So do
you have a message? I guess for a middle power
like Australia, like what should countries like ours be doing
to help the situation if they can?
S3 (27:11):
I mean, there are a lot of little countries that
have good NGOs there. You know, there's a you know,
I had some help and I ran into Norwegians and
Czechs and all kinds of people who are working there.
I mean, they're small. They're humanitarian roles that Australians can play.
I mean, it all depends on your ambition. I mean,
remember that Norway was once, um, you know, the Oslo
(27:35):
agreements in the Middle East in the 1990s were conceived
by Norwegian government that wanted to do it, not because
they have any historical interest in the Middle East, but
because they felt it was a good thing to do.
There were just Norwegian diplomats who wanted to be involved,
and I can imagine, um, there being a role for
Australian diplomats. If they wanted to, um, they would certainly
(27:56):
be seen as neutral there. Um, and, and there is
certainly a role for Australian NGOs. I mean, there are
functioning NGOs on the ground and there is, as I said, this,
this er movement, it's called the emergency response rooms. These
are the Sudanese who created this mutual aid organizations, and
they're all over the country. Um, you know, Australia could
(28:17):
help them. Um, they're, they're they're the people who are
in contact with ordinary people. They have very, you know,
I mean, literally like village level and street level operations. Um,
you could, you know, the Australian government could create a
program working with them. Um, and that would probably be
the most efficient and effective way, uh, to help the Sudanese.
(28:38):
So there there are small things that you could do. And, um,
you know, if your diplomats ever had the time, I'm sure,
you know, they would be treated as neutral and interesting outsiders.
S2 (28:49):
And just to wrap up, I'm wondering also whether this peace,
whether I wonder if you wrote it as something of
a warning to to countries, even wealthy countries, countries like ours, because,
you know, you do write that this is, you know,
what the end of the liberal world order looks like.
But you write that the same forces that have destroyed
Sudan are coming for other countries too. So is that
(29:09):
sort of is this something you see for other parts
of the world?
S3 (29:12):
Sudan is a country that fell apart very fast. I
met a young man in his 20s there, another person
who I found who was very moving to speak to.
Who'd been in university studying graphic design. Or he was
about to start university studying graphic design at the time
the Civil War broke out. And literally like from one
(29:32):
day to the next, he lost his future and he
was on his way to university to do this. And
Sudan had universities and had good universities and had hospitals
that had schools. I mean, it's a it's a poor country,
but it wasn't a disintegrated country. You know, there was
a there was a functioning state. Um, and he he
lost it overnight. And it happened very fast. And these
(29:53):
huge displacements of people, you know, enormous refugee camps, you know,
emerged from one day to the next. Um, and so the, the,
the breakdown of civilization can take place quite quickly. I mean,
once people set out to destroy the state, once there's
a determined group of armed people who want to end
the political system as it exists, they can they can
(30:16):
do it very fast. Um, and of course, I mean,
when I, when I wrote that, I mean, I was
thinking of states near Sudan, some of which are affected
by the violence and by the refugee flows and by
the gun running, you know, that go through the I mean,
this is Chad and Ethiopia. Um, you know, Kenya, these
are these are all states that are, you know, where they're,
you know, Egypt, actually where where they where they feel
(30:38):
impact of the war. Um, and it's perfectly plausible that
the Sudanese war could somehow spill over into one of
the neighboring countries. Um, and then you could have a
breakdown in one of those places as well. So, you know,
civilization is a lot more fragile than we like to think.
I mean, it, um, the people who are determined to
(30:58):
wreck your state or wreck your system and who are,
you know, armed and able to do it can, as
I said, it can go. It can go quickly.
S2 (31:10):
Well, and it is an absolute privilege to speak to
you about this. So thank you so much for your time.
S3 (31:15):
Thank you. I'm really delighted to speak about it. Thanks
for for your interest.
S2 (31:33):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by myself
and Josh towers. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Tom
Mackendrick is our head of audio. To listen to our
episodes as soon as they drop, follow the Morning Edition
on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Our
newsrooms are powered by subscriptions, so to support independent journalism,
(31:55):
visit The Age or Smh.com.au. And to stay up to date,
sign up to our Morning Edition newsletter to receive a
summary of the day's most important news in your inbox
every morning. Links are in the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris,
thanks for listening.
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