Forced From Home Episode 2: “No One Was Spared.” The War in Sudan and the Genocide in Darfur with Rep. Sara Jacobs and Emi Mahmoud
The world just passed the three year mark of the war in Sudan – the largest displacement and humanitarian crisis in the world.
We spoke with U.S. Representative Sara Jacobs (D-CA) about the impact the war has had on Sudanese civilians and refugees, the role of external actors in fueling the conflict, and what the United States can do to help end it. Then, we met with Emi Mahmoud, a renowned poet, author, and humanitarian activist who grew up in Darfur to hear about the RSF’s genocidal violence in Darfur and how local community groups are supporting each other across Sudan.
Timed Takeaways:
[0:46] Setting the scene: unpacking the scale of the crisis and warring parties in Sudan
[4:24] Representative Jacobs on the impact of aid cuts for Sudanese refugees
[8:00] Representative Jacobs on the role of the UAE in fueling the conflict in Sudan
[13:35] Representative Jacobs on needed U.S. leadership and congressional engagement to end the war in Sudan
[19:20] Representative Jacobs on setting the record straight about migration management at the U.S. southern border
[24:03] Emi Mahmoud on the RSF’s atrocities and siege of El Fasher, Darfur
[33:00] Emi Mahmoud on the role of racism and Arabization in the war in Sudan
[43:44] Preventing further deaths in Sudan and ways to take action
[52:08] Roundup: Displacement in the news this week
[54:30] Tribute to former Refugees International President Lionel Rosenblatt
Mentioned in This Episode:
Aid and Accountability for Sudanese Refugees in Chad – Refugees International
The Darfur Genocide Never Ended – New York Times
Refugees International Calls for Action: New Evidence of United Arab Emirates Fueling Genocide in Sudan – Refugees International
Refugees International Take Action: NO Weapons Sales to the UAE Until They End Support for Genocide in Sudan – Refugees International
Speak Out on Sudan www.speakoutonsudan.org
Darfur IDP Humanitarian Network darfuridp.org
Afghans Who Helped U.S. Forces Say They’re Being Pushed Back to the Taliban – New York Times
Risk of Renewed War in Tigray: Painful Reminders From Ethiopia’s Last War Demand Action to Prevent Another – Just Security
Refugees International Honors the Life of Former President Lionel Rosenblatt – Refugees International
Lionel Rosenblatt Dies at 82; Led Daring Rescue of Vietnamese Refugees – New York Times
Lionel Rosenblatt is dead at 82. He defied his bosses to help hundreds flee Vietnam – Washington Post
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This episode of “Forced from Home” was produced by Refugees International. Our technical director and sound designer is Joshua Suhy. Our executive producer is Madison Cullinan. The show’s production team also includes Etant Dupain, Eliza Leal, and Sarah Sheffer. Our music is composed by Richard Adam Keyworth from Sound Pocket Music. And special thanks to Dan Sullivan and Mohammed Naeem.
Transcript
Jeremy (00:04)
Hi, I’m Jeremy Konyndyk and you’re listening to Forced From Home, a podcast by Refugees International about global displacement.
In this episode, we talk with Representative Sara Jacobs of California about the humanitarian crisis in Sudan, the role of external actors in fueling the conflict, and what the United States should do to help end it. Then, I sit down with Emi Mahmoud, a Sudanese activist and poet, to zoom in on what has happened in Darfur, how local Sudanese groups are responding, and what you can do to take action. And hang out at the end for our quick roundup of a few other displacement stories that deserve your attention this week.
Let’s begin by briefly setting the table on what’s been happening in Sudan. This conflict is, by far, the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world. More than 13 million people have been displaced. Over 33 million people need humanitarian aid. And meanwhile, actual relief aid has declined dramatically as the U.S. and other donors have slashed their aid budgets.
The war in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces and a breakaway paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, has just passed its third year with no signs of slowing. And look, neither of these parties are good guys. Both have committed widespread atrocities against civilians. But some other context here is important. The RSF paramilitary group emerged from the Janjaweed forces who began committing genocide in Darfur 20 years ago and are continuing to do so today. Both the U.S. State Department and a UN panel of experts have concluded that the RSF’s systematic and grotesque violence against civilians amounts to genocide. We, at Refugees International, have documented some of the witness testimonies from the RSF’s genocidal violence, first in the town of Ardamata in 2023, and from others who survived sweeping massacres in the town of El Fasher late last year.
Importantly, and very relevant to our conversation today, that genocide has been directly facilitated by external actors, most notably the United Arab Emirates, who have supplied weapons, money, and diplomatic support to the RSF. However, their role has gotten very little attention, and they have faced no real accountability for it. They continue to sponsor sporting events like an annual NBA tournament and Formula 1 races. They continue to buy weapons from the U.S., the UK, and other countries, some of which have even ended up on the battlefields in Sudan. And there are reports that the UAE may soon get a financial bailout from the United States government to cushion the economic impact of the Iran war.
So with that background, let’s dive into today’s episode with our first guest, who has been one of the most vocal members of Congress working to advance solutions to end the war and demanding accountability for the UAE’s support to the Sudan genocide.
I’m really pleased to welcome Representative Sara Jacobs of California to today’s episode to talk about the humanitarian crisis in Sudan. Representative Jacobs has the unique distinction in Congress of being one of the few former aid workers to serve as a member. Prior to running for her seat, she served in a variety of roles in our field, including working on peacekeeping issues for the UN, working for UNICEF, working on conflict and stabilization issues at the State Department.
And she brings that perspective and that experience to her role now in Congress as the ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa. So she has a really unique background and set of experiences to bring to our discussion today on US engagement with Sudan and the war there. Representative Jacobs, it’s such an honor. We’re really excited to welcome you to join us today.
Sara (03:54)
Thanks, it’s great to be here with you.
Jeremy (03:56)
Fantastic. Let’s dive right in. I want to start with the impact that the war in Sudan has had on civilians. You’ve visited Sudanese refugee camps in Chad. You’ve heard directly from people displaced by the war, people who survived the genocide in Darfur. You also come from a background of working professionally on these kinds of issues before you came into Congress. What stood out for you in the refugee camps that you visited? What sort of things were you hearing from people there? And what did you take away from that about what the US government needs to be doing?
Sara (04:24)
Yeah. So, know, Jeremy, as you mentioned, I worked in foreign assistance. I worked at the State Department and at the UN. And so I’ve been to my fair share of refugee camps. I’ve met with refugees before. And I’ll be honest with you, the refugees I met coming across the Chad Sudanese border were some of the most traumatized I’ve ever seen. The kids wouldn’t even wave back at you or accept your candy, right?
When you’re usually in a refugee camp, you bring candy for the kids, they all come running. There was none of that. I will never forget the look in those kids’ eyes. They were so incredibly traumatized. And I think that the U.S. has a lot more that we need to be doing.
First of all, the Trump administration has cut almost all of U.S. foreign assistance to Sudan. The Biden administration had done a good job of actually finding a way to get our assistance actually to the local groups like the Emergency Response Rooms who are really on the ground able to get to these places. And the Trump administration cut all that. And as a result, 80 percent of the kitchens that they were running, they’re no longer able to run. And so people are literally starving and dying because of U.S. foreign aid cuts in Sudan, in addition to what we aren’t doing to actually get this war to end.
Jeremy (05:49)
Yeah, it’s the first time that I can think of in probably in the history of U.S. foreign assistance that the government has actually cut foreign aid in the midst of a declared famine in a country. That’s just, it’s a really astonishing, really astonishing callousness.
One really striking difference as someone who has, who worked on advocacy around the Darfur genocide 20 years ago and is working on this round of genocide in Darfur again today is how much more limited some of the congressional engagement feels relative to 20 years ago.
You’ve been one of the few voices on the Hill that’s been really consistent and loud and vocal on this, and there’s huge appreciation for that from the humanitarian community, I think from the Sudanese diaspora. As someone who’s in it every day up there, what’s your take on why this isn’t right now higher on Congress’s priority list, and what would it take to get more members focused on
Sara (06:35)
Yeah, honestly, I think a big piece of it is that we’re not seeing the public engagement like we did. I was in high school and college during the Save Darfur movement. I remember how many people were getting engaged in it. We’re not, unfortunately, we’re not seeing that. And I think it’s in part a few reasons. One is there are just so many crises happening right now.
Whether it’s Gaza, whether it’s, you what’s happening here at home, that I think people’s attentions are just split. I think another thing is like, there’s not one clear bad guy here. It’s not an easy narrative. Both sides have committed really heinous crimes. Now, one side has committed genocide and the other side hasn’t, but both sides are committing war crimes against humanity. So I think it’s not as easy of a narrative. There’s no like just a bad guy.
And then I think maybe the third reason is like a lot of U.S. partners and allies are involved, UAE, Egypt, Saudi, but involved in a way where again, because there’s no clear bad guy and because the U.S. involvement is there, but not direct. people don’t feel the access point. And frankly, the Emiratis and the Saudis are very good at lobbying in D.C. They are very good at the sort of influence game. And I think they’ve done a lot of work to make sure that Congress isn’t really paying enough attention to what’s happening here. And frankly, I think members of Congress and the public all just have war fatigue.
Jeremy (08:21)
Yeah, I think that the fact that the U.S. has basically allies and partners on all sides of the proxy wars in Sudan, it both complicates the action, but it also means that if there were really concerted attention from the U.S. side, we’d probably have a lot of leverage across the board. Often we only have links on one side of these kinds of equations. Now we’ve got them on both sides. But as you say, there’s been a lot of really concerted pushback, particularly by the UAE against any sort of scrutiny of the role that they’re playing. And I think it’s important for our listeners to understand that dynamic because it is so key to why the U.S. is staying, and relatively speaking, on the sidelines.
You’ve had the distinction of being one of the most outspoken members of Congress, I think along with Chris Van Hollen and a few others, calling for accountability for the UAE’s role. I’m sure you also talk to UAE officials. I’m sure that they push back in conversations with you because they have a pretty strong game on Capitol Hill. When I talk to other members of Congress, I sometimes sense a wariness about pushing the UAE over this.
What’s your view on why Congress needs to step up and what do you think will, what will it take to convince more of your fellow members to get on board with that agenda?
Sara (09:29)
Yeah, I mean, Emirati officials have literally lied to my face and told me they’re not doing any of this when there is like concrete, credible evidence, both in U.S. intelligence and in the public source, that they are doing this and they are continuing to do it. And they have actually, frankly, increased their assistance to the RSF recently. Look, I think, you know, that the Emiratis are very good at Capitol Hill. We were actually like, we got a bill, the Stand Up for Sudan Act that I introduced that would have cut off U.S. arms sales to the UAE until we could certify that they were no longer funding and arming the RSF. We actually got that considered for markup and at the very last minute, the Emiratis were able to get it pulled off of the markup list. So like that just goes to show like how much influence they have here. And to be clear, like this was happening under the Biden administration too.
We do also know that the UAE has put $2 billion into the Trump family crypto fund. So they’re talking about building a Trump tower in Dubai, right? There are all these pieces of it. And I think they’re also like considered good partners on other issues, issues that many of my colleagues maybe put more of a premium on like competition with China, support for Israel, that kind of thing.
But I think it’s incredibly important that we hold them accountable for a few reasons. One, people see when we are hypocritical and don’t hold our allies to the same standards that we hold other people. And it actually erodes our national security writ large with other partners and allies, especially ones who are in the middle, and as the ranking member of Africa, I’m talking to African leaders all the time. There are so many of them who will be like, you guys won’t sell us a helicopter because you’re worried about our civilian casualties. But like, you’re still going to sell the UAE and Israel and others, whatever, despite what they do. And we all see what they’re doing. Like, why should we ever listen to you?
So I think that’s one. I think the other thing is like, for a lot of external actors, the UAE is basically the sole funder and armor of the RSF and the U.S. is the biggest arms seller to the UAE. So we both have a lot of leverage with the UAE and the UAE has a lot of leverage with the RSF. And I do think there have been many points in this conflict where the conflict was only able to continue because of UAE support to the RSF. Now, do I think cutting off arms sales to the UAE is going to end this conflict? No, but I do think it will be important leverage that we have to get the people to the table to actually get a real negotiated solution to end this and get to a civilian-led government.
Jeremy (12:25)
And to sharpen the point about how going to direct that support is, there was a report that came out this week that the reporter Justin Lynch did some analysis looking at cell phone data from these Colombians who had, Colombian mercenaries who had turned up in Darfur. And what he found when he looked at the patterns of where their cell phones had been, he could trace them from Colombia to the UAE, to Libya, to Darfur. So the UAE link is clearly there. They’re going in through Libya. And then they ended up being involved in the RSF rampage overrunning the town of El Fasher, which produced at minimum thousands and more likely tens of thousands of dead, really directly enabled by that UAE support.
And you’re not the first member of the US government who’s told me that the Emiratis have lied to their face about their role in any of that. It’s a really astonishing thing.
Cutting off the arms sales is one piece.What else do you think the US government ought to be doing? Do we need a special envoy? Are there other measures that we should be taking, beyond just the UAE angle because they say this is a really complex, multifaceted war. What else should the U.S. government be doing to try and bring peace?
Sara (13:35)
Yeah. Look, I absolutely think we need a special envoy. And I’ll be the first one to tell you that I think we’ve had a proliferation of special envoys at the State Department and it’s not always the right move. But in this case, it really is. And you need a special envoy that’s at a high enough level for a few reasons. And by the way, this is mandated by law. Congress was able to pass a law saying this and the Trump administration has still not filled this position. But, and I’m going to get a little in the weeds here, but I feel like people who are listening here want that.
Jeremy (14:04)
They can handle it.
Sara (14:06)
But basically, the way the State Department is set up is that you have the Middle East Bureau and you have the Africa Bureau. And so part of why I think we haven’t been able to really solve this is because the people in the Middle East Bureau are the ones who are talking to the UAE, to the Saudis, to Egypt, and they’re more focused naturally on what’s happening in the Middle East. So when the UAE is being a good partner on other issues there, that’s their focus. And we have to fight really hard to get one line on Sudan in sort of these bilateral conversations.
Whereas the people who are focused on Africa understand what’s happening in Sudan and are very focused on it, but they’re not the ones talking to the regional partners and the external actors. And so I think it’s incredibly important that we have a special envoy who can sit, straddle those or slightly above so that you have someone talking to all of the external parties who’s really focused on what’s happening in Sudan and has remit in both regional areas.
Jeremy (15:03)
Yeah, it’s a sort of interesting reflection of how partly what the Emiratis are able to capitalize on here is our own internal bureaucratic structure, that we don’t have a good concerted way to put pressure on them because of competing interests within our own system. Yeah, and I think in my experience in government too, a special envoy can ideally help cut through some of that.
You, as a former foreign assistance worker, aid worker, involved in peacekeeping and conflict policy before coming into government. There are not many members of Congress who take that kind of background into congressional service. I think Andy Kim in the Senate is probably another one, but there aren’t too many. So how has that shaped how your focus and your work as a member of Congress? Obviously, you have domestic constituents that are, I’m sure, your primary concern. How do you balance that? And what do you take away from that experience in terms of how you approach your role in Capitol Hill?
Sara (15:55)
Yeah, I think I’m the only member of Congress who’s worked at the UN and definitely one of a few, as you mentioned, who worked at the State Department or in the federal government. It makes sense, right? Most people in Congress come through local government and frankly haven’t engaged with sort of foreign policy in the same way. But I think it’s really helped me be a better member of Congress for a few reasons. One is that our job is to do oversight of the federal government and having worked in it and actually understanding how the federal government works is actually like really helpful in doing oversight of it.
Jeremy (16:25)
100 percent. 100 percent.
Sara (16:27)
The other thing is like the aid cuts and everything we’re seeing the Trump administration do, they’re not theoretical to me. I know exactly how they’re going to impact people on the ground because I’ve seen it. And the third way that it’s been really helpful to me is that I know that what the Trump administration is doing is wrong and hurting people. And I know that there was actually a lot of reform we needed to do of our foreign assistance as well, and that we’ve been working on a big push, actually a bipartisan push, to get more locally led development assistance, right? To make sure we’re actually using our foreign assistance in a way that’s empowering partners on the ground and really putting ourselves out of business. And as we are now rebuilding everything that the Trump administration has gutted, really understanding like how we can do things differently and better and not just recreate what we had in the past. I think it’s going to be really important.
Jeremy (17:22)
Yeah, that issue on locally led development is very pertinent in Sudan. At the top, you mentioned the role of the Emergency Response Rooms. Sudanese civil society has had such an important role in the aid effort in sustaining Sudanese civilians throughout this war at a time when sometimes international groups have really struggled with access to parts of the country. There’s often a sense, I think, in the aid community that Congress is suspicious of local funding, of local leadership, doesn’t trust local groups. Do you think that’s surmountable?
Sara (17:53)
I do. And I think part of what we did in our locally led development bill that is a bipartisan bill that passed the Foreign Affairs Committee, it’s me and Representative Young Kim as the leads, is to try and figure out how do we get real accountability and make sure we are understanding where money is going and all of the protections we need, while not having all of that get in the way of us being able to work with local partners. And there are some like little things like being able to do things in local languages, for instance.
And I think especially as you look at the numbers and see that when we are able to do it through local partners, you actually get more efficient aid and the aid is more effective, I think a lot of my colleagues are really starting to see that actually this is the way forward that we should be doing for an assistance.
Jeremy (18:41)
Yeah, as you said earlier, not everything about how things worked before was ideal. And I think one of the big problems was it was just really tough for the U.S. government to partner at scale with local groups. It’s not to justify anything that happened last year, but as we look forward to rebuilding, that’s definitely an area to focus on.
Maybe one last question for you, and you can take this wherever you want, but one of the aims of our podcast is to cut through some of the misinformation and sometimes disinformation that’s out there about displacement issues and refugee issues and foreign assistance. So is there a wrong assumption that you’ve encountered in your career, whether about Sudan or anything else that you’d like to take on?
Sara (19:19)
Oh, that’s an interesting question. Maybe I won’t make it about Sudan actually. So I represent San Diego, which is a border community. And obviously as a border community, we see a lot of migration issues and a lot of people seeking asylum. And I think there’s a misconception about why people migrate, about what are the actual effective ways to help prevent mass migration like that. And also a lot of misinformation about what it means to have an orderly border.
I’ll be honest, I have a lot of my colleagues here who represent like Wisconsin, who try to wax poetic about the southern border. And I’m like, what are you talking about? That’s not what it’s like at all. Maybe you’re talking about the Canadian border. I don’t know, but let me tell you what it’s actually like at the southern border. And it is possible to have an orderly and humane approach at the border. And I think we in San Diego actually were able to show that when you put the resources behind it that it needs, you can make sure that there is this orderly and humane way of engaging with people who are, frankly, fleeing for their lives and seeking asylum. And like, I think the U.S. government should do a lot more and spend a lot more of our money trying to work on and address the reasons people need to flee countries: poverty, climate change, corruption, bad governance, conflict, and less money on ICE and all of the horrible things that we’re seeing them do in our communities right now. Development is a lot cheaper than the billions of dollars that they’re spending on ICE and CBP and frankly, in a way that’s not actually making our communities any safer.
Jeremy (21:03)
Absolutely, and I think your point about the community engagement and involvement in welcoming is so important. A couple years ago, during one of the high kind of points in the level border crossings, I went to El Paso and Juarez and then I went to San Diego and Tijuana. And the level of engagement and cooperation by the state and local government in California was just a totally different thing than what we saw in Texas. And it was so much more orderly and so much more sensible and so much more humane. And I there is this sense sometimes that we need to we face a trade-off between a humane policy or an orderly policy, and I think what I took away from that was actually the more humane the policy the more orderly and when you dial up the inhumanity you get chaos and frankly that’s what we’ve seen over the past year and a half now too.
Sara (21:48)
Absolutely
Jeremy (21:49)
Representative Jacobs, thanks so much for joining us today. Appreciate your insights, really grateful for your leadership on Sudan on refugee and immigration policy and so many other things on the hill and thanks so much for your time.
Sara (22:00)
Of course, thanks for having me.
Jeremy (22:05)
So we’ve just heard from Representative Jacobs about the need for US leadership to try to end this war and the importance of accountability for the United Arab Emirates. We’re now going to hear from Emi Mahmoud, a Sudanese-American activist, about what that lack of accountability has meant in real terms for the Sudanese people and particularly for those in her home city of El-Fasher in Darfur.
I am really honored to welcome Emi Mahmoud to the show. Emi is a renowned poet, author, humanitarian activist, and strategist. She serves as a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, a member of the Grand Challenges Canada Investment Committee, analyzing and authorizing catalytic investments in emerging markets. She’s also a Time 100 Next honoree, and she’s a close partner of us here at Refugees International. She serves on our advisory council. She’s also the strategic director of the IDP Humanitarian Network, serving millions of people in her native Darfur.
I first had the privilege of meeting Emi at a Sudan rally that Refugees International helped to organize a few years ago. And I saw her perform some of her poetry there and was just blown away. So it’s such a pleasure. Emi, welcome to the show.
Emi (23:18)
Thank you so much for having me. It really means a lot to be here with you, Jeremy, and to join Refugees International yet again in a lot of the work that we do.
Jeremy (23:25)
Wonderful, wonderful. So maybe just start with what happened last fall in El Fasher. You’re from El Fasher, for our listeners, that’s the capital of North Darfur, and it was the final major city to fall to the Rapid Support Forces after being besieged for more than 500 days. And that in turn set off a wave of genocidal violence by the RSF that one media report called the most accurately predicted genocide in history. Tell us about how you experienced that, how you saw that, how did you first get word of what was happening and how did that then play out over the following days?
Emi (24:01)
Thank you so much. Yeah, as someone from El Fasher who not only lived and worked there and went to elementary school there and actually part of kindergarten too, as someone whose ancestral home is there, whose family, both sides of my family, the side of my family that became displaced over time and created and built all the different camps there, like including Zamzam camp, especially Zamzam camp.
As someone who is so deeply rooted in El Fasher, I understood what was at stake, way before the most recent war. And what was so painful about this is I want our listeners to close their eyes and just imagine what we saw. The first thing to understand is that those of us who work on the ground, even as part of the diaspora, because we’re refugees and each of us who are refugees were IDPs at some point, internally displaced people, before we became refugees. Because the hope is to not have to leave home, but a lot of us have had to leave home, but many people are still stuck inside.
So imagine we’re working until the last days of the 500 day siege, still trying to deliver food, medicine, and water. And what’s so painful about this is that in 2026, I can tell you we’ve been shouting it from the rooftops, but for the past almost a year of the siege, if they caught us smuggling in food, that’s what I said, smuggling in food and water to feed people you would be killed. And so we lost a lot of volunteers that way. And a lot of our counterparts actually ended their operations in El Fasher and left everyone to essentially fend for themselves. But we were there and indigenous groups were there till the very last moments because we understood what was at stake.
Imagine until the very last minute, we’re trying to deliver food. Imagine for 500 days, not food, not water, not medicine, nothing was allowed in and people were not allowed out. And over time, they actually built a berm around El Fasher with only a few openings. And so we had to find different ways to bring food and water in till the very last moments because we knew people were depending on us. And our volunteers are survivors themselves. And this was after Zamzam camp fell and Zamzam camp, our home, the place we built up one of IDP’s biggest operations. And also, the largest internally displaced person camp in all of Sudan. It swelled to the size of about 2 million on the ground because all the surrounding areas who were becoming displaced for the third or fourth time came to Zamzam because everywhere around El Fasher was burning.
And what’s so painful about this is that, like they said, it’s the most accurately predicted because we didn’t just predict it. We told everyone that the genocide never ended, but this is still happening. In the last days, food was running out, and people started eating animal feed, ambas, which is basically the husks of sesame and peanuts and such that is left over after you make peanut oil and sesame oil. And we would hear accounts of people mixing it with water and they called it killing you slowly because it would ease some of the pain of death by starvation, but it would not essentially save off the starvation. So of course, until the very last moments, we kept our operations going.
Indigenous people kept going even after our counterparts, both international and national had withdrawn and essentially written al-Fasher off to a lost cause. And what’s so painful about this is that what we saw, what the world saw in the next 72 hours was not something new to us. We knew it was already happening the whole time. And we told people this is still happening. If you compare the maps of burned villages in the early 2000s and then 2013 and other times like that. And then also in December, November of 2024, when the first, when the recent burning started, they’re the exact same cities. They’re the exact same towns of our indigenous people who are trying to survive. And the maps and the satellite images look exactly the same.
The difference this time is everything was live streamed. So there was a blackout and our international and national counterparts were reaching us because we’re the last mile asking us, did you hear anything? anyone like, have you heard from anyone in El Fasher and such? And suddenly if you close your eyes and you imagine, we knew the worst had happened because we were completely cut off from anyone on the inside. Our family members, our volunteers and such.
And when we thought the worst was already happening, for example, my uncle Habib, may he rest in peace, he was delivering food at the very last year of the siege, was delivering it to our, one of the community kitchens we run. And he went on a bike with another person, because we always do it in pairs. And he was targeted with an RPG and it hit the street near them because we’re not allowed to get food. They want everybody to die. And the shrapnel hit both of them, but it hit our other volunteer on the arm and thank God he survived. But my uncle was hit in the head by the shrapnel and he immediately died.
Why were they on a bike? Because if you go in a car, they can hear the cars. So we essentially were sneaking around trying to deliver food and water to children, to mothers, to whoever was left. Because at some point, once they decided no one’s allowed out and nothing is allowed in, they wouldn’t let indigenous people in. At some point they put a ban on men age seven to 70, they said, because they were insisting that just because you’re indigenous, it means that you’re going to be fighting in the war, which is not true at all. It was just like another justification for the genocide.
When they destroyed Zamzam, we knew and we warned, I even wrote it in the New York Times when Zamzam was destroyed, that this is the penultimate step to the end of the Darfur genocide, because the Darfur genocide never ended. Because Zamzam camp was one of the last frontiers protecting El Fasher, one of the last buffers. Protecting El Fasher how? Because like I said, indigenous people and other people from all around the town surrounding El Fasher were becoming displaced in Zamzam. And at some point, people from al-fashir were even being displaced to Zamzam because our food markets created by like indigenous knowledge in terms of farming and such were still active. And it was like the place to get food. Everybody understood that.
Once the siege was there, we were still growing food, tomatoes, and all of the things that we could. So we hope for the international protection and that of course did not come either. And as tens of thousands of people were killed and it made me wonder why it is even though I warned and all of us warned that this was going to be our Srebrenica moment Our families were digging holes and hiding in the holes in their homes because the drones would not leave the sky. The drones would not leave the sky for days.
One of the moments that will never leave my mind is that I saw one of the videos and I recognized, when I say the videos, the videos of the RSF who call themselves the Janjaweed until this day, were proudly sharing all across the world to say, how powerless you are as indigenous people. Look how powerless you are. Look how erasable you are.
And my cousin, Nadeefa, like I saw her face light up the screen and I’ll never forget this. She just looked different. She looked drained and I could see her thobe covering her body and I could see the bullet holes. I could see what was happening and I understood, oh, my cousin’s dead. They killed her. And I saw and heard the soldiers, the RSF soldiers walking around her and they’re yelling at her body, get up if you can, get up if you can. And they taunted, they were taunting people, even, and the berms that trapped us inside became the mass graves for tens of thousands of us, our families, our friends, our neighbors, our fellow volunteers. Yeah. So for me, I’ll never forget that, but it also makes me, it makes me very angry that the Darfur genocide never ended.
Jeremy (32:30)
Yeah. Thank you. First, just thank you for sharing. And I can hear in your voice how painful it is to talk about that. And we’re seeing that now that the RSF has consolidated their control over Darfur. They’re expanding into the court of funds. What are the risks as they do that? And you’ve talked about how some of the community response groups, including the ones that you’ve helped to lead, have worked in al-Fasher, have worked in Darfur. How are those groups coping in the face of these atrocities?
Emi (32:58)
To make it very clear, people think that the Darfur genocide was a, quote, conflict between African tribes who were agricultural and Arab tribes who were nomadic. Already I can dispute that because my indigenous tribes that I’m a part of, even one of them, one of them is both nomadic and agricultural. So it’s not actually possible to say that because we’re African in their eyes that we are agricultural and so the symbiosis between the two peoples didn’t work out. Also, a lot of us in Darfur identify as Afro-Arab, including the Darfuri tribes that are Afro-Arab. So that’s one thing. It’s not like a quote, tribal conflict because of agricultural versus nomadic.
Another example is, this is really important. Another important misconception is that this is a conflict that is cultural. That’s not true at all because it was state sanctioned. It was clearly political. It was funded by Bashir’s regime and the SAF. And they funded and created the Janjaweed and they institutionalized them eventually by creating the RSF to carry out the political goal of Arab supremacy in the region and making Sudan an Arab country based on the lens that the leaders in Khartoum had at that moment. Why is this important? Because our parents’ generation, when they were in school, when they were growing up, when they were living through the aftermath of independence, they were beaten in school if they used their indigenous languages.
So there were institutional things that made it impossible to be indigenous. Why is that? Why is that a thing? Because it was colonization by proxy. Because before in Darfur, being Afro-Arab and being indigenous was not an issue. People coexisted and we had a social fabric and many of us blended together. And Islam and even some Arabization came to Darfur in the early 1400s through the Sultan and through integration and through sharing. It became something that was very accepted and well-loved, which is why I still identify as part Afro-Arab and I identify as indigenous.
So that’s one thing that I want to say that before independence and colonization, Arabization was not weaponized, but after it was used as a weapon to erase.
Jeremy (36:33)
I’m so glad you’ve gotten into some of that because I think that some of those questions of identity and how that relates to the nature of the conflict gets so compressed and so simplified to the point of, as you said, of almost being misleading in a lot of the discourse. And so I think it’s really, it’s such an important corrective in how we understand that backdrop to what’s happening. So I really appreciate you getting into some of that.
One thing I wanted to ask you about as well on the civil society front is I can imagine that that’s got to be a real challenge for civil society cohesion in Sudan when you have that history and now attempting first with the democratic revolution a few years ago and now with the civil society movement that has evolved out of that after the coup and now the war. How does that play into the attempt to build a more cohesive, more powerful and influential civil society movement within Sudan and push back on some of the militarism?
Emi (36:36)
For us, it’s really important to say, you have to understand how race and Arabization and Arab supremacy plays into the current war because that’s why people in Kordofan, in the Blue Nile, in other indigenous areas are being targeted as we speak. In the Nuba mountains, everywhere else. They’re targeted and they’re treated with the same level of violence that we’re treated with in El Fasher and in other parts of Darfur because we are considered erasable. We’re considered something that is counter to the Arab supremacy that gives the RSF the right to destroy and the SAF the right to rule.
So in order for us to address this and to create routes toward democracy, which is what everyone all over Sudan wants, which is why I always say this is not a civil war because civilians did not consent to this war. This is a war against the people. And it is also true because in 2021, the RSF and the SAF, who both have blood on their hands, as Senator Warner said, they cooperated to create a coup and erase the routes to democracy that we young people fought for.
We need to be working together. And what’s hard about being in the struggle for decades and having a lot of people only have recently joined in the past like five, six years, is that you’re waiting for everyone to catch up to what is the only way for us to move forward, which is to work together.
And my dad was one of the original whistleblowers of Darfur genocide in the nineties, before I was even born. I was born in 93. And even before I was born, he was already targeted for blowing the whistle on several mass graves that he found of. Indigenous leaders who he knew personally who were killed. And when they were killed in the early 90s, they were buried and he uncovered the graves and he created these reports that he then shared all over his networks internationally. After telling the government, you need to do something about this. He knew every single one of them personally. And that’s what made him go from a star surgeon to an activist on top of that.
And the nail in the coffin was actually when they brought him the body of the brother of his friend. His name was Ali Fadl. Ali Fadl was amazing. He was an activist who was the head of the doctor’s union at the time. And my dad was woken up at 2 a.m. in the military hospital where he worked because he was a top surgeon. And they used his friend’s body to threaten him. He had clearly been tortured and killed. And they told him, he died of malaria. And my dad said no. And this was the NIS, by the way. And he was like, he said no.
And they said, are you sure? Like they were threatening him and these are the ways that they threaten people. And he said, no. And he stood on business and said, no, he did not die of malaria. He clearly did not die of malaria. So they went and they came back after consulting and they said, we want to bury him. What do you recommend? So that was like, okay, we’re giving you another chance. He said, no, I recommend that you put him on ice until a full pathological report, like a pathology can be done to determine the cause of death. They said, are you sure? And he insisted, yes, I’m sure. So they came back and they said to him, we want you to forge a death certificate and write malaria on there. And he said, I will not. And he said, and I quote, he said, I am not a judge, nor am I a pathologist to forge a death certificate or to write a cause of death report. I’m a surgeon and I will not be doing that and we need to put them on ice.
So then they started threatening him and threatening to call the top leaders at the time. And he said, call them. And it turned into a standoff. And my dad just stayed with his friend’s body and he refused to let them force the certificate or anything. And then when his shift ended, he said, my shift has ended. I’m going to go home. And he went home. And from that day, there was a target on his back.
And that’s how we became refugees. So when I was one, we escaped from Sudan to Yemen. And that’s another long story. But we came to the US on the visa lottery. So my dad was only 30 years old then when he made that decision. This revolution of decades has been in the works by a lot of brave young people who are now our older counterparts.
Jeremy (41:06)
And I think what that really reinforces too is how much going back to the 90s, are brave leaders in civil society who have tried to stand up to this.
Emi (41:16)
And what’s so painful about this is that if you look at civil society, we don’t think this way, we don’t believe this way, but it was the people in power who created these institutions. And it’s very well studied all across Africa and other continents as well after colonization, because we were colonized by the British, by the Ottoman Empire at some point, by the Egyptians, the Anglo-Egyptian thing, all of it. So we were colonized. But if you look at these post-colonial spaces, a lot of times the people in power end up instead of changing, they just end up reinforcing the colonial standards, which was that there’s a center, which is where the colonizer rules. The goal is to get Khartoum, to get the whole country. And if you look at their methods of violence, specialized brutality, if you’re indigenous, that often determines, it’s a determining factor of how brutal your annihilation will be. And if you’re not indigenous, sometimes, only sometimes, you’re given the option of living, sometimes after torture, sometimes after rape, sometimes after unspeakable things. So what I was gonna say is like for us, if you look across every single context of this war, your proximity to blackness or indigeneity is gonna determine how terrible of an experience you have. And your proximity to whiteness is either going to get you some sort of safety or get you killed for suspicion of being part of the RSF. And the worst part for those of us who are freedom fighters for so long is we know that every single death was preventable since 2018 even.
Jeremy (43:05)
Yeah. You talked a moment ago about how this is preventable. And another way of saying that is the policy failure. Like the world failed to act. A lot of what you work on now in some of the areas where we work together is around trying to bring the American public back into this. 20 years ago, there was a lot of attention to this in the United States. There was a lot of political attention to this. Very imperfect. Also sincere.
What do you want to see now out of the U.S. public, out of the U.S. government, and what are some of the things that people listening to this podcast could or should be doing to try and move us in that direction?
Emi (43:43)
Absolutely. I talk about all of our historical lessons to be learned. A lot of people think I just talk about the failures, but it’s not true. I talk about the lessons that need to be learned. And I’ve written a poem literally called Lessons Learned. I talk about this because as somebody who grew up as a survivor of the genocide, my family and I escaped early on, but we went back without my dad in 2000 and 2005 at the height of the genocide.
In 2013, when I was in Sudan, that was actually when the RSF was created by the SAF. All throughout this time, Darfur was suffering in silence, but not in inactivity. We were on the ground from day one. We were on the ground before the world’s eyes were on us. And we were on the ground after the world’s eyes turned away. And we’re still on the ground now and never stopped. So the Darfur IDP, IDP Humanitarian Network. So our network has started in the early 2000s.
There are millions of people on the border in Chad that we’ve been taking care of, and also people all over Sudan, and especially in Darfur. And we built up all of the major IDP camps in Darfur, and we had clinics and mobile societies and such. And so we were there. It was very funny because we were talking to one of our international counterparts. said, wait, are you guys an Emergency Response Room? We said, yeah, we predate the Emergency Response Rooms, but we’ve been around for decades and this is an indigenous network, which is actually what now as a founder of several Darfur ERRs.
What’s so powerful about it is that idea of mutual aid in Sudan. It’s an indigenous idea and it’s the idea that we as Sudanese people have to help each other and it’s how we survive the famines in the 80s, how our grandparents survived the famines. It’s how we beat the British during independence. It’s how a lot of things happen.
But what happened after was not a failure in character of Sudanese people. It was a failure in leadership and a failure in policy internationally. That’s why it’s important for Americans to understand, yes, the human aspect is painful. Yes, realizing that the world has been silent while we’ve continued to be killed through genocide is the reality. That’s why I think a lot of people call it a new genocide or a different genocide or the first genocide, but it’s not, it’s just the same genocide, it just never ended. And we kept raising the alarm and kept talking about it.
But now that the world is awake, we can prevent more deaths because there are still a lot of people who are missing and murdered. There are still people who are our own volunteers arrested in El Fasher. There are still people being killed every day. There are still weapons pouring in from different countries. There are still so many things that the U.S. can do, that Americans can do.
And as an American, I know that if we as civilians don’t say that this matters to us, our leaders won’t really think that it matters to them. And that’s a painful reality. Yes, some of our leaders do care, but the reality is that if Americans don’t speak up and say that we don’t want to be allies with countries that say it’s okay for one-year-olds to be raped, for women and children to be tortured and killed.For people in general to be tortured, killed, starved, you name it, just for the color of their skin, whether they’re considered black or white in Sudan.
Something practical that people can do because I, even as I sit here talking, I sit here with hope. I sit here with hope that this war won’t continue for another 20 years like the Darfur genocide has, that people will understand and listen and hear us and describe what’s happening in our words and in our lens of reality and not in the rigid lenses of people trying to parse through something without understanding the context. Something practical is that indigenous groups like the Darfur IDP, so the DarfurIDP.org, so the Internally Displaced Persons Network. So IDP Humanitarian Network or DarfurIDP.org, one of the things that we’ve been doing forever is that we create mobile clinics, mobile kitchens, and mobile societies in general. When we were able to stabilize the IDP camps, had education as an aspect of our care and so much else, and we would build shelters and such. The resources that are available to us are not enough to cover everyone that needs help, but the places that we reach are further and deeper than even the international and national NGOs reach because for us, we have been covering that last mile for a very long time.
I know that I can tell you that if you were to fundraise and donate today, we get that on the ground in a week and it immediately goes to the people and the need itself is produced by the people on the ground and we don’t take any salaries. We don’t take any salaries, we’re all volunteers. Even as a co-president, I don’t take a salary for this. So I would say if you were to one, donate, you’d make a big difference. Two, educate and learn, three, actually talk to us, hear what indigenous people are saying and spread, spread that knowledge. Don’t say non-Arab, don’t say African groups or things like that. And don’t say the first genocide and the new genocide, say the Darfur genocide, because it never ended. And don’t call it a civil war. Understand that this is a very long war and it is the continuation of the Darfur genocide, but it has affected our entire country. And understand that we civilians, we just want to be free. We want to live. We want to go to school. We want to be healthy. We want to eat.
Jeremy (49:31)
I mean, thanks so much for that. And we will put links to a few of those groups in the show notes for our listeners to follow up. And if you want to take action on some of the arms shipments that Emi talked about, you can go to the Refugees International website. We have actions you can take to call on your members of Congress and others to stop those arms shipments. I mean, thanks so much for joining us today. It was so powerful and such a privilege to hear from you.
Emi (49:58)
Yeah, thank you so much. I’ll leave you with one final note, which is something that we say in Darfur. And I think that this is a message for Sudanese people and for American people and anyone who’s listening. We always say Darfur baledna wa Sudan watana, which means that Darfur is our home and Sudan is our nation. So understand that for us, when we talk about our identities, we’re not asking for difference. We’re asking to be seen, and we’re asking for people to recognize and love and embrace the full and vibrant diverse identity of what it means to be Sudanese.
Sudan means land of the blacks. But even from the beginning, we always welcomed everyone. And that’s why for me, I think it’s really important for people to know that this is a call for us to be seen and to rejoice and to join together and to not make the mistakes our leaders made. Say Darfur, and say, Free Sudan.
Jeremy (50:58)
Wonderful. Thank you so much, Emi.
Emi (50:59)
Thank you.
Jeremy (51:05)
We covered a lot of ground today and it may leave you wondering what you can do.
If you go to our website at refugeesinternational.org, we have a list of actions that you can take. First, as Representative Jacobs mentioned, she is sponsoring the Stand Up for Sudan Act which would suspend U.S. arm sales to the UAE until they halt their support for the RSF. On our site you can call on your own member of congress to lend their support to that bill.
Second, the NBA has a longstanding partnership with the UAE and the UAE even sponsors an in season tournament every year. We are calling on the NBA to suspend that partnership until the UAE stops supporting the RSF, and you can add your voice to that chorus at our website or at speakoutonsudan.org.
And finally, as Emi mentioned, you can support her organization’s work at darfuridp.org.
Jeremy (52:08)
So a few things we’re tracking this week beyond the war in Sudan. The first is reports in the media that the U.S. government is considering sending Afghan refugees who are currently being held on a U.S. military base in Qatar while awaiting what they thought would be resettlement to the United States, instead to the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is part of the system of really egregious third country deportation agreements that we talked about during the news roundup last week.
To underscore just how cruel and how absurd this is, I want to read an excerpt that the Afghans being held at that base wrote in an open letter to the world.
“The United States brought us to this place. The United States vetted us.The United States told us we were coming to America. We’re not told where we are going. We are not told when we are going. We are not told what has been decided about our cases. Our children ask us every week where we are going. We do not know what to tell them.
And now we are being told through the press that our next stop may be the Democratic Republic of Congo. We will say this plainly. We do not want to go to the Democratic Republic of Congo. We have no family there. We have no language there. We have no legal status there. It is a country in its own war. We have been in enough war. We cannot take our children into another one. We also cannot return to Afghanistan. We are asking the United States to keep the promise it made to us.”
Another major story that we’re watching and one that hasn’t gotten enough global attention is the possibility of a return to war in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. There was a very severe war there from 2020 to 2022 that is estimated to have killed around 600,000 people, just a staggering figure. And it was brought to an end in 22 through a fragile ceasefire in the what’s called the Pretoria Agreement. That is now very tenuous and at risk of collapse. A couple of my colleagues here at Refugees International wrote an op-ed about this for Just Security back in February about the risks and what was at stake if war resumes in Tigray. We’re going to drop the link to that in the show notes. And that is a really important thing to watch over the coming few months.
And finally, I want to close us out with a tribute to someone really important in the history of Refugees International, our former president, Lionel Rosenblatt, who sadly passed away just a couple of weeks ago. Lionel was a lifelong advocate for refugees dating back to his time as a young State Department official when he famously and somewhat infamously slipped unofficially into Saigon during the final days of the Vietnam War. And in defiance of the U.S. ambassador and the U.S. embassy, he worked to facilitate the evacuations of hundreds of local Vietnamese embassy staff before the city fell in 1975.
It was classic Lionel. He believed deeply in doing the right thing, even when it was unorthodox. As president of R.I. throughout the 1990s, he famously helped to sneak Richard Holbrooke into Sarajevo as it stood under siege using a fake ID badge that he made on the spot. And that trip in turn led to Holbrooke becoming special envoy and later brokering the Dayton Peace Accords to end that war.
You can find a memorial page honoring his legacy on our website and his obituaries in the New York Times and the Washington Post. We’ll drop the links to those in the show notes. Lionel was an absolute giant of refugee advocacy, hugely important to our history and our trajectory here at Refugees International, and he will be greatly missed.
Thanks so much for joining us this week and we’ll see you next time.
Thanks so much for joining us today. Don’t forget to subscribe to Forced From Home on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed the episode, consider donating to support our work at refugeesinternational.org or the link in our show notes. For more, follow Refugees International on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. And stay tuned for more Forced From Home episodes coming soon.