Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Andrew Ross Sorkin, the founder of Dealbook. Every year, I interview some of the world's most influential leaders across politics, culture, and business at the Dealbook Summit, a live event in New York City. On this year's podcast, you'll hear my unfiltered conversations with Gavin Newsom, the CEO of Palantir and Anthropic, and Erica Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk.
Listen to Dealbook Summit wherever you get your podcasts.
Chapter 2: What recent events have reignited global attention on Darfur?
From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily. What we're about to talk about next might be the most undercovered story of human misery on planet Earth. Twenty years ago, a genocidal campaign in the Darfur region of Sudan shocked the world. Now, videos and images of new atrocities have captured global attention once more. About 150,000 people have been killed.
Some 12 million displaced, half of them children.
Chapter 3: How has the conflict in Sudan evolved over the years?
As another bloody conflict has returned to the region.
This week, the people of Al-Fashr, beaten and threatened, fled for their lives from a murderous militia that films itself unleashing ferocious violence.
Today, my colleague Declan Walsh on what has become the worst humanitarian conflict in decades and the precious metal that is fueling it. It's Monday, November 10th. Declan, in recent weeks, there have been many horrific images coming out of Sudan, including what appear to be these very graphic execution videos.
And this is all occurring as part of a civil war that you have been covering since the start. Tell me what has happened in Darfur over the past couple of weeks.
Well, after 18 months of a pretty brutal siege led by this paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces, which had been trying to seize control of this city called al-Fasher. It was the last major urban center in western Sudan that was beyond its control. It finally broke the siege and its troops seized the entire city. They expelled the Sudanese military from it.
And what followed was really days of reports of atrocities against about a quarter million civilians who'd been trapped inside the city. First, we saw these videos start to come out showing bodies piled in buildings, sometimes fighters executing wounded people lying on the ground, often quite casually.
These videos, it must be said, are filmed by the fighters themselves as kind of trophies for the war, which is a pattern we've seen since the start of the Sudan war. And since then, that's been added to by accounts from witnesses, from people who fled the city, from aid groups, and now from open source investigators who are using satellite images
to try and determine what's been happening in El Fasher. And just last week, a new report from one of those groups saying that they had uncovered evidence that 80 people had been killed in one specific incident. Others have found traces, in fact, from satellites of blood on the sands of the area around El Fasher.
This is, of course, coming 20 years after another bloody conflict made Darfur basically a byword for human rights atrocities. Can you talk to us about what is different this time?
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Chapter 4: What atrocities are being reported in El Fasher?
Entire neighborhoods of homes that had been looted, buildings destroyed, and in particular the city center around the presidential palace. The presidential palace had become one of its biggest battlegrounds. At one point we climbed into a sniper's nest beside the Nile River and overlooking that palace and it was amazing to see how it had been absolutely reduced to rubble by the fighting.
And it wasn't just that, the entire city centre, many tall buildings were also pocked with bullet marks and had been turned into fighting positions. It was really incredible to see how an entire city could be reduced to rubble by this two years of war. Largely, it must be said, without being seen by the outside world. As the Sudanese military pushed into new areas, we followed them.
and often came across residents who were emerging from their homes, kind of stunned. We talked to this one man who'd seen his neighbor get gunned down by RSF fighters.
And others brought these stories about abuse, about starvation, about people being killed.
At one point, we found ourselves at a well that contained maybe a dozen bodies. And we were told that these were people who had been killed by fighters at a nearby checkpoint and dumped there.
What was it like to report in that kind of environment? And what kind of clues could you find to answer your question about what is funding and fueling all of this destruction?
Well, as we went through the city, we found ourselves in the abandoned villas of some of the RSF leaders. In one of them in particular, there were fighters lounging outside this empty swimming pool. The house had an internal elevator, you know, sort of markings of wealth that were such a contrast with the scenes we were seeing outside.
And so as we walked through this house, I also found this sheaf of papers that evidently had been abandoned by the Orsath leaders as they left. And when we examined them more closely, they turned out to be corporate documents related to gold mines run by the same armed group in the south of the country. And this was a really important clue into what was funding a lot of the fighting.
We already knew that Sudan had a huge gold industry going back many years, but it was very difficult to get a sense of just how important it had become to these groups that were fighting for control and how much it was fueling the fight itself. And here was this clue that really set us further along this track of trying to uncover what's really driving this destructive war in Sudan.
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Chapter 5: What distinguishes the current conflict from the previous genocide in Darfur?
So far, the U.S. has been deeply invested in ending the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. But we have heard next to nothing about anything that the U.S. intends to do vis-a-vis Sudan. What has the Trump administration said publicly about this?
Well, if I can pedal back just briefly to the previous administration, the Biden administration, there has certainly been a lot of U.S. concern among some officials, at least about what's going on in Sudan. The Biden administration recognized that the Emirates was a major factor in fueling the war and privately put pressure on the Emirates to try and stop that to little effect.
The Trump administration initially didn't seem to be very concerned with Sudan. But as things have gotten worse in recent months, particularly as the siege of the city al-Fasher we talked about earlier intensified, the Trump administration has suddenly become much more engaged in Sudan. Since September, we've seen the U.S. bring together this diplomatic grouping, which it calls the Quad,
And that is diplomats from the US, from Saudi Arabia, from the United Arab Emirates and from Egypt. And they say that they are working towards a ceasefire in the country. It didn't lead to much initially, but at least provides a sort of framework for what it hopes could at least stop the fighting and the war for the first time in over two and a half years.
But given how much money is flowing into the UAE in the form of gold from Sudan and the fact that they won't even acknowledge that they have a role in the conflict, what incentive would the UAE have in trying to solve this?
Well, this is part of the problem. I mean, critics of this diplomatic initiative say, here's the U.S. trying to bring peace to Sudan, but doing it through these talks with countries that are fueling either side in the war, particularly the UAE. And in fact, even when the UAE signed an agreement as part of the Quad in September 2017, denouncing foreign funding in the war.
It was continuing to support the RSF and didn't seem to do anything to stop the terrible scenes that we've seen in al-Fasher just over the last couple of weeks. So it's really a very uncertain effort, but it has to be said that as these images have been coming out of Sudan showing these atrocities, It is generating outrage and attention around the world.
And in fact, I've even heard recently from very senior American officials that President Trump himself hasn't spoken much about Sudan, but has privately told officials how appalled he was at some of the things he's been seeing and asking what the United States can do at this stage to try and stop it.
This war in Sudan started in 2023, and it has gotten so much less attention than the war in Gaza, which also started at the end of 2023. And we may now be talking about Sudan because there is a ceasefire, a fragile ceasefire, but a ceasefire nonetheless in Gaza. And I wonder whether these two things are related, that there is now room and space and attention to devote to this conflict in Sudan.
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