Interview with Ismail Adam, who grew up and was initially educated in El-Fasher, Darfur, Sudan before studying science at Khartoum University in Sudan's capital.
AllAfrica:
Tell me about yourself.
Adam:
I'm Ismail Adam from Sudan. I was born and raised in El-Fasher, and I went to Khartoum University (in Sudan's capital) [studying] science. I've been a human rights activist since high school. I've also been a trade unionist, and I've done a lot of advocacy work for Sudan, especially after the genocide that has taken place in the early 2000s, from 2003 to 2006. I've been working with different organizations and grassroots groups in the arena of bringing to light what is happening in Sudan. I have done multiple interviews: newspapers, TV, just to shed light on Darfur. Currently I reside in the area of Toronto, Canada and am married with four kids and work in the financial industry.
AllAfrica:
Do you still have family in Darfur? I know most communications have been disrupted as massacres have mounted.
Adam:
The last person directly related to me, my cousin, was killed about a month ago. The rest of my direct family managed to flee to neighboring areas. Some of them ended up crossing the border to Libya. It is really catastrophic. It's a dire situation. A lot of people have been trapped inside.
AllAfrica:
International organizations providing food aid say they have received only about 10% of the needed rations of food for Sudan and for the refugee, camps, and even that can't reach starving people inside the country. Is any food getting in now, through the humanitarian ceasefire that was recently declared?
If you get away with genocide, you'll do it again.
Adam:
All I know is that in the past 18 months, nothing has entered, and people ran out of food. All the organizations that used to work in the area have halted their operations, because there's no safety. The RSF [Rapid Support Forces] attacked the maternity hospital, killing more than 500 people, including staff and patients. People are dying by bullets, they're dying by diseases, by starvation, by famine. The perpetrators got away with crimes against humanity, the genocide [twenty years ago], and they're repeating that again, because nobody brought them to justice. That added oil to the fire.
AllAfrica:
The crisis has recently received more media attention, but it still doesn't produce daily headlines. What's your theory about why the earlier Darfur genocide was much more widely covered by news organizations than what's been happening in the last year or more.
Media are culpable.
Adam:
Attention has shifted elsewhere. There are Ukraine, Gaza, other problems. So media have focused on these areas, and Sudan is almost off the radar of the international community, of the media. Without media coverage, without international engagement, all these atrocities will continue. When I talk about Darfur, the killings, the attacks on the IDP (internally displaced people) camps never stopped. The rape has never stopped. It's been ongoing.
One thing that I may add is that, after the conflict in Darfur, the earlier conflict, up to this recent war, there's still about two million people living in IDP camps, and they cannot return to the areas that they used to live. And one of the problems people don't know, villages and towns have been completely demolished.
The RSF recruited fighters – often informally – people from the neighboring countries that share Arabic ethnic lineage, such as from Chad, Niger and Mali. They are new inhabitants to some areas in Darfur, too. The international community has done nothing to help [displaced] people settle back and have peace and stability in places that used to be called homes. This is ongoing for extended period of time. Ethnic Cleansing in West Darfur – Human Rights Watch Report May 2024
AllAfrica:
Longtime authoritarian ruler Omar al-Bachir had been indicted by the International Criminal Court for his role in genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Link: When the pro-democracy revolution succeeded in forcing him out in 2019 and a civilian-military government was formed, did you feel hopeful, even though his army was still in place?
Adam:
Well, a cautious kind of hope. The youth led the revolution, which nobody believed was going to happen. They called it 'resistance committees'. In all neighborhoods, they had people organized, very tightly organized, without being infiltrated by the security apparatus or security forces. They managed to organize mass protests, and that's what toppled the regime.
But the regime, they're very savvy. They were always planning to take over. A person that knows Sudan's Islamists knows it is not a small organization. The Muslim Brothers that were in power in Sudan for 30 years have the Muslim Brotherhood globally supporting them. [https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/countries/sudan/removal-of-president-omar-al-bashir ] The military is in cahoots with this, so they will not let go.
They started infiltrating even the youth, planting a seed of discord among the civilians. Also they targeted the activists, all the youth leading the resistance committees, the leaders get killed, basically.
One of the things that the transition government wanted to do was to dismantle 30 years of corrupt rule. They know that if this is dismantled, they will lose all the accumulated wealth, all the privileges. If they lose their grip on the country, control will start to slip from their hand. The [transition government's] agenda, the series of plans that they had, was not going to happen overnight, of course. They started from the economy, reforming a lot of institutions, the infrastructure that has been damaged, to be rebuilt. Yes, I was cautiously optimistic that is going to go all the way.
AllAfrica:
Did you and your colleagues, human rights activists, young people, feel betrayed by the international community when negotiations were held by successive U.S. administrations, but civil society was never included?
Adam:
Yeah, that's a huge thing. [Negotiators] tried to work with IGAD [Intergovernmental Authority on Development in Eastern Africa]; they tried to work with the African Union. And one of the things I want to highlight here is that these organizations, the regional framework that they put in place, is compromised because they are corrupt themselves. They're not coming from democratic states. To broker something like this, it is not something that I think is going to fly, unless the international community, [including] the United States and Canada, take the lead in this process.
This process excludes the civil society. In the history of Sierra Leone and the peace process in Rwanda, for example, the civil society was a big part of it. If civil society in Sudan, if they get excluded, there is no lasting peace. It is vital for civil society to be engaged, because they are the people. It is for them. They need to take the country back.
AllAfrica:
What else could be done?
Adam:
A fact-finding team
A priority for us, for the community, is sending a fact-finding team. Atrocities in the past, like mass graves, disappeared in the desert. El-Fasher is a desert. If you go to the outskirts of the city, you will be beaten by sand. The sand is creeping so fast, evidence can be buried very quickly. Time is of an essence. They [the RSF] have very good experience on how to hide the evidence. In [the last genocide], people like George Clooney, having access to satellites, could document whole areas. I think if something like that can happen now as fast as possible, that will be a great thing.
[Editor: The Yale School of Public Health Humanitarian Research Lab has begun to gather and document such evidence.
Other tools and mechanisms include pressure on countries fueling this war, like UAE [United Arab Emirates]. The RSF are funded, armed and provided with communication tools by the UAE, and they have a vested interest in the RSF taking control. They have heavily invested in agriculture. They heavily invested in gold.
Conflict Gold
Stop the stealing of gold and other minerals
We call this 'conflict gold', just like blood diamond. This is corporate gold, because Sudan is the third largest gold producer in in Africa, and I think the 12th in the world. [Gold is mined and exported by both the army and the RSF.] This massive amount of gold there, most of this gold, goes to the Dubai market. Saudi Arabia is involved in different capacities. Egypt is involved. Almost a dozen countries are involved. If global organizations work with the OECD to regulate the gold trade, I believe it could be a deterrent.
It's a war about resources, not only gold. We have a lot of minerals and elements that the world needs, including copper, iron ore and rare earths. [SEE Gold and the war in Sudan - Chatham House Research Paper
Media needs to report the atrocities, rapes and human rights violations.
We need immediate action to stop the massacres and human rights violations. The rape of women and girls, and also of young boys, is a tool of war. There's no media there, so they have free hand to do whatever they want. We need immediate unfettered access to humanitarian aid. Because, as we speak, people are still dying of starvation and famine.
Only coercive diplomacy can block the heavy weaponry that prolongs the conflict.
Stop the arms shipments
Stop fueling the war; stop providing arms. Through diplomacy and maybe coercion, the international community needs to stop the arms.
[Editor: Before it was dismantled by the current U.S. administration, the United States Institute of Peace, a 40-year-old independent non-profit organization devoted to peacebuilding, published a history of U.S. use of coercive diplomacy to end conflicts abroad.]
AllAfrica:
We've been constantly amazed at the courage of the young people who were in the streets, when it was still possible to do it across Sudan, setting up soup kitchens, the neighborhood kitchens that were supplying much of the food for much of the population. They were really courageous and are still doing what they can.
Adam:
Yeah, they are. We are working actually close with them. I'm part of the Darfur Diaspora Association. the Vice President. We have partnerships with some organizations here in Canada, also youth and university, basically students and professors. In partnership, we are constantly sending money, raising funds, and sending money to these soup kitchen, communal kitchens, we call them. We never stopped, even now, after decimation of communities and people fleeing to a neighboring town called Tawila.
I know it's not a lot, but we sent them almost $80,000 right away, just to keep these kitchens moving. But we need the international community. We don't have much resources. This will run dry very fast.
AllAfrica:
Are you getting contributions from beyond the Sudanese diaspora?
No. We applied for grants, such as to the Canadian government, that did not materialize yet. That's the only hope.
AllAfrica:
AllAfrica will publish a link for donations to the Mutual Aid Societies of Sudan.
Adam:
That would be great!
AllAfrica:
It's hard to say what it will produce. So many people are so desperate these days, but it's worth putting out there.
Money donated to Sudanese supporters of mutual aid societies outside the country goes directly to the Sudanese Emergency Respoonse Rooms.
Adam:
Our Darfur Diaspora Association is a registered charity, tax receipts will be issued. You'll be surprised that $1 will make a difference, because $1 can feed a child a day, or maybe a child and his mom or his family. Anything will help. Anything will make a difference. And, as I said, civil society has to be in the middle. Without civil society, no lasting peace will happen.
[Editor: New York Times columinist Nick Kristof has made an agreement with U.S. organizations that will match donations to the Mutual Aid Sudan Coaltion, potentially multiplying donations in the millions.
AllAfrica:
Thank you for spending this time talking with us.
Adam:
Thank you for the opportunity and the time AllAfrica took to hear our voice. I really appreciate this call and any effort that people put to shed light on the tragedy in Darfur. It is very, very much appreciated, because it will make a difference. When good people do good things, good things will definitely happen.
Ismail Adam is a financial services advisor and a senior executive executive officer of the Darfur Association of Canada. He lives near Toronto.
