The war in Sudan has so far been marked by a lot of incompetency and mismanagement by government forces (the SAF). After months of bitter fighting, in late 2023, the opposing Rapid Support Forces suddenly expanded their control towards the southeast of Khartoum after not a lot of resistance, most notably taking the city of Wad Madani. This led the SAF supporters and officials to panic and point fingers at each other about what the hell the army is even doing, while RSF soldiers looted the city.

These victories led to a short period in late December and early January where diplomacy and peace talks were considered, but such attempts fell apart. The leader of the RSF visited various African countries, including meeting Paul Kagame in Rwanda, to boost his legitimacy. Then, the RSF attacked into South Kordofan and consolidated their hold on other areas.

The Sudanese capital of Khartoum sits on a river which divides it from the city to its west, Omdurman (see the post image). The SAF and RSF have been fighting over this grand urban area for the whole war, with the RSF holding most of Khartoum (with an entirely cut-off SAF force holding on in the center), with a similarly cut-off SAF force also in eastern Omdurman, up against the river. For 10 months, this force has been under siege - but no longer. In perhaps the first actual W of the war for the SAF, they finally managed to break the siege a week ago, pouring supplies in. This leaves a section of the RSF now cut off, though Omdurman is still not under full SAF control (and, who knows, the whole situation could once again go badly for the SAF).

Meanwhile, the Sudanese socioeconomic situation has completely collapsed, with potentially a 20% fall in GDP and 8 million people displaced, with 2 million from Khartoum alone. 18 million Sudanese, or about a third of the population, is in acute hunger, and 20 million children are out in school. The refugees streaming out of the country are causing knock-on effects in neighorboring countries like Chad. Nobody is even really counting the dead anymore.

Red is the government forces, the SAF. Blue is the RSF opposition. Other colours are various factions.


The Country of the Week is Sudan! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.

Sunday’s briefing is here.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.

English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.

English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.

Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.

Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Sources:

Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful. Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.

Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:

Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.

Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:

Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


  • destroyamerica
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    6 months ago

    is “israel” still posturing like they’re going to invade lebanon? feel like I heard about their plans for that awhile ago and nothing has come of it so far

    • Greenleaf [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      6 months ago

      Probably posturing but I’m not ruling out that “israel” wants to start a big war that they would lose by themselves in order to force the US to join with boots on the ground.

      • destroyamerica
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        6 months ago

        they’ve heavily escalated to be sure, but I was somewhat expecting an actual full scale invasion by this point based off them supposedly moving their reservists to the north like I think they did with gaza right before they invaded there.

        • zed_proclaimer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          6 months ago

          Israel’s military is finding out they’re pretty good at doing airstrikes and drone warfare, and they’re pretty damn bad at infantry and armor tactics in urban warfare. They don’t really have an incentive to do a full on invasion of Lebanon. Instead they’ll just keep blowing them up until there’s nothing left and Beirut is like Gaza. Hezbollah needs to respond and it may be Hezbollah that goes on the offensive as they’re sustaining a lot of damage.

          • destroyamerica
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            6 months ago

            hmm. grim shit then. interesting it took them this long to learn

            • zed_proclaimer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              6 months ago

              The entire Gaza invasion was a disaster for Israel politically, militarily. It accomplished none of their stated or actual goals and got hundreds or thousands of Israeli soldiers bagged and most of their tanks disabled. All they did was go around try (and fail) to flood some tunnels, get shot at a bunch, and then retreat. They didn’t rescue any hostages, they didn’t destroy Hamas, they didn’t destroy the tunnel network. They failed at every single thing but they had to do it to look strong and because the entire world was condemning them carpet bombing a civilian city non-stop.

              Next time I think they’ll fix their mistake (and they also are running low on armor). They’ll just stay in the sky. This is why Russia and Iran need to provide Lebanon and Syria a lot more anti-air capabilities.

              • destroyamerica
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                6 months ago

                fair. I figure the gaza invasion was typical fascist hubris, and they have just enough sanity to recognize that they just wont win these land invasions. and yes, hopefully in the nearish future the resistance can finally be given the ability to counter the zionists’ greatest advantage, especially if Ukraine’s collapse continues to accelerate which should hopefully free up Russia somewhat.

                • zed_proclaimer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  6 months ago

                  Russian mercs are going to flood into axis of resistance as soon as Ukraine front collapses fully, it’s already starting in Syria as the first round of troops that have gone on a rotation in Ukraine are rested and fresh and ready to train Syrians, Yemenis, Africans, etc. I’ve seen military telegrams proving this is happening at increasing rates. These will be the best soldiers in the world at drone warfare, electronic warfare, AA, urban tactics, etc. as they just won the first major war of this type. These are the dudes that defeated NATO’s biggest army in Europe.

                  • destroyamerica
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                    6 months ago

                    that’s good, don’t use telegram so i can’t really keep track of that kind of thing so my news on the war mostly comes from mercoursis cause i know that mf won’t ever exaggerate anything with how careful he is to couch everything in 10 layers of “these are unconfirmed reports!” lol. speaking of mercoursis i think a great sign of how the war is going is he’s getting ever closer to saying more dramatic things about the war (like today he was outright hinting he thinks ukraine is in the process of complete defeat imo lol), so I think this corroborates what you’re seeing on telegram

                    (also for you and also anyone else who might stumble across this, can you even watch/listen to him at less than 2x speed? i have to use 3x speed because of how slow he talks lol)