Rahmane Idrissa

Este archivo solo abarca los artículos del autor incorporados a este sitio a partir del 1 de diciembre de 2006. Para fechas anteriores realice una búsqueda entrecomillando su nombre.

Abdul Fattah al-Burhan, now the head of Sudan’s military government, and Mohammed Hamdan Daglo “Hemetti,” the chairman of the Rapid Security Forces (RSF), attending a graduation ceremony for Sudan's special forces, Khartoum, 2021. Mahmoud Hjaj/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

In June 2019, shortly after directing the massacre of a sit-in outside the army’s headquarters in the Sudanese capital, Mohammed Hamdan Daglo “Hemetti”—the commander of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a mercenary army of over 100,000 men—warned that “Khartoum could become Kutum”. He was referring to a much fought-over little town in North Darfur that Le Monde reported was once “emptied of its inhabitants” by his militiamen. “People will abandon the high houses, only the cats will remain”.

Today Hemetti is fulfilling his threat. Since fighting broke out between Sudan’s army and the RSF in April, Khartoum, a city with a population of close to nine million in its metropolitan area, has been abandoned by well over a million people—including most of the wealthy bourgeois families of the old city, whose comfortable “high houses”, when not reduced to ashes, have been stormed by the tens of thousands of looting young adventurers Hemetti has recruited from the lumpenproletariat of Darfur and the rural areas of Chad, the Central African Republic, Niger, and Mali.…  Seguir leyendo »

Protesters at a demonstration organized by the pan-Africanist platform Yerewolo to celebrate France’s announcement to withdraw French troops from Mali, Bamako, February 19, 2022

In an April communiqué dressed up as an interview with Jeune Afrique, the Francophone African weekly of record, Victoria Nuland, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, assured the paper’s readers that there is no “new cold war” underway in today’s world. There is only the imperative to defend “our system which favors freedom, which defends the self-determination of states, their independence, their sovereignty in opposition to authoritarian regimes, whether in Russia, in China, in Iran or in North Korea.” Nuland did not clarify who the possessive “our” refers to, but most Jeune Afrique readers would think she meant the West.…  Seguir leyendo »

John Nacion/NurPhoto via Getty Images. A medical worker crossing the street against the backdrop of a “thank you” sign behind near Elmhurst Hospital Center, Queens, New York City, March 27, 2020

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK—A roving, low-wattage panic prevails on the streets of central Brooklyn. There are the scrupulous citizens who solemnly keep their distance, the flouters who dance with death like the calaveras of Mexico, and those who live in perpetual crisis and don’t believe that the virus has presented them with more to lose.

At my local liquor store, the bulletproof glass, behind which an elderly Taiwanese couple toils, is now more of a germ barrier than a protection against robbery. The perennial loiterers thoughtfully try to suppress their perennial coughs, as I join them on line to await our bottles of potable disinfectant, theirs a mini shooter, mine a relatively luxurious quart of whiskey.…  Seguir leyendo »