KHARTOUM: As Samir Gasim reels off the problems facing his Khartoum confectionery and packaging factories, already running well below capacity, the power cuts and generators kick in.
Now he fears the plants may close entirely due to a sudden, eightfold hike in industrial diesel prices imposed by a government desperately short of foreign currency and facing the biggest popular protests since President Omar Al-Bashir came to power 30 years ago.
“We are in favor of eliminating subsidies, but gradually, over five years. Not overnight,” said Gasim, seated in his spartan factory office. “Otherwise it will be a disaster.”
Sudan’s worsening economic crisis has caused fuel, cash and bread shortages that in turn set off a wave of unrest that has surged across the country over the past two months.
The economic slide has also alienated the professional classes, who blame Bashir and the ruling National Congress Party for their troubles, according to businessmen, activists and academics. That has undermined Bashir’s authority and encouraged a protest movement that has persisted despite a security crackdown in which dozens have died.
The Sudanese Professionals’ Association (SPA), which has posted calls for protests on social media and organized strikes, draws in doctors, teachers and lawyers and others complaining of decades of economic mismanagement and isolation.
Founded in 2015, it was planning to submit a request to parliament to raise the base level from which monthly public sector salaries are calculated of 650 Sudanese pounds — now worth just $13.60 at the official exchange rate — on Dec. 25, six days after protests began to escalate.
“We decided to raise the ceiling of our demands from the improvement of wages and the working environment and the right to form professional unions, to demanding the end of the regime,” said Mohamed Yousef, an SPA spokesman and economics professor at Khartoum University.
“There was a big response to us because there is an economic crisis and failure of government, and fuel, bread and liquidity crises.”
Infiltrators
Officials have blamed the unrest on unnamed infiltrators and on Sudan’s international isolation, saying they are taking steps to address the economic turmoil. Bankers say US sanctions, though reduced, have choked the economy.
Bashir, subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes in Darfur and hoping for a financial lifeline from the International Monetary Fund, has tried to be measured in his response to burnish his international image, diplomats say. He has tempered warnings to protesters with expressions of sympathy for their plight.
But protests in Khartoum and other cities have continued almost daily, with demonstrators calling for an end to what they see as Bashir’s kleptocratic and incompetent rule. Popular chants include “Down, that’s it!” and “Peaceful, peaceful against the thieves.”
In a country where more than half the population of 42 million are under the age of 19, many of the protesters are young men and women struggling to find jobs that could pay them a living wage. Unemployment rose from 12 percent in 2011 to around 20 percent in recent years, with youth unemployment at more than 27 percent, according to IMF and World Bank estimates.
Businessmen say an unskilled factory worker in Khartoum earns from 1,000 to 1,500 pounds ($18 to $27) a month and a skilled worker may make double that, barely enough for a family to survive.
Some families in the capital have pulled their children out of school over the last year or are serving them fewer and less nutritious meals, making them more susceptible to disease, according to a government presentation to social workers last month in Khartoum.
The economic crisis has hit salaried staff, young people and the unemployed particularly hard. Families have had to sell scarce belongings and crime has risen, the presentation said.
Since the protests began the government has been spending even more money on largely imported, subsidised products including bread and fuel. But it has all but run out of the foreign currency it needs to pay for them, causing widespread shortages.
Debts
Sudan already has foreign debts of more than $50 billion, and has been struggling to attract new external financing. By the end of 2018, inflation was running at more than 70 percent. It then dipped to 43 percent, according to official figures, though one US-based economist put it at nearly double that.
Authorities will likely continue to expand the money supply, exacerbating inflation, bankers and economists say.
It was a short-lived attempt to increase the price of bread to ease a shortage that sparked the current unrest. Raising the price of diesel for industry but not other consumers will cause yet more problems, warned Abbas Ali Elsayed, Secretary General of the Sudanese Chambers of Industry.
“This will lead to lots of corruption. People will start selling to factories on the black market. It will affect the competitiveness of factories,” he said.
Higher diesel prices will spread rapidly through the economy as the cost of running farm machinery, transport and industry surges, analysts say. They also risk crushing Sudan’s struggling manufacturers.
Factory owner Gasim had been investing to add chocolate bars and potato chips to the foodstuffs already produced in one of his plants. Diesel shortages, power failures and falling demand from consumers who can’t afford his products mean he has slashed output and shed workers instead.
Late last month, his suppliers told him the government had increased the diesel price for industry to 222 Sudanese pounds per imperial gallon from 28 pounds.
“We will have to close the factory completely if the price doesn’t go back down,” he said.
The 240 people he employs at the factory and a nearby cardboard packaging plant, and more than 100 seasonal staff, could be out of work.
Some older Sudanese remember different times before Bashir came to power in a coup in 1989.
Sudan’s major cities had 65 cinemas, many privately run, before Islamist governments under Bashir with a “hostile” attitude to the arts shut them all down, says film director Suleiman Ahmed Ibrahim.
“This is a part of modern life that young people in Sudan have lost, and could be one of the reasons they complain about the political system,” he said.
At universities, quality has fallen and many academics have gone overseas, while an emphasis on Islamic education has led to “the neglect of mathematics, science and arts,” said Ali Mohamed Othman, a 69-year-old professor at the Sudan University of Science and Technology.
University staff, like other members of the middle class, used to be able to get by on part of their salary. Now it only lasts a few days every month.
Sudan’s economic decline provides fuel for anger against Bashir
Sudan’s economic decline provides fuel for anger against Bashir
- The recent fuel, cash and bread shortages fueled recent protests in Sudan
- Protestors blame President Bashir and the ruling National Congress Party for the economic crisis
Jordan’s Queen Rania highlights effects of war in Gaza on the world
- She tells Milken Institute Global Conference 2024 in Los Angeles the conflict has ‘divided people along new battle lines’ and fueled a growing sense polarization among peoples
- ‘The only way we can achieve security in our part of the world is through a negotiated peace, where Palestinians have not a promise of statehood, but actual statehood,’ she says
LONDON: Jordan’s Queen Rania on Tuesday discussed the global effects of Israel’s war on Gaza and called for a just solution to the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Speaking during a session at the Milken Institute Global Conference 2024 in Los Angeles on Monday, she said the war has “exposed old fractures” and “divided people along new battle lines,” which has contributed to a growing global polarization.
“Polarization leads to binary thinking; it makes us think of our world as us versus them, left versus right, East versus West,” she added. “And even though that might give us a false sense of security that we belong in a certain camp, it actually inadvertently really puts constraints on us because it kind of limits the way we think, what we should do, what we should say and, more importantly, it makes us look at everybody outside our camp as the rival, as the enemy.
“Peace cannot be achieved through violence … it has to be achieved through negotiations, political process, evenhandedness and commitment (and) the only way that we can achieve security in our part of the world is through a negotiated peace, where Palestinians have not a promise of statehood, but actual statehood.
“It all comes back down to an illegal occupation. You want safety and security, we need to end the occupation, because you cannot have a safe and secure Israel while there is a grave injustice on their border.”
Queen Rania highlighted the divisions and sense of “selective empathy” that exist in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and said people increasingly feel forced to choose sides, causing the “middle ground to shrink year after year.”
She told delegates: “When it comes to the Palestinians, I think they’ve been pushed to the periphery, where their suffering has become almost unnoticed, and where they become almost a people unto whom anything can happen without consequence.
“That’s why it’s important for us to actually find that middle ground. People should put people first. What Palestinians want is not sympathy or special treatment; they just want the impartial application of the law.”
Queen Rania also spoke about the number of civilian deaths during the war in Gaza, which began after the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas on Israel, and noted that it has claimed the lives of more doctors, aid workers and journalists than any other conflict, as well as 14,500 children.
Regardless of whether Israel’s actions during the conflict can officially be categorized as genocide or not, many people are dying and the very fact that people are even discussing whether such a designation is justified was “shocking” enough in itself, she said.
The world expressed its collective anger over the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, she added, so why, she asked, do the mass deaths in Gaza not warrant the same response?
“You have to give human life equal value and you have to place equal condemnation on human rights violations,” said the queen. “You cannot have credibility without moral consistency.”
The US has a very important role to play in the war because it is the single most powerful country in terms of its leverage on Israel, she said, and so much depends on how willing Washington is to use its “political capital” to hold Israeli authorities accountable for their actions.
“The starting point needs to be a legal framework that is recognized by the international community, and then a commitment from the US to hold Israel accountable when it doesn’t stick to the terms, of course,” said Queen Rania.
She added that there is a need for Israelis and Palestinians to “start to heal the wounds and to try to build the trust that has been lost now as a result of years of suffering, and we have a responsibility to try to stand behind a vision that delivers the people there the security and the future they deserve.”
The theme for the 27th annual Milken Institute Global Conference, which began on Sunday and concludes on Wednesday, is “Shaping a Shared Future.” Specific topics of discussion on the agenda include geopolitical hot spots, the climate crisis, and the rise of artificial intelligence.
UN atomic chief urges Iran to take ‘concrete’ steps for cooperation
- Grossi said a March 2023 deal with Iran was “still valid” but required more “substance”
ISFAHAN: UN atomic watchdog chief Rafael Grossi, visiting Iran on Tuesday, urged the country to adopt “concrete” measures to bolster cooperation on its nuclear program and address the international community’s concerns.
At a news conference in the city of Isfahan, Grossi said he had proposed in talks with Iranian officials that they “focus on the very concrete, very practical and tangible measures that can be implemented in order to accelerate” cooperation.
The International Atomic Energy Agency director-general held talks with senior Iranian officials including Atomic Energy Organization’s head Mohammad Eslami.
Grossi insisted on the need to “settle differences” on the nuclear issue while the Middle East was going through “difficult times,” particularly with the war between Israel and the Iran-backed Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
“Sometimes, political conditions pose obstacles to full-fledged cooperation” between Iran and the international community, he said.
To overcome these obstacles, he said, “we need to come up with concrete steps that are going to be helpful in bringing us closer to these solutions that we all need.”
Grossi said a March 2023 deal with Iran was “still valid” but required more “substance.”
The agreement was reached during Grossi’s last visit to Iran and outlined basic cooperation measures including on safeguards and monitoring. The IAEA chief said, however, that there had been a “slowdown” in the agreement’s implementation including the number of inspections being reduced and the accreditation of a group of IAEA experts being withdrawn by Iran.
Iran suspended its compliance with caps on nuclear activities set by a landmark 2015 deal with major powers a year after the US in 2018 unilaterally withdrew from the agreement and reimposed sweeping sanctions.
“We have this legal right to reduce our commitments when the other parties do not adhere to their obligations,” Eslami said during the joint news conference.
Tensions between Iran and the IAEA have repeatedly flared since the deal fell apart, and EU-mediated efforts have so far failed both to bring Washington back on board and to get Tehran to again comply with the terms of the accord.
The agency has in recent months criticized Iran for a lack of cooperation on issues including the expansion of its nuclear work, the barring of inspectors and deactivating the agency’s monitoring devices at its nuclear facilities.
Why Israel’s military operation in Rafah will lead to ‘inevitable catastrophe’ in Gaza
- Israel has seized control of the Rafah border crossing and ordered 100,000 Palestinians to “evacuate immediately”
- Full-scale assault on Rafah would intensify humanitarian emergency throughout Gaza, aid agencies warn
LONDON: Palestinians in Gaza’s southern governorate of Rafah face a desperate situation as the Israeli military proceeds with its long-planned assault on the area, capturing the Gaza side of the border crossing with Egypt and ordering displaced families to move yet again.
The Israeli army announced on Tuesday morning that its 401st Brigade had taken “operational control” of the Rafah border crossing after advancing into the eastern part during the night as part of its mission to dislodge Hamas.
Earlier on Monday, Israel ordered some 100,000 Palestinians in eastern Rafah to “evacuate immediately” to Al-Mawasi, a coastal town near Khan Younis that humanitarian organizations said was “completely uninhabitable.”
Mercy Corps said Palestinians in eastern Rafah were confronted with two impossible choices: Face death under bombardment or attempt a perilous journey to an unlivable area with no access to essential aid.
Bushra Khalidi, advocacy director for Oxfam in the Palestinian territories, says civilians fleeing Rafah have been left with nowhere to go.
She told Arab News that people in Rafah “are worried of even leaving their homes” because they fear they will not find anywhere in the middle area or in Al-Mawasi.
According to the AFP news agency, more than 74 percent of the infrastructure in Gaza has been destroyed since Oct. 7 when Israel launched its bombing campaign in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.
Al-Mawasi, which Israel had dubbed a “humanitarian zone,” is “already overpopulated and filled with makeshift tents,” said Khalidi. “There is no infrastructure, there (are) no services, and no facilities to host this number of (internally displaced people).”
Moreover, this narrow coastal strip, measuring just 1 km wide and 14 km long, already hosts an estimated 250,000 displaced Gazans, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.
Ahmed Bayram, media adviser for the Norwegian Refugee Council in the Middle East, stressed that “there is not a corner or a street in Gaza where people can go expecting safety.”
He told Arab News: “Al-Mawasi, which is one of the areas Israel has asked people to go to, is full to the very brim. There is no free spot left in that narrow stretch of land, which is not equipped for such high demand.”
According to Mercy Corps, Al-Mawasi is already a sea of makeshift tents, with little in the way of humanitarian relief, electricity, or water.
It also remains unclear whether Palestinians can flee to neighboring countries through the Rafah crossing now that it is under Israeli control, said Ruth James, Oxfam’s regional humanitarian coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa.
She told Arab News: “Many Palestinians in Gaza currently do not have the recognized right to return to their original homes. Given this context, Egypt, or any other state, should be cautious of inadvertently abetting any potential efforts by Israel, or any other party, to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population of Gaza.”
Volker Turk, the UN human rights chief, slammed Israel’s evacuation order as “inhumane,” warning that such an action could amount to a war crime, Reuters reported.
Oxfam’s Khalidi also warned that if a Rafah-wide incursion happens, which is the worst-case scenario, it would “entail mass carnage and a complete bloodbath.”
She explained that this is due to “how small” Rafah is and “because of how congested and overpopulated it is.”
Echoing her colleague’s fears, James said: “It’s hard to imagine the scale of need caused by a Rafah invasion. Simply put, this invasion can’t happen. There must be an immediate and permanent ceasefire.”
She added: “The alternative is an avoidable, massive loss of civilian life.”
Despite repeated public objections, even US President Joe Biden’s appeals against the Rafah offensive have gone unheeded.
According to the Associated Press, Biden urgently warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call on Monday against invading Rafah, stressing it would only lead to more deaths and exacerbate the despair in the embattled enclave.
The Israeli military said its operation in Rafah is designed to eliminate fighters and dismantle infrastructure used by Hamas, according to Reuters.
Israel’s overnight strikes across Rafah killed at least 23 people, including five children, according to local health officials.
Prior to that, Israeli warplanes pounded homes in Rafah, killing at least 27 Palestinians, including two babies, according to Gaza’s health authority.
This is despite Hamas accepting the terms of a Qatari-Egyptian ceasefire proposal on Monday.
Humanitarian organizations concur that the impact of Israel’s operation in Rafah will extend beyond the eastern area, affecting more than 1.4 million people who have been sheltering in the southern governorate — and the entirety of Gaza’s remaining population.
“While the initial ‘evacuation orders’ and operations announced in the east of Rafah are directly impacting 100,000 people, over 1.4 million are sheltering in Rafah, half of which are children, and are at direct risk of any escalated military operations across the area,” Salim Oweis, a spokesperson for UNICEF in Gaza, told Arab News.
“The extended impact will be far-reaching to include all the 2.2 million residents of Gaza.”
Elaborating, Oweis added: “Rafah is the main hub of all humanitarian response, and any impact on the already struggling aid delivery and humanitarian response will hamper the efforts across Gaza.”
Rafah is the last population center in the Gaza Strip after the seven-month Israeli assault obliterated three-quarters of the besieged enclave, killing at least 34,700 Palestinians according to Gaza’s health ministry, and displacing 90 percent of the population of 2.3 million people.
Israel’s evacuation orders in eastern Rafah, coupled with unceasing airstrikes across Gaza’s south, have instilled panic among the war-weary residents, triggering an exodus of thousands of Palestinians who have nowhere to seek refuge.
Describing the situation across the Gaza Strip as “a state of despair, chaos and confusion” as Israel carries out its assault on Rafah, NRC’s Bayram said that “by issuing its orders, Israel has again pushed over 1 million people into the unknown.”
FASTFACTS
• Israel ordered Palestinians to evacuate to Al-Mawasi — deemed ‘completely uninhabitable.’
• Closing Rafah crossing would cut Gaza’s only viable humanitarian lifeline, warn aid chiefs.
• Fears that Rafah-wide incursion would ‘entail mass carnage and a complete bloodbath.’
He added: “Let’s not forget, while the orders cover an area with 100,000 people east of Rafah, the rest of the population in central and western areas will think they are next to be forcibly transferred, and so they will try to get out while they can.”
Tahani Mustafa, a senior Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group, foresees a “horrific” humanitarian situation if the Rafah hostilities do not stop.
“All movement of people and goods has been closed off, at a time where famine is already in the north and was very much on the verge in the south,” she told Arab News.
“There’s been no contingency plan in place, and all foreign aid delegations have been evacuated. If this goes ahead as Israel states, it will be a massacre.”
As Israel has blocked aid through the Rafah border crossing, aid groups are concerned about the impact on much-needed humanitarian assistance across the Gaza Strip. This concern is exacerbated by the suspension of aid deliveries to Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing following a nearby Hamas rocket attack.
Oxfam’s James cautioned that “even one day of closure (of crossing points) means that additional lives are likely to be lost to hunger and illness.”
She called on Israel to “adhere to its obligations under international humanitarian law to ensure civilian populations are provided with the most essential aid in sufficient quantities.”
Khalidi pointed out that aid organizations “are already facing huge obstructions” in delivering aid across Gaza.
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“Often aid is not making it even past Khan Younis,” she said. “And hence the descent to hell, into starvation, that we have seen over the last course of months in the north, but also across the strip.”
Stressing the need to open “all crossings” to meet the immense and deep humanitarian needs in Gaza, Khalidi said: “We’re hearing that maybe other crossings will open, but the problem is that we already had two crossings open, and that was not enough.”
The World Food Programme warned on Saturday that northern Gaza is experiencing a “full-blown famine,” which is “moving its way south.”
Bayram of the NRC also warned that “the entire aid system is at the point of collapse.”
He said: “Closing down the Rafah crossing means cutting off the only viable lifeline currently available for aid workers,” highlighting that the NRC relies on the Rafah crossing to bring in essential aid.
“Fuel is running low already and the existing stocks will not be able to sustain increasing demand,” he added, stressing that “Israel must reverse its plans so we can avoid an inevitable catastrophe.”
UNICEF’s Oweis emphasized that “any interruption to the already limited aid access will have a devastating impact on the humanitarian situation as a whole.”
He added: “With no fuel coming in, all the basic services will be in jeopardy of a total halt, including aid delivery and what’s left of healthcare.
“Not having food entering the strip means that more children will fall into malnutrition and disease, and will be put at heightened risk of death.”
Gaza’s health authority reported on April 25 that since February, at least 28 children, most of them no older than 12 months, had died of malnutrition and dehydration.
Oweis stressed that “the only hope for a way out of a worsening humanitarian catastrophe is simple, and it’s an immediate and long-lasting humanitarian ceasefire.”
He added: “Meanwhile, safe and consistent access for humanitarian organizations and personnel to reach children and their families with lifesaving aid, wherever they are in the Gaza Strip, is crucial.”
Israel’s incursion into Rafah putting 1.5m people in danger: WHO director
- Hospitals in Rafah must be protected and provided with the supplies they need to keep providing care to the thousands of sick and injured civilians, Balkhy said
LONDON: Israel’s military incursion into the Gazan city of Rafah is putting 1.5 million people, including 600,000 children, in “grave danger,” a World Health Organization official warned on Tuesday.
Dr. Hanan Balkhy, regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean, said on X that lives were hanging in the balance as the health system in the Gaza Strip struggled to remain functional.
The WHO and its partners were committed to providing assistance and delivering aid to all areas of the Gaza Strip, she said, but that required unimpeded access through the Rafah border crossing.
She called for the urgent reopening of the crossing and said any further escalation would push an already fragile humanitarian operation “to a breaking point.”
Hospitals in Rafah must be protected and provided with the supplies they need to keep providing care to the thousands of sick and injured civilians who were the victims of Israeli military operations, Balkhy said.
She called on the international community to pressure Israel to stop its military operation, which is threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Rafah.
“An urgent ceasefire in Gaza is needed now, for humanity’s sake,” she said.
Israeli forces seized the main border crossing between Egypt and southern Gaza on Tuesday, shutting down a vital aid route into the Palestinian enclave that was already on the brink of famine.
Hezbollah carries out drone, artillery attacks on Israeli forces, equipment
- Group claims it ‘killed, wounded’ soldiers in strike on Yiftah barracks
- Lebanese Foreign Ministry warns of risk of ‘humanitarian catastrophe’ in Rafah
BEIRUT: Hezbollah on Tuesday carried out a series of drone and artillery attacks on Israeli forces and other targets under the blanket slogan of “Supporting the Gaza Resistance.”
The group said it targeted “officers and soldiers while they were in the courtyard of the Yiftah barracks” and that its strikes were successful in “killing and wounding them.”
It also “targeted with other drones one of the Iron Dome platforms located south of the Ramot Naftali barracks, which was directly hit and damaged.”
A third target was “spy equipment at the Al-Sammaqa site in the Kafr Shuba hills,” while a fourth was “Israeli soldiers as they were moving inside a bulwark at the Israeli Al-Rahib military site,” on which it “achieved a direct hit.”
Israeli media said that “six explosive-rigged drones were launched from Lebanon, five of which exploded in the Upper Galilee, causing damage.”
Officials at the Kiryat Shmona settlement asked residents there to “stay in shelters due to fears of drone infiltration.”
Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth said Hezbollah’s operations included “launching rockets and drones toward border areas in the Upper Galilee” and that an Israeli warplane dropped heat balloons over the area where the drones entered.
Explosions were heard in Yiftah and Ramot Naftali, it said.
Israeli Channel 12 said air defenses intercepted a drone launched from southern Lebanon toward Galilee, while another exploded without causing any damage.
According to the Israeli Army channel: “During April, four Israelis were killed by Hezbollah fire on the northern border and 33 others were injured, including five who sustained serious injuries.”
The Israeli military responded to Hezbollah’s actions by conducting raids and using artillery to shell Lebanese border towns, particularly Aita al-Shaab.
Meanwhile, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry warned against “any escalation by the Israeli occupation forces against the city of Rafah,” which it said would cause a “severe humanitarian disaster for more than 1 million Palestinians who have been displaced to this area as a result of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip that has been ongoing for seven months.”
