Essential The Africa the Media Doesn't Tell You About

[loyola llothta]

 

[loyola llothta]

ISIS Attacks in DR Congo: A New Phase of a Western Scheme for Resource Plunder
Ann Garrison,

24 Apr 2019




ISIS Attacks in DR Congo: A New Phase of a Western Scheme for Resource Plunder
The new president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is asking for US help to fend off an alleged ISIS threat.

“The idea of ISIS establishing a caliphate might seem comical if the indigenous people of Beni weren't being massacred by the illegal resource trafficking militias already operating there.”

In October 2017, a video calling for an Islamic State jihad in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) appeared online and in a few news reports. It was purportedly made in Beni Territory, within Congo’s North Kivu Province, where a phantom, so-called Islamist militia, the Allied Democratic Forces, has been blamed for massacres of the indigenous population that began in October 2014.

The footage featured a bearded, camo-clad North African or Middle Eastern man draped in ammunition belts and holding a Kalashnikov rifle, while calling on Islamic State jihadists to come to Congo—in Arabic. Black African militiamen stood behind him.

Nearly two and a half years later, on April 4, 2019, the Atlantic Council , a Washington, DC think tank committed to US hegemony, reported that Felix Tshisekedi, the new president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, had come to the US and told them he feared ISIS attacks in DRC. He warned, they wrote, that ISIS might try to establish a caliphate there now that they'd been pushed out of their strongholds in Iraq and Syria.

“The DRC’s population is more than 90 percent Christian and only 2 percent Muslim.”

Ten days after that, the New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg, and other major corporate media outlets began reporting ISIS attacks in DRC. Specifically in North Kivu Province's Beni Territory, a region with large reserves of rainforest timber, oil, gold, coltan, cassiterite (tin), rare earths, and other strategic and critical minerals essential to both industrial and military industrial manufacture.

The trouble with this ongoing story is that DRC’s population is more than 90 percent Christian and only 2 percent Muslim, and the Roman Catholic Church is its most influential non-governmental institution. Arabic is neither the international language nor any of the national or indigenous languages. So the idea of ISIS establishing a caliphate might seem comical if the indigenous people of Beni weren't being massacred by the illegal resource trafficking militias already operating there and the proposed caliphate weren’t a new cover for that.

I asked Boniface Musavuli, author of “C ongo ’ sB eni M assacres : Fake Islamists, Rwandan Unending Occupation ,”whether any of the fundamentals have changed since he published his book in July 2017, and he said no, that there is still no credible documentary evidence of ISIS or other foreign Islamist groups in DRC. “Reports that they are there,” he said, “curiously reappeared in the last report of the New York University Group of Experts on Congo (GEC) report on Beni. However, this report is based on unreliable sources, including Invisible Children , producer of the laughable propaganda video Kony 2012 , and untraceable videos that could not have been made by GEC researchers themselves.”

“There is still no credible documentary evidence of ISIS or other foreign Islamist groups in DRC.”

 

[loyola llothta]

Musavuli also said that none of the fundamentals in this October 2017 BAR conversation, “ISIS of Central Africa: A New Cover for Plundering Congo,” have changed:

Ann Garrison:Boniface, what's your first response to this video? Do you think these ISIS jihadis have any real existence or any real interest in a holy war in your country?

Boniface Musavuli: This video appears mainly as an attempt to manipulate international opinion, to make people believe that eastern Congo is becoming a bastion of international Islamist terrorism. The reality is that only 2 percent of Congo’s population are Muslims, and there is no radical imam to lead a holy war. Congolese Muslims have never fought against the government or even organized a political demonstration against the authorities. There is therefore no sociological basis for the establishment of a caliphate in Beni. A jihad in the Congo makes no sense whatsoever. Congo has never been claimed as a "land of Islam," and the Congolese government does not send soldiers to Muslim countries.

AG:The Arab guerrilla fighter—or actor—in the video is not "white" according to the Western construction of that idea, but he is most certainly not a Black African, and the image of him at the head of a band of Black Africans has an unpleasant, racially supremacist implication. What do you think of that?

BM:I think that this image is making believe that the massacres that started in Beni in 2014 were from the very beginning sponsored by evil Arab Islamist organizations, and that the time has finally come for them to appear alongside their Black performers.

AG: "Islamic State" seems to have become a franchise business like McDonald's, but it's not clear that IS headquarters, wherever that may be, has granted a franchise to this highly unlikely "Islamic State of Central Africa." According to “ISIS calls for jihad in eastern Congo ," someone posted the video to a few "pro-ISIS" websites, but I haven't been able to find any of them. Have you?

“Congolese Muslims have never fought against the government or even organized a political demonstration against the authorities.”

BM:No, but that article with the video that was supposed to be on the "pro-ISIS websites" appeared on the online news outlet "politico.cd." It did not appear on YouTube as we might have expected, and it did not appear on any other news websites either, so it seemed as if politico.cd was the only one that received it.

AG: Some of the video was included with a version of the politico.cd report in the Daily Mail , a British tabloid that some call “The Daily Bigot.” The only other Western site that seems to have reproduced the story is PJ Media , but last week the New York Timesand AP both ran stories about the Ugandan Muslim Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) that this Arabic ISIS militia has allegedly been working with all along—even though the ADF story has been proven fraudulent by UN investigators . And Radio Okapi, a UN Peacekeeping Mission outlet, seemed to take it seriously when they interviewed Nicaise Kibel'bel , a Congolese journalist who published a book, “The Advent of Jihad in Eastern Congo, the Islamic Terrorism of the ADF.”

BM: Nicaise Kibel'bel won a CNN African Press Freedom Award in 2009 before starting to write his book on Beni. He published this book in December 2016. He is very close to General Mbangu Mashyta, who directs the military operations in Beni, which are, in reality, operations to traffic resources and kill the local people. It is therefore possible that he has an interest in conveying a story that serves as Islamist cover for the crimes of the army and the regime of Kabila.

AG: Do the people of Beni believe that Islamists are killing them?

BM: The people of Beni knew from the beginning that the Congolese soldiers who are part of the resource-trafficking networks are killing them. The people lived for a long time with the ADF Muslims in the forest—almost 20 years—and the ADF trafficked timber but it never massacred them. The killers are the units commanded by General Mundos, a close friend and collaborator of [then president] Kabila; they have been killing the people since October 2014. This video will not change what they know to be true.

“The killers are the units commanded by General Mundos, a close friend and collaborator of [then president] Kabila.”

AG: Politico.cd links to its source for the ISIS video, the SITE Intelligence Group, breaking news, articles, and analysis on the jihadist threat , which is led by private Israeli intelligence professional Rita Katz in Bethesda, Maryland. SITE Intelligence Group released the video of ISIS beheading American journalist Steven Sotloff before ISIS itself released it in 2014, after which President Obama said the US would "degrade and destroy ISIS,” which the US is still bombing—or funding—in Syria today. Which depends on whom you ask, of course, and there are also people who say the US is doing both.

I can't imagine President Trump using this "ISIS of Central Africa" as an excuse to drop Cruise missiles on eastern Congo, but this certainly makes it look as though US and Israeli intelligence agencies are for some reason investing in the idea that this group exists. ISIS always seems like a serviceable cause for militarization or military intervention of one sort or another.

And regardless of who's actually producing politico.cd, they obviously favor US policymakers’ viewpoints. On Monday, October 23, one of its three most recent posts was about UN Ambassador Nikki Haley's trip to Congo's capital Kinshasa to meet with President Kabila. The other two were about New Jersey Senator Cory Booker , whom they identified as a "rising star of the Democratic Party, the first Black Senator from New Jersey." The Booker reports varied only slightly, and both included a letter that he and six other senators had written to President Trump and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley asking them to compel Kabila to hold an election in 2017 by imposing harsher sanctions, and threatening the murky international financial networks that Kabila and his circle use to stash all the wealth they've stolen from their own people. I can’t help asking why they’re willing to let the loot sit in its overseas vaults, election or no, instead of returning it to the people, since they claim to know where it is and how to seize it as they did Gaddafi’s.

BM: That wouldn’t be in their interest. They say they’re concerned that we have an election and that we be able to freely express ourselves, but they’ve never said that the Congolese people should benefit from Congo’s resource wealth. Their big mining corporations are here too, most of all in Katanga, where they take as much ore as they can for a little as they can and exploit Congolese labor miserably.

AG: Another piece prominently featured in politico.cd summarizes "A Worsening Crisis in Congo ," an essay by Enough Project founder and executive director John Prendergast and Sasha Lezhnev in Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations. Both are leading ideologues of the humanitarian war crusades led by former UN Ambassador now Harvard professor Samantha Power, but writing for the CFR audience, they’re frank about how essential Congolese minerals, most of all copper and cobalt, are to US national security. Both are absolutely key to both weapons and consumer commodity manufacture. Congo contains 60 percent of the world’s known cobalt reserves, and the US has no cobalt ore worth mining. Congo also has the world’s second largest copper reserves.

Prendergast and Lezhnev warn that if instability keeps escalating as Kabila clings to power, it could endanger the security of roads leading out of the Kolwezi and Kasumbalesa copper and cobalt mines. Like Cory Booker, they want Trump to manipulate Kabila and his criminal cronies by threatening their overseas assets if they don't behave.

“Congo contains 60 percent of the world’s known cobalt reserves.”

But, getting back to ISIS, whatever interest the US may have in promoting the ISIS of Central Africa story, it also benefits Kabila and his circle by enhancing their cover for the army’s crimes in Beni, doesn’t it?

BM: Absolutely. I’m sure he’s hoping this Islamic State video and Nicaise Kibel'bel’s delirious new book about Congo jihad will create an even thicker smokescreen to hide behind.

AG: OK, let's talk about the indigenous people of Beni, the ones suffering because of all this. If I understand correctly, the majority are indigenous in that their families are rooted there—Beni is their homeland—and they survive by farming and/or artisanal, pre-industrial mining. Is that more or less accurate?

BM: The majority of Beni's population live by subsistence agriculture. The mining sector remains small and artisanal. Beni is mainly a transit zone for eastern Congo's minerals and other resources to be exported to the markets of East Africa and Asia.

AG: Not to the West?

BM: Yes, but indirectly. First the minerals go to the East, to China, Malaysia, Korea, Japan, India, but we are in a globalized economy. The factories in these Asian countries, such as China, process Congolese minerals more cheaply than they could be processed in the West, but they operate with capital from Western investors.

AG: And if Beni is a transit zone, where are the minerals and other resources coming from?

BM: Some of course come from Beni, most of all timber, but others come from Ituri District and other territories of eastern Congo. Beni is the border territory where the resources are transported into Uganda.

AG: The Ituri District borders Uganda too, but the smuggling routes have been developed from points in Beni to points in Uganda?

BM: Yes.

AG: And what else can you say about the timber trade? I know that most of Beni is rainforest, the earth's lungs, and cutting it down is hastening climate catastrophe, but who's doing it and where do they trade it, to what markets?

BM: Beni's precious rainforest timber is illegally logged and smuggled out by the Congolese army, then sold on the world timber market, as UN reports have shown. It's first stored in Uganda, then shipped to overseas markets. Beni’s timber exploitation zones were occupied by the ADF until 2013, but they've broken up and dispersed. Since then, the forests have been occupied by traffickers pretending to be ADF, most of all by the Congolese army. UN experts revealed that General Mundos, Joseph Kabila's henchman, was logging Beni’s rainforest timber and exporting it, but we don’t know what part of it is controlled by Mundos and Kabila behind him.

“The forests have been occupied by traffickers pretending to be ADF, most of all by the Congolese army.”

AG: What about the Ugandans and Rwandans that you’ve said are among the aggressors and traffickers?

BM: Regarding the role of Rwanda and Uganda, it should be noted that at the time when the ADF occupied the forest and controlled the timber sector, they were working for the benefit of Uganda, even though, officially, they presented themselves as "Ugandan rebels hostile to the government of Museveni." That lie masked their mafia trafficking.

When the ADF were driven out of the Beni forest, thousands of Rwandans arrived in areas they’d formerly occupied, where timber is exploited, but the timber still continues to transit through Uganda. The only victims of this illegal economy are, of course, the indigenous people, who are driven off their land and replaced by hordes of Congolese soldiers and Rwandans.

AG: So they kill indigenous people and terrorize them till they flee just to get them out of the way?

BM: Yes.

AG: And what about foreign, industrial mining corporations. Has AngloGold Ashanti set up operations in Beni yet?

BM: There are gold-buying comptoirs—middlemen—in Beni and Butembo who buy from artisanal miners, but there are no big industrial mining companies. The firm AngloGold Ashanti, which merged with Sokimo to form Kibali Gold, has operations more than 300 km from Beni, near Watsa in the province of Haut-Uele.

AG: Is there anything else you’d like to say about this?

BM: Yes. I don’t believe this ISIS jihadi terror story, but I’m very worried that the gangsters in power may bring real jihadi killers to Beni to terrorize the people moreand make the international community believe their cover story. I believe they are quite capable of bringing killers from Arab countries to eastern Congo, and this could make things even worse, even though that’s hard to imagine.

Today [10/23/17], the United Nations activated its Level 3 humanitarian emergency designation for the entire Democratic Republic of the Congo . That puts it on par with the three other crises currently recognized as L3 emergencies: Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. They said that North Kivu Province, which includes Beni, hosts the largest number of internally displaced people in the country—close to a million. And it’s not even one of the most urgently targeted areas yet, though they say it’s very fragile and its conflicts could suddenly intensify again at any time.

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[Premeditated]

any french speaker here?

if you have time you want to help decipher this?

I can only understand certain parts


he's a chemical engineer who is venting his frustration on how the government doesn't want to fund any money in manufacturing high tech weapons when they have the brains for it.

 

[Red Shield]

They really pulling some ISIS in the congo shyt

 

[Bawon Samedi]

How in the fukk did ISIS even get into the Congo/Great Lakes region??

Anyways Congo gonna do a Angola and ban Islam. ISIS gonna get washed by those Congolese warlords like how they were washed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Region only gonna get even more unstable.

 

[loyola llothta]

They really pulling some ISIS in the congo shyt

Cacs have no shame

 

[loyola llothta]

How in the fukk did ISIS even get into the Congo/Great Lakes region??

Anyways Congo gonna do a Angola and ban Islam. ISIS gonna get washed by those Congolese warlords like how they were washed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Region only gonna get even more unstable.

Read the article(both pages). Its not what you think


Here some short important clips:

whether any of the fundamentals have changed since he published his book in July 2017, and he said no, that there is still no credible documentary evidence of ISIS or other foreign Islamist groups in DRC. “Reports that they are there,” he said, “curiously reappeared in the last report of the New York University Group of Experts on Congo (GEC) report on Beni. However, this report is based on unreliable sources, including Invisible Children , producer of the laughable propaganda video Kony 2012 , and untraceable videos that could not have been made by GEC researchers themselves.”

“There is still no credible documentary evidence of ISIS or other foreign Islamist groups in DRC.”

The trouble with this ongoing story is that DRC’s population is more than 90 percent Christian and only 2 percent Muslim, and the Roman Catholic Church is its most influential non-governmental institution. Arabic is neither the international language nor any of the national or indigenous languages. So the idea of ISIS establishing a caliphate might seem comical if the indigenous people of Beni weren't being massacred by the illegal resource trafficking militias already operating there and the proposed caliphate weren’t a new cover for that.

Ten days after that, the New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg, and other major corporate media outlets began reporting ISIS attacks in DRC. Specifically in North Kivu Province's Beni Territory, a region with large reserves of rainforest timber, oil, gold, coltan, cassiterite (tin), rare earths, and other strategic and critical minerals essential to both industrial and military industrial manufacture.

Boniface Musavuli: This video appears mainly as an attempt to manipulate international opinion, to make people believe that eastern Congo is becoming a bastion of international Islamist terrorism. The reality is that only 2 percent of Congo’s population are Muslims, and there is no radical imam to lead a holy war. Congolese Muslims have never fought against the government or even organized a political demonstration against the authorities. There is therefore no sociological basis for the establishment of a caliphate in Beni. A jihad in the Congo makes no sense whatsoever. Congo has never been claimed as a "land of Islam," and the Congolese government does not send soldiers to Muslim countries.

BM: The people of Beni knew from the beginning that the Congolese soldiers who are part of the resource-trafficking networks are killing them. The people lived for a long time with the ADF Muslims in the forest—almost 20 years—and the ADF trafficked timber but it never massacred them. The killers are the units commanded by General Mundos, a close friend and collaborator of [then president] Kabila; they have been killing the people since October 2014. This video will not change what they know to be true.

 

[Red Shield]

Cacs have no shame

none at all

if it wasn't obvious to anyone what all that isis shyt really is... it should be obvious as hell now

 

[phcitywarrior]

Nigeria may close 80 missions over poor state of embassies - Vanguard News

Close 80 / 110 embassies but claim to be the Giant of Africa

 

[Secure Da Bag]

 

[loyola llothta]

Sudan protesters demand self-rule after Bashir ouster

Published on Apr 27, 2019

Sudanese protesters continue to struggle for civilian rule after long-time President Omar al-Bashir was ousted and arrested by the military earlier this month. Tens of thousands of civilian protesters have already forced the resignation of three controversial military figures, and refuse to allow Saudi or UAE aid to enter the country. Journalist Ahmed Kaballo chats with RT America’s Manila Chan to unpack the rapidly developing situation.

 

[loyola llothta]

MANUFACTURED REVOLUTION?

Saudi Arabia, Israel, US All Sought Bashir’s Ouster: So How Real Was the Sudan Revolution?

Last week’s events in Sudan appear to be yet another example of foreign governments manipulating real dissent against an authoritarian government in order to install yet another authoritarian government more friendly to their interests but to the detriment of the people.

by Whitney Webb

April 16th, 2019

was ousted in a military coup that followed months of protests against his rule, which began in 1989. Bashir’s overthrow was widely hailed in the U.S. as a “revolution” brought on by a people-powered movement, in which women played a prominent role. Indeed, the symbol of this recent “revolution” has become 22-year-old student Alaa Salah, after a picture of her speaking to a crowd went viral last Tuesday, with some in international media dubbing her “Sudan’s statue of liberty.”

Given the intense news cycle that occurred last week — from Israel’s elections, to the Trump administration’s troubling declaration aimed at Iran’s military, to the recent arrest of Julian Assange in Ecuador’s London embassy — little international attention was paid to last week’s military coup in Sudan. For many, last week’s events seem simply the logical conclusion of months of protests aimed first at rising food prices and subsequently at Bashir’s nearly thirty-year rule. Yet, the reality of what has recently transpired in Sudan could not be further from that assumption.

While Bashir’s lengthy rule over Sudan has been filled with many despotic, authoritarian actions and state-sponsored violence over the years, and while many Sudanese citizens were likely all-too-eager for a change in government, powerful forces — the United States among them — had long sought Bashir’s ouster for other reasons, much of their motive linked to the country’s oil reserves.



After South Sudan’s creation in 2011, Sudan lost control of most of its former oil reserves and then, in order to stall a burgeoning economic crisis and prevent the further destabilization of its economy and its government in the years that followed, forged closer ties with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States. Though the Saudi-Sudanese alliance worked for a time, it ultimately soured, largely thanks to the war in Yemen.

Saudi Arabia, Israel, US All Sought Bashir's Ouster: So How Real Was the Sudan Revolution?

 

[loyola llothta]

The Saudi interest

In 2015, after the Saudi-allied “puppet government” in Yemen was deposed, a coalition of countries, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, declared war against the Houthi rebels and their allies. The result, nearly four years later, has been a Saudi-led war that has created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in Yemen, stemming from the coalition’s tactic of waging war against Yemeni civilians and critical civilian infrastructure — including hospitals, water treatment facilities, farms and schools.

Sudan has long been part of the Saudi-led Coalition, owing to Bashir’s effort to forge an alliance with the House of Saud that even saw his government cut ties with Iran — a long-time Bashir ally — to please the Gulf monarchies.

As part of the coalition in Yemen, Sudan has sent thousands of Sudanese fighters — many of them alleged to be child soldiers — in support of the Saudi-led effort to force Yemen’s people into submission. Though the Saudis and Emiratis bankroll much of the war and carry out most of the airstrikes, analysts have noted that Sudanese fighters often do “the dirty work,” including on-the-ground combat. This has meant that many of the coalition’s casualties are Sudanese. In return, Sudan’s government has received billions of dollars from the Saudi-led Coalition for “services rendered” and has been offered investment opportunities for its Gulf Kingdom allies. Saudi Arabia became the largest Arab investor in Sudan, with an estimated $15 billion in investments made in 2016.

Sudanese soldiers on a military vehicle gesture as they arrive to the port city of Aden, Yemen, Nov. 9, 2015. Wael Qubady | AP

Domestic discontent with Sudan’s involvement in Yemen first became clear in late 2017 — nearly two years after the African country had entered the war — when Houthi-aligned media outlets began publishing images of “slaughtered” Sudanese soldiers, an alleged effort by Houthi forces to portray the Sudanese as “cannon fodder” for the Saudis and Emiratis and aimed at reducing domestic support in Sudan for the war. The media offensive worked remarkably well and, after a major Houthi attack in April 2018 left scores of Sudanese soldiers dead, Bashir’s government was forced to reassess the country’s role in Yemen and many Sudanese lawmakers vocally called for an end to Sudan’s role in the war.

Declining domestic support for the war was combined with stalled investment initiatives that the Saudis and Emiratis had promised in Sudan, along with the Saudis’ failure to deliver on another key promise, to get Sudan removed from the U.S. government’s state-sponsors-of-terrorism list. Around this time, Bashir not only began to seriously reevaluate his government’s participation in Yemen, but also its regional alliances.

Indeed, not long before Sudan began to reconsider its role in Yemen’s war, Bashir began to cozy up to Qatar — the ally-turned-enemy of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies. In late March 2018, it was announced that Sudan and Qatar finalized a $4 billion deal to manage Sudan’s port city of Suakin. Turkey, another ally of Qatar, also acquired a role in the port’s management. Soon after, Sudan finalized a $100 million oil-sector investment deal with Turkey, with the promise of much more to come, as ties between Khartoum and Ankara deepened just as Turkey and Saudi Arabia were at each other’s throats after the alleged murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Adding insult to injury from the Saudi perspective, Sudan’s vice president subsequently stated that “the martyrdom of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi may be a reason to stop the war” in Yemen.

Bashir’s decision to inch further away from the Saudi-led bloc of Arab nations was made even more clear last December, when he unexpectedly made an unannounced trip to Syria to meet Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The trip came just five days after Saudi Arabia announced the formation of a new Red Sea alliance. According to analysts cited by Middle East Monitor, this Saudi-led alliance in the region was “the clearest signal yet that Riyadh intends to monopolise the Sea’s mineral wealth explored jointly with Sudan until recently, and establish a security corridor to prevent the entry of ‘unauthorised’ vessels, naval or merchant.”

Middle East Monitor further noted that “the move is seen in Khartoum as a decision clearly designed to allow Sudan to develop the Red Sea area for tourist purposes but curtail any ambition it may have to establish a military base on its coast,” particularly the port city of Suakin where Qatar and Turkey were set to play important roles. This concern appears to have been a major factor in Bashir’s mid-January visit to Qatar. Prior to that visit, Bashir had claimed that his government was being targeted by a “foreign conspiracy.”

Notably, the very day of Bashir’s visit to Syria last December marked the beginning of the protests that would result in the end of his rule. Given the context mentioned it above, is especially noteworthy that the man now in charge of the military council that ousted Bashir last Thursday, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan Abdelrahman, “oversaw Sudanese troops fighting in the Saudi-led Yemen war and has close ties to senior Gulf military officials,” according to the Associated Press.

On Saturday, the Saudi government unsurprisingly voiced its support for Sudan’s now-ruling military council, stating:

The Kingdom declares its support for the steps announced by the Council in preserving the lives and property, and stands by the Sudanese people, and hopes that this will achieve security and stability for brotherly Sudan.”

 

[loyola llothta]

Israel’s machinations

While the deterioration of Saudi-Sudanese relations seem to have played a role in Bashir’s ouster, recent events have suggested that another key player in last week’s coup was the state of Israel, particularly Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad.

As Saudi Arabia and Israel have become more and more open about the alliance between them, Arab and Muslim-majority nations aligned with the Saudis have been pressured to follow Riyadh’s example and normalize relations with the Jewish ethnostate.

Despite having ruled out any possibility of normalizing relations with the “Zionist enemy,” as Bashir had called Israel in 2013, his government began to openly signal its willingness to reconsider forging ties with Tel Aviv in 2016, soon after Bashir had cut ties with Iran and sought the Saudis’ good graces. At the time, Israeli media reported that the Israeli government was lobbying the United States to improve its relationship with Sudan.

Some in Sudan’s government said they would consider normalizing ties with Israel in exchange for the lifting of U.S. sanctions. However, there was resistance from within Sudan’s political establishment, given that many still bitterly remember the Israeli bombings of Sudanese military targets, such as those that took place in 2009, 2012, and 2014, as well as Israel’s decades-long arming of anti-government rebels. Since 1967, Israel has armed and trained anti-government fighters in Sudan, with that support intensifying in 1989 after Bashir took power in a coup that year. Israel’s clandestine involvement in Sudan had long been called a proxy war against Iran up until Bashir’s 2016 decision to cut ties with the Islamic Republic.

Sudanese students protest Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, outside U.N. headquarters in Khartoum, Dec. 29, 2008, as they hold anti U.S posters and burn Israeli flags. Abd Raouf | AP

By late 2018, Israel’s efforts to woo Sudan again made headlines as the visit of Chad’s president to Tel Aviv was touted by Israeli media as a sign that Israel would soon forge public ties with not just Chad but Sudan, Mali and Niger. That same report claimed that Israel and Sudan had been involved in talks since 2017 aimed at the normalization of relations.

Yet, the very day that Bashir made an unannounced visit to Syria to meet with Assad — who Israel has long set to overthrow — the protests against his rule put new pressure on Sudan’s long-time leader. Notably, Bashir openly stated in January, several weeks after the protests had begun, that he had been advised that he could ensure the stability of his rule were he to agree to normalize relations with Israel, suggesting that foreign interests eager to see those ties materialize were involved in Sudan’s protests. Bashir would not state publicly who had given him that telling advice. However, just days later, Bashir rejected an offer to fly to Tel Aviv and publicly declared his strong opposition to “any possibility” of forging ties with Israel.

News then emerged that Sudan’s intelligence chief, Salah Gosh, who was intimately involved in Bashir’s recent ouster, had met with the chief of Israel’s Mossad, Yossi Cohen, in February. The report, published last month by Middle East Eye, claimed that Gosh and Cohen had met on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference as part of a plan led by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Israel to oust Bashir. Gosh is also known for his past collaboration with the CIA. Notably, Gosh was one of the interim leaders of the military council that ousted Bashir last week, though he quit his leadership role in the council on Saturday as protesters demanded that the military council be replaced with a civilian-led government.

Israel’s apparent role in the military coup that ousted Bashir last week comes just days after a general in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) revealed that Israel had been behind the 2013 military coup that ousted Mohammed Morsi and installed Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has closely aligned Egypt with Israeli interests since taking power. Israel’s apparent role in Sudan’s recent coup suggests that the Jewish ethnostate’s efforts to force the normalization of relations with Muslim-majority nations that have long supported the Palestinian cause still continue