The United Arab Emirates has launched a campaign to get one of its senior diplomats, Lana Nusseibeh, to be the next UN Secretary-General. Part of the push: framing it as a victory for women, complete with a puff piece in the October issue of Vogue Arabia, titled, Meet the Emirati Diplomat Running to Become the First Female UN Secretary-General. True, she would be a first, but there was not a whisper, not a reference to the thousands of women raped by militias funded by her government in Sudan and other parts of Africa.
The piece reminded me of a similar, infamous Vogue story back in 2011. In a self-proclaimed “Power issue”, Vogue celebrated Syrian First Lady Asma Al-Assad with a splashy soft soap story entitled “A Rose in the Desert”. The timing couldn’t have been worse. The Arab Spring had happened and the violent crackdown by regimes across the region was ramping up. The perfectly elegant Asma Al-Assad stared out from the pages on newsstands in Damascus as bullets flew, people screamed and fled for their lives, and the bodies kept piling up.
Now this? Seriously? The UAE bid for the Secretary-General's job dressed up as an achievement for modern gals in the Middle East? By the time the Sudanese city of El Fasher fell to the UAE-backed RSF last year, tens of thousands were dead. In the ensuing violence thousands more were massacred and thousands of women were raped and trafficked. Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary-General, said: “These atrocities were facilitated by the United Arab Emirates’ support for the RSF. The UAE’s ongoing backing of the RSF is fuelling the relentless cycle of violence against civilians in Sudan.”
Yet the UAE is our close friend and ally which, with the immense help of parts of our media, is portrayed as advancing women’s rights! This won't help: in a New York Times piece published 5 November, titled “U.A.E. Sent ‘Desert Wolves’ to Help Sudanese Militia Accused of Genocide”, it says: “Lana Nusseibeh, one of the Gulf nation’s top diplomats, has led the effort to deny her country’s role in Sudan. Now it’s complicating her bid to become secretary general of the United Nations.”
Despite the crushing weight of evidence from the UN, Amnesty, multiple human rights groups, major investigative journalists and witness statements and satellite images, UAE has the chutzpah to consistently deny it has done anything wrong.
The Emirates are, along with the US and Israel, major state-wreckers. Their whole business model is based around fuelling civil wars and reaping profits and influence. Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia are just some of the states that have been torn apart by militias that are armed, funded and logistically supported by Lana Nusseibeh’s government. Now they want her to helm the organisation that is dedicated to fostering state building, protecting territorial integrity, and advocating for non-interference in the affairs of sovereign states.
Last week I met with Fatima Sanussi, a Sudanese New Zealander fighting every day to bring awareness to the misery the UAE is inflicting on the people of Sudan.
Fatima Sanussi
“I think it's important for the world to understand that this war on Sudan is a war waged by the UAE on the people of Sudan.”
“There are tangible steps towards ending the violence but it needs the political will from nations like New Zealand and Australia to uphold human rights and international law – and value Sudanese people as people who do not deserve to die for a global war economy that's built and sustained by violence against civilians,” Sanussi told me.
My own country, New Zealand, whose ministry of foreign affairs is fully aware of this depraved business, moved with speed last year to deepen its relationships with the UAE. As the RSF forces were besieging the city of El Fasher, we were finalising a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement – the fastest trade deal in New Zealand's history.
Let’s be clear: the UAE is the major state funder of the RSF (formerly the Janjaweed Militia) in Sudan. Thanks in part to Lana Nusseibeh's government, there are 33.7 million people in dire need of humanitarian assistance in Sudan – over 17 million of them children. The UAE and its RSF ally is responsible for the largest attack on civilians in the world today. This involves the displacement of millions of civilians and the theft and shipment to UAE of billions of dollars in gold and other resources that could otherwise bring relief to the benighted population.
Trying to preserve the territorial integrity of Sudan is one of the goals of both the government and the popular resistance to the UAE-RSF war machine, Sanussi says.
“I think it's important for the world to understand that this war on Sudan is a war waged by the UAE on the people of Sudan.
“This is a New Imperial project led by the UAE for the resources and the geostrategic location of Sudan. People need to stop seeing the conflict in Sudan through a lens of an internal conflict. What we're seeing in Sudan is they're trying to push Sudan into a Libyan-type split, the balkanization of Sudan.
“This is not to wash away the crimes of the military institution and their history but what you are seeing is people within Sudan who have nothing to do with the elites and the military institutions picking up arms to defend their homeland against the RSF's campaign, which is synonymous with genocide, mass ethnic cleansing, and demographic change.”
Space permitting, I would have mapped out almost an identical modus operandi the UAE is running in Yemen (via its STC ally), in Libya (via General Haftar’s forces) in Somalia (where, along with Israel, it is assisting in the creation of a break-away state, Somaliland). Does it need saying? A government undertaking such state destruction projects should not be seeking to lead the United Nations.
Fatima Sanussi says UAE is shipping Colombian mercenaries into Sudan hired by Abu Dhabi-based companies. It is bringing in mercenaries from UAE military camps in Somaliland, Libya and other places.
“It's very clear that this is an invasion of Sudan. What we’re seeing is a transnational mercenary group operating as a business venture that benefits from the total destruction of Sudan.”
All this is headquartered in Abu Dhabi, the hub of a network of non-state entities undermining states across the wider region. It is all part of a huge project run by our friend and ally. The sad reality is that countries like Australia and New Zealand – for the price of their alliance with Israel, their submission to the US, and their trade with the UAE – are turning a blind eye to this depravity. Will they now limbo under the lowest bar of human decency and support the candidacy of Lana Nusseibeh?
Eugene Doyle
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He hosts solidarity.co.nz.
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