Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

I do not often thank the Government but I will do so for facilitating this important debate on the horror that is being inflicted on the people of Sudan. The genocidal horror they are enduring at the moment has led to at least 150,000 people being killed, more than 21 million people, which is 45% of the population, facing hunger and famine, 12 million people being forcibly displaced, and the horrific scenes involving the RSF in the siege of El Fasher, to name some of the atrocities that have taken place.

This is complex and, like Deputy Coppinger, I remember speaking about it. At that time, I had been briefed but, unfortunately, I did not have a chance to talk to Sudanese people before this debate. I had been briefed by people from Sudan before the previous debate, which was at the time of the revolution by the people of Sudan. That was a revolution not based on siding with either of the two factions responsible for this horror; it was a grassroots rebellion of people against the austerity and poverty being imposed and backed by institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, our friends in the IMF, the purveyors of austerity across the world.

There are layers and layers to this but, in essence, it is the old divide-and-rule tactic being used by different factions in the Sudanese ruling class fighting over power against a population that was rising up against them and, in turn, the alignment of both of these factions, which are guilty of the genocide, with external powers which, ultimately, are tied up with big western powers. They are armed, financed and supported by big western powers.

I heard some people say those who are campaigning and advocating for the people of Palestine are not speaking about Sudan. We were, back when the revolution was happening, and we are now, but there is a connection between these two things. The connection is very important and brings it into sharp focus. What is the western agenda in this region and in the wider Middle Eastern region? In the popular narrative purveyed by western leaders over the years, including the US, the European Union and so on, it is to support democracy and be supporters of democracy. In actuality, the entirety of western foreign policy, that is, US and European foreign policy, has been to prevent democracy, back dictatorships and divide and rule the population to ensure we do not have successful democratic revolutions in places such as Sudan, where ordinary people might take control of their resources and of strategically important areas. Some of the strategically important resources have been mentioned, including gold. The UAE is involved big-time. We have trade relations with the UAE, and it is armed by France and the United States. Europe and America are backing these regimes.

The Egyptian regime has its interests, in terms of plans by Ethiopia to build a dam that will impact on the movement of the Nile and who gets what share of the Nile and so on, so it is backing other forces and particular factions. There is also the question of access to the Red Sea and various battles going on between different states, in turn backed by western governments. Let us remember the el-Sisi dictatorship in Egypt, which brutally crushed the Arab Spring in Egypt. It is backed by the United States and western governments and treated like a normal government, when the people who led the democratic uprising in Egypt are all languishing in jail being tortured, yet we pretend the Egyptian regime is somehow normal.

The policy was summed up by the first governor general of Jerusalem, Ronald Storrs, in 1936, when he was asked why the British were backing Zionism and what would later be the Nakba and the destruction of Palestinians. He said they wanted to create a loyal little Jewish Ulster in the Middle East to guard against a potentially hostile sea of Arabism. It was divide and rule. They did what they did in Ireland, setting the Catholics against the Protestants, in order to make sure they controlled the region and that the people of the region did not democratically control their own resources. This is the same playbook that has been playing out in Sudan and the entire region. They back dictatorships, and back this faction against that faction, as long as they control the resources or their allies get what they want, or Red Sea routes, or whatever it is. Of course, on top of all of this, they are backing governments that are imposing brutal austerity on an incredibly poor country. It is complicated, and too complicated to discuss in the time available, but the hypocrisy and double standards of some of the external players, including western governments here, is stunning. Often, they have done it precisely because some of these disgusting factions were willing to police the migration from these countries of desperate people trying to flee an horrific situation. Honestly, you could not make up the hypocrisy and double standards around this.

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