Latest news with #Burhan
Asharq Al-Awsat
5 hours ago
- Politics
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Sudan's Military Accepts UN Proposal of a Weeklong Ceasefire in El Fasher for Aid Distribution
Sudan's military agreed to a proposal from the United Nations for a weeklong ceasefire in El Fasher to facilitate UN aid efforts to the area, the army said Friday. UN Secretary-General António Guterres called Sudanese military leader Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan and asked him for the humanitarian truce in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur province, to allow aid delivery. Burhan agreed to the proposal and stressed the importance of implementing relevant UN Security Council resolutions, but it's unknown whether the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces would agree and comply with the ceasefire. 'We are making contacts with both sides with that objective, and that was the fundamental reason for that phone contact. We have a dramatic situation in El Fasher,' Guterres told reporters on Friday. No further details were revealed about the specifics of the ceasefire, including when it could go into effect. Sudan plunged into war in April 2023 when simmering tensions between the Sudanese army and the rival RSF escalated into battles in the capital, Khartoum, and spread across the country, killing more than 20,000 people. The war has also driven more than 14 million people from their homes and pushed parts of the country into famine. UNICEF said earlier this year that an estimated 61,800 children have been internally displaced since the war began. Guterres said on Friday that a humanitarian truce is needed for effective aid distribution, and it must be agreed upon several days in advance to prepare for a large-scale delivery in the El Fasher area, which has seen repeated waves of violence recently. El Fasher, more than 800 kilometers (500 miles) southwest of Khartoum, is under the control of the military. The RSF has been trying to capture El Fasher for a year to solidify its control over the entire Darfur region. The paramilitary's attempts included launching repeated attacks on the city and two major famine-stricken displacement camps on its outskirts.
Associated Press
8 hours ago
- Politics
- Associated Press
Sudan's military accepts UN proposal of a weeklong ceasefire in El Fasher for aid distribution
CAIRO (AP) — Sudan's military agreed to a proposal from the United Nations for a weeklong ceasefire in El Fasher to facilitate U.N. aid efforts to the area, the army said Friday. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called Sudanese military leader Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan and asked him for the humanitarian truce in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur province, to allow aid delivery. Burhan agreed to the proposal and stressed the importance of implementing relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions, but it's unknown whether the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces would agree and comply with the ceasefire. 'We are making contacts with both sides with that objective, and that was the fundamental reason for that phone contact. We have a dramatic situation in El Fasher,' Guterres told reporters on Friday. No further details were revealed about the specifics of the ceasefire, including when it could go into effect. Sudan plunged into war in April 2023 when simmering tensions between the Sudanese army and the rival RSF escalated into battles in the capital, Khartoum, and spread across the country, killing more than 20,000 people. The war has also driven more than 14 million people from their homes and pushed parts of the country into famine. UNICEF said earlier this year that an estimated 61,800 children have been internally displaced since the war began. Guterres said on Friday that a humanitarian truce is needed for effective aid distribution, and it must be agreed upon several days in advance to prepare for a large-scale delivery in the El Fasher area, which has seen repeated waves of violence recently. El-Fasher, more than 800 kilometers (500 miles) southwest of Khartoum, is under the control of the military. The RSF has been trying to capture El Fasher for a year to solidify its control over the entire Darfur region. The paramilitary's attempts included launching repeated attacks on the city and two major famine-stricken displacement camps on its outskirts.
Hindustan Times
10 hours ago
- General
- Hindustan Times
Review: Loal Kashmir by Mehak Jamal
There's a common saying, 'In Kashmir, the news can be wrong, but the rumours are always right,' writes Mehak Jamal in Lōal Kashmir: Love and Longing in a Torn Land, her debut collection of 16 real-life love stories set in the Valley against the backdrop of the unrelenting conflict. In this case, she is referring to a sense of foreboding in Kashmir in July 2019. By the end of the month, locals had begun hoarding food, medicines and fuel, preparing for the suspension of phone and internet services, and generally sensed that something was afoot. But no one was prepared, after the revocation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, for the total communication blackout imposed — certainly not young people in love. Lōal is the Kashmiri word for love and longing. Like rumours, love here often exists in whispers and moves in the shadows. And Jamal's book is a collection of the sweet, bittersweet, or even bitter — and often inventive — ways in which Kashmiris must navigate romantic relationships, with patience and restraint. Under the chinar trees at the Nishat Mughal garden in Srinagar. (Waseem Andrabi/ Hindustan Times) 364pp, Rs599; HarperCollins The people in this book have lived through the significant political events of the last three decades, and Jamal has neatly divided their accounts into three chronological sections: Otru (day before yesterday) from the 90s, Rath (yesterday) from the 2000s and Az (today) from 2019. Altogether, this book is perhaps the most perspicuous account of Kashmir and the conflict. The most complex and powerful — and suddenly, unanticipatedly topical — story is about Pakistani wives of former Kashmiri militants. Months after the publication of Lōal Kashmir, these women were among the Pakistani nationals across the country deported in the aftermath of the Pahalgam attack in April. What's little known outside of Kashmir is the years of protest by dozens of these women — Pakistani wives of former Kashmiri militants — to either get Indian citizenship or be allowed to return. Bushra, a young woman in the Bagh district of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, marries Burhan, a member of the Hizbul Mujahideen from Baramulla who had crossed over for arms training in the 1990s. When they married, he left militancy. They were madly in love, they ran a fruit and vegetable shop together, had children. A few years later, in 2010, chief minister Omar Abdullah started a rehabilitation programme for ex-militant youth stuck in PoK, giving them a chance to return and be reintegrated into Kashmiri society. Bushra accompanied her husband to the home he hadn't seen in over a decade since he was a boy, promising her mother that she would be back soon. But Burhan had thrown away their passports. And Bushra, along with about 350 other wives, was now stuck in limbo, neither being granted Indian nationality nor allowed to return to their home towns. Over the course of the story, Bushra and Burhan's marriage, soured beyond repair by his betrayal, ended and she joined Pakistani women like her who were protesting their precarious situations. This is a story about the inheritance of displacement. Bushra's grandfather too had been from Pattan, Burhan's home town, in Baramulla. During the 1965 war, he had crossed the ceasefire line and married a woman from Bagh and then had been unable to return or visit his family. But Jamal doesn't analyse the labyrinths of borders and identity and ideas of nationhood and belonging — she simply lays them out for readers to make their own connections. The early stories, more so because of the benefit of the passing of time, are more compelling. There's the love story of the Kashmiri woman who lived in Gaza (and was evacuated in 2023) with her Palestinian husband she had met when they were students at the Aligarh Muslim University in the 1980s. There's a man from a village in Anantnag who still carries around a love letter in his pocket because when he was 17, in the 1990s, he was saved from what could have been a terrible encounter with soldiers, by one written in poetic Urdu from his girlfriend. There's the unlikely relationship of a young Pandit boy and Muslim girl in the early 2000s — spending time together talking in a PCO booth or empty Matador buses or a giftshop called Dreams whose sympathetic owner let them wander around — and the story unfolds over the years starting from his family decision's to return to the Valley after temporarily relocating to Jammu during the exodus of the Pandits in the 1990s to what their lives looked like in the Kashmiri crossfire between the army and militants. There's a woman whose Indian-American husband — his knowledge of the Valley was limited to the 2000 Bollywood movie Mission Kashmir — was aghast at the realities of life in a conflict area. Most stories, though, are from around the 2019 blackout — and couples somehow found ways to correspond. An engaged doctor couple, working in different hospitals and unable to meet, exchanged love letters passed through a chain of medical staff. Couples would handwrite letters, take photos of them and share via Bluetooth. They were using Bluetooth-enabled messaging apps — 'many a boyfriend visited his girlfriend's neighbourhood, and once in the area range, messaged her while standing in the lane right outside her house, hoping she checked her phone and his journey would not prove futile.' A young trans man who flew to Amritsar to be able to stay uninterruptedly on the phone with his girlfriend who had moved to study medicine in Islamabad. Lōal Kashmir started as a memory project in 2020. Jamal, a filmmaker, grew up in Srinagar 'struggling with language, religion and belonging'. Her father is Kashmiri Muslim and mother Maharashtrian Hindu, and she writes in the introduction to the book, 'I always felt I belonged to Kashmir, but I wasn't sure Kashmir belonged to me.' This is a reclamation, her own love letter. She put out a call online asking Kashmiris willing to share their stories to fill up a Google form and then conducted detailed interviews. Author Mehak Jamal (Courtesy A Suitable Agency) The idea is deceptively simple — its execution more so. Jamal is a thrifty writer. She prefaces the stories with brush strokes of the history of Kashmir — from Yusuf Shah Chak, the last indigenous Kashmiri king in the sixteenth century to the assembly elections in 2024 — in four pages. And in 16 stories (although some could have been skipped), she covers the most significant events of the last three decades. This is a very accessible book, which is not to say that it's simplistic. Far from it. The writing is plain but succeeds through its clarity. Its only real flaw is the inability to capture any kind of sentimentality. The material is dramatic, the characters are intriguing, and the landscape is stunning. But there's little here in terms of emotions or insight associated with love and strife. There isn't, really, any passage or sense of feeling worth quoting but all the stories are easy to remember and to read. Saudamini Jain is an independent jouralist. She lives in New Delhi.
BBC News
16-06-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
Sudan in danger of self-destructing as conflict and famine reign
Sudan's war is in strategic stalemate. Each side stakes its hopes on a new offensive, a new delivery of weapons, a new political alliance, but neither can gain a decisive losers are the Sudanese people. Every month there are more who are hungry, displaced, Sudan armed forces triumphantly announced the recapture of central Khartoum in broadcast pictures of its leader, Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, walking through the ruins of the capital's Republican Palace, which had been controlled by the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), since the earliest days of the war in April army deployed weapons newly acquired from Egypt, Turkey and other Middle Eastern countries including Qatar and Iran. But its offensive quickly stalled. The RSF, headed by Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as "Hemedti", responded with a devastating drone attack on Port Sudan, which is both the interim capital of the military government and also the main entry point for humanitarian were long-range sophisticated drones, which the army accuses the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of supplying - a charge the UAE rejects, along with well-documented reports that it has been backing the RSF during the 27-month conflict.A simple guide to Sudan's warFear, loss and hope in Sudan's ruined capital after army victoryBurhan and Hemedti - the two generals at the heart of the conflictThe RSF has also expanded operations to the south of struck a deal with Abdel Aziz al-Hilu, the veteran rebel commander of the Sudan People's Liberation Army-North, which controls the Nuba Mountains near the border with South forces combined may be able to make a push to the border with Ethiopia, hoping to open new supply the RSF has been besieging the capital of North Darfur, el-Fasher, which is defended by a coalition of Darfurian former rebels, known as the Joint Forces, allied with the of the fighters are ethnic Zaghawa, who have been in fierce conflict with the Arab groups that form the core of the RSF. Month after month of blockade, bombardment and ground attacks have created famine among the residents, with the people of the displaced camp of Zamzam RSF and its allied Arab militias have a terrifying record of massacre, rape and ethnic cleansing. Human rights organisations have accused it of genocide against the Massalit people of West communities in el-Fasher fear that if the Joint Forces are defeated, they will suffer savage reprisals at the hands of the pressure on el-Fasher is growing. Last week the RSF captured desert garrisons on the border with Libya held by the Joint military has accused forces loyal to Libyan strongman Gen Khalifa Haftar, who controls the east of the country and is also a reported beneficiary of Emirati support, of joining in the civilians, who six years ago managed the extraordinary feat of overthrowing the country's long-time leader Omar al-Bashir through non-violent protests, are in groupings are aligned with Burhan, with Hemedti, or trying to stake out a neutral position. They are all active on social media, polarised, acrimonious and neighbourhood committees that were the driving force of the civic revolution are clinging to life. Most have kept their political heads down, focusing instead on essential humanitarian activities. Known as "Emergency Response Rooms", aid workers recognise that they are the most efficient channel for life-saving many lost their funding when the administration of US President Donald Trump closed down USAID, and other donors have not stepped into the army and RSF both see any form of civic activism as a threat. They are cracking down, arresting, torturing and killing national aid workers and human rights is no credible peace UN's chief diplomat assigned to Sudan, former Algerian Prime Minister Ramtane Lamamra, formulated a peace plan that was premised on the assumption that the army would achieve a military that would be left to negotiate would be the disarmament of the RSF and the reconstruction of the country. That is totally has a big diplomatic advantage over Hemedti because the UN has recognised the military side as the government of Sudan, even when it did not control the national attempt to launch a parallel administration for the vast territories controlled by the RSF has gained little credibility. Foreign ministers at a conference in London in April, hosted by British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, failed to agree a path to peace. The conference chairs had to settle for a statement that covered familiar this occasion, as before, progress was blocked because Saudi Arabia and the UAE could not acknowledge that Sudan's war is an African problem that needs an Arab road to peace in Khartoum runs through Abu Dhabi, Riyadh and Egypt, the big question is whether Burhan is able to distance himself from Sudan's Bashir, the Islamist movement was in power for 30 years, and established a formidable and well-funded organisation, that still Islamists mobilised combat brigades that were key to the army's recent victory in President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi supports Burhan and wants him to sideline the Islamists, but knows that he cannot push the Sudanese general too question takes on added salience with Israel's attack on Iran and the Islamists' fear that they are facing an irreversible other big question is whether the UAE will step back from supporting the RSF lost Khartoum, some hoped that Abu Dhabi might seek a compromise - but within weeks the RSF was deploying drones that appear to have come from the UAE is also facing strategic challenges, as it is an outlier in the Arab world in its alignment with wants to see Sudan divided. But the reality of the war points towards a de facto partition between bitterly opposed warring camps. Meanwhile, the world's largest and deepest humanitarian emergency worsens with no end in than half of Sudan's 45 million people are displaced. Nearly a million are in sides continue to restrict aid agencies' access to the starving. The UN's appeal for $4.2bn (£3bn) for essential aid was only 13.3% funded in late and among the Arab world's powerbrokers, Sudan is no-one's priority, an orphan in a region that is is a country where the multilateral organisations - the United Nations and the African Union - could still be can remind all of their commitments to human rights and human life, and that it is in no-one's interest to see Sudan's catastrophe continue to long-suffering Sudanese people surely deserve that quantum of de Waal is the executive director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in the US. Go to for more news from the African us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica
Iraq Business
10-06-2025
- Business
- Iraq Business
Iraq to become "a Massive Success Story"
By Padraig O'Hannelly. Iraq is experiencing unprecedented stability and security, creating significant opportunities for international businesses, according to Abir Burhan, Company Director of Al-Burhan Group (ABG), speaking at the Iraq Britain Business Council (IBBC) Spring Conference in London. Burhan outlined how the operating environment has transformed dramatically over the past year, with the Iraqi government actively inviting international investment and reducing hostility towards foreign businesses. " We've been through the worst of it, and we finally see that Iraq is becoming really stable and secure, " he told delegates. ABG has positioned itself as a facilitator for international companies entering the Iraqi market, partnering with established firms including Menzies Aviation and Air BP to operate ground fuelling services at Iraqi airports. The company has achieved international operational standards with no reported incidents, demonstrating the viability of high-quality service delivery in the country. " We allow companies to operate in a safe environment, to actually do their job, rather than worrying about the hurdles of dealing with the Iraqi infrastructure, " Burhan explained. The group has made substantial investments in Iraq's infrastructure over the past two years, including: A 300-room hotel development near Baghdad airport Construction of 1,200 affordable housing units in Wasit province Establishment of an operations centre to support international business activities Burhan noted that ABG's security division has experienced reduced demand over the past year, which he views as a positive indicator of improving conditions. " We don't mind our security company not being busy, because we know that there are big advantages for businesses as well, " he said. The Operations Director expressed optimism about Iraq's economic prospects, predicting the country will become " a massive success story " within the next five to ten years. He emphasised the current government's commitment to attracting international investment and the noticeable improvement in security conditions. Burhan acknowledged the pivotal role of the Iraq Britain Business Council in facilitating international business opportunities in Iraq over the past decade, describing their work as instrumental in bringing projects to fruition despite various challenges. The comments reflect growing confidence in Iraq's business environment as the country continues to rebuild and modernise its economy following years of instability.
