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Security Council Extends Arms Embargo on Darfur

FILE PHOTO: Members of the United Nations Security Council gather during a meeting about the situation in Venezuela, in New York, US, February 26, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
FILE PHOTO: Members of the United Nations Security Council gather during a meeting about the situation in Venezuela, in New York, US, February 26, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
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Security Council Extends Arms Embargo on Darfur

FILE PHOTO: Members of the United Nations Security Council gather during a meeting about the situation in Venezuela, in New York, US, February 26, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
FILE PHOTO: Members of the United Nations Security Council gather during a meeting about the situation in Venezuela, in New York, US, February 26, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

The UN Security Council extended an arms embargo on Sudan's Darfur region for another year, after experts said it had been regularly violated amid the ongoing civil war.

In a resolution adopted unanimously, the Council extended until September 12, 2025 the sanctions regime in place since 2005, which is aimed solely at Darfur, AFP reported.

That includes individual sanctions -- asset freezes and a travel ban -- on three people, and an arms embargo.

The "people of Darfur continue to live in danger and desperation and despair ... This adoption sends an important signal to them that the international community remains focused on their plight," said deputy US ambassador Robert Wood.

Though sanctions do not apply to the whole country, their renewal "will restrict the movement of arms into Darfur and sanction individuals and entities contributing to or complicit in destabilizing activities in Sudan," he said.

More than 16 months of war between rival Sudanese generals has killed tens of thousands of people and triggered what the United Nations calls the world's worst internal displacement crisis.

The war pits the army under Sudan's de facto leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against the RSF, led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

The UN and humanitarian organizations fear that the war could degenerate into new ethnic violence, particularly in Darfur.

Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the decision was a "missed opportunity" by the Council to extend the embargo to the whole of Sudan.

China and Russia, permanent members of the Security Council who abstained the last time the embargo was renewed, in 2023, this time voted in favor.

The move "will go some way towards stemming the steady flow of illicit arms into the battlefield and calming down and deescalating the situation on the ground," said deputy Chinese ambassador Dai Bing.

He said the sanctions were "a means, not an end. They must not replace diplomacy."

In their annual report, published in January, experts charged by the Council with monitoring the sanctions regime said the arms embargo had been violated multiple times.

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Former Israeli Spies Describe Attack Using Exploding Electronic Devices against Lebanon’s Hezbollah

An ambulance rushes wounded people to the American University of Beirut Medical Center, on September 17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon amid ongoing cross-border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah fighters. (Photo by Anwar AMRO / AFP)
An ambulance rushes wounded people to the American University of Beirut Medical Center, on September 17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon amid ongoing cross-border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah fighters. (Photo by Anwar AMRO / AFP)
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Former Israeli Spies Describe Attack Using Exploding Electronic Devices against Lebanon’s Hezbollah

An ambulance rushes wounded people to the American University of Beirut Medical Center, on September 17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon amid ongoing cross-border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah fighters. (Photo by Anwar AMRO / AFP)
An ambulance rushes wounded people to the American University of Beirut Medical Center, on September 17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon amid ongoing cross-border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah fighters. (Photo by Anwar AMRO / AFP)

Two recently retired senior Israeli intelligence agents shared new details about a deadly clandestine operation years in the making that targeted Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and Syria using exploding pagers and walkie talkies three months ago.
Hezbollah began striking Israel almost immediately after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack that sparked the Israel-Hamas war, The Associated Press said.
The agents spoke with CBS “60 Minutes” in a segment aired Sunday night. They wore masks and spoke with altered voices to hide their identities.
One agent said the operation started 10 years ago using walkie-talkies laden with hidden explosives, which Hezbollah didn't realize it was buying from Israel, its enemy. The walkie-talkies were not detonated until September, a day after booby-trapped pagers were set off.
“We created a pretend world,” said the officer, who went by the name “Michael.”
Phase two of the plan, using the booby-trapped pagers, kicked in in 2022 after Israel's Mossad intelligence agency learned Hezbollah had been buying pagers from a Taiwan-based company, the second officer said.
The pagers had to be made slightly larger to accommodate the explosives hidden inside. They were tested on dummies multiple times to find the right amount of explosive that would hurt only the Hezbollah fighter and not anyone else in close proximity.
Mossad also tested numerous ring tones to find one that sounded urgent enough to make someone pull the pager out of their pocket.
The second agent, who went by the name “Gabriel,” said it took two weeks to convince Hezbollah to switch to the heftier pager, in part by using false ads on YouTube promoting the devices as dustproof, waterproof, providing a long battery life and more.
He described the use of shell companies, including one based in Hungary, to dupe the Taiwanese firm, Gold Apollo, into unknowingly partnering with the Mossad.
Hezbollah also was unaware it was working with Israel.
Gabriel compared the ruse to a 1998 psychological film about a man who has no clue that he is living in a false world and his family and friends are actors paid to keep up the illusion.
“When they are buying from us, they have zero clue that they are buying from the Mossad,” Gabriel said. “We make like ‘Truman Show,’ everything is controlled by us behind the scene. In their experience, everything is normal. Everything was 100% kosher including businessman, marketing, engineers, showroom, everything.”
By September, Hezbollah militants had 5,000 pagers in their pockets.
Israel triggered the attack on Sept. 17, when pagers all over Lebanon started beeping. The devices would explode even if the person failed to push the buttons to read an incoming encrypted message.
The next day, Mossad activated the walkie-talkies, some of which exploded at funerals for some of the approximately 30 people who were killed in the pager attacks.
Gabriel said the goal was more about sending a message than actually killing Hezbollah fighters.
“If he just died, so he’s dead. But if he’s wounded, you have to take him to the hospital, take care of him. You need to invest money and efforts,” he said. “And those people without hands and eyes are living proof, walking in Lebanon, of ‘don’t mess with us.’ They are walking proof of our superiority all around the Middle East.”
In the days after the attack, Israel's air force hit targets across Lebanon, killing thousands. Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was assassinated when Israel dropped bombs on his bunker.
By November, the war between Israel and Hezbollah, a byproduct of the deadly attack by Hamas group in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, ended with a ceasefire. More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas militants, health officials have said.
The agent using the name “Michael” said that the day after the pager explosions, people in Lebanon were afraid to turn on their air conditioners out of fear that they would explode, too.
“There is real fear,” he said.
Asked if that was intentional, he said, “We want them to feel vulnerable, which they are. We can’t use the pagers again because we already did that. We’ve already moved on to the next thing. And they’ll have to keep on trying to guess what the next thing is.”