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Aid Situation Worsens As Sudan Fighting Spreads

Sudanese women and children crowd into a camp for the displaced in Al-Suwar, about 15 kilometres (10 miles) north of Wad Madani - AFP
Sudanese women and children crowd into a camp for the displaced in Al-Suwar, about 15 kilometres (10 miles) north of Wad Madani - AFP
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Aid Situation Worsens As Sudan Fighting Spreads

Sudanese women and children crowd into a camp for the displaced in Al-Suwar, about 15 kilometres (10 miles) north of Wad Madani - AFP
Sudanese women and children crowd into a camp for the displaced in Al-Suwar, about 15 kilometres (10 miles) north of Wad Madani - AFP

Desperately needed relief supplies are being confiscated by the warring parties in Sudan as fighting spreads to areas previously untouched by the 10-week-old conflict between top generals, aid agencies said on Friday.

Demonstrations in support of the regular army were held Friday in greater Khartoum and in White Nile state to its south as civilians gave vent to their anger at the widespread requisition of private homes by the rival paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), witnesses said.

The battle for power between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, has killed more than 2,000 people since April 15, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.

Greater Khartoum and the flashpoint western region of Darfur have been the main battlegrounds so far but this week residents reported a flare-up of fighting in the Kordofan region, scene of another long-running rebellion.

On Friday, witnesses reported renewed artillery exchanges and street-fighting in Khartoum, as well as "clashes between the army and the RSF" in North Kordofan state, hundreds of kilometres (miles) to its south, according to AFP.

The United Nations says a record 25 million people -- more than half of Sudan's population -- are in need of aid and protection.

While some relief supplies have trickled in, aid agencies report almost insurmountable hurdles to their work.

"Blatant restrictions on entry into Sudan for humanitarian workers and aid supplies are leaving millions in need stranded," according to the Norwegian Refugee Council's William Carter.

Doctors without Border (MSF) reported similar hurdles. Permits have been "delayed, rejected, rescinded, or plainly not respected," while "supplies have been confiscated" and staff "beaten and violently threatened" by armed groups, it said.

Two-thirds of health facilities in the main battlegrounds remain out of service, according to the Sudanese doctors' union, which says medical personnel have been targeted amid widespread violations against civilians.

At least 36 cases of sexual violence have been recorded in Khartoum alone by the governmental Combating Violence Against Women and Children Unit, with the majority of survivors accusing RSF fighters.

"Reported and documented cases are no more than two percent of real figures," the unit said, adding that they have not been able to assess the case total in the western region of Darfur, "where the situation is getting worse every day".

Diplomatic efforts to broker a halt to the fighting are at a standstill after both sides violated the last, 72-hour ceasefire, which ended on Wednesday.

The United States, which brokered the truce along with Saudi Arabia, said Thursday it had put its mediation efforts on hold.

"On Wednesday, yesterday, we adjourned those talks because the format is not succeeding in the way that we want," US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

"Those ceasefires have not been fully effective, although they have allowed the transmittal of important, urgently needed humanitarian assistance," she said.

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Why Greenland? Remote but Resource-Rich Island Occupies a Key Position in a Warming World

Large icebergs float away as the sun rises near Kulusuk, Greenland, on Aug. 16, 2019. (AP)
Large icebergs float away as the sun rises near Kulusuk, Greenland, on Aug. 16, 2019. (AP)
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Why Greenland? Remote but Resource-Rich Island Occupies a Key Position in a Warming World

Large icebergs float away as the sun rises near Kulusuk, Greenland, on Aug. 16, 2019. (AP)
Large icebergs float away as the sun rises near Kulusuk, Greenland, on Aug. 16, 2019. (AP)

Remote, icy and mostly pristine, Greenland plays an outsized role in the daily weather experienced by billions of people and in the climate changes taking shape all over the planet.

Greenland is where climate change, scarce resources, tense geopolitics and new trade patterns all intersect, said Ohio University security and environment professor Geoff Dabelko.

The world's largest island is now "central to the geopolitical, geoeconomic competition in many ways," partly because of climate change, Dabelko said.

Since his first term in office, President-elect Donald Trump has expressed interest in acquiring Greenland, which is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, a longtime US ally and a founding member of NATO. It is also home to a large US military base.

Why is Greenland coveted? Think of Greenland as an open refrigerator door or thermostat for a warming world, and it's in a region that is warming four times faster than the rest of the globe, said New York University climate scientist David Holland.

Locked inside are valuable rare earth minerals needed for telecommunications, as well as uranium, billions of untapped barrels of oil and a vast supply of natural gas that used to be inaccessible but is becoming less so.

Many of the same minerals are currently being supplied mostly by China, so other countries such as the United States are interested, Dabelko said. Three years ago, the Denmark government suspended oil development offshore from the territory of 57,000 people.

But more than the oil, gas or minerals, there's ice — a "ridiculous" amount, said climate scientist Eric Rignot of the University of California, Irvine.

If that ice melts, it would reshape coastlines across the globe and potentially shift weather patterns in such a dramatic manner that the threat was the basis of a Hollywood disaster movie. Greenland holds enough ice that if it all melts, the world's seas would rise by 24 feet (7.4 meters). Nearly a foot of that is so-called zombie ice, already doomed to melt no matter what happens, a 2022 study found.

Since 1992, Greenland has lost about 182 billion tons (169 billion metric tons) of ice each year, with losses hitting 489 billion tons a year (444 billion metric tons) in 2019.

Greenland will be "a key focus point" through the 21st century because of the effect its melting ice sheet will have on sea levels, said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. "It will likely become a bigger contributor in the future."

That impact is "perhaps unstoppable," NYU's Holland said.

Are other climate factors at play? Greenland also serves as the engine and on/off switch for a key ocean current that influences Earth's climate in many ways, including hurricane and winter storm activity. It's called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, and it's slowing down because more fresh water is being dumped into the ocean by melting ice in Greenland, Serreze said.

A shutdown of the AMOC conveyor belt is a much-feared climate tipping point that could plunge Europe and parts of North America into prolonged freezes, a scenario depicted in the 2004 movie "The Day After Tomorrow."

"If this global current system were to slow substantially or even collapse altogether — as we know it has done in the past — normal temperature and precipitation patterns around the globe would change drastically," said climate scientist Jennifer Francis of the Woodwell Climate Research Center. "Agriculture would be derailed, ecosystems would crash, and ‘normal’ weather would be a thing of the past."

Greenland is also changing color as it melts from the white of ice, which reflects sunlight, heat and energy away from the planet, to the blue and green of the ocean and land, which absorb much more energy, Holland said.

Greenland plays a role in the dramatic freeze that two-thirds of the United States is currently experiencing. And back in 2012, weather patterns over Greenland helped steer Superstorm Sandy into New York and New Jersey, according to winter weather expert Judah Cohen of the private firm Atmospheric and Environmental Research.

Because of Greenland's mountains of ice, it also changes patterns in the jet stream, which brings storms across the globe and dictates daily weather. Often, especially in winter, a blocking system of high pressure off Greenland causes Arctic air to plunge to the west and east, smacking North America and Europe, Cohen said.

Why is Greenland's location so important? Because it straddles the Arctic circle between the United States, Russia and Europe, Greenland is a geopolitical prize that the US and others have eyed for more than 150 years. It's even more valuable as the Arctic opens up more to shipping and trade.

None of that takes into consideration the unique look of the ice-covered island that has some of the Earth's oldest rocks.

"I see it as insanely beautiful. It's eye-watering to be there," said Holland, who has conducted research on the ice more than 30 times since 2007. "Pieces of ice the size of the Empire State Building are just crumbling off cliffs and crashing into the ocean. And also, the beautiful wildlife, all the seals and the killer whales. It’s just breathtaking."