'Not Another War in Africa!' II: Sudan

Or, How Your 'Dubai Bling' coded vacay is enabling mass murder

Issue #026

It was 2009, I was almost 18 years old and Dubai was our three-day stopover on the way to visiting family in Pakistan. I had a good time: I was with my family, A-levels were behind me, and there was plenty of sunshine to bask in. Although, in reality, the sun was too hot to actually go out in, the city was too commercial, unwalkable, and my biggest impressions of it were that it was a city in a desperate hurry—unmade and in the act of burying its history as a fishing village—and that it was just one big shopping mall.

That impression never left me. I didn’t respect the loud, brash, consumerist nouveau riche that had hands slick with oil. The disparity in the country was blatant when Filipinos with smiles plastered over god knows what horrors were second-class citizens and South Asians mopped the floors after Emiratis with Louis Vuitton swinging on the crooks of their arms.

And then, over the years, the drip-drip of news exposed the exploitative nature of Dubai. No surprise. Men sleeping, cramped, in labour camps outside the city, their passports confiscated and contracts modified upon arrival. The ‘kafala’ system that gave employers inhumanly draconian rights over their workers so that domestic workers were essentially slaves, and women known to vanish completely into its web.

And then some.

Yet, even with the taint of these truths, the glamour of Dubai never really waned. People continue to visit and buy into its trap of luxury. A matchstick luxury that a little flick would topple over. But, who cares? You don’t have to pay tax, can drive fast, buy a viral chocolate, shop endlessly, walk on fake grass, sleep on a fake island and still remain unsatisfied.

So what if a few foreigners get exploited? Exploitation happens everywhere!

But it only gets worse. The United Arab Emirates’ insidious tendrils stretch beyond its borders so that it is one of many foreign powers that is causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands in many countries, including Sudan.

At the moment, the displacement of millions and the sheer violence that is being perpetrated against the Sudanese people is absolutely staggering and sickening (I mention the violence against women in my newsletter here). The current wave of violence in the country began in April 2023, though it is a country that has been struggling for peace for decades. I don’t want to go into the pissing contest between ruling factions, because the main problem is that, yet again, the ordinary person suffers.

The problem is—because the UAE has invested billions of dollars into Sudan already—it has a vested interest in the conflict, too. It is backing the RSF (Rapid Support Forces) so that it can then exploit Sudan for its resources and is doing this by funnelling arms into the country. Politics and power play and dirty money once again. People dying once again.

And how does this link with you, with us?

What’s happening in Sudan is a genocide, plain and simple. People are being killed with an intent to eradicate the existence of any one that will get in the way of a ‘Muslim’ state. Tourism is a major contributor to Dubai’s economy and is continuing to grow from year to year. It’s important to understand that when you spend money in Dubai, you’re also tacitly agreeing to let it use your money to kill people. Your insta-worthy, sun-kissed and sterilised snapshots are giving false testimony to a regime that is happy to kill through another’s hands.

I really can’t stop stressing this: the UAE is one of the main reasons that people in Sudan keep dying, keep having to leave their homes, keep seeing their family members tortured, keep getting raped. I’ve mentioned mostly Dubai because it is the most famous of all the cities in the country and is the place that most people will visit and invest in.

Although I’ve learnt to modulate my speech since my days of adolescent and 20-something hot-headedness, I am often met with askance faces when I air my ‘highly-politicised’ opinions, but people need to realise that politics doesn’t fit in a neat box away from our every day lives. The current concept of politics is an excuse to tread on the lives and voices of ordinary people, as if we are all too stupid to make informed judgments. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sit right with me.

Remember Sudan. Speak up about it. Don’t pay the people sullying their hands with its blood.