On 11 April 2025, AP noted that the two-year-old Civil War in Sudan is regarded by the United Nations as “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis”, though it is grossly underreported (see Wake up: The Worst Humanitarian Crisis on Earth is in Sudan, by Shirley Martey Hargis and Mike Sexton, Third Way [2024]).

Even Pope Leo XIV failed to mention ‘Sudan’ on Sunday when he denounced the conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine, and Myanmar (refer Pope Leo calls for peace in Gaza, Myanmar and Ukraine at the end of his inaugural mass, Africa News 18 May 2025).

Al Jazeera’s The Stream (20 May) posed this social media post: “Trying to raise awareness about Sudan is like talking into a void. Nobody seems to care about the starving children or the innocent people being brutally executed by the RSF on a daily basis”.

The young man, Elbashir Idris, political analyst, speaking from Cardiff, claimed: “There’s an international conspiracy done by the global order that seems to be working together against the Sudanese people”.

What Sudan means to me, and that the conflict should mean to New Zealand

I have not been to Israel, Gaza, Ukraine, or Myanmar; though I have been close to Gaza; Port Said (and other places in Egypt, during the week in September 1978 when Pope Jean-Paul I mysteriously died). And I enjoyed two days in Khartoum and Omdurman the following week.

Sudan represents a special memory to me. It’s an assertive place. Khartoum, on the confluence of the Blue Nile and the White Nile, was the site of one of the most spectacular defeats of the British Empire, in 1884/85. I still remember the epic 1966 movie Khartoum, starring Charlton Heston and Lawrence Olivier.

That 1880s’ stoush – reminiscent of the 2021 defeat of the United States by the Taliban – could have been New Zealand’s first involvement in a foreign imperial war. The conservative government in New Zealand – headed by Harry Atkinson – refused the request from the United Kingdom for military support; contrast the subsequent adventure into South Africa in 1899 under the Liberal Government of Richard Seddon.

Al Jazeera reported just today (20 May 2025, Sudan time) that the new Battle of Khartoum (2023–2025) has resolved with a victory to the Sudanese Armed Forces over the rebel Rapid Support Forces. (The Wikipedia article is premature, calling the present Battle of Khartoum over on 26 March 2025.) The Sudan Civil War remains far from over, however.

One reason why the west has paid so little attention to this conflict is almost certainly a racism-tainted view; that it’s just a civil war in ‘black Africa’, that the rest of the world can leave well-alone. But this view is not true, because the present Sudan Civil War is an international ‘proxy war’; fuelled by extra-national powers – regional if not global.

Before the Civil War started, there was a successful military coup, in October 2021. Sudanese politics have always been convoluted, as is true in reality for most countries. Sudan had struggled for decades with a humanitarian crisis in its west – Darfur – with attacks on civilian communities by the mysterious Janjaweed which had links to Libya in the time of Muammar Gaddafi. The Janjaweed has now largely morphed into the Rapid Support Forces, and it’s an open contention that they are heavily backed by the United Arab Emirates; that is, the RSF – the force which appears to be mainly responsible for the humanitarian disaster – is an alleged proxy of the UAE. And the RSF have a lot of very sophisticated military kit; armaments which are clearly foreign-sourced and foreign-funded.

Where is the journalism examining the role of the United Arab Emirates in this most brutal of wars; this war happening in front of our eyes but which we do not see? This is an important question for New Zealand, because the UAE is a particularly important commercial ally of New Zealand.

Al Jazeera’s Inside Story (15 April 2025) noted: “In March, the army-led government filed a case in the International Criminal Court against the United Arab Emirates”. Conspiracy or not, there is certainly a massive missing narrative. Is this cognitive void simple racism on the part of The West (and maybe some others)? Or is it part of a wider problem of geopolitical smoke and mirrors? Or are New Zealand and its associates mesmerised, like a possum (or rabbit) in the headlights or an ostrich with its head firmly buried in the sand?

(Chris Hipkins, New Zealand’s Leader of the Opposition, deployed a little casual racism in Parliament yesterday [20 May 2025] – twice in the one speech – referring to “tinpot dictatorships and banana republics“. Is the United Arab Emirates a ‘tinpot dictatorship’? Would he call the President of the Philippines a ‘banana republican’?)

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

The New Zealand government is being urged to create a special humanitarian visa for Palestinians in Gaza with ties to this country.

More than 30 organisations — including World Vision, Save the Children and Greenpeace — have sent an open letter to ministers, calling on them to step up support.

They also want the government to help evacuate Palestinians with ties to New Zealand from Gaza, and provide them with resettlement assistance.

Their appeal is backed by Palestinian New Zealander Muhammad Dahlen, whose family is living in fear in Rafah after being forced to move there from northern Gaza.

His ex-wife and two children (who have had visitor visas since December) were now living in a garage with his mother, sisters and nieces who do not have visas.

“There is no food, there is no power . . .  it is a really hard situation to be living in,” he told RNZ Morning Report.

If his family could receive visas to come to New Zealand “it literally can be the difference between life and death”.

‘Everyone susceptible to death’
With Israel making it clear it still intended to send ground forces into Rafah “everyone is susceptible to death and at least we would be saving some lives”.

Dahlen said New Zealand had a tradition of accepting refugees from areas of conflict, including Sudan, Ukraine, Afghanistan and Syria.

“So why is this not the same?”

He appealed to Immigration Minister Erica Stanford and Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters to intervene and approach the Egyptian government.

“We need these people out,” he said.

“Please give them visas; this is a first step. This is something super super difficult and huge and requires ministerial intervention.”

Border permission needed
At the Gaza-Egypt border potential refugees needed to gain the permission of officials from both Israel and Egypt.

Egypt had concerns about taking in too many refugees from Gaza so the New Zealand government would need to provide assurances flights had been organised.

If the government offered a charter flight to bring refugees to this country, “that would be amazing”.

World Vision spokesperson Rebekah Armstrong said the government had responded with immigration support in other humanitarian emergencies.

“We provided humanitarian visas for Ukrainians when their lives were torn apart by war, and we assisted Afghans to leave and resettle in this country when the Taliban returned to power. The situation for vulnerable Palestinians is no different.

“Palestinians are living in a perilous environment, with hundreds of thousands of people displaced from their homes; children and families starving with literally nothing to eat; and healthcare and medical treatment nearly impossible to access,” Armstrong said.

This is not a detainment camp in World War II, nor a prison in the Holocaust, this is Gaza in 2024. A chilling reminder that history repeats.

A holocaust is happening right before our eyes and the world is silent. pic.twitter.com/Y4SgE1yjji

— Mohamad Safa (@mhdksafa) March 10, 2024

Several hundred
The organisations did not know exactly how many people would qualify for such a visa, but estimated it could be several hundred.

“We know there’s around 288 Palestinian New Zealanders in New Zealand, and they have estimated that there would be around 300-400 people that are their family members that they’d like to bring here,” Armstrong said.

“That’s a very small number and as we’ve seen, in the case of Ukraine . . . the actual number of people that have probably come here would be significantly less than that, it’s not like they’re asking for the world. I think it’s quite a conservative number myself.”

She told Morning Report similar visas for Ukrainians and Afghans had been organised within days or weeks.

“It would be New Zealand’s response to this catastrophic situation that is unfolding. We want to be on the right side of history and this is one way we could help.”

She said embassies in the region would need to assist with the logistics of people leaving Gaza.

NZ government ‘monitoring’
Stanford said in a statement the government was monitoring the situation in Gaza.

“The issue in Gaza is primarily a humanitarian and border issue, not a visa issue, as people are unable to leave.

“People who have relatives in Gaza can already apply for temporary or visitors’ visas for them,” Stanford said.

But Armstrong said: “If there is the political will, the government can do this.

“Other countries are doing this . . .  Canada and Australia are getting people out. It’s tricky, but it’s not impossible.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz