Rapid Support Forces What?

Four years ago, I told you to keep an eye on Sudan. The Wagner Group takes a close interest in the diamonds, gold, uranium, and thus government of that country, which in February agreed to host a Russian naval base on the Red Sea. Accordingly, an American-backed coup is now underway, and, with the end of the war in Yemen, we may be seeing one of the first two major practical consequences of the Chinese deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Most Labour and all Conservative politicians in Britain look absolutely ridiculous, having backed the Saudi assault on Yemen to the bitter end, as did the Liberal Democrats when they were in office. Now Saudi Arabia is accepting yuan for oil, applying to join BRICS, and leaving Yemen to the Houthis, heaven help both it and them. The world turns. It is just that some of us are always slightly ahead of it.

So a new front opens up, in Sudan. This one could be as complicated as Syria. But amid the glittering array of bad guys, you can bet your life that the British elite will not only feel the need to back one, but will then back the worst of the lot. It always does. That is the grownup thing to do, you see. The sensible approach. The centre ground. Those of us who have been proved right about all of these things, ever, will be howled down or ignored, as we always are.

It is never mentioned in polite society, but Shamima Begum was trafficked to join the organisation that, even as we were bombing it in the Iraq where we had created it, we were backing in Syria, where Britain still officially believes that IS should have won. Similarly, you will scarcely have noticed it, but Hashim Thaçi is on trial as a war criminal. This was not merely a man for whom the Blair Government voted at the UN, nor even whom Britain merely supplied. We went to war for him. We bombed a major European capital for him. We sent our troops to fight alongside his. Blair considered a full mobilisation. Thus, we created the source of many of the illegal firearms on British streets, and a global centre both of heroin-trafficking and of people-trafficking. For a quarter of a century, boys in that never unfailed state of Kosovo have been called Tonibler. And now, Thaçi and three of his other closest associates are on trial for war crimes.

Are they paying attention in Ukraine? I doubt it. Thanks to Jack Teixeira, Turkish, Israeli and South Korean politicians have to pretend to be shocked at the "discovery" that the Americans were spying on them, in the way that writers on certain British newspapers had to feign indignation that the President of the United States had bothered to visit Belfast and have Rishi Sunak serve him coffee only because he had needed an excuse to visit Ireland anyway. But in Ukraine, even what passes for the elite truly believes it all. Yet they now know what the Americans really think of their capabilities and of their chances. While the caravan is moving on to Sudan, or Taiwan, or wherever, leading to a marked increase in audibly injured Ukrainian entitlement. Denial is a river in Sudan.