How to Obfuscate Genocide: The Case of Sudan's Hiwaraat

On September 18th, 2025, GU-Q began yet another installment of its Hiwaraat conferences, this time with a focus on Sudan. According to the website itself, the conference seeks to, “convene a historic gathering of academics, artists, and activists to examine the relationship between sociopolitical dynamics and cultural production.” By the website’s own admission, Sudan is an often overlooked war, one with a “humanitarian crisis” (not genocide) that ravages the country’s present and threatens its past and future. What this tells us is that the university is more than aware, to some extent, of the stakes present in Sudan. It tells us that it recognizes the threat to Sudan and its people’s very existence. It tells us that it sees the suffering, the destruction, and the pain. It comes as a shock then, to realize that this conference will not seek to address the “humanitarian crisis” (not genocide) itself, but will instead tiptoe around it in the name of artistic expression, in the name of self-righteous abstract theater. The latest Hiwaraat conference, Arabic for dialogue, will attempt to avoid doing just that.

Taking a look at the program, one can immediately spot a clear pattern. The panel names mean nothing. Filled with vague titles and abstract concepts, one can immediately feel that there is no serious attempt to address the conflict in Sudan. It includes dance, song, and even a Sudanese culinary experience with a chef in the midst of an active famine in Sudan. How many planning boards and executives approved of this kind of grotesque mockery of genocide? Did not a single one stop to think whether this addressed the needs of Sudan? Whether this was time-appropriate as we watch genocide and famine unfolding before our very eyes? For all of its faults, I’m sure the planners of the Reimaginine Palestine conference would have never even had the thought of a food event cross their mind, and yet here we are. I will spare us all the unfortunate answer as to why Sudan was overlooked in this way, as I’m sure we are all well aware of the reason.

You may imagine that that’s the worst of it; but Georgetown, thankfully, never fails to impress. A consistent pattern among speakers is the desire to equate the RSF with the Sudanese government in an attempt to whitewash their atrocities. With this framing, the war in Sudan is not a foreign-funded and backed genocide, but an unfortunate and almost unstoppable conflict with Sudanese “brothers” fighting against each other. The war is happening because Sudanese people are “living in the past.” The war is happening because as claimed by journalist Azza Aziz, “...disdain towards Hemeti in Khartoum was largely based on classist and elitist understandings…” The war is happening for any reason that assigns no blame to the RSF or its foreign backers. One invited guest has even gone on a several minute interview asserting his belief in normalization with “Israel”, bringing this conference to the level of downplaying genocide in not one, but two separate countries. Another guest, Rebecca Glade, has even gone on record as saying, “[The RSF] attack people, they commit rape, they loot houses. They’re not a professionalized force. On the other hand, you have an army that is targeting people on ethnic lines. So, like in that sense, both are pretty bad.” Beyond the obvious equating of the SAF to the RSF, Glade somehow presents the army, and not the RSF, as the one attacking on ethnic lines when it is the RSF that is actively committing genocide. How a graduate student of Sudan manages to find this reductionist, genocide apologist take on a conflict, let alone muster up the confidence to say it on a newspaper in front of the whole world is entirely beyond me.

This is all done ultimately in service of one of the key causes of the war in Sudan, foreign powers. By equating the RSF and the SAF, support for the RSF can now similarly be ignored. If they’re both equally bad, there is no unique evil in profiting off of supporting one faction against the other. If these countries aren’t supporting genocide, then that means they still have the legitimacy to serve as mediators, parties in the discussions for the future of Sudan, no doubt to profit off of the blood, labor, and resources of Sudan. They want America and the UAE to get involved to put an end to this “senseless” bloodshed between these two factions who simply don’t know better. The civilized nations of the West and the Arab Gulf will come to rescue Sudan from its own shortcomings, saving its people from this self-inflicted disaster. 

The problem with this framing of the war in Sudan is that it, of course, misses the larger picture entirely. When there is a situation in which a genocidal military force, the successor to a previous genocidal military force, is committing mass atrocities across the country. With its control of parts of the country, it provides its wealthy backers with Sudan’s resources, covered in the blood of its people. To obfuscate this by invoking the shortcomings of the SAF, of the elites of Khartoum, by framing it as a “counter-revolutionary” event when it was the RSF that had seized Khartoum with foreign backing is nothing short of genocide apologia. There is no denying that the Sudanese army has been a terrible institution, one responsible for the oppression of Sudanese people not just during and after the 2019 revolution, but stretching back decades. These valid criticisms of the army however, is no excuse for equating a group like the RSF, or its horrific atrocities to the Sudanese government. Despite this, there is little pushback thanks to a lack of international media coverage on Sudan. Now, these so-called “experts” can sit in these panels and spread disinformation while well-meaning attendees are indoctrinated with this skewed, narrow view of events. Imagine if the Iraq War was described as a war of two evil forces, Saddam’s dictatorship and Bush’s imperialism, fighting against each other. Instead of recognizing the core of the issue, American imperialism, this framing would ultimately serve to downplay or even justify the Iraq War. This would immediately have been called out in the context of discussing Iraq, but Sudan holds no such privilege. In the face of media silence, Sudan can become whatever the so-called experts want it to be, however they want to frame it, in an audience of well-meaning people seeking to learn. 

Hiwaraat has already been subject to countless criticism for its numerous oversights. In the Iraq conference, we were invited to listen to the American ambassador discuss his own country’s imperialist invasion of Iraq. We were invited to listen to certain “journalists” who emphasize the necessity of overcoming sectarian division, but are simultaneously sympathizers of Iraq’s Hashemite monarchy that led Iraq with an iron fist, massacring thousands of Assyrians in its first year of rule and suppressing Shias, Kurds, and all kinds of reformists alike. In the Palestine conference, we were treated to Coca-Cola as guests educated us on the importance of the BDS movement. This time however, Georgetown has truly outdone itself. Never before has there ever been such a naked, shameless, and flagrant attempt at obfuscating genocide, at not addressing the realities on the ground with people who have actually lived those realities, at not addressing the global systems of imperialism and capitalism and their state backers who all share responsibility for the atrocities we see unfolding every day. 

I want to believe this conference was built out of ignorance, and that may be how it began. But after countless reminders from our Sudanese community and beyond at GUQ about the danger of presenting the conflict in this way, hardly anything about the conference was altered. Rather than being honest and rethinking this conference, they have gone ahead to “save face” (Although I expect this conference will be remembered in the future with more embarrassment and shame than anything else). Hiwaraat is an incredible idea in theory. It invites us to reflect, discuss, and debate over the issues that truly matter, issues often forgotten or misrepresented by mainstream academia. This conference does not just not reflect these values, it intentionally avoids all of them. If Georgetown would like for the Hiwaraat series to reach its true potential, it will have to reflect its own values, have a dialogue with itself, and create new conferences affirming these principles. For now, however, I encourage all students, faculty, and whoever else is able, to attend this conference critically and help Hiwaraat live up to its values. Ask difficult questions, bring up difficult topics, show these “experts” that their obfuscation isn’t working, and that countless people can see beyond their disingenuous framing of one of the worst atrocities of the 21st century.