“None of the ceasefires have been respected in total,” Volker Perthes, the United Nations special representative for Sudan, has told Sky News.
As Sudan’s political centre collapses under the chaos of urban warfare, Mr Perthes is regrouping with his team in the new peacetime capital of Port Sudan.
In an exclusive TV interview, Sky News sat down with Mr Perthes to discuss the points of contention in a crisis that has rapidly swallowed the country – killing hundreds of people and displacing millions of people in the first two weeks.
As the man at the helm of the United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS), Mr Perthes is often perceived to be the main mediator between the Sudanese parties vying for power since former military dictator Omar al Bashir was ousted in 2019.
After sustained pro-democracy protests, army chief Abdel-Fattah al Burhan and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces leader Mohamed “Hemedti” Dagalo partnered to remove their former ally al Bashir.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
8:18
UN envoy to Sudan’s full interview
In January 2021, Mr Perthes was assigned by the UN to assist with the transition to democratic elections. In October 2021 a military coup staged by the generals brought this transition to a deadly pause.
During this period, both men and the civilian political opposition they have wrestled with for command of the country, have had a seat at his negotiation table.
More on Sudan
Related Topics:
“In the last two weeks, there was no table to negotiate,” said Mr Perthes. “When we still were speaking about a political process, they were all in the room – signatory, civilian, military, non-signatories in different forms. Now, we have been speaking individually to them.”
In the first few days of fighting, presidents from Djibouti, South Sudan and Juba offered to fly to Khartoum and lead mediation efforts.
In a recent interview with Sky News, army chief al Burhan said that the climate of clashes was not suitable for their arrival.
Now, there are discussions of peace talks being held in a neighbouring country like Saudi Arabia, UAE or South Sudan.
“The idea is to actually bring them physically together to agree face-to-face on some of the modalities of a ceasefire – which is more than just a declaration of ‘we’re going to stop the fighting’,” Mr Perthes said.
Image: The UN has come under fire for its slow crisis response
‘How could you let this happen?’
In the past two weeks, Mr Perthes’ mission has been a target of anger and frustration. Those who believe he overestimated the generals ask “how could you let this happen?”, and those who believe he underestimated the generals ask “how could you not see this coming?”
“We saw enormous tensions between the leadership and the RSF leadership, and we struggled particularly in the last two weeks before 15 April – before the outbreak of hostilities – to de-escalate,” Mr Perthes said.
“But of course, we did not see it coming Saturday morning.”
Image: International rescue missions have allowed hundreds to flee Sudan
Like the forensic timeline of a brutal crime scene, Mr Perthes detailed the 24 hours before that shocking morning.
“We knew there was a risk of an outbreak of hostilities. We warned against it on Friday afternoon. We thought we, others and civilian actors from the Sudan had reached some progress because the two leaders had agreed on forming a military committee which was supposed to meet Saturday morning,” he said.
“So we went to bed and said well, maybe we have de-escalated it a little bit – and then we were woken up by the fighting.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
0:18
Heavy shooting in Sudan
A two-week lag time that I asked him to explain.
“Much of the humanitarian aid which we had in stock was looted,” he said.
“All the warehouses, WFP [World Food Programme], UNHCR [UN Refugee Agency] and others in Darfur were looted. Vehicles from the humanitarian agencies were looted. The offices of my own mission as well as offices, agencies in most of the towns of Darfur were looted. Food trucks were looted.
“WFP lost like 4,000 metric tons of humanitarian goods. So if all this is looted – you cannot distribute it.”
Image: International efforts, with support of a UK war vessel, are under way
Also at the port, are white containers stamped with the UN logo and rows of UN-branded armoured vehicles.
UN staff and personnel involved in the mission have also faced extreme dangers, Mr Perthes said.
“Staff members were held at gunpoint. Staff members were thrown out of their houses by armed fighters who took positions, and houses were broken into. We had at least one case of attempted sexual assault… on a female staff member. Many of the houses and apartments were hit by stray shells and bullets.”
In the first week of fighting, three WFP staff members were killed in north Darfur and as a result the WFP suspended all operations in the country.
“We are trying to get humanitarian supplies in,” Mr Perthes said.
“What we need to resume humanitarian activities is a ceasefire – a ceasefire that holds – and then we can start again.”
“We used to drink a beer every weekend,” she tells me, her eyes trained on the small little table on the patio where they would sit and talk.
“So for 500 days I came to have a beer outside the table. Here I put the beer for grandpa and I put the beer for me. He was my psychologist for 500 days.
“He was only a few kilometres from me and I just imagine him coming in with a big smile.”
Image: Rita Lifshitz tells Sky News her kibbutz ‘wakes up every morning to the 7th of October’
Around her, the charred remains of violence, death, and devastation. The burnt-out wreckage of happy lives that came to a horrific end.
I spent two hours walking around this kibbutz with Rita. She showed me the places where friends had been murdered, where loved ones had been taken hostage, and where her best friend had been shot and then dragged away, his blood still smeared over the floor of his home.
“It is a trauma,” she says. “And all of us, the whole kibbutz, wakes up every morning to the 7th of October.”
In total, 117 people, more than a quarter of those who were there that morning, were either killed or kidnapped. No other kibbutz suffered such a high proportion of casualties.
Among them, Oded Lifshitz and his wife, Yocheved. Both were in their 80s, and both had volunteered for charities promoting peaceful relations with Gazans. Both were taken hostage on October 7.
Image: Oded Lifshitz, who died in Hamas captivity
Oded used to drive sick children from Gazaand take them to Israelihospitals for treatment. Now we stand in the charred remains of their home.
Yocheved was eventually released after 16 days as a hostage, but Oded died in captivity. His body was not returned until earlier this year, but he had probably died a year earlier.
And now we stand in the charred remains of their house.
To Rita, this place is both a touchstone to a happier time and also a stark warning of inhumanity. A panel of metal is all that is left of the piano that Oded loved to play.
The couple’s crockery is still scattered in a corner, thrown there when their furniture was upended.
“They started firing rockets at us at 6.30 in the morning, but we didn’t worry because they have been firing rockets at us for 20 years,” says Rita.
“There was one day we had 800 rockets land round here, so we are not scared of rockets. We didn’t get any information about what was happening, no warning.
“The first we knew was when two people working in the fields saw Hamas, and they were the first ones to be killed.”
It is believed that around 540 fighters attacked the kibbutz – far more than Nir Oz’s entire population. It was a massacre. Only six houses escaped attack.
The nursery school workshops, gardens – all of them shot, burnt, destroyed.
We move to the far end of the home, picking our way through the debris that still litters the floor.
There is a steel door, the entrance to the bomb shelter where Oded and Yocheved often slept and where they tried to hide.
Their beds are still here, blackened and burnt. In the door are bullet holes – Oded had done his best to hold the door shut, but he was shot in the hand and the attackers stormed in.
‘The death road’
The last time Yocheved saw her husband was him lying on the floor, bleeding. As she was taken away, rolled into a carpet, she didn’t know if he was dead or alive.
To walk around this kibbutz is to witness the scars of trauma again and again. A black flag outside a house means someone died there.
A yellow flag designates that an occupant was taken hostage. There is a road that Rita calls “the death road,” where almost every house has at least one flag outside.
We go into the home of one friend, who was murdered in the living room. Her clothes are still there, her handbag hangs on the bedroom door. It feels so intrusive to be here, but Rita insists the world needs to see.
We see Natan, a long-term resident who is now 88 years old. His home was one of only six to escape being ransacked, because the Hamas attackers couldn’t work out how to get through the front door.
He says he came back as soon as he could, despite the destruction around him, insistent he is not fearful.
“This is my home,” he says emphatically.
Image: Natan says his home was one of only six to escape being ransacked
Rita takes me to the home of her best friend, Itzhak Elgarat. Unlike most of the homes, his was not set ablaze, so it still looks now as it did then.
A bottle of olive oil is on the side, cooking ingredients laid out, a couple of bottles of wine set on the table.
But also bullet holes strewn across the walls, in the furniture. Possessions thrown around and, horrendously, Itzhak’s blood still smeared across the walls, the floor, and the door where he was shot.
The other side
I climb a set of stairs, which used to belong to a house that has now been demolished.
You can see Gaza in the near distance, across a few fields.
And over there, not so long ago, Sabah might have been looking back.
Just as Rita’s life has been torn apart by the war, so has Sabah’s. For Rita, it is the mental torment of what happened on October 7, the struggle to process and to move on.
Image: Sabah says she has been displaced 13 times due to Israeli strikes since 7 October
For Sabah, it is something more fundamental. A Gazan displaced from Khan Younis, she once lived in a grand home near the border, only a couple of miles from Kibbutz Nir Oz, as the crow flies.
It was a home for multiple generations, the pride of her life, “a place meant to give us stability and peace”.
Since then, she has been displaced 13 times, and she worries that her home has been reduced to rubble.
“Personally, I long to go back to even the ruins of my house, to sit among the rubble, simply to be there,” she says.
“Even that would be better than this life. At least then I might find a little peace.”
The last time she saw her home, it had been hit by an explosion. Some of it was destroyed, but other parts were habitable.
But since then, Sabah has been told that it has been damaged by both fire and military action – news that devastated her.
Image: A building in Gaza in ruins after an Israeli strike
She says: “Someone told me ‘your house was the very first thing they burned. The fire raged inside for three days. And after they burned it, they brought in an armoured vehicle and blew it up’.
“Just imagine losing your home. When they told me what happened to mine, I spent nearly ten days doing nothing but crying.
“It feels like your soul is torn away. Your spirit leaves you.”
Image: ‘We are an oppressed people,’ Sabah tells Sky News
She insists that this story is not just about October 7, not just about Hamas, but about decades of struggle that led to this point, about Palestinian anger and accusations that they are oppressed by Israel.
“This goes back generations. What happened on October 7 was not the beginning of the story. I remember my father, my grandfather, and their fathers before them telling what they had endured. We have lived our entire lives under this weight.
“This land is ours, our homeland. We did not buy it. It has been passed down from our ancestors, generation to generation. That is why it is not easy for me, or for any of us, to surrender it.
“The truth is that we are exhausted. We are an oppressed people. October 7 was just one day, but for us, it has felt like living through hundreds of October 7th’s, over and over again.”
The first rule: Israel would manage the threat from Hamas but not try to eradicate it. Israel’s policy of dividing and ruling the Palestinians’ rival factions had come back to bite them.
Instead, Israelis insisted in one voice after October 7 no more “mowing the grass”, their euphemism for cutting Hamas down to size, from time to time. This time, the job must be finished.
That would change the way Israelis waged their war in Gaza. Not least in the way they would tolerate many more civilians dying, in the name of defeating their enemy. If the target’s rank was high enough, the deaths of scores of civilians – women and children – would be acceptable.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
7:43
Two years on from 7 October attacks
The outcome has been an unprecedentedly high civilian death toll.
Israel’s war on Hamas has now killed more than 67,000 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians or combatants.
Its impact will be felt for generations to come, not least no doubt on the potential radicalisation of those who have survived.
And it has seen Israel, a nation conceived in the wake of one genocide, accused of perpetrating another. That stain, justified or not, has implications for Israel’s psyche and own sense of identity.
Israel denies all accusations of genocide. But it has potentially grave repercussions for its future.
Abroad, popular support for Israel has fallen most of all among the young and most of all where it needs it most: America. The rule that supporting Israel will always be a vote-winner in the US is also now in question.
But the rules have changed Israel’s borders and in the way it has chosen to wield its increasingly hegemonic military power even more dramatically.
Image: Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel is now finding itself increasingly isolated. Pic: AP
Israel’s leaders found a new boldness in the wake of October 7, at the same time as technological and tactical advances gave them the tools to pursue it.
The pager operation against Hezbollah that crippled the Shiite Lebanese militia was planned long before October 7. But it reached operational utility just as Israel found the risk appetite to implement it.
The pager attack disabled Hezbollah’s ability to launch tens of thousands of missiles, after months of attritive attacks on them by Israel.
For as long as Hezbollah held that arsenal of missiles, it was assumed Israel would not risk attacking Iran. With that neutralised, Israel could now take on its ultimate enemies there.
Image: Netanyahu has provoked Trump in the past with Israel’s military offensives. Pic: Reuters
In the prelude to this anniversary, Benjamin Netanyahu is learning the limits of what can be achieved by military power alone. Having invested more in military action than constructive diplomacy, Netanyahu’s Israel is now increasingly isolated.
Israel’s leader finds himself hemmed in by a US president being leant on by Arab allies. Trump will not tolerate Israel annexing the West Bank and wants a deal that offers a “credible pathway” to a future Palestinian state.
Netanyahu needs to show he can still bring the remaining hostages home, that fighting the war this long was justified, and he has a plan for what happens the day after.
And if the war is being drawn to a close, with American mediation and the support of Arab partners and allies, they all have responsibilities too.
To find a better new status quo with far better rules, to make sure the carnage and regionwide turmoil of the last two years can be brought to a close and never repeated.
A source with knowledge of the situation told Reuters the evacuation should be completed on Tuesday, though the Tibetan regional government did not have an immediate comment.
Those rescued so far have been escorted to the small town of Qudang, which is about 30 miles from base camp on Everest’s Tibetan side.
Image: Tibetan firefighters rescue trekkers from Everest. Pic: Reuters
October is a popular time for hikers attempting to climb Everest – the highest mountain on Earth.
Skies are usually clear following the end of the Indian monsoon season, making the weekend’s rainfall unusual.
Chen Geshuang, who was part of an 18-strong team that safely got to Qudang, said: “It was so wet and cold in the mountains, and hypothermia was a real risk.
“The weather this year is not normal. The guide said he had never encountered such weather in October. And it happened all too suddenly.”