3 hours ago
1
The latest report from the UN independent fact-finding mission on the fall of El Fasher in Sudan reads like a postmortem of a preventable tragedy. The report details what it calls the “hallmarks of genocide”: mass killings, systematic sexual violence and ethnic cleansing targeting non-Arab communities by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The atrocities in El Fasher should have surprised no one in the international community. Western governments were warned repeatedly by civil society, humanitarian organisations, investigative journalists and their own agencies. In Britain, a whistleblower last year accused the Foreign Office of censoring internal warnings about imminent genocide. The US state department and members of the UN security council received continuous reporting from the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab documenting the RSF’s military buildup and preparations to overrun the city. Senior US officials warned the Biden administration that El Fasher was at imminent risk. A security council resolution in 2024 called for an end to the siege. None of this prevented the city from being strangled.
The clearest expression of the failure to act on information emerged in October 2025, when Washington hosted talks involving officials from the Sudanese government and the RSF. Just days after those discussions, the RSF captured El Fasher and began the massacres the UN has now documented. These talks did not prevent catastrophe. They provided political cover while it unfolded. The subsequent calls for a truce were issued without any acknowledgment of why they failed to prevent the assault.
The silence reflects a hierarchy of priorities. Strategic relationships with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have been placed above civilian protection in Sudan.
Multiple investigations, including leaked UN expert reports, have raised serious concerns about the UAE’s role in sustaining the RSF through arms transfers, logistics networks and financial pipelines. When supply routes through Libya and Chad became widely exposed, alternative corridors reportedly emerged via Somalia’s Puntland and Ethiopia. Advanced weaponry, drones and foreign mercenaries further strengthened the RSF. At the very moment the Sudanese armed forces had retaken Khartoum, Gezira province and Sennar, creating a narrow but real opportunity for de-escalation, the UAE’s support for the RSF intensified.
Yet western governments continue to treat Abu Dhabi as a mediator. The “Sudan quartet”, bringing together the US, UK, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, presents itself as a diplomatic mechanism for peace. In practice, it institutionalises contradiction. When a state widely accused of arming one of the belligerents is seated as a broker, mediation becomes theatre and engagement replaces accountability.
A widening rift between Saudi Arabia and the UAE has turned Sudan into a proxy arena of Red Sea competition. Riyadh frames the conflict through state authority and regional stability; Abu Dhabi has pursued an assertive strategy anchored in ports, gold and militia patronage. Rather than confront this divergence, Washington and London have chosen equilibrium, careful not to alienate either Gulf ally.
That caution has translated into conspicuous silence. At the Munich security conference last week and in front of the UN security council, the UK foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, expressed concern for Sudanese civilians and for women subjected to sexual violence. Yet she didn’t acknowledge claims that the UAE was the principal external supporter of the RSF, instead asserting that “a dozen states” were involved in arms transfers. The effect was to diffuse responsibility precisely at the moment clarity was required.
Donald Trump’s adviser, Massad Boulos, followed the same script. In his security council briefing yesterday, he avoided addressing the documented scale of Emirati support and instead focused on the threat posed by Islamists and remnants of the former regime within the Sudanese army. Those concerns may be politically convenient, but they do not explain the RSF’s campaign in Darfur.
With this evasive strategy, alliances are protected but civilians are not. The result is paralysis dressed up as diplomacy.
Western officials routinely invoke accountability while remaining adrift in their attempts to operationalise it. The liberal peace-building model that privileges armed actors and elite bargains has already failed Sudan. It treats generals and militia leaders as indispensable stakeholders and relegates civilians to observers. By treating the RSF as a legitimate political interlocutor rather than what it is, an armed organisation implicated in mass atrocities and sustained by foreign patronage, the international community validates violence as a pathway to recognition. If El Fasher is to mean anything, this approach must change.
First, fund the people keeping Sudan alive. Channel resources directly to Sudanese civilian networks such as resistance committees, emergency response rooms, and the medical and food lifelines operating outside both armed camps.
Second, name the parties to the war. The US, the UK and the UN must explicitly acknowledge the UAE’s role in sustaining the RSF and treat it as a belligerent, not a broker. This means sanctions not only on individuals but on the companies, financial channels and transport routes implicated in arms transfers and logistics to the RSF.
Third, establish real accountability. Any ceasefire or political track that lacks independent monitoring, enforceable civilian protection and automatic consequences for violations will merely provide cover for rearmament.
Peace cannot be built on the same elite bargains that have repeatedly collapsed. Without confronting the external enablers of this war, diplomacy becomes theatre and accountability a slogan. El Fasher has already exposed the cost of that illusion.
-
Husam Mahjoub is co-founder of Sudan Bukra, an independent non-profit Sudanese TV channel
-
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
