Since the decolonization of Sudan in 1956, the Sudanese people have never been able to live in peace, especially since the war in Darfur which broke out in 2003, calling for self-determination, and then for independence. Now, the security situation is still dangerous, as the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fight regularly, causing deaths and injuries. This, therefore, could also be termed “genocide,” as UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide Alice Wairimu Nderity called it last week.
After nearly 20 years, a violent new civil war is raging in Sudan, where the threat of genocide is once more present. However, there are no calls for outside military involvement, no A-list celebrities, and no rallies this time. Very few international leaders denounce the crimes with more than a passing comment.
Darfur is an area in western Sudan which borders Chad and the Central African Republic, and after its creation in 2012, great tensions with Sudan ensued.
Since the battle re-started in April 2023, fighting between the SAF and the opposition RSF paramilitary force has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and about 9 million displacements.
The lack of international attention and resources the crisis is receiving–especially in comparison to the world response to the violence in 2003, which by the way was the precursor to the current inferno–has angered and terrified Western politicians and relief workers operating in Sudan.
They caution that if this pattern persists and there is not a strong international crisis reaction, Sudan is likely to become a failed state and may see full-fledged genocide once more.
In a coup in 2021, the leader of the RSF, and Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the chief general of the SAF, took control from a transitional government. In April 2023, hostilities between the rivals erupted as tensions increased.
The SAF was forced to move its headquarters to the coastal city of Port Sudan in the 13 months that have passed since the RSF solidified its positions around Khartoum, the country’s capital. In the face of SAF forces, the RSF has steadily advanced south and east and taken control of Darfur.
The Red Sea coast, the area east of Ethiopia and Eritrea’s borders, and the area surrounding Khartoum and along the Nile River—a crucial strategic route to Egypt—are all still under the command of the SAF.
The combat hub and capital of North Darfur, El Fasher, is currently the focus of the conflict. In its fight against the SAF, the RSF has seized control of large areas of western and southern Sudan. The final SAF stronghold in Darfur is El Fasher, which has a strategically significant location for trade lines from nearby Libya and Chad.
There are between two and three million people who have sought safety from the battle near El Fasher, and this is where the RSF recently started to advance.
Al Jazeera reports that on Saturday, over 30 people and 17 military perished in the El-Fasher area, or more specifically, Minni Minnawi city, and at least 130 have died since May 10th, reported CNN.
The organization claimed to have treated 979 patients since the violence started more than two weeks ago.
At least 500,000 of the individuals taking refuge in the city, according to UNICEF, are refugees from other parts of Sudan. Food aid deliveries to Darfur are restricted, and there is a shortage of food, medication, and other necessities. There are 1.7 million individuals in the region who are at emergency levels of hunger, according to the World Food Program.
Over 8.8 million people have left their homes since the start of the conflict, and 24.8 million more require aid, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Human Rights Watch’s extensive investigation detailed the massive crimes carried out by the RSF and its affiliated militias during their conquest of El Geneina, Sudan, last year. These atrocities included mass rape, child murder, and killings of civilians.
Aid is unable to reach the appropriate locations because RSF soldiers are robbing humanitarian supplies, worsening the situation and driving some parts of the nation toward starvation.
Executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale’s School of Public Health–who incidentally runs a research project that monitors the conflict in Sudan, Nathaniel Raymond—asked, “What will happen when the RSF takes El Fasher? Exactly what is happening in every other place they control […] There is Hiroshima- and Nagasaki-level casualty potential,” referring to the U.S. atomic bombs dropped on Japan in World War II that killed up to 225,000 people, reported Foreign Policy magazine.
Though none of these fully explains why the atrocities in Darfur and throughout the country are getting as little attention as they were in the 2000s, diplomats, and charity workers on the ground in Sudan have some views.
The U.S. was still at the pinnacle of its post-9/11 “war on terror” effort in 2006. According to Nicole Widdersheim, a former senior National Security Council official who is currently with Human Rights Watch, “Bashing Bashir and his genocide in Darfur couched nicely with [counterterrorism] priorities” of the U.S. government at the time. Osama bin Laden had established his global terror network in Sudan under the dictator Omar al-Bashir.
Policymakers were still somewhat enmeshed in the memory of failed and successful international operations to stop genocide—Rwanda in 1994 and the Balkans later that decade, respectively. The expensive Western operations in Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq that subsequently revealed the drawbacks and unintended consequences of military interventions continued.
Sudan is in competition with the current conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine for the attention and humanitarian supplies of the international community. Others have said racism was a factor in Western foreign policy.
“Gaza is taking up the always-limited American public interest and activism on a foreign crisis, but to be fair, there was nearly no public activism or engagement on the Sudan war before,” former senior National Security Council official Nicole Widdersheim concluded.