A horrific massacre in Sudan

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The macabre aftermath of mass killings in the Sudanese city of El Fasher has been visible from space. Satellite imagery shows streets stained red with lakes of blood, strewn with bodies and the earth disturbed by mass graves.

After driving the Sudanese Armed Forces from their last stronghold in the western Darfur region, paramilitary Rapid Support Forces led by renegade general Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti, have been accused of committing one of the worst atrocities in Sudan’s civil war. But it is by no means the first. The militia, born out of the notorious Janjaweed who laid waste to Darfur 20 years ago, has a long record of war crimes.

This makes the support the United Arab Emirates has been repeatedly accused of providing to the RSF in weapons and mercenaries all the more cynical. The UAE has always denied supporting or arming the RSF. But its ties with Hemeti go back a decade to when it helped recruit RSF fighters alongside soldiers from the SAF to join the war against Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen.

In 2023, Abu Dhabi backed the RSF leader after his fallout with his erstwhile allies in the SAF ignited the civil war. Analysts say Hemeti was perceived by Abu Dhabi as the best foil against resurgent Islamists in the army, and the most likely defender of the UAE’s interests along the Red Sea and in a vast hinterland of Nile Valley agricultural land.

The US, UK and other western powers have been conspicuously silent in the face of this Faustian pact, seduced by Gulf petrodollars and by Abu Dhabi’s strategic value in higher-priority Middle East concerns. Both Washington and London have engaged the UAE as a partner in peace efforts alongside other regional powers in the so-called Quad (comprised of the UAE, US, Egypt — which backs the SAF — and Saudi Arabia). This was even as the UAE stood accused of enabling the RSF to prolong the war and commit what some human rights groups and the US government have called genocide in Darfur.

But the scale of recent RSF atrocities has grabbed rare international attention, and in the face of outcry some glimmers of hope have emerged. With both sides exhausted by relentless combat, the RSF endorsed calls this week by the Quad for a humanitarian truce and there are signs the SAF could follow. If implemented, this would allow urgently needed aid not only into El Fasher, where the IPC global hunger watchdog declared a famine this week, but other parts of Sudan ravaged by the war. Overall, some 21mn Sudanese are close to starving, according to the IPC.

It is for the SAF’s backers in Egypt and elsewhere, and for the UAE — which despite its protestations and denials has undoubted leverage over the RSF — to make sure a ceasefire holds.

There are no likely victors in this civil war, and no good guys. The RSF has shown with murderous brutality how shallow its commitment is to a more harmonious Sudan. The SAF and associated militias are also accused of committing atrocities. By past association with the brutal Islamist regime of deposed autocrat Omar al-Bashir, they are no more likely partners in peace.

It would be foolish to think either side will willingly back down from their zero-sum aim of reconquering Sudan. Any chance of persuading them will require sustained, high-level international engagement of the kind that has been sorely missing. This must combine the promise of rapprochement with the real threat of sanction.

For the US and the UK, that also means putting serious pressure on the UAE and ensuring the SAF’s backers are on notice too. The horrific consequences of having failed to do so before have played out in El Fasher. Regional powers must now play their part to stop the killing and ease the path to a ceasefire.