Sudan’s Genocide Deepens: UAE Arms, U.S. Paralysis, and the Collapse of International Accountability (Copy)
Executive Summary
The massacre and famine following the fall of El Fasher to the UAE-backed Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have exposed one of the worst cases of genocide and foreign-enabled atrocities in modern African history. Despite clear evidence of Emirati arms transfers sustaining the RSF, Washington and its allies have failed to enforce the UN arms embargo or impose meaningful costs on those enabling the violence. The crisis now represents both a humanitarian catastrophe—with famine declared in parts of Darfur and South Kordofan—and a moral collapse of the global system meant to prevent such crimes.
Key Judgments
Key Judgment 1
The RSF’s seizure of El Fasher and ensuing atrocities constitute an ongoing genocide enabled by foreign arms transfers, particularly from the UAE.
Evidence: The RSF’s assault on El Fasher resulted in the massacre of more than 2,000 civilians, including 460 at a hospital, amid door-to-door executions, sexual violence, and mass displacement. UN and human rights investigators have documented Emirati-origin weapons—including Chinese-made drones and munitions—flowing through Libya and Chad to RSF forces. (Truthout; DW; The Hindu; UN Reports)
Key Judgment 2
The United States’ continued arms sales to the UAE have undermined its moral and strategic credibility in addressing Sudan’s genocide.
Evidence: Despite U.S. intelligence confirming Emirati re-export of drones and bombs to the RSF, Washington approved $1.4 billion in weapons sales to Abu Dhabi in May 2025. Congressional voices—including Senators Van Hollen and Risch—have called for suspension of sales until the UAE halts RSF support, but the administration remains constrained by its strategic dependence on Gulf partnerships. (Truthout; PassBlue)
Key Judgment 3
Famine has taken hold in multiple regions, marking Sudan’s transformation from a failed state into a site of mass starvation and systemic atrocity.
Evidence: The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) confirmed famine in El Fasher and Kadugli, with 375,000 people starving and over six million facing “extreme hunger.” The UN describes the collapse of livelihoods and widespread child malnutrition as “catastrophic.” (NPR; IPC; OCHA)
Analysis
Sudan’s war has now metastasized into a genocide sustained by foreign complicity and global inertia. The RSF’s capture of El Fasher—the symbolic and logistical heart of Darfur—represents not only a battlefield victory but the near-total destruction of non-Arab communities in the region. Satellite imagery, eyewitness accounts, and open-source videos confirm systematic killings, torture, and sexual violence. The UN’s own famine declaration underscores how starvation has become a deliberate weapon of war.
At the center of this catastrophe stands the United Arab Emirates. For years, Abu Dhabi has covertly supplied the RSF with weapons, drones, and ammunition, using smuggling routes through Libya, Chad, and Uganda. The RSF’s battlefield superiority—particularly its use of Chinese-manufactured armed drones—cannot be explained without this external support. The UAE’s denials ring hollow amid overwhelming forensic and intelligence evidence, including U.S. Defense Intelligence assessments identifying Emirati-supplied materiel in RSF stockpiles.
The response from Washington and its allies has been strikingly muted. Despite bipartisan outrage in Congress, the Trump administration has continued arms transfers to the UAE and resisted sanctions enforcement under the UN embargo. The reasons are structural: the UAE’s value as a partner in counterterrorism, technology, and energy policy outweighs the political costs of complicity in Sudan’s genocide. As one analyst noted, “the UAE matters more than Darfur” in current U.S. strategic calculus. This moral trade-off has hollowed out America’s credibility and weakened the broader Western commitment to atrocity prevention.
The famine now spreading across Darfur and South Kordofan transforms the conflict into a mass-death crisis. According to the IPC, over 375,000 people are in famine conditions, while millions more are one step away. The RSF’s siege warfare—blocking food, medicine, and communication—has produced mortality rates comparable to past genocides. Starvation is no longer a byproduct; it is a method.
Regionally, Sudan’s collapse threatens to redraw the strategic map of northeast Africa. The RSF’s gold-funded war economy gives it the means to persist indefinitely, while the SAF’s retreat to the Red Sea port city of Port Sudan signals an emergent east–west partition. Egypt and Iran back the SAF; the UAE and Russia (via Wagner’s Africa Corps) back the RSF. This proxy configuration risks turning Sudan into a new Libya—a fragmented, militarized space fueling jihadism, trafficking, and famine across the Sahel and Horn.
The international mechanisms designed to prevent such an outcome have failed. The UN Security Council’s paralysis—driven by divisions between Western states and Russia-China—has rendered the arms embargo toothless. The African Union’s diplomacy is discredited, and the U.S.–UAE–Saudi–Egypt “Quad” initiative, launched in Washington, lacks legitimacy with either warring side. The RSF, now de facto sovereign in Darfur, operates with impunity while claiming humanitarian legitimacy through staged arrests of its own fighters.
If there is a policy window left, it lies in accountability. The enforcement of the UN embargo, coupled with targeted sanctions on Emirati firms and RSF leadership, is the minimum baseline for restoring deterrence. Designating the RSF as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, as proposed in Congress, would constrain its financing networks and stigmatize its backers. Meanwhile, humanitarian actors require air corridors and guarantees from regional powers to access famine zones before winter.
Sudan’s war is no longer merely a civil conflict—it is a genocide amplified by foreign greed and diplomatic cowardice. The international system’s unwillingness to confront a Gulf ally supplying mass murderers calls into question the very foundation of global human rights enforcement. Unless Washington and its partners act decisively, Darfur will become the precedent for a world where strategic interests openly outweigh human life.
