Five months after the United Nations reported acts of genocide in Sudan, another human rights catastrophe may be imminent.
The Rapid Support Forces, a rebel group that controls parts of the country and has a history of committing atrocities, has gathered outside El Obeid, a strategically important city, and nearly encircled it. About 600,000 people are facing severe shortages of food, water and medicine, and the R.S.F. has already killed some civilians through drone attacks. “The signs from El Obeid are clear and unmistakable: Another human rights catastrophe is unfolding in Sudan,” the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, said. There are many reasons that Sudan’s war is often overlooked, despite being bloodier than conflicts that receive far more attention. Sudan does not fit into larger global political debates in the ways that the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East do. Africa too often is ignored by those on other continents, a reflection of both racial and economic double standards. Sudan has been so long ravaged by war that efforts to bring peace can seem pointless.
None of these explanations are acceptable, and they feed the terrible costs of the continuing conflict. The war in Sudan is one of the world’s most lethal, with a death toll estimated by independent monitors to be between 150,000 and 400,000. Millions of Sudanese have been driven from their homes, some of them flooding into neighboring countries. Beyond the innocent death and suffering in Sudan itself, the longer the fighting drags on, the greater the chance that regional instability will spread. The world needs to make a bigger effort to halt the killing and mass displacement in Sudan, and the threat to El Obeid should inspire urgent action. The United States is uniquely positioned to push regional powers to intervene to halt the current threat and to bring an end to the war. American influence over Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, nations that have aided the warring sides, can restart peace talks and initiate a cease-fire. The Trump administration should urgently recommit to peace in Sudan and protect the many innocent civilians who face the threat of sexual assault, torture and death.
Bringing peace to Sudan will not be easy. Since it won independence in 1956 from Britain and Egypt, Sudan has endured decades of instability, including coups, long civil wars and the Darfur genocide of the early 2000s. The key divide is ethnic rather than religious. More than 90 percent of Sudan’s residents are Muslim, but they are split between an Arab majority and several non-Arab Black ethnic groups. In the Darfur genocide, Arab militias backed by Sudan’s government killed hundreds of thousands of Black civilians.
The current conflict began after Omar al-Bashir, a dictator who ruled the country for three decades, cut subsidies for fuel and wheat in 2018, and protests erupted. The following year, the military and the private militias that have long dominated parts of Sudan united to topple the government. But their alliance proved temporary, and the military and militias soon began fighting one another, leading to the civil war. In addition to fighting for territory, the two sides are trying to control natural resources, including gold, oil and agricultural products. Both have committed atrocities.
On one side is the Sudanese Armed Forces, led by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, whom many countries recognize as the head of state. It has close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, the nearly century-old radical Islamist group, and has received aid from Iran and Egypt. The United Nations has accused the armed forces of committing war crimes, including torture, sexual violence and the use of chemical weapons.
On the other side are the Rapid Support Forces, a predominantly Arab group led by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan. The United Nations says that his forces have committed acts of genocide in recent years, massacring members of non-Arab ethnic groups in western Sudan since 2023. General Hamdan also led groups that committed the atrocities in Darfur two decades ago. The Rapid Support Forces describe themselves as anti-Islamist and, according to U.S. officials, have received aid from the United Arab Emirates.
The result is a war of exceptional brutality that remains too often ignored. If even the low end of the estimated death toll in Sudan is correct — 150,000 people — it is twice the official toll in Gaza and comparable to the toll among Ukrainian soldiers and civilians. Millions of Sudanese have also been driven from their homes, some of them flooding into neighboring countries.
What might the world do to stop the bloodshed?
The most important role is among the Middle Eastern countries that have been backing one of the two sides. Saudi Arabia, which is officially neutral, has helped the Sudanese Armed Forces. The United Arab Emirates provides weapons and other aid to the Rapid Support Forces. Rather than fueling the fighting, both countries should use their influence to stop it.
The United States also has a crucial role to play. The Trump administration, like the Biden administration before it, has tried to end the war without success. In September, the United States, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates proposed a road map to peace, starting with a three-month truce followed by negotiations on a transitional civilian government.
The Sudanese Armed Forces rejected the plan. The Rapid Support Forces pretended to welcome it, but soon began a merciless assault on el-Fasher, a regional capital in western Sudan, that included the killing of 6,000 civilians in three days after the city fell, the U.N. found. U.N. officials said that the attack bore “the defining characteristics of genocide.”
With the near-encirclement of El Obeid, the world must urgently take action. The Trump administration should re-engage, as should European leaders who say they want to play a bigger role in global affairs in response to President Trump’s sporadic isolationism. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates should stop their shortsighted jockeying for influence in Sudan and prioritize ending the massacres.
The 2020s have set a grim benchmark. Global deaths in armed conflicts have reached their highest level since the 1994 Rwandan genocide, ending a long period of relative peace. The continuing tragedy in Sudan has been among the largest contributors to the new era of bloodshed. The rest of the world should act to prevent the rising danger to civilians and to end the war in Sudan once and for all.
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