By: Emma Kim
The US is complicit in the suffering currently taking place in Sudan.
Since April of 2023, Sudan has been engulfed in a brutal civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Reports of mass violence and genocide have long been present in the conversation surrounding this conflict, and the RSF’s recent overtaking of Darfur’s only remaining city center, el-Fasher, is no exception.
United Nations officials have been investigating claims of war crimes and genocide in Sudan since the onset of the war, repeatedly warning of escalating atrocities against civilians. Reports are circulating of rapes, mass killings, and attempts by the RSF to conceal these crimes following their hostile takeover of el-Fasher. However, a deep history of similar crimes is embedded throughout this conflict.
While both forces involved in this war have been accused of war crimes and human rights violations, the most recent violence taking place in el-Fasher is being perpetrated by the RSF. Multiple investigations have signaled that the RSF has been receiving covert financial support from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While the UAE has repeatedly denied its involvement, evidence against them is mounting, and many Western powers are growing suspicious.
The US is a long-time trading partner of the UAE. The US recently invested $200 billion in this relationship in sectors including technology, aerospace, and oil. The US has a long history of supplying the UAE with weaponry, including fighter jets and helicopters, both prior to and during the current civil war.
After US intelligence confirmed that the UAE had been supplying the RSF with Chinese-made weaponry including drones, many in the US government questioned whether the US should lessen its economic involvement with the UAE and its export of weaponry to the Gulf state. Despite mounting evidence of the RSF’s cruelty in Darfur, US engagement with the UAE has not stopped.
By refusing to put pressure on the UAE to halt its support of the RSF, the US has failed the Sudanese people. Reports of war crimes and other atrocities in the region are not new, with involvement from the RSF and other groups. International organizations such as the UN are calling for intervention from nations party to this war. While the RSF has agreed to a temporary humanitarian ceasefire, this conflict should never have been allowed to reach the point it has now.
In addition to the current violent crimes Sudanese civilians are facing, cities such as el-Fasher have been under siege for many months, resulting in mass-displacement and famine. Famine has plagued Sudan since the onset of the war, and the instability and lack of access to resources which Sudanese people had to cope with was exacerbated when the US announced drastic cuts to its international aid agency, USAID.
USAID previously provided 44% of funding for Sudan’s humanitarian response in 2024. Following the withdrawal of USAID support, over 80% of Sudanese emergency kitchens were shuttered, and many in dire medical conditions forced to go without lifesaving treatment. The removal of US support for Sudanese people in the most dangerous of humanitarian situations has resulted in great amounts of suffering which could have been prevented, or at least lessened, had the US continued to provide assistance.
This combination of cuts to USAID programs which Sudanese civilians were dependent upon for survival and the trade partnerships the US maintains with the UAE implicate the US in the horrors currently unfolding in Sudan. It is the responsibility of the US government to utilize their significant economic and political leverage among the key players in this conflict to put a stop to the suffering and cruelty facing Sudanese civilians.
