{"id":318316,"date":"2026-07-20T12:00:34","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T11:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=318316"},"modified":"2026-07-14T09:14:34","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T08:14:34","slug":"lets-name-the-country-thats-financing-mass-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/07\/lets-name-the-country-thats-financing-mass-murder\/","title":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s Name the Country That\u2019s Financing Mass Murder"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Credit: Dan Kitwood\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

11 Jul 2026\u00a0<\/em>– Last year, human rights experts warned for many months that a brutal militia was about to overrun a major Sudanese city, El Fasher, and massacre inhabitants.<\/span><\/p>\n

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President Trump and other world leaders mostly shrugged. The militia went ahead and overran El Fasher, slaughtering some 60,000 people<\/a>\u00a0in a few weeks.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Now the same militia is besieging another major Sudanese city, El Obeid, which has half a million or more people, and is also threatening populations to the north in the Darfur region. Some inside El Obeid are starving, yet, again, Trump and many other world leaders seem largely indifferent.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Preventing the slaughter would not require military action. It would not even require money. Put aside the arguments over whether humanitarian assistance is worthwhile. (But first, let me say that I believe the billions spent on the Iran war would have been better allocated to $2 bed nets to save children\u2019s lives from malaria.) It may be that all we need to do to avert atrocities in Sudan is to speak up.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The backdrop: Sudan is probably the world\u2019s worst humanitarian crisis right now. The country is caught in a civil war between the army and a largely Arab militia, the Rapid Support Forces, or R.S.F., and while both sides have behaved viciously, the R.S.F. is particularly notorious for savagery, including for killing and raping members of several Black African ethnic groups. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While reporting on the Chad-Sudan border in 2024, I interviewed survivors<\/a>\u00a0who described the R.S.F.\u2019s systematically killing men and boys over the age of 10 and gang-raping many women and girls.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe don\u2019t want to see any Black people,\u201d one woman quoted an R.S.F. leader telling villagers before the militia slaughtered the men and boys, among them her five brothers.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The R.S.F. is now massing forces around El Obeid and attacking it with drones. Food is scarce and people are weakening. The region is suffering an outbreak of cholera, which, if it spreads, could greatly increase the suffering.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cAnother human rights catastrophe is unfolding in Sudan,\u201d Volker T\u00fcrk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, warned<\/a>\u00a0a few days ago. He added that people in the region are being subjected to summary executions and sexual violence.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cFamilies have to queue for long hours to get water that is often unsafe for drinking,\u201d the Norwegian Refugee Council reports<\/a>. \u201cOnce they manage to bring water home, they must choose whether to use it to drink, cook or wash.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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It\u2019s not entirely clear if the R.S.F. plans to overrun El Obeid or whether there would be a blood bath if it did. Compared to El Fasher, fewer people in El Obeid are members of the Black African ethnic groups that the R.S.F. targets. It\u2019s even possible that the siege of El Obeid is a feint to distract from an attack elsewhere, such as on the Darfur city of Tawila.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Still, the risks are immense, and the United Nations Security Council issued a statement last month warning of the \u201cimminent risk of mass atrocities.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Leaders are willing to speak about the violence itself. Both the Biden and Trump administrations described the situation in Sudan as genocide. The State Department just last month warned of \u201calarming indications that mass atrocities could be imminent.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But what American, European and United Nations officials won\u2019t say openly is that the power behind the R.S.F. is the United Arab Emirates.<\/strong> Although the Emirates denies it, its backing of the R.S.F. is well established. Yet the Emirates is rich and influential, so it has become The Country That Must Not Be Named.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Tough public comments and other pressure from Washington and European capitals might shame the Emirates enough for it to tell its murderous friends in Sudan to back off; similar pressure led the Emirates to pull most of its forces out from a brutal war in Yemen in 2019. Instead, world leaders today tiptoe around the Emirates\u2019 role.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Emirates has particularly close financial ties to the Trump family. Indeed, Trump\u2019s family income surged last year partly because an investment firm<\/a>\u00a0tied to the Emirates paid hefty sums for a stake in the family\u2019s main crypto company.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Members of Congress, led by Senator Chris Van Hollen and Representative Sara Jacobs, have sponsored legislation<\/a> that essentially would limit sales of weaponry<\/a> to the Emirates as long as it arms the R.S.F. \u201cThis awful conflict could be ended if we had the political will to do so \u2014 instead of starting stupid wars with Iran,\u201d Van Hollen said.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I share the belief that such a measure could end this catastrophe \u2014 but it is languishing from indifference. We should have the fortitude to speak up about human rights outrages whether the responsible party is Russia, China, Israel, America or the Emirates; if you care about human rights in only some places, you don\u2019t actually care about human rights.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sudan isn\u2019t getting much attention, partly because the crisis areas are difficult to enter. I was organizing a trip to the conflict areas last month, but my route closed at the last minute, and I had to put the trip off. Enough information is trickling out for diplomats and aid groups to be able to ring the alarms; it\u2019s just that the world is ignoring them.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe international community must stop reacting to atrocities and start preventing them,\u201d noted Rabab Mohamed Ali Baldo, a Sudanese activist originally from El Obeid.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This is an excellent moment to apply public pressure, for the Emirates [incredibly] appears to be lobbying for one of its top Foreign Ministry officials, Lana Zaki Nusseibeh, to be the next United Nations Secretary General.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThis won\u2019t end until the Emirates are pressured to stop their advanced weapons superhighway to the R.S.F.,\u201d said Nathaniel Raymond of the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, which closely follows the crisis in Sudan. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThis war could end in two weeks if the R.S.F. entered an ammo drought because the Emirates decided it was no longer worth it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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So, this is in part on us. Will we find the courage to speak up?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Copyright 2026 The New York Times Company<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Go to Original – genocidewatch.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

11 Jul 2026 – Last year, experts warned Trump and other world leaders that the UAE-backed R.S.F. militia was to commit a massacre in El Fasher, Sudan. They shrugged as the militia slaughtered 60,000 people. Now the same militia is besieging El Obeid, with half a million inhabitants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":318317,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[237,865,715,2819,128,75],"class_list":["post-318316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa","tag-africa","tag-genocide","tag-massacre","tag-south-sudan","tag-sudan","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318316"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":318319,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318316\/revisions\/318319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}