The Silence After El Fasher

Why the West lets Dafur burn again

Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab published satellite imagery last week showing something obscene: blood stains visible from space. Dark reddish-brown patches covering the ground in el-Fasher, North Darfur. Objects measuring 1.3 to 2.0 metres, consistent with human bodies. The technology exists to watch genocide in real time, to document mass killing with the precision of orbital observation. Yet beyond the specialist publications and human rights organisations, the silence is deafening.

We have the capacity to see atrocity from the heavens. What we apparently lack is the will to care.

The Massacre the World Ignored

The numbers emerging from el-Fasher are staggering even by the standards of Sudan’s brutal civil war. At least 1,500 people murdered in 48 hours as the Rapid Support Forces stormed the city on 26 October. Another 460 killed in the Saudi Maternity Hospital alone, where women had sought safety and medical care. Patients, visitors, displaced people, healthcare workers, all cut down indiscriminately. Survivors reaching the town of Tawila, 30 miles through desert, report systematic separation of civilians by gender, age, and perceived ethnicity. Summary executions. Sexual violence deployed as weapon. Prisoners crushed beneath military vehicles.

More than 62,000 people fled el-Fasher between Sunday and Wednesday, according to UN figures. But tens of thousands remain trapped. Of the 260,000 people in the city before the RSF’s final assault, satellite analysis suggests most have not escaped. They are either hiding underground, trekking through hostile desert, or dead. Every single child under five years old who arrived in Tawila on 27 October was acutely malnourished. Fifty-seven per cent suffered severe acute malnutrition. These are children who survived the journey.

The fall of el-Fasher represents more than one city’s capture. It marks the RSF’s complete control over all five state capitals in Darfur, effectively partitioning Sudan along an east-west axis. The Sudanese Armed Forces control the north, east, and centre. The RSF, a paramilitary force credibly accused of genocide, now governs the entire western region. Sudan is being carved up before our eyes.

Beyond el-Fasher, the crisis metastasises. Across Sudan, 14 million people have been displaced. This is the largest displacement crisis in the world. Twenty-five million face acute food insecurity. Famine, officially declared in Zamzam camp in August 2024, has spread to ten additional areas. Eighty per cent of hospitals in conflict zones are non-operational. Cholera and other deadly diseases surge as infrastructure collapses.

And the West? It watches. It issues statements. It holds conferences. But the material commitment (the resources, the pressure, the action that might actually shift outcomes) remains absent.

Darfur 2.0: The Lesson They Learned

“What is unfolding in El Fasher recalls the horrors Darfur was subjected to 20 years ago,” UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher told the Security Council. The parallel is not coincidental. It is instructive.

Between 2003 and 2004, as the first Darfur genocide unfolded, Western powers discovered something useful: they could let Darfur burn with minimal domestic political cost. There were op-eds, of course. Celebrity activists. Vigils and awareness campaigns. The phrase “Save Darfur” became briefly fashionable. But when it came to meaningful intervention (the kind that stops killing rather than merely observing it) the West demurred.

The reasons were material, not moral. Darfur offered nothing the West needed. No oil pipelines requiring protection. No NATO members under threat. No Israeli security considerations. No strategic chokepoints commanding global trade. Just African bodies, politically expendable, geographically remote, and economically irrelevant to the immediate interests of Western capital.

The calculations made in 2003 are being repeated in 2025. The variables have not changed. Sudan remains peripheral to the core concerns of Western power. And so the dying continues, observed by satellites, documented by researchers, mourned by the dispossessed, and ignored by those with the capacity to intervene.

This is not oversight. It is policy.

The Material Logic of Selective Outrage

When the West mobilises for humanitarian intervention, it does so along predictable lines. Libya in 2011: oil reserves, Mediterranean proximity, relatively straightforward military operation, domestic political dividends. Kosovo in 1999: on Europe’s doorstep, threatening NATO credibility, manageable risk. Even Syria commanded attention when chemical weapons crossed “red lines” that threatened regional stability and Western prestige.

But Sudan? The RSF now controls all of Darfur. The country is effectively partitioned. A paramilitary force armed and funded by the United Arab Emirates. Who are a key Western ally, commits what US lawmakers openly call genocide. The response is tepid at best.

The humanitarian funding tells the story more honestly than any ministerial statement. United States funding accounted for half of all humanitarian assistance to Sudan in 2024. As of April 2025, that funding has been slashed. Sudan’s coordinated response plan sits at just ten per cent funded. Thirty per cent of current funding was expected from the US and may not materialise as humanitarian partners struggle to secure payments. As America withdraws, European donors have not filled the gap.

Why? Because the material interests do not align. The UAE, which supplies the RSF with weapons, funds, mercenaries, and political backing, is far more valuable to Western powers than Darfur’s starving millions. Abu Dhabi offers strategic partnerships, arms purchases, regional influence, and diplomatic support on other priorities. The Gulf states (including Saudi Arabia, which participates in mediation efforts whilst maintaining its own regional interests) represent relationships the West cannot afford to jeopardise over Sudan.

Egypt backs the Sudanese Armed Forces. The UAE backs the RSF. Saudi Arabia plays both sides. And Western powers, dependent on these Gulf relationships for energy security, arms sales, and regional influence, find themselves unable or unwilling to meaningfully challenge the parties fuelling Sudan’s destruction.

Resource extraction continues regardless of which faction controls which territory. The gold flows out of Darfur whether the RSF or SAF claims sovereignty. Chinese investments proceed. Regional actors pursue their interests. And the fundamental calculation holds: intervention in Sudan offers no strategic benefit commensurate with the diplomatic cost of confronting Gulf allies or the military risk of meaningful engagement.

African blood, as always, remains cheap.

The Diplomatic Performance

Britain leads on Sudan at the United Nations as the Security Council “penholder”—the member state responsible for drafting resolutions and coordinating international response. In April 2025, the UK co-hosted a high-level diplomatic conference in London alongside Germany and France to mark the second anniversary of the war. Representatives from nearly twenty countries attended. The stated aim was to galvanise international pressure for a ceasefire and ensure accountability for war crimes.

Neither the Sudanese Armed Forces nor the Rapid Support Forces were invited.

Think about that for a moment. A conference to end a war, and the warring parties are excluded. Sudan’s foreign minister Ali Youssef criticised the inclusion of the UAE, Chad, and Kenya—”stakeholders in the war”—whilst Sudan itself was shut out. The British government pledged £120 million in aid to support 650,000 people. Statements were issued. Commitments were made. And nothing changed.

In October, as el-Fasher endured its eighteenth month under siege, the so-called Quad (the United States, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates) convened talks in Washington. These four states are supposedly tasked with addressing the Sudan war. Sources report the negotiations made little progress. When discussion turned to el-Fasher specifically, the UAE shut it down. No negotiation on the besieged city was permitted.

Days later, the RSF stormed el-Fasher. The massacre began.

This is how diplomatic theatre functions. Conferences provide the appearance of concern without requiring meaningful action. They create alibis—”we tried”—that justify continued inaction. They allow governments to claim engagement whilst pursuing contradictory material interests. Britain can position itself as humanitarian leader, pledge aid, convene meetings, and simultaneously approve arms exports to the UAE that end up in RSF hands.

The performance is everything. The substance is nothing.

Parliamentary debates in the UK follow the same script. Ministers speak of “pursuing all diplomatic avenues” and “pressing for a peaceful solution.” They reference Britain’s role as penholder, the conferences hosted, the aid committed. What they do not explain is why diplomacy consistently fails to produce outcomes, why “all diplomatic avenues” never lead anywhere, or why the aid pledged is a fraction of what is withdrawn.

The question is not asked because the answer is obvious. Diplomacy succeeds when powerful interests align behind it. Diplomacy fails when those interests diverge or simply do not care. In Sudan, Western powers have no compelling reason to force a resolution. The diplomatic process serves primarily to manage appearances, to provide a response to domestic constituencies that occasionally notice massacres, and to maintain the fiction of international order.

Meanwhile, Yale researchers document blood from space. And the dying continues.

The Imperial Arithmetic of Human Life

There is an arithmetic at work here, a calculus of human worth that operates beneath the rhetoric of universal values and international law. When intervention serves Western interests (securing oil, protecting allies, managing migration, maintaining credibility, or satisfying domestic political demands) atrocities become unacceptable. “Never again” is invoked. Red lines are drawn. Consequences are promised.

“When intervention serves Western interests, atrocities become unacceptable. When intervention contradicts those interests, identical atrocities become ‘complex internal conflicts’.”

When intervention contradicts those interests, or simply offers no benefit, identical atrocities become “complex internal conflicts.” They are tragedies, certainly. Regrettable. Concerning. But ultimately, matters for regional actors to resolve. The universal principles mysteriously dissolve. The red lines fade. And the consequences never materialise.

US lawmakers call what is happening in Sudan genocide. Some demand the RSF be designated a terrorist organisation. These are not fringe voices but senators from both parties, officials with access to intelligence, people who understand the gravity of such designations. Yet no action follows. The designation is not made. The assets are not frozen. The pressure is not applied.

Because designation would require consequences. It would complicate relationships with the UAE. It would force difficult conversations about who is arming whom, who is funding what, and what Western complicity looks like in practice. It would make the performance of concern unsustainable.

Better to let Darfur burn. Better to keep the satellites watching, the researchers documenting, the aid agencies pleading. Better to maintain the diplomatic channels that go nowhere, host the conferences that change nothing, and issue the statements that cost nothing. Better to preserve the relationships that matter (with Gulf states, with arms purchasers, with regional powers) than to intervene for people whose lives generate no strategic value.

This is not cynicism. It is analysis. The pattern is consistent, the logic clear, the outcomes predictable. When African or Arab populations face genocide, Western powers perform concern whilst calculating interests. And in Sudan, as in Darfur two decades ago, the calculation comes up empty.

Blood Visible From Space

Every child under five arriving in Tawila was acutely malnourished. Fifty-seven per cent suffered severe acute malnutrition. These are not statistics. These are children whose bodies are consuming themselves, whose parents walked through desert under threat of execution to reach a town that cannot adequately feed them. These are human beings reduced to objects measuring 1.3 to 2.0 metres in satellite imagery, their blood visible from orbit.

The technology exists to see genocide in real time. The resources exist to stop it. What does not exist is the political will, because Darfur offers nothing the West needs.

In 2003, they learned that African blood is cheap. That “Save Darfur” could become a slogan without becoming a policy. That conferences and statements could substitute for action. That the domestic political cost of inaction was manageable, the strategic cost non-existent, and the moral cost, well, the moral cost could be externalised onto humanitarian agencies and UN officials paid to care when governments would not.

“In 2003, they learned that African blood is cheap. That ‘Save Darfur’ could become a slogan without becoming a policy. Twenty years later, they are collecting on that knowledge.”

Twenty years later, they are collecting on that knowledge. The RSF controls Darfur. Yale documents the blood. And the West, which moves mountains when its interests are threatened, which topples governments (or threatens to) and rebuilds nations when strategy demands it, which spends trillions protecting assets and projections of power, that same West watches Sudan partition itself and does nothing.

Because it can. Because the calculation was made long ago. Because Darfur is burning again, and the lesson of the first genocide was that nobody would stop the second.

The satellites see everything. The silence says more.

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