The UAE-backed horror in el-Fasher exposes the West's empty words
Earlier this month, when international dignitaries were queuing up to pay homage to Donald Trump after Israel and Hamas had signed the Gaza ceasefire deal, the US president grasped the hand of Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates and owner of Manchester City Football Club, and said: “Unlimited cash.”
There were smiles and laughter all round. Once again, Trump had said the quiet part out loud, but what did it matter?
Remember this when you see the responses of US, British and other western politicians to the capture of the Sudanese city of el-Fasher by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which is backed by the UAE.
Remember it when you hear that Massad Boulos, the US senior adviser for Arab and African affairs, has called on the RSF, which the US government has concluded is committing genocide, to "protect civilians and prevent further suffering".
Remember it when you read that Jenny Chapman, a British baroness and foreign office minister, is "concerned" and that she thinks the RSF should "honour their commitments to protect civilians".
When Trump was clutching Mansour and laughing about his "unlimited cash", el-Fasher, the capital of Sudan’s North Darfur state, had already been under siege for over 500 days. Its people were living under famine conditions. The RSF had walled them in with earthen berms, trapping civilians in a kill box.
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The paramilitary, which has been at war with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) since April 2023, was getting ready to do what it has done across Darfur: slaughter Sudanese civilians.
Since May 2024, human rights monitors have warned of an impending "Srebrenica" in el-Fasher, of a terrible massacre that would be conducted in front of a world that would do nothing.
And now here it is.
RSF fighters are gunning down civilians trying to escape the hell they created. They are torturing humanitarian workers. They are, like Israeli soldiers in Gaza, filming themselves committing a genocide. The blood of their victims can be seen from space.
The UAE and Sudan's war
There are many elements to Sudan’s war.
The Sudanese army, which was supposed to be protecting el-Fasher, has for many months been sitting in the middle of a minefield it planted around its barracks to stay safe.
The RSF, which grew out of the Janjaweed militias that terrorised Darfur in the first decade of this century, was once part of the military, part of an anti-democratic, counter-revolutionary state that sought to keep Sudan’s riches in the hands of the usual elites.
But what is happening in el-Fasher now would not be happening without the United Arab Emirates. Though it has always denied it, the UAE has provided the RSF with weapons, supplies, propaganda and diplomatic cover since before the paramilitary’s war with the army began in 2023.
The UAE has two bases inside Sudan - Nyala in South Darfur and al-Malha, which is 200km from el-Fasher - and transports supplies to the RSF from a range of outposts in the countries that surround Sudan, including Bosaso on Somalia's Puntland coast, al-Kufra in southern Libya, and Kajjansi airfield in Uganda.
Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the RSF chief better known as Hemedti, has provided the UAE with gold from his mines, mercenaries from the wide stretches of western Sudan and beyond, and an entrenched presence in a large, strategically positioned country with a wealth of untapped resources.
Sudan’s Red Sea coastline, its rich farmlands, its young fighting men: all these things and more are on offer for a Gulf kingdom that has overtaken China and the western nations as the primary external actor on the continent of Africa.
Just as crucially, the democratic uprising that swept aside the autocrat Omar al-Bashir in 2019 and which could have served as inspiration to revolutionaries in the Gulf, has been pushed into the blood-soaked soil of Sudan.
Empty words, empty gestures
Through the course of this latest war in Sudan, which has displaced over 13 million people and seen countless thousands killed, western politicians have periodically wrung their hands and furrowed their brows.
Britain, the US and other western powers are deeply committed to the UAE, and the UAE has remained deeply committed to the RSF
Earlier this year, David Lammy, then-British foreign secretary, pinned a message to the top of his X account: “We must not forget Sudan." Accompanying this was a video of Lammy striding through the desert in Chad, looking pained.
Sudan seemed like a safe diplomatic bet for politicians like Lammy, who wanted to project a progressive image but who were hamstrung by their countries’ deep complicity in Israel’s deepening genocide in Gaza.
Here was an African country in need of help, a war in which Britain, the US and other western powers were not deeply committed to one side or another.
Except that Britain, the US and other western powers are deeply committed to the UAE, and the UAE has remained deeply committed to the RSF.
This means that no effective pressure has ever been put on Abu Dhabi to stop arming the Sudanese paramilitary, leaving efforts to end the war – or at least pause it – severely hampered.
Lammy asked where the "liberal outrage" about Sudan was, but he couldn't answer questions about the UAE's deep involvement in the crisis.
There is now evidence that British military equipment bought by the UAE has been used in Sudan.
In April 2024, the UAE cancelled meetings with British ministers because they were angry that the UK was not jumping to Abu Dhabi’s defence at a UN Security Council meeting on Sudan’s war.
One British government source told me a UK minister flying to the UAE at the time had to have their plane turned around mid-air.
The source also said that it hadn’t even been Britain’s intention to leave the UAE undefended.
So as the survivors of an over 500-day long siege in el-Fasher try desperately to escape the slaughter that has been brought to their door, as the satellite images showing vast stretches of blood are shown, and as the politicians talk about genocidal paramilitary groups respecting civilian life, remember this: they got away with it because they have unlimited cash.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
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