When Ahmed tried to flee El Fasher with his wife, children and older brother, he thought staying close to retreating soldiers would keep them safe. Instead, Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fighters stopped the group on the city’s outskirts, separated the men, ordered them to lie down and shot them one by one. “In El Fasher, there are no civilians”, the gunmen allegedly told him.
His account is one of 28 testimonies gathered by Amnesty International from survivors who escaped El Fasher after the city in North Darfur fell to the RSF on October 26th, following an 18-month siege. Witnesses describe executions of unarmed men, ransom kidnappings, and streets littered with bodies as tens of thousands tried to flee.
Others recount sexual violence used as a weapon of terror. Ibtisam told Amnesty that an RSF fighter raped her on the escape route; later she realised her 14-year-old daughter had also been raped. The girl’s health deteriorated and she died days later in a clinic in Tawila. Another woman described being raped three times in a single day after RSF fighters separated “younger women” from a group of displaced civilians.
These are not isolated crimes. The UN’s human rights chief, Volker Türk, has warned of “devastating mass killings, rape and torture” in and around El Fasher, after the RSF finally captured the last army-held city in Darfur. Aid agencies and the G7 now describe Sudan as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis: more than 150,000 people killed and about 12 million forced from their homes since war erupted in April 2023.
The conflict pits the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) against the RSF, a powerful paramilitary that grew out of the Janjaweed militias deployed by former president Omar al-Bashir in the early 2000s Darfur genocide. After popular protests toppled Bashir in 2019, civilians briefly shared power with both the army and the RSF, but that arrangement collapsed in a 2021 coup led jointly by the two generals now at war.
As Nesrine Malik notes in The Guardian, Sudan’s civilians did not choose this fight. The war is less a “civil war” than a struggle between an old military establishment and a newer militia that amassed money and foreign backing outside the state, with ordinary people paying the price. In Darfur, that price has been especially high for non-Arab communities who were already targeted 20 years ago.
UN investigators say the scale of suffering in Darfur today is greater than during the original Janjaweed campaign: entire cities and refugee camps, not just villages, are being attacked. Amnesty has documented ethnically targeted killings, sexual violence and mass displacement of Masalit and other non-Arab groups; it concludes that RSF attacks in El Fasher amount to war crimes and may constitute other crimes under international law.
Whether these atrocities amount to genocide is no longer just an academic question. In January this year, the US government formally determined that members of the RSF and allied militias have committed genocide in Darfur, alongside crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. The determination cites systematic killings of men and boys on an ethnic basis, and the targeted rape of women and girls from specific communities. Other governments, including the UK, say it is for courts, not politicians, to decide on genocide, but acknowledge that atrocities on a massive scale are being carried out.
Attention is now turning to those accused of enabling the RSF’s campaign. Chief among them is the United Arab Emirates (UAE). For years, Gulf states have seen Sudan as a source of cheap food, labour and gold. Emirati and Saudi money helped prop up Bashir’s regime and later supported the post-revolutionary military council with a $3 billion loan, before payments were frozen as civilians gained influence. Analysts argue that the withdrawal of that support weakened the civilian government and paved the way for the 2021 coup.
Since the war began, human-rights groups and UN experts have repeatedly alleged that weapons have flowed to the RSF via the UAE, often routed through Chad into Darfur in breach of a long-standing UN arms embargo. Amnesty says it has identified weapons manufactured in countries including Serbia, Russia, China and the UAE being used in Sudan, with smuggling networks frequently passing through Emirati territory. A leaked UN report cited by the BBC also links the UAE to such routes.
The economic relationship is equally deep. Gold now accounts for roughly half of Sudan’s exports; in 2024, nearly 97 per cent of official gold shipments from army-held areas went to the UAE, worth about $1.5 billion. Researchers estimate that far more – perhaps 90 per cent of total production – leaves Sudan illicitly, often via neighbouring states before ending up in Emirati markets. Many of the mines in Darfur are controlled by RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, through his family company.
The US genocide determination was followed by sanctions on Hemedti and seven RSF-linked companies based in the UAE. Sudan went further, filing a case at the International Court of Justice accusing the Emirates of breaching the Genocide Convention by arming the RSF as it attacked the Masalit in West Darfur. In May, however, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) dismissed the case, ruling that it lacked jurisdiction because the UAE had entered a reservation to the treaty article that gives the court authority over such disputes. The judges did not rule on whether the allegations were true.
Under growing criticism, Abu Dhabi is now trying to recalibrate. In November, senior Emirati diplomat Anwar Gargash acknowledged that failing to confront the 2021 coup was a “critical mistake” and said the UAE now wants a transition back to civilian rule, arguing that both the RSF and the army have disqualified themselves from shaping Sudan’s future. Officials insist the country is a neutral mediator and reject accusations of arming the RSF as a disinformation campaign led by Islamists and hostile Non-Governmental Organisations.
Western governments have been cautious in publicly naming external sponsors. The UN Human Rights Council has unanimously authorised a new independent investigation into the El Fasher massacre that will identify those who ordered and carried out mass killings, with its findings potentially shared with the International Criminal Court. But the mandate does not explicitly mention foreign states, and the probe may struggle for funding at a time when UN relief operations in Sudan are already badly under-resourced.
For survivors, these legal and diplomatic manoeuvres feel remote. Amnesty is urging all states to halt arms transfers to all parties to the conflict and to extend the Darfur arms embargo to the whole of Sudan. It also wants the UN Security Council to broaden its existing International Criminal Court (ICC) referral on Darfur to cover crimes committed across the country since 2023. Human-rights groups say genuine cooperation from the UAE with UN arms-monitoring panels would be a basic test of its declared shift.
Meanwhile, people like Ahmed and Ibtisam are left to navigate loss and exile. Sudan’s war is not forgotten so much as tolerated. Whether the world is willing to confront not just the men pulling triggers in Darfur, but also those profiting from Sudan’s gold and allowing weapons to cross its borders, will help determine if today’s genocide warnings finally prompt action – or become another set of statements filed away after the killing has already been accomplished.
