Failure to Act in Sudan (Again)

The United States has expressed its “deep concern” about the likelihood of atrocities in El Obeid, where the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and their allies have gathered in preparation for an assault on the city. This statement follows closely on the heels of similar remarks from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and a forum of international nongovernmental organizations operating in Sudan. The UN Secretary General has chimed in, urging action “to prevent further bloodshed.”

What happens when the alarm is sounded, the red flags waved, the warnings issued and received, but no one actually acts to stop an atrocity from happening? We know because Sudan shows us. What happens is that the killings unfold, blood soaks the earth, and the killers prepare to do the same thing again. The massacre in El Fasher in October 2025—the one that temporarily turned global attention to Sudan because so much blood soaked the ground that it was visible in satellite photos—was widely expected. The city had been under siege for over a year. Warnings abounded. It made no difference.

Little, if anything, has changed now that El Obeid is the focus of the dire predictions and concerned statements. Drones are now more common, and more deadly, in the Sudanese conflict. Feeble peacemaking efforts may have done more to whitewash the reputations of states fueling the conflict than they have done to end the suffering of the Sudanese people. Casual threats to target civilian infrastructure—also known as war crimes—have become standard fare in the halls of power, further eroding norms. In a world where wealth can be used to evade accountability, humanity’s collective response to serial atrocities is limited to empty words.

It’s not as if there is no way to stop the conflict in Sudan. The RSF could not persist without access to money and arms. There is some cost, some consequence, that could change the incentives of the United Arab Emirates, whose leaders deny backing the RSF, despite ample evidence to the contrary. But while a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the U.S. Congress have signaled their desire to increase the pressure on the war’s external drivers with the recent introduction of the Preventing External Aggression and Conflict Escalation in Sudan (PEACE in Sudan) Act, thus far, no entity that is able is also willing to impose such costs, lest they lose access to investments or military basing arrangements, or lest the increasingly unstable and tremendously costly house of cards that is U.S. policy in the Middle East collapses.

It’s not as if there is no one in Sudan interested in human decency; Sudanese civilians in the country and in the diaspora have shown extraordinary resilience and ingenuity in their efforts to help each other. But donors have only funded about 30 percent of what is needed to support displaced Sudanese in 2026.

Action eludes the powerful. Suffering persists far from the homes of the war’s arms suppliers and funders. They will, however, be sure to issue statements of concern.