Interview with Sudanese anthropologist and African studies researcher Dr. Nisrin Elamin.
AllAfrica:
Before we discuss the background to the war and what's happening to the Sudanese people now, could you characterize the escalating conflict over the past two years. A number of Sudanese I've talked to say they don't like to call it a civil war, but a proxy war between armies backed by outside powers. Civilians caught in the middle want peace, stability, and democracy. Do you agree with that assessment?
Dr. Elamin:
There is a proxy element in the sense that if all of the foreign actors that are involved – the UAE (United Arab Emirates) on the RSF (Rapid Support Forces) side, Egypt and other countries on the army side – if they were all to withdraw their support, then things on the ground would look very different, and there might be more pressure to resolve what is happening. But I think the proxy war framing absolves the Sudanese military elites that are responsible for starting this war.
I think it's important to frame this war as an internationalized counter-revolutionary war that is protecting the interests of Sudanese elites and their international partners. Part of its purpose is to ensure that there will not be civilian rule and popular democracy. That's part of what explains the brutality of this war.
Brutality is employed to block democracy.
AllAfrica:
So in essence, you see the shorthand of calling this a proxy war goes some way towards absolving the internal parties of their responsibility and the accountability that they need to have.
Dr. Elamin:
Yes, exactly, and that's why I add the internationalized, because we also have to hold the foreign actors like the UAE accountable in this context. But I don't think we can absolve others. Both Burhan [General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the Sudanese Armed Forces] and Hemedti [RSF leader General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo] are war criminals, and we cannot absolve them of that long history of atrocities.
AllAfrica:
As genocidal violence and famine spread and international humanitarian organizations have raised louder alarms, media coverage has increased somewhat – but during the years of civil protests that helped topple al-Bachir [authoritarian ruler Omar al-Bachir] and the years afterwards, global attention has been sporadic. Has that affected developments in Sudan?
Dr. Elamin:
There has been, in my view, a virtual media blackout. Now there's a little bit more coverage of what's happening, but it's really too little, too late. There should have been a lot more focus on what is happening in order to put more pressure on the warring parties to agree to a ceasefire and corridors for humanitarian aid to come in.
There's a lot of evidence that the UAE has been supporting the war from the very beginning. The RSF, after a 500-day siege, has taken control of the city of El-Fasher in North Darfur, the last stronghold of the army in western Sudan. So this is a kind of major turning point in the war.
Over the course of 500 days, they've trapped people inside the city and cut off all supply lines, cut off food supplies. People have not been able to access health care. One last partly functioning maternity hospital was attacked, killing hundreds – all the health staff, the patients, their companions. We're seeing one atrocity after the other.
Indigenous Darfurian communities were previously displaced from the genocide that started 20 years ago – a targeted ethnic cleansing campaign that was the first genocide of the 21st century – and we're seeing this repeat itself. The RSF is an outgrowth of the Janjaweed that were responsible for carrying out those horrific massacres in partnership with the army at the time. Now they're fighting each other.
The horror is hard to describe.
It's actually very difficult to put into words what we're seeing happening on the ground. Tens of thousands of people that fled El-Fasher are being targeted while they're escaping. They're dying of starvation and lack of water on the way. People are having to hide and then move overnight. Many are trying to reach the town of Tawila, which is not controlled by the RSF or the army. 99,000 civilians have fled El Fashir but among them there are still tens of thousands who are unaccounted for and 150,000 remain trapped inside the city as the RSF commits horrific massacres. Pools of blood can now be seen via satellite images from space.
There's very, very little international aid support on the ground, which means that it's mostly Sudanese, ordinary Sudanese civilians organized into mutual aid groups – like the emergency response rooms that grew out of the resistance committees that were the backbone of the revolution – but also other kinds of mutual aid groups that are helping people survive.
[Sudan's Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs) – have been awarded the 2025 Chatham House Prize, in recognition of their crucial role in delivering humanitarian support.]
I think that a media blackout of high-level negotiations that have been happening in Washington DC, contributes to their not really being taken seriously and serving to legitimize this war and to sort of give it a green light to continue. Specifically, there has been a lack of coverage of the role that the UAE is playing in arming the RSF in exchange for Sudanese gold, livestock, gum arabic and other resources. To me, the key factor is that the international community should be imposing trade restrictions and an arms embargo on the UAE until it stops arming the RSF.
AllAfrica:
The situation in Darfur is getting at least some coverage now, but the situation in the whole of the country is desperate, isn't it? Are local support groups working everywhere?
Dr. Elamin:
Yes, absolutely. One of the things that is becoming more clear is that this major turning point in the war, in terms of the RSF now controlling all five states of Darfur, is coinciding with escalating aggression in different cities across Kordofan, which means we will likely see more violence against civilians there as well, and as you mentioned, across the country. There are people who have returned to Khartoum (the capital) since the RSF retreated, but they're returning to a city that is in complete ruins, where there is little infrastructure to sustain life. The health care system has disintegrated. We've seen cholera and dengue fever epidemics. There's still no water or electricity in many places.
A lot of my relatives are still in Khartoum and in the Gezira, and they're really struggling. People aren't earning a living and there is very little to sustain their wellbeing.
AllAfrica:
How culpable do you see the army in all this?
Dr. Elamin:
Neither of these warring parties have the interests of Sudan civilians at heart here, right? They're both benefiting financially from this war, in the sense that they're partnering with countries like the UAE and Egypt to extract Sudanese resources in exchange for the weapons they're getting. As I mentioned earlier, this is really a counter-revolutionary war that is trying to ensure that there isn't civilian rule.
The army staged the coup [against the civilian transition government] jointly with the RSF in October of 2021, upending the path towards civilian rule. The army itself has also committed war crimes. It's not like they are innocent bystanders here. They had a long history of war crimes against people in South Sudan and against people in Darfur during the genocide of the 2000s.
Both the RSF and army have used hunger as a weapon of war, cutting off supply lines to areas under enemy control. While the RSF is starving hundreds of thousands in N. Darfur and elsewhere, the army previously bombed an IDP [internally displaced persons] camp in order to eliminate the evidence for famine after the UN declared famine in North Darfur.
Both rival armies are committing crimes; neither are legitimate.
In this particular moment, the RSF is committing much more heinous war crimes in Darfur. But that doesn't absolve the army of the war crimes they've committed during and before this war. So for me, neither of them are legitimate. Neither of their power is legitimate.
The RSF is obviously committing genocidal war crimes, and the [Sudanese] diaspora is rightfully mobilizing against the RSF, and in particular the UAE, because it's been supporting the RSF. If the UAE were not supporting the RSF, it wouldn't have made these military gains. It's because of the anti-aircraft missiles and advanced weaponry that they've been shipping in over the last couple of months that the RSF has been able to make these advances. Again, going back to the point, what we really need to mobilize around is pressure on the United Arab Emirates to stop fueling this war and supporting the RSF.
Partly why we're where we are today is that the RSF was propped up and legitimized through the Khartoum process, which was led by the European Union (EU). The RSF was created out of the Janjaweed by the Al Bashir regime to kind of coup proof his own rule against the army. These are both elements of a state that has been extremely violent for decades and has worked together to commit atrocities against civilians.
AllAfrica:
Do you see any international party that could intervene to stop the massacres?
Dr. Elamin:
Certainly there needs to be so much more pressure on both parties to come to a ceasefire agreement and to open up corridors for humanitarian aid. That hasn't happened. We need to pressure on the foreign actors. Once the UAE stops arming the RSF, they will not be able to make the advances they've made. That only comes through international pressure on the UAE.
There have been countless high-level negotiations in Jeddah, in Cairo, in Geneva, now in Washington, DC, that have led to absolutely nothing, except, for example, the RSF being hosted in a luxury hotel, being wined and dined by people in Washington as people are getting massacred on the ground. We need to rethink this model of high-level negotiations. They're obviously not working. Sudanese military elites have long learned how to use peace as a currency to legitimize their continued rule and violence and more profiteering.
I think the only way we're going to get to a resolution is if we stop propping them up as potential reformists. That could lead us back to a path towards civilian rule. The UAE is one of the largest trading partners in the Middle East for Canada and the United States. It's about time that they use that pressure on the UAE.
And I should also say, sitting in Canada, there have been various Canadian companies that have been implicated in the war in Sudan, a PR company that represented the RSF after they committed a massacre during the revolution called Dickens and Madsen. There's also Canadian Streit armored vehicles and Sterling Cross rifles that have been discovered in the hands of the RSF as they commit genocide in Darfur. So it's not like Canada is an innocent bystander here. And the international community has barely funded the UN's aid appeal. There's a lot that has not been done.
What needs to happen is to center civilians who are most impacted by this war, in these negotiations to put them at the table – not civilian elites who are representing either party, but the civilians who are organizing for the survival of people on the ground. I think that's where we need to start.
Nisrin Elamin is Assistant Professor in the Departments of Anthropology and African Studies, specializing in Sociocultural Anthropology at the University of Toronto. She investigates "the connections between land, race, belonging and empire-making in Sudan and the broader Sahel region."
