Yet the Weapons Flow

As Sudanese civilians endure the world’s biggest displacement and humanitarian crises, uprooted political analyst Dallia Abdelmoniem unpacks the genocidal war in her country.

By Elle Kurancid, Dallia AbdelmoniemFebruary 8, 2025

• Politics

• Law

DALLIA ABDELMONIEM, A SUDANESE journalist turned political analyst, fled her missile-hit family home in central Khartoum after a week of war—which erupted on April 15, 2023—with fighter jets of the ruling Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) lurking above and rival snipers from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) below. Three months later, with her 29 immediate and extended relatives in Sudan separated across several countries, and many hundreds of thousands of households displaced nationwide, she co-authored the Al Jazeera investigation “‘Don’t let the other soldiers watch’: Rape as weapon in Sudan war.”

Now, 22 months on, death toll estimates exceed 150,000 people, with at least 61,000 dead in Khartoum State alone. Half of Sudan—about 25 million people—faces “engineered starvation,” and 30 percent of the population, around 14 million people, endures the world’s biggest displacement crisis, both internally and across borders. Abdelmoniem, the uprooted analyst now residing in Cairo, stresses that “civilians are the lowest priority” to the warring SAF and RSF, given their widespread documented crimes. In this searing interview, she points to the “moral bankruptcy” behind what Amnesty International reports as “an almost unimpeded supply of weapons” into her devastated but resource-rich country—including from the United Arab Emirates, a longtime top defense customer of the United States and current enabler of atrocities amounting to genocide.

¤

ELLE KURANCID: Across Sudan, as in Gaza, civilians and critical civilian infrastructure are under deliberate and indiscriminate lethal attacks, effectively making nowhere safe. To quote Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the United Nations Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, last June, “It is unquestionable that risk factors and indicators for genocide and related crimes are present, and the risks are increasing.” Around the same time that Nderitu issued her warning for Sudan, you recalled, in The Nation, the warmongering of a former Sudanese politician, who once said: “If a third of the population is displaced, if a third is killed, we’ll rule the remaining third.” With their hands already bloodied from the Darfur genocide of the early 2000s, it’s a lethal perspective that you say captures the warring SAF and RSF generals’ spiraling disregard for civilian protection today. From carnage in Darfur to the whole of Sudan, what is the anatomy of these genocidal campaigns—or, in the words of the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa, this “legacy of impunity”?

DALLIA ABDELMONIEM​: From the first day of the current war in Sudan, safety for and of civilians was disregarded, and that set the precedent for what was to come and has come to bear fruit. But it was expected: to this day, many of those accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Darfur conflict remain at large, such as former Sudan president Omar al-Bashir; Ahmed Haroun, a former Minister of State for the Interior accused of allegedly recruiting, funding, and arming the Janjaweed militia [the predecessor of the RSF]; and Abdel Raheem Muhammad Hussein, who was at the time the Sudanese President’s Special Representative in Darfur and is accused of recruiting, arming, and funding police forces and the Janjaweed in the region. Even after the fall of the Bashir regime and their subsequent arrests [at the bloodied hands of their former army allies], they never faced the legal consequences of their actions, and in some cases were shielded under the pretense of “they will face” justice and accountability—which they never did.

Impunity, especially in times of war, breeds contempt—contempt for the protection of civilians, contempt for the upholding of basic rules of war, contempt for the value of life. I could go on and on in respect to how violations committed by warring armies show little or no regard toward Sudanese civilians. What’s even worse, this legacy of impunity is not exclusive to Sudan but, as you rightly pointed out, is being practiced live on our screens in Gaza, for example. The concept of moral responsibility that, for quite some time, was utilized and held up as “guidance” by the international community on governance, for example, has been upended and erased. The “never again” promise has proven to be meaningless when all we get are pearl-clutching statements with no effective action implemented.

As the SAF and RSF exact atrocities with impunity, a recent Human Rights Watch investigation titled “Fanning the Flames” traces new, foreign-made weapons and military equipment across Sudan’s war zone, coming from companies in China, Iran, Russia, Serbia, and the United Arab Emirates. Despite the fact that such weaponry is “likely to be used to perpetuate serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law,” crucial arms transfers by outside powers and corporate actors continue, fueling humanitarian catastrophe. You’ve previously referred to Sudan as “a very resource-rich country,” adding: “We have water, agriculture, minerals, gold, gas, and oil—six resources that other countries would go to war for.” How central is this connection between your country’s natural resources and the weapons flows through which regional and global powers profit from mass suffering?

It’s very central. Economic and financial interests have now proven to be more important, more vital, than ensuring the safety of civilians or even pushing for an end to conflict. There is an arms embargo in Darfur [imposed by the UN since 2004 and renewed last September], yet the weapons flow in from that region. Where are the sanctions and penalties for those who continuously flaunt the violations of this embargo? There are numerous reports from media outlets, NGOs, and even the UN itself on how certain nations and groups, such as the UAE and Russia’s Wagner Group, who have been accused of both arming and supporting the RSF militia, are fanning the flames of war even further with their actions—be it financial support, weapons supply, or conveniently turning a blind eye.

What underlines the actions of certain nations or entities is resources, and specifically having access to and control of them. The smuggling and sale of gold from Sudan has never stopped, even during the war, for example. Furthermore, Sudan is a resource-rich country, from agricultural lands, minerals, and precious metals to oil, water, and [its location as] one of the best entry points into the African continent via the Red Sea—a major trade, shipping, and port facility to power-hungry nations wanting to exert their influence and using their deep pockets to attain that.

Amid the fastest-growing displacement and protection crisis globally, in Sudan, the international community has been slow-moving and neglectful, from the UN to the African Union and the Arab League to the European Union. For instance, the two-decade-old UN Security Council arms embargo on the Darfur region continues to be violated, for years, with recent reports by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International documenting ongoing arms flows to the region and nationwide via Belarus, China, France, Iran, Russia, Serbia, Türkiye, and the UAE. Against this brutal backdrop in which strategic interests prevail, the United States has been the leading donor of humanitarian assistance to Sudan with $2.3 billion since 2023—even as the Biden administration designates the RSF-backing UAE a “major defense partner,” after decades as the 10th largest US defense customer. Now, in the clutches of a second Trump administration and the shadows of the Biden-led State Department’s long-overdue genocide determination—complete with long-overdue sanctions on the RSF and SAF strongmen—where does this leave or lead the fight for civilian protection across Sudan and beyond?

This is one scenario I and other colleagues in the Sudan civic society sphere have been debating and discussing. Again, going on precedence, US humanitarian aid will be slashed, if not completely erased. Already, the 90-day pause of American foreign aid by President Trump is worrying, as USAID has been the single largest donor to Sudan. I believe the US-UAE relationship will take on even more importance due to the strong ties established during Trump’s first presidential administration, and that will surely continue now. The Gulf state is seen as a very strategic partner in terms of security, policy, economic, and commercial ties, and more crucially, the Abraham Accords—a look at the joint US-UAE statement released right before the UN General Assembly meeting is a testament to that. 

So, where does that leave us Sudanese? Hanging on a hope and a prayer that something will give. Maybe this will pave the way for other nations or regional blocs, such as the European Union and the African Union, to step up, but again, I won’t hold my breath for that to happen. I have a very bleak outlook on what could transpire, but anything can, I guess. Penalizing or sanctioning entities or nations that are flagrantly violating the arms embargo is possible. It’s been done before, especially in regards to Sudan—the Bashir regime embargoes era attests to that—but the fact there’s been an obvious dragging of feet to apply and enforce the arms embargo this time around [and expand it nationwide] shows how economic and political interests supersede everything else. This moral bankruptcy is what governs, what drives and pushes actors in the international community.

The final acts by the Biden administration of imposing sanctions on the RSF leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo or “Hemedti,” for committing war crimes and genocide, and on Sudan’s de facto ruler and SAF head Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan—for lethal attacks on civilians, among other violations—are welcome but a little too late. The war is nearing two years, and we in Sudanese civil society have been calling for the imposition of sanctions since day one, among other appeals, but it went unheeded until now. Will the last throw of the dice by Washington have an effect? Absolutely, especially on the RSF leadership, making them, and the militia they lead, personae non gratae. Whoever deals with them will be outed as genocide enablers, and no one wants that label.

A notable clarification is required here: the SAF leadership was not designated as having committed genocide nor war crimes—the RSF was and still is. This does not mean that the SAF is the moral authority on war conduct; their history and current violations prove otherwise.  But in this current war, it is the RSF that has looted and occupied civilians’ homes, driven millions of Sudanese into “displaced” status, committed ethnic and racial massacres in both Darfur and El Gezira, waged a sexually aggravated war on women and girls, and intentionally destroyed infrastructure such as power and water plants, food production facilities, and agricultural crops and harvests. The scorched-earth tactic adopted by the RSF has been weaponized on an unprecedented scale, and it will take a long time to recover, to rebuild from what they have unleashed.

Nothing is straightforward in politics, especially when it involves many entities and parties, so we wait and see if US sanctions will prove to be a major stumbling block for both the SAF and RSF, but I doubt it will. The war will end when one side emerges victorious. Conceding defeat is not an option for either of the two warring sides, and reaching an agreement of some sort is not conceivable—but nor is it inconceivable.

¤

Featured image: Plumes of smoke on day two of Sudan’s war, April 16, 2023, in the embattled capital Khartoum, as captured by Dallia Abdelmoniem from her kitchen window.